No cash to go with it, so not entirely clear how much use it would be (although around 75% of the economy of Northern Ireland consists of public sector spending, mostly in tax shovelled into it from the rest of the UK).
Derry/Londonderry (whose name indicates it is a city with some sort of multiple personality disorder/deep schism) is a weird place and I look forward with anticipation to what they're going to deliver.
Probably one of their strengths will be something to do with murals, an area in which they already seem to have some skills.
Derry/Londonderry beat off stiff competition from, er, Sheffield (I thought every major millennium cultural investment there had had to be closed down because it was a complete fiasco)...
... um, Birmingham (dear God: the city of cheap paving slabs and arse-wipe architecture. Although I do love the extraordinary Brutalist signal box at Birmingham New Street station - quite amazing)...
... and, um, Norwich.
Now I actually love Norwich: it's a great little city, with almost no tourists, and lots of yokels (like me) speaking in a weird regional accent.
It's the spiritual home of Alan Partridge ("Ah-Ha!")...
... and has a world class collection of Medieval architecture from the time when it was England's second or third wealthiest city (I'm not making this up)...
... as well as such unexpected cultural delights as the Sainsbury Centre, whose collection is one of the most interesting among provincial galleries.
But, for Christ's sake, their idea of promoting themselves was to put Delia Smith forward as a leading spokesperson, and to publish some banal crap from Stephen Fry (who should know better) banging on about how whenever he visits Norwich he tries to take in a football match with Delia. I'm sorry, but for that appalling misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "culture" they deserved to lose.
Anyway, despite its mass of exquisitely cute architecture, Norwich lost the competition and Derry/Londonderry won it.
And, lest you think I'm being a bit unfair, there are actually some quite nice bits in Derry/Londonderry:
And I guess they got the sympathy vote. Ach, maybe I shouldn't be such an old cynic: maybe it'll all turn out fine after all.
PS: Norwich was, of course, the main East Anglian city served by my favourite railway, the Midland & Great Northern (even though for some bizarre reason they always treated Yarmouth as the main destination. Perhaps if they'd focussed more on Norwich passenger traffic the system would still be here) -- here an express waits to leave from the old City Station sometime in the early 1950s:
If the people responsible for Norwich's City of Culture bid had focussed more on the M&GN and less on Delia Fucking Smith, I have a hunch they may have done rather better in the competition. Let's just leave it at that.
3 comments:
Have you had a sherry?
Apologies -- I allowed my irrational hatred of Delia Smith and my rational hatred of football to coalesce into one giant ball of rage.
Er... sorry.
But Norwich still should have won.
Of course it should! I had rather hoped that this absurd over-compensatory PC had been flushed down the drain with the Coalition's arrival - let's hope it proves to have been the last dregs. As the NU's advertisements used to say "A fine City, Norwich"
Nice to see the final photo...
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