Place and memory

Geraldine Collinge
Saturday, March 7th, 2009

I’ve been thinking about our memories of places and how we ascribe emotions and relationships to place which may not be accurate and often conceal truths we’d rather forget.

I was born in Halifax and my Grandparents lived there until fairly recently.  I was excited to hear about Channel  Four’s new drama Red Riding.  I hadn’t read the books and frankly can’t have read much of the pre-publicity.  Oh a drama about my homeland, rolling hills, heather, a pint of good bitter, the Bronte sisters and Winifred Holtby, think I.  http://www.librarything.com/author/holtbywinifred

Oh but no, Yorkshire in the 1970’s was tough and Red Riding didn’t hide this.  It was really well written but extremely dark and disturbing.  My parents left Halifax for the South Yorkshire countryside for a reason, and they didn’t stay there long!

http://redriding.channel4.com/

I wonder, what is the history of the places that you know?  How is that represented now and what do you think about that representation.  Cornwall and the Lake District have similarly sugar coated images that conceal poverty and deprivation – Anna and Emma what do you think?  What was in the places that you are in residence and what will be there in the future?  Who occupied these places before us?

Geraldine

tagged under: .

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR


Geraldine Collinge
I'm Director of Apples & Snakes.

  1. annamaria
    March 7th, 2009

    hello geraldine and all…yes, Cornwall is often a backdrop for bodice ripping smuggling romances, or twee comedies such as Doc Martin, which nearly make me puke it has to be said, patronising twaddle…don;t get me started!!!
    of course there was smuggling, borne out of desperate poverty and starvation….there are myths about the practise of wrecking, deilbratley helping ships wreck by putting false lights on the cliffs, which actually never happened, rather, locals would risk thier lives to rescue drowning sailors., but of course , if there was a cargo on the beach, they would take it, still do.
    we suffer the same as any beautiful place, second homes, low paid seasonal demeaning work, loss of tradional trades..a globalising of local accents and culture..though the cornish are fiercly proud with a gift for reinvention. The sea shapes us, it’s never far away, and gives us our sense of place and connects us to the rest of the world…in some ways, our ports protect us from the worst of inward lookingness, as we’ve always looked to the world, and the world has come here for centuries.., infact i would say, London is more foreign to most cornishmen and women that the rest of the world is…. red riding grim indeed , but brillaint.
    annaxxx

    Reply


  2. Charlie
    March 7th, 2009

    As a brummie, we’ve never had that problem of romanticising our city…..Crossroads Motel meant that Benny or Adam Chance was the nearest we got to a Mr.Darcy:)

    Reply


  3. Robert
    March 8th, 2009

    I moved to the Oxford area towards the end of the Inspector Morse television series and was struck by the difference my knowledge of the actual city made to how I watched the programme. Before it had been a well acted television drama but afterwards it became to some extent an exercise in picking up on those occassions when the producers and directors “changed” the place to meet the needs of the story – cars going the wrong way down a one way street, creating locations that did not exist etc… Having thought more about this in the years since I have come to realise that we all do this in our everyday lives and my concept and understanding of a particular place might well be entirely different from that of someone standing right next to me at exactly the same time. That to me is what makes this project so interesting.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Previous Post
Next Post
Click here to receive regular updates on this blog
et_footer(); ?>