The City in Shakespeare Country

I was going to write this yesterday when it was all fresh in my mind thing but I was too knackered. And now I can't remember why I was so keen to write it up in the first place. It was the story of my road trip to Coventry ("The City in Shakespeare Country" as a laminated poster in our student house proclaimed, "Presumably they mean Britain - 'Coventry - The City in Britain'" as Punt and Dennis noted during their second stab at BBC1 sketch fame).

I got there by train from Birmingham International Station. Sidebar - how can you have an "International" railway station in Britain? Parents were visiting the NEC and it's only a nine (or eighteen) minute ride from there. I used the trains a lot while living there. They are immeasurably better now. They’ve installed these information boards in every carriage. It tells you where you’re going and what the next stop is. Invaluable info for someone like me who can be sure they’re on the wrong train no matter how many times evidence is presented to the contrary. A constant reminder is therefore a good thing. The other change is that they've installed London Underground style turnstiles at Coventry station. Last time I was in the area - Birmingham this time - some transport police were on the train checking tickets. It was quite amusing - one guy didn't have a ticket and claimed he was in such a hurry and didn't have time. The official deadpanned "Then why did I see you smoking a cigarette on the platform before we left?" He handed over his ten or twenty pound fine, a beaten and broken little criminal man.

It was while on the train that I realised I'd forgotten the name of the place where I lived in first year. There is a secondary campus and although I could remember the name of the hall I could not remember what the campus itself was called. Indeed, I can still remember most of the alphabetised halls after a decade. I've had to wade though the university website to find it. It really was a stupid thing to have forgotten.

Now comes the bit which no right thinking person would dare include in a fiction. I left the station in a rush to be somewhere nicer. Parked on the road outside the station, the first vehicle I looked at that wasn't a taxi, was a number 141. The cursed plate which had eluded me for a month (which I know because I haven't scored a single point since changing my car). That was good that was. I want to claim an extra bonus point for it being a vehicle with curtains but there is nothing in the Rule Book about fixtures and fittings.

Walking from the station I took a deliberately long way round. There are many ways into the city centre but I wanted a particular one. The one on the far side - the side where we lived. I was going to plot my route on a smaller version of this map but it is mangling my brain. Where is the station? I've found what looks like the station but there is no sign of any railway lines or shit. Maybe it is a plan to foil terrorists. Anyhoozle, I wander round (past a small BBC building) and reached the Co-op (home of the worst own-brand coco pops I've ever known). Behind it was a large blue building. Fuck me if it wasn't the Coventry Sky Dome - home of several recent sports entertainment events. Suffice it to say, from the size of it I doubt it holds as many people as Toronto's Sky Dome. Still, it's nice to know where these things are.

Coventry has a reputation for being somewhat ugly in construction. My future life partner Sue Perkins once defended the city on Light Lunch saying "It's not their fault the Luftwaffe blew most of it up". It was rebuilt in the style of the day and, through neglect or misplaced aesthetics, what remains isn't pretty. But in its day the vast circular market building was no doubt impressive.

The ongoing regeneration of the city centre (I call it a renewal) has linked the main shopping area to the market via several passages. There isn't a better way to describe them - one walks along, sees a corridor, follows it out of a sense of adventure and finds oneself in the market. That's what I was doing yesterday - going anywhere that looked new or different. From the outside it is still old and dirty and surrounded by detritus. Inside it is your typical market.

One of the passageways goes from the main centre of regeneration. Coventry city centre, for those unfamiliar, is basically a cross with a fountain in the centre. One arm leads to Waterstones, one down to WHS, one to Woolworths and beyond and the fourth lead down to a dead limb. I walked through that dead quarter every morning for two years and, aside from a local record shop (now gone and replaced by a chain store) there was nothing there but grime. It was as if the 90s stopped at the entrance way and you were plunged briefly back to the 70s. Last time I was there I saw how different it was. I must've been blinded by surprise as I was sure they'd pretty much knocked it all down and rebuilt it. Looking at it now I can see it is all the same buildings but clean, alive, repaved and light. They've added a glass roof and an escalator to the upper level but everything else remains. This bit of the town centre actually has its own website (I kid you not) - www.lowerprecinct.com and bizarre logo.

There are a few Doctor Who landmarks in Coventry. The most notable would be the Leofric Hotel, site of several big conventions in the 80s and 90s. It took me a good couple of years to even notice it was there - it isn't exactly prominent. It's just tucked into a corner on an unremarkable road. Then there is the theatre where Jon Pertwee was to perform his one man show shortly after the end of term. I thought briefly about staying behind for a couple of extra days so I could go and see it but didn't. I don't know if he died before the show's date or if I missed my last chance to see him perform. I do know that I couldn't find the theatre this time. There is also the Forbidden Planet where I bought Rigglesford's book - the one with the planet Dildo in it - and which has the largest single door I've ever seen. It is massive. As wide as a bus and would surely be better as two complimentary doors. I bought many things from there over the years. The last would be my City of Death video which only contained episodes one to three.

The final connection I can think of is more bizarre and ephemeral. I was in the West Orchards shopping centre and I heard the horn of Rassilon. The one that always plays whenever the Dark Tower appears in the Five Doctors. I don't know if it was experimental music, a fault in the air conditioning, a builder with a novelty drill, a hooligan with an air horn or a surrealist anarchist trombonist secreted in a nook but West Orchards became the Death Zone for several minutes.

I had to resort to chips from Burger King for lunch because all the chips shops I remembered were now halal-friendly kebab shops. They probably still served chips but I really dislike religious dietary laws. At least BK is vaguely honest. They sell meat. They don’t try and tell you that their meat is moral and everyone else’s is immoral. Besides, BK’s chips are ok’d by the Vegetarian Society and I was hungry.

So it was an interesting few hours, over all too quickly, and the journey home was interrupted by numerous traffic queues. The irritating kind – the ones that slow you to a crawl for a mile or two and then vanish like a manager who has stolen your ideas and wants to cut you out of the loop so he can take credit for them. Coventry is just a city centre – no better than most, not as good as some. A collection of generic shops and generic crowds. But just going there and seeing it again was nice.