Читать книгу Class of '79 - Chris Rooke - Страница 17

I had been born and grown up in Oxford; one of the most beautiful and bohemian cities in the country. It was what I was used to – lovely stone architecture with a learned air, steeped in history, together with a fairly laid-back counter culture driven by the large student population with bars and trendy shops and great pubs. Portsmouth, however, was pretty much the exact opposite to Oxford.

Portsmouth was a very staunchly working class town with a strong naval history with architecture (or rather a lack of it) to match. Instead of students there were sailors (known as Skates to the locals) and they tended to be quite right wing and working class in their orientation. There weren’t the bars and pubs and cafes and general air of culture that there had been in Oxford. Portsmouth (Pompey) was very much a naval dockyard town, and proud of it.

Of course the seaside resort of Southsea was also a part of Portsmouth, and that was great, but it was very much harking back to a past era, one of candy floss, and deck chairs and penny arcades. It had its own fairground with rides that even then had seen better days, and this only added to the sense of a seaside town that had once been great, but had been in decline. So, not only was I leaving home for the first time and living on my own in a new city, the contrast between the city I was leaving and the one I was going to, could hardly have been more marked.