Looking back at days gone by
There comes a time in your life when you become what you always feared – an ‘I remember when’ bore. But having lived my whole life in the county, it was perhaps always inevitable. You always mature into what you fear.
So when I think of Canterbury, part of me still thinks of the Whitefriars complex as new. The days of getting lost in the labyrinth that was the old Ricemans department store is something for the history books, and popping into Woolworths a distant memory. Or walking across the covered bridge from the long-since demolished multi-storey to the shops and past the Morelli’s cafe.
Today, Canterbury may have its flaws but it’s a far more coherent combination of old and new than in, say, the 1980s. Likewise, the fact the city is no longer subject to the particular pong given off by the tannery which operated close to the centre for so many years is something of a treat. Not all progress is bad.
Mention this to my kids and it sounds like painting a picture of a medieval city rather than east Kent’s go-to shopping destination.
Folkestone used to only mean one thing – the Rotunda. It wasn’t quite up to Dreamland/Bembom Brothers in Margate in the 1980s, but it came a decent second. Along with those big domed arcade areas, it
dominated the seafront with rides and crazy golf.
As you got a little older, you moved a few yards down the coast to the La Parisienne nightclub, or perhaps the Metronome live music venue in Grace Hill which hosted early shows by the likes of Suede and the Manic Street Preachers. It’s hard to criticise Folkestone’s remarkable transformation in recent years.
A trip intoAshford means I always need to remember the ring road is not all one way any more, or that the old Picture House cinema has long since been ploughed into the concrete to make way for the international station complex. Or, for that matter, that catching a train no longer requires you to climb those steps to reach the
ticket office strip of the old railway station (the opposite end of which brought you out just across the road from the aforementioned cinema) and then stroll back down a flight to reach your platform of choice. And where the popular Saturday morning market used to be? And which sold cattle during the week? Now it’s a huge cinema and restaurant complex. As for what was the town’s one and only nightclub Cales (or Dusty’s for that matter)? Soon to be turned into flats.
Mind you, it wasn’t that long ago that the County Square shopping centre was extended to great fanfare (it was originally the Tufton Centre in my day) and actually had some shops inside.
Times change, progress is made, and, hopefully, the town is delivering on all the promise those of us growing up there in the 1980s were told lurked just around the corner. Most of us, of course, had moved away by then – tired of the cultural desert it had become – so experienced only the growing pains. To the west of the county there was Tunbridge Wells. In an era before Royal Victoria Place emerged as the key shopping destination, Calverley Road was the main ‘high street’ with all the key chain stores we felt so important back then. Many a happy hour was spent in Our Price browsing the records.
And it was rare there wasn’t a gaggle of people around the cinema at the top of Mount
Pleasant Road, waiting in line before the era of pre-booking. Now, like so many others, it’s gone forever.
Or take little Whitstable. Once upon a time, the summer meant not having to walk into the road to avoid the crowds; where chic boutique fashion stores sit today there were second-hand furniture shops where everything was priced for a local market – and not to sell to wealthy DfLs at inflated prices.
There used to be a cinema above the fish restaurant on the seafront too. It’s tough to argue with the success it’s become, but change it most certainly has.
Of course, all these former configurations of towns start to fade from memory over the
years as you become familiar with what they have now become.
And while becoming an ‘I remember when’ bore is one thing, banging on about how everything was better ‘back in the day’ is quite another. Times change, our habits change. Developments don’t happen just to spoil memories, they occur in the great pursuit of progress – some work, some don’t, but in the same way we all once had haircuts we’d rather not revisit, so our town centres have altered their appearance over the years to reflects trends and fashion.
All of which means, of course, in another 20, 30 or 40 years, the high streets we all walk along now will be the fading memories of today’s generation.