Category: UK

I always used to visit the public library when going somewhere new, as there is an element of it showing how much effort and enthusiasm has been put into a place. I think it’s fair to say that libraries can say quite a lot about a town. Some feel loved, active and properly used, while others have the faint atmosphere of a civic obligation being kept alive with a printer, three chairs and a display about recycling. This one was certainly not in the latter category. It was evident that there was a fair amount going on here, with regular events taking place and a genuine attempt to make it feel part of the community.

This library opened in 1939, having moved from their previous Commerce Way location, and it has kept its well designed building which is spacious and large inside. From the outside, it felt like a proper library building.

It has a more traditional feel in the rear room and the book range seemed well curated from what I saw. However, libraries like this have entirely lost some of their appeal to me. It was impossible to sit down with a laptop, as all the seated areas near the front had been reserved and there were dedicated children’s study areas which were empty. There were a couple of low chairs visible in this photo and it was all very lovely, but it wasn’t overly conducive to work. Low chairs are fine to contemplate life, read a magazine or slowly lose the will to stand up again, but they are not ideal for laptop-based productivity.

This is the reason I so often find myself in JD Wetherspoon venues to get work done. For all their many quirks, they have worked out seating, power points, comfort and the useful social contract that one can sit there for a while with a coffee without anyone looking faintly wounded. It feels a little sub-optimal that the national pub chain has become more useful to me as a working environment than many public libraries, but here we are.

Libraries used to have this pretty sorted, they’d have a lending section which was all about selecting a book and maybe having a quick sit down, then a reference area at the back where people could sit with a newspaper or to write. Now the whole thing appears to have verged into some sort of event space and people are displaced. But, if it works for the local community then that’s good as too many public spaces are closing and there are no shortage of places that cater to my urgent laptop and research needs….

I wanted to visit a pub that wasn’t JD Wetherspoon operated, although the Three Magnets was very lovely, and with the only Good Beer Guide pub in the town closed, I went for Crafty’s Bottle Shop which felt like a reasonable compromise.

The list looks quite broad, but there were six beers that weren’t available. However, there were some interesting ones that were and it’s not a bad list. There is always a little moment of emotional recalibration when a venue has crossed-out beers, unavailable beers or beers that exist only in theory, but I am used to disappointment in licensed premises

When I went to order it later transpired that a customer at the bar and the member of bar staff had guessed what I’d ordered. They went for the Beaver Town Neck Oil so we were all annoyed when they discovered that’s what they thought I’d order. I’m not sure what it says about me that strangers looked at me and thought “Neck Oil”, but I shall try not to dwell on it.

Before I realised they had incorrectly pre-judged my order, I had ordered two half pints and this was the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, an agreeable gentle wheat beer with banana notes.

And the Broken Dream from Siren Craft Brew, which was verging on decadent as it was smooth with tastes of coffee and chocolate. A entirely agreeable beer.

It wasn’t the busiest of venues, but I like calm.

There was a decent selection of bar snacks though.

I rather got the impressions that this venue had been a little more craft beer orientated in the past with a wider range of keg and can options, but a few reviews have suggested that the management has changed. Either way, the service was friendly, the surroundings were clean and there were some interesting beers available at reasonable prices. It’s certainly worth popping in, well, for beer drinkers anyway.

The phrase “Paradise is a promise as well as a memory” comes from Joseph Rykwert’s architectural history book ‘On Adam’s House in Paradise’, where it appears as part of his exploration of the “primitive hut” as an imagined origin point for architecture. Rykwert was interested in the way people have repeatedly imagined an ideal first dwelling, not just as something lost in the distant past, but as a model for what human shelter and society might still become.

The phrase has also been used in Letchworth Garden City, where artist Bettina Furnée incorporated it into her 2003 public artwork Paradise Is, commissioned for the centenary of the original Garden City. And here, across three photos, is this rather pleasant and slightly quirky signage.