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First published in: City GENT Issue 114. December 2003
STOKE
It is clear that the vast majority of Britons do not have a clue where the city of Stoke-on-Trent is, that the vast majority of people who visit it think it is a closet, and the vast majority of people born there love it. We reckon this is to do with the history of the six little towns that were scraped together to make the city. There is no city centre worth the name, because none of the six towns were big enough to build on a grand scale. Even the pottery industry that brought wealth here was on a human scale. You do not need a four storey mill with a 200 foot chimney to make pots.
Oat cakes
This seems to be the ethnic cuisine of Stoke, and comes highly recommend, especially if served with bacon.
PMT
This is painted on the buses: which are claimed to be unreliable, uncertain; and are likely to cost much more than you expected.
Rudyard Lake.
This is a beauty spot close to Leek, which itself is a pretty town. Rudyard Lake is a reservoir supplying water to the Leek Canal. It was built by John Rennie in the late 18th Century. Rennie built the London Bridge that now stands in Arizona, and was one of our greatest civil engineers. His dam is a technical and aesthetic triumph. The dam, like almost all reservoir dams, was built of rock faced earth, with a core of puddled clay; which is a mix of clay and water, the mixing being done, then, by the feet of navvies.
What fame this lake has is based on the fact that England’s most successful poet was named after it. He was probably not called Rudyard for the same reason that the Beckham’s called their first born Brooklyn. More likely because Lockward Kipling (obviously a man already used to odd names) asked Alice Macdonald to marry him here. Their first child was born in India; learnt Hindustani as a first language; and became, arguably, this nations greatest ever multi-cultural writer. His poems work better as spoken pieces that any others I know of, as long as the audience is not arty and half strangled with beastliness, and Kim is a breath taking novel that would be a set text, if it had been written by a Russian or someone who lived in Bloomsbury.
Bradwan (Promotions) is happy to announce that it is now handling bookings for :
‘If Boots! - The best of Kipling'. Terms negotiable.
for details.
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