Internet time clock of the heart.

[hirez]

Somewhat trousered this evening. Time-travel has that effect.

Years ago there was a down at heel hotel/boozer in the middle of Cheltenham called The Plough. I recall some band called 'The Roadrunners' had a residency there because they were in the NME gig-guide for months. Esprit de Corps probably played there too. Round the back was a car-park that was little more than a bomb-site with a load of hardcore dumped in it. There were Buddleia growing out of the crumbling brickwork and rusty Fords everywhere.

It was all flattened in the 80s and replaced with the Regent Arcade, which is exactly what you'd expect from an 80s provincial mall that considered itself too posh to be called 'mall'. Not for nothing was a Cheltenham fanzine named 'It's only a bloody clock'. I used to go there quite a bit because it contained record shops. And the sort of bloody awful shops you only ever see in malls. Etam. River Island. Fucking Clintons. The entire cohort of the Dolmansaxlil Corporation.

I was there today for the first time in at least a decade. It's smaller, louder, held together with gaffer-taped plasterboard partitions and jammed out with Cheltenham yout'. You know the flickery-neon cyberpunk future we were going to have from the vantage point of 1986? Just like that. A concentrated bubble of 80s that's too dense to move with the rest of the timeline and has been abandoned to its fate.

The sort of yout' that frequents Broadmeads in Bristol are grimly spherical pram-faced mingers jabbering into mobile phones. Cheltenham yout' fall out of personal-plated Range Rovers, haul their miniskirts down slightly and then jabber into mobile phones.

Out of a sense of completeness and curiosity, I beetled up the road to the other 'mall' to check. Pretty much the same. You could be anywhere on the planet that does malls. I wandered round the back stairs of the place on the off-chance that I could find the door that leads to the outlet mall in Gurnee Mills, IL. However, all I found were funny looks from the security staff.

Which leads me to think that malls aren't spatially linked the way shitey metal nightclubs are, and that's probably a good thing. We can't have frigging shoppers discovering inter-dimensional travel by accident while they were looking for the scented candle shop. That sort of thing takes a certain amount of application and the ability to deal with watered-down lager, several hours of AC/DC and a lake of toxic lager piss slopping out of the blokes bogs. You need to be dedicated to your cause and look the part if you're going to lurch out of some black-painted pit in an entirely different decade and country to the one you entered.

Anyway. That particular reality (and it's very real. I'm not from here.) will be written about at some point in this future.

After that, it was off to the aged P's for tea and toast. All very fine. This week we discover a semi-distant relation ran the Hants and Dorset bus company.

Comments

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

Talk about your Bed, Bath, and Beyond!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I was actually surprised not to find one of those, or Crate & Barrel.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

grimly spherical pram-faced mingers jabbering into mobile phones

This is the exact description of mall shoppers in Southampton too.. perfect :)

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

When I was 12 years old, I thought that was the coolest clock I had ever seen. I took a picture of it which is even now mouldering in a pleather scrapbook in my mother's attic on a page labelled "My Day Out in Cheltenham". There was a fern bar (Sweeney's? Sweeney Todds?) somewhere in the arcade that featured a dessert with 12 scoops of ice cream. In one of those unbelievable-at-the-time triumphant ice cream related life experiences, my stepmother ordered it for everyone at our table to share.

My theory is that malls are like airport lounges - not interconnected, but manifestations of the same set of dimensions caught outside the time and space of real life. I like to seek out malls in times of desperation when I want a hit of cultural anesthesia and a Saturday marathon of The Good Life reruns is not available. Maybe it's the smell of Cinnabon.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the smell of Cinnabon.

I wish the shopping areas of the UK smelled of Cinnabon! *sigh*

Crazy but tasty.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at the nutritional breakdown of their products? I just end up smelling them and not eating them.

A regular cinnamon roll is 730 calories (http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/52903.html).

The ones that I like, the pecanbons, are even worse at 1,100 calories (http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/52905.html).

Re: Crazy but tasty.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I've only ever had one to eat, and that was about 8 years ago.

I just wish more places in the UK smelled of cinnamon. :(

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that the Promenade entrance to the Regent Arcade looks more like the main gate of HM Prison Cheltenham.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

It is odd. Everyone always went on about Gurnee Mills yet I never could understand why. Other than the faux wood floors, it was pretty much like any other mall.

What would be cool (at least to me) is to find a door that leads to an 80s era arcade that has Galaga, nacho cheese chips, and cola slushies. It would be a nice escape.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That was mostly my point. It was the only name I could remember off the top of my head. They are all entirely interchangeable. There was another on the far south side of Chicago that had a Hot Topic. It's probably got a name; Trevor or six-and-a-bit. Something like that.