When we were on our way back home to Scotland after our recent trip to Holland and Belgium we chose to stop overnight in Nottingham. I’m not sure why we chose that place but maybe thoughts of Robin Hood and his Merry Men was at the back of my mind, and we had never been there before. By the time we got there it was dinner time and we had seen the art deco pub in the photo below.
Jack is a big fan of art deco and the pub sold food so we thought we would give their eatery a go, and it would give us a chance to see if the interior was also art deco. When we parked the car I said to Jack – I can see a huge St George’s cross flag. Then I thought – Well, why not, it’s about time the English rescued their flag from the rough elements who usually brandish them with violence in mind.
On entering the pub we saw that the entire place was festooned with St George bunting and flags (this was long before the football tournament started) and worse than that the pub was full of very rough looking men indeed. We just knew that our Scottish accents were going to be like a red rag to bulls. So we backed our way out again, all of the art deco had been stripped out of it anyway, if it had ever been there in the first place.
It was a bit of an eyeopener really, there are parts of England that are truly a foreign country, and I suspect that is so for many English people too. If David Cameron had known that communities like that existed he would never have dreamt of having that damned referendum.
We ended up in what was supposed to be a ‘posh’ bit of Nottingham but it wasn’t an awful lot better. There were ‘bouncers’ on every restaurant doorway and when we finally found somewhere to eat that didn’t look too grotty it was a bit like something out of a sitcom as we were the only people in there who looked up when the many emergency vehicles screamed past the windows, it was obviously normal life as far as the other diners were concerned.
There was proof that Nottingham had had a genteel past though as you can see below. The Zara shop is situated in a lovely art nouveau building which I think must have been a beautiful department store in its heyday.
I’m very susceptible to atmosphere in places and I really didn’t like Nottingham, it was only when I got back home and mentioned that to some people that they said – that’s hardly surprising as it has had a lot of trouble with gang warfare and shooting incidents in the recent past! Where is Robin Hood when you need him?!