Teignmouth Atmospheres

Teignmouth Atmospheres

On walking sideways through a place with Phil Smith

What I bring is this: Teignmouth is almost the oldest seaside resort in Devon. The years of experience have ensured a wonderfully rich holiday atmosphere. Teignmouth retains much of the quaint charm and homely atmosphere which has drawn generations of visitors. In 1690, the year the clarinet was invented in Nuremberg, the French invaded Teignmouth. Or this: A pen and a book. Or this: An enquiry. How will I know an atmosphere? It seems rather a large, allencompassing thing. Like a parachute so big that you think it’s the firmament. Two answers: 1. The pervading tone or mood of a place or situation, especially with reference to the feelings or emotions evoked. 2. Atmos is vapour. The tone does indeed pervade. It goes through. It goes through me. But the tone pervades itself too. The town, or a street or a place or a space pervades itself with its own tone. The place constantly recreates itself by emitting and absorbing its own tone. Just as I do - constantly recreating myself, emitting and absorbing my own tone. Sentient and conscious, I can also choose to – or seek to – change my tone, in a way that Higher Brimley cannot. Americans say ‘tony’. For posh. Tony Spice perhaps? Can I change the tone of the places we visit? Can I change the atmosphere? Can we, together, change it? Can it change me? Or us?

Stepping into the atmosphere, do I become part of it? Does it absorb me? I breathe the vapour. Is my own atmosphere separate from the atmosphere of the place? When the atmosphere changes, as on rounding a street corner, what exactly changes? Is there a line in the air, as where two rivers meet? Or is it only the feelings evoked in me that change? What about those feelings evoked? Called out. The atmosphere becomes a Siren, perhaps. Only a stronger tone can resist it. My babble. Else, plug my ears with beeswax and tie me to the mast. If I don’t resist it, do I become a litmus? A litmusphere? A moss dye? Arriving, I am aware of genius loci. The spirit of the place. Is that atmosphere? Or something different? The spirit of the place is best found in the tessellation of the pavement – the patterns we are most familiar with as head-turned-down children scuffing or not scuffing, hopscotching or crack-hopping in our new shoes. Is that atmosphere? I did not scuff or not scuff here. What do I know? There is vapour and there is spirit. Do I conflate these two? Blow or breathe them together?

Words I notice some tones or strands or qualities – in the words first. Perhaps they’re just themes. If I educe a theme from what I see and what I read, can I then imagine, fantasise, feel an atmosphere that matches the theme? Is that cheating? How can I find an atmosphere that I haven’t first suggested is there? Those words: Private ~ Mark your bin here Unadopted ~ No admittance Restricted parking Residents only No access ~ Keep out This is not an abandoned vehicle Keep clear A lot of effort is expended in delineating different kinds of space. These words do it. Conventional symbols, like yellow lines, do it as clearly as physical barriers in the form of fences, gates and bollards. It seems to matter both who owns this space and who can use it, and how. Reverse into parking space. The barriers, symbols and words – all symbols – determine how we experience the place. Do they affect the atmosphere? Or simply evoke feelings or a state of alertness that colours my experience of the atmosphere? What would change the atmosphere? If there had been a concentration camp behind the high wall on Belgrave Terrace, would it change the atmosphere? Even if I didn’t know it had been there? You know nothing grows and no birds sing at Auschwitz? That’s not true. Never was.

Slices From the museum, everything is slicing. Or sliced. The main road and the railway slice through the town. The bridge slices across the vector of the trains – one side the stone is grey and industrial; the other side is red and varied and geological. The bridge is a slice through a marbled cake.

I’m hungry already. Elsewhere streets slice, the estuary slices, the railway always slices – both the track and the trains. The place is defined by its interruptions. Or my experience of it is constantly defined by interruption. I become differently aware of the street as it ends. I look back to see it more clearly now I know its extent. Its extent even defines its function. This is an old way down to the port; this is a residential cul-de-sac; this is an impasse. The slices, even the estuary, represent functions: travel and transport and commerce. A human imposition with a clear purpose.

In church In St James’ Church, the rungs of the belfry ladder slice across a space sliced up already by the wych-elm stiles. The wear of centuries has hollowed them, but they still have a hallowed purpose. Signs seen: Donations will be appreciated. By whom? By the attendants, helpful? By god? DANGER – Bells Are Up. Bells Я Up perhaps, in a time that conflates sound and alphabetic form? Eight bells. A wormhole. To my father’s life in the navy. The end of the watch. The start of another. For those in peril on the sea. Grunted and sobbed at his funeral. There is quite an association with HMS Pellew. HMS Pellew is not a ship, in one of those quaintnesses of the Royal Navy. It is a building. Or was. It’s been decommissioned. Though it’s a place of birth and marriage and death, the church isn’t sexy. I do not see a condom-vending machine in the church. Catholic churches are much sexier, but they don’t have them either. Nor do I see any sign of fornication. Though there are injunctions behind the altar against certain types of fornication. Don’t think of a monkey. Or your neighbour’s ass. Or anyone else’s wife.

Forlorn In Station Business Park there is suddenly width after narrowness. The skip maws open. The first sign of the litter that will salt and pepper our journey. Receiving waste in a wasteland. On waste ground. Here weeds flourish. But this is not an abandoned site. Though it is clearly a site, where a street may not be a site. The pumping station is abandoned. What was, is not. Though they be dead, yet they speak does not yet echo from the church that we have not yet reached. Weeds gang up where once coal stacked. From atmospheric to coal to weeds. A slow deterioration. A Portakabinned wasteland. Ageing flower troughs harbour fence-averse sweet peas. This is the month to grow cannabis. The station windows are glassless. Eyeless. Are they less functional without glass? I can see more clearly through them now. Vinegar is not needed to keep them clean. Are windows knocked through into seeing? Someone has punched their lights out. The train slices through. My sense here is of forlorn. Verloren. Sad and abandoned. Lost. Lost already? Lost before? The sedge is withered. I feel as leaden as the sky. Borne down upon. I feel as empty as a drum. Paradise Street. Eden’s Court. A touch aspirational? The litany is impossible to say without hearing the young dog. I breathe more easily. We are ascending. Larks. My spirits are lifted. The red hot pokers upsurge. Our path slices up between the houses. Valerian breaks through, suggesting the mortality of walling, but also growth and life and physis. Is valerian more self-actualising than a wall? I am lifting with the gulls.

Higher Brimley et ses environs At the top of Heywoods Road someone is undecided about defacing Shute Hill into Shite Hill or Shit Hill. Too much choice can be stressful. The former has more literary merit, I think. There is the vapour of a Dublin accent not a countryjoyce accent permeates the words, but surely that vapour is mine alone. It becomes a literary peramble. Covert Capture Cars lurk here. If I should wander this way drunk one night, could I be caught and consumed by one? Covertly? Would anyone ever know?

Not waving On Higher Brimley, more roads slice. Or do they? If roads are simply what’s left of the ground that was there before the houses came, with their Covert Capture Mortgages – then surely the houses slice and the roads simply remain. On Higher Brimley the ridge tiles on each roof suggest a wistful quality in the architect. Are these hooks? Or the flailing right arm of a swimmer doing a vigorous crawl? Or a simple fancy?

Beyond Higher Brimley the houses become softer. Rounded windows, creams and blues and custard colours. Stripes and window wrappings appear. I wish to be enchanted. I am enchanted. Where did the impetus for that change of atmosphere lie? Was I asking for it? Or did it ask for me?

Gaping After St James’ Church we find again the main road. Some horror from our group. It seems to me that the main road thoroughly inhabits the present. Is it more in the now than we are with our wistfulness? Would Master Eckhart embrace the main road? Praise for the Present Pride in the Past Faith in the Future Perm any two of three. In Daimands Lane many a wheelie bin overfloweth. An olive tree is optimistic in a pot. I Rule By Me says a graffito. Indeed you do, mate. The downpipes belch. The earth reasserts itself through the tarmac. Roof eye windows gaze. There will be more of this. By the water, the houses gaze over the railway track enviously – a line of open-mouthed tennis spectators, or vultures waiting for the moment to pounce. All eyes and windows – all eyes and mouth and desire and greed and swallowing up and wanting. More gaping maws – the house as skip. The train is not fast. It is a slow object of house lust.

Point Counterpoint I remember the starting contrast. Counterpoint: Atmosphere Brunel Organisation

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Steam Stephenson Individual

I add: The jurist-priest-king who “proceeds by treaties, pacts and contracts”; who is a one-armed man using tools and mechanisms principally.

The fearsome magician-emperor who “operates by capture, bonds, knots and nets”; who is a one-eyed man using signs and symbols principally.

Both retain the threat of violence. Both ensure order. Who or what keeps order in this town? I am aware of some tension. We must hold on tight to stop things falling apart in this town. What would happen if the Private sign were to be disregarded? Perhaps this only echoes my own tension – what must I do to stop myself falling apart? Is the town safe in its tension, or threatening, or both? Perhaps the only atmospheres that I can be aware of in this town are ones that already exist in me?

Putty By the water the clay is red. Boats and buoys lie around like cattle in the sun. Listless. Listing. At odds with themselves. I think for a moment of clumpiness. Clusters of buoyish activity. Or inactivity. The boats lie at rakish angles, one leg akimbo, one hand clapping.

The washing line garden has poles for maybe 50 – I didn’t count – Simon Stylites. It could be a pole dweller’s park. In Russia, agoraphobic storks could nest on each one. In Berlin, it would be a holocaust memorial. Buñuel would have a field day. There is some clarity of purpose. This space is determined by its poles – its content.

Determination How much of the town is determined. The space (pavement, park, path, church, shop) determines what I do in it. Signs and symbols and notices determine where I go. Customs and conventions determine how I go. My own and the town’s. I am no free agent in any of these spaces. The atmosphere, too, determines how and where I go. Or my will determines the atmosphere and it determines me, so I can hold up hands up and protest my innocence. Me? What did I do? What are we doing here, people ask? Our answers stumble. We are, in fact, uncategorised, perhaps less determined in a determined landscape than most others. Less determined than if we were on our own? The space determines what I do in it; what I do determines, to some extent, how I feel. How I feel detetmines the atmosphere I perceive. The atmosphere determines how I feel. I am putty. Or not.

Waste Trying to write, I seek out covered places where I can be out of the rain. The ink blots. There are few such places. More in the Mediterranean. The bowling green is a fertilised desert. There is desert everywhere. What is waste ground? Ground with no purpose. Unwanted or unusable. Empty or immense in its origin. I am wandering in the purposeless. Vagrant, vagabond or vague in the vastness. Waste, derelict, deserted, abandoned – yet, now, available for re-use, for new use. The unwanted is now wanted. Over it presides the Happy Hooker – beached but flirty, temporarily abandoned but available. I start to run, want to dance. Is it the lightening sky, an open beach or the overdetermining Happy Hooker? After the port, in Teign Street, the houses are more solid, bourgeois, prosperous; the letterbox is VR. Here windows retreat slightly from the road – defensive, quite unlike their rapacious fellows by the railway line overlooking the water. Here the windows defend an inner space rather than craning towards an external one. They nervously protect a certain certainty, suspicious bouncers at a wealthy garden party. Outside Pellew House the pavement is all askew, diagonals and parallels and stars. Yet less a spirit of place than an unharmonious geography imposed. I remain unconvinced. Atmosphere wishes to emerge. It will not be imposed.

Taste The Hobbit is “looking for artists who can paint nudes tastefully”. Now there’s a thing. I am tempted to go in and fart tastefully. Would they have turned away Spencer and Bacon? The Hobbit welcomes tasteful beaver shots. Cunts need not apply. On Stanley Street, the brightly coloured houses put themselves into the available space, again unlike the demure houses on Teign Street. If the Stanley Street houses could wear tiny skirts, they would. The vapour of Teignmouth is in my nostrils now. Decay and resurgence. Grandpa’s going clubbing tonight. Up and at ‘em boy. Andrew Carey With great thanks to Phil Smith and Sandra Reeve