wendy house

Can you improve Cemetery Junction?

Is it so gorgeous that any changes are more likely to ruin its existing gorgeousity?

Is it so icky that people have given up hope of being able to improve it without first obliterating it?

The question raises all sorts of emotionally charged, creative, cynical, optimistic, pragmatic and other reactions from people who live near, or pass through, the infamous local junction of the A4 (London Road) and A329 (Kings/Wokingham Road).

A local councilor, Rob White, is working with local action groups to improve the Cemetery Junction area. At the moment he’s consulting with locals. The co-op has a big cardboard suggestions box decorated with a collage of magazine pictures of pretty things. Excellent stuff. It made me feel like being back at school where having a go was important, encouraged and easy.

I’m loving the humour and creativity evident in this summary of suggestions to improve cemetery junction made on a ‘Get Reading’ news article:

• i’m thinking giant dinosaurs
• how about a cinema or a roller disco?
• Napalm
• Make it a spooky theme park
• How about a monorail?
• A small tactical thermo-nuclear device
• Bit of paint and a clean should do it….or if you really wanna prettify it, hanging baskets
• An underpass
• make a big roundabout where resturant is
• Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure
• re-install the gallows that used to stand on the site now occupied by The Granby? It might act as a deterrent to the hoodies and wannbie gangsters in that area
• What about an H Bomb?
• Prevent shop keepers and traders from parking cars and vans on the pavements
• The overhanging bushes on the London Rd side need trimming… …new paving and signage
• can’t be improved – its a dead loss
• A Tesco supermarket each side of the road, with a couple of Tesco Expresses sprinkled around Liverpool and Cholmeley Roads
• big ornamental archway would brighten up the area considerably
• Give me some explosives and a bulldozer and Ill give you instant results. Guaranteed
• Zombie Apocalypse

The Abbot Cook is a Mitchell and Butler pub at Cemetery junction in Reading town. You can see the Arthur Hill swimming baths through the window in the night-time picture. In this decade it has changed to the Abbot Cook from the Upin Arms and before that from the  ‘Jack of both sides’. The pub appears to reflect and redefine the character of the area, charting social change.

The Upin Arms used to court the custom of Reading town’s many students being placed half way between  Thames Valley University buildings and the Reading University campus. It had the feel of a vampires lair where the vampires drank shorts and Lager. Only one ale available and it was not hand pulled. Dark, and possibly a bit dank, with a sticky carpet, loud music, TV screens playing sport or music videos, cheap microwaved food and long opening hours.  Service was slow and surly. Recent Government cuts will inevitably lead to fewer and poorer students, their target customers are disappearing.  The pub re-invented itself as the Abbot Cook targeting an altogether different customer. Hopefully it will appeal to my friends and family.

The name ‘Jack of both sides’ refers to a proverb ‘jack of both sides, is before long, trusted by nobody, and abused by both parties.’  and to its physical location with entrances on two sides, towards two roads. According to some pub reviews it used to have trouble with drugs and violence.

As the pub has moved to serve different segments of the community so the character of its location, Cemetery Junction, is gradually changing. It’s definitiely calmed down in its most recent incarnation.  

The Abbot Cook incarnation is named after a 16th century local Catholic Martyr, the Abbot of the now-rubble Reading Abby,  Hugh Cook Farringdon. The pub serves overpriced average food (£9 for a chicken breast and some potatoes in a mushroom sauce)  including some vegetarian options. There is a friendly, bare-parquet-flooring with authentic victorian furniture, church-candle riddled, warmth to it’s atmosphere.

It has about 4 real ales on tap, they pull pints into jugs and have oversized stemmed glasses for half pints. Oh! I felt all girly drinking a half pint, never again. The staff don’t know what a slieve glass is, but they are phenomenally polite, cheerful and helpful. One bar man spent nigh-on half an hour talking to be about Mitchell and Butler and the different chains of pubs they own. I’m guessing he’s on the management trainee track.  It has a supportive and friendly atmosphere. Like me it’s pleasantly quirky – succulent plants in teacups decorate each table. There are also some double sockets for the cupboard and her companions.

My local pub has become somewhere I want to go.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s first feature film is named after a place in Reading called ‘Cemetery Junction’. “A 1970s-set comedy centered on three upstart professional men working at an insurance company” staring Ralph Fiennes.

I haven’t noticed the film cameras locally.

2am
Cemetery junction
Heards of black taxi’s rumbling by
Smaller, colourful, cabs weave between them
Heels clicking, skirts, hair and make-up readjusted
Bright laughter and  flourescent light waft from the rows of fast food shops
sometimes I feel wonderfully invisible in the bustling crowds as I wander the Reading streets at night

These reasons for not catching the bus to work have been cropping-up rather more frequently than I anticipated before moving to Reading:

• The cat ate my homework.
• I can’t get my computer to work.
• Washing machine, drains, pipes, roof,  (replace with home-feature of choice) is broken and I have to wait for the repair-person.
• Aliens have surrounded cemetery junction.
• I’ve got a cold.

Singing and high spirits in the streets near cemetery junction,   Balloons tied to fire engines,   lamp-posts,   leaple and shops.   Police directing traffic and cycling aound,   smiling.   A yound boy offered me bottled water and a leaflet.   I took the leaflet and  read…   …Nagar Kirtan is a Punjabi term that literally means “neighbourhood hymn singing“.   The seek new year is April 14th,   the day that Sikhism was born in 1699.   It is the holiest day of their calendar.

Wikipedia described Vaisakhi

Such singing and laughter and happiness,   it was a joy to mingle with the crowds

in the city cemetery

at cemetery junction

wandering around as if they own the place and no way-out except using the pedestrian crossings across the A4 or A329.    Neither crossing to be taken-on lightly by even the most hikingly-well-equipped-human.  

Odd to find wild deer in the city so close to my home…   well protected deer,   by the community police that live in the cemetery gate and parole the area in small bicycle packs…