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| Hebden Bridge the UK's coolest place? Mmm... | Hebden Bridge the UK's coolest place? Mmm... |
| (12 days later) | |
| It's great to live in the coolest, quirkiest, most creative place in Britain but can Hebden Bridge really be cooler than, say, Brighton (The sea! The sunshine! The Lanes!) Or London? Or Edinburgh? | It's great to live in the coolest, quirkiest, most creative place in Britain but can Hebden Bridge really be cooler than, say, Brighton (The sea! The sunshine! The Lanes!) Or London? Or Edinburgh? |
| It could be argued that it's the smallness of the place that swung it. It's true that all the art and creativity is accessible. I wouldn't have to go further than the next street if I wanted to collaborate with other Hebden residents on a film/play/art installation/clown workshop. And although I didn't get tickets for Pattie Smith or The Fall, I like the idea that I might bump into Mark E Smith down the Spa. It's also more open minded than most small towns, due to the happy fact that most residents have moved here from somewhere else, somewhere bigger. | It could be argued that it's the smallness of the place that swung it. It's true that all the art and creativity is accessible. I wouldn't have to go further than the next street if I wanted to collaborate with other Hebden residents on a film/play/art installation/clown workshop. And although I didn't get tickets for Pattie Smith or The Fall, I like the idea that I might bump into Mark E Smith down the Spa. It's also more open minded than most small towns, due to the happy fact that most residents have moved here from somewhere else, somewhere bigger. |
| But Hebden Bridge is still small, and no matter how many times it's voted cool and quirky here are some basic principles of small town life that will never change, even in Hebden Bridge: | But Hebden Bridge is still small, and no matter how many times it's voted cool and quirky here are some basic principles of small town life that will never change, even in Hebden Bridge: |
| Relationships: I've heard all the jokes about in-breeding and I'd like to make it clear that they are offensive and we've moved on since the days of Wuthering Heights where the only opportunity for love was hooking up with your step brother on the next farm. However, there are some problems with relationships in small towns that apply to Hebden as much as anywhere and this seems as good a time as any to be open about that. To put it bluntly, there are only so many people to go round. It's perfectly acceptable here to go out with someone, then go out with their best friend/brother/sister, then go back out with them a few years later to check whether there was anything you missed first time round. Everyone understands. Hebden has always been ahead of the game when it came to recycling and making the most of limited resources. The influx of new residents will hopefully mean that this particular feature of the coolest town in Britain has almost been phased out. Ex-partners: Unless you married the person you went out with at school, most of those who grew up and stayed in a small town have at least one Ex knocking about. You may have merely snogged them once at a young farmers disco in 1984; you may have been married to them for 20 years and have three kids together. But one thing is a certainty: you will bump into that person at least three times a week for the rest of your life. And it won't be in a way you can prepare for, like Princess Diana when she emerged in that killer black dress after news of her divorce broke. It will be when you are at the dump, with no make-up on, by the garden waste skip. Or in the frozen food aisle of the co-op when there's no way out past the trollies. | Relationships: I've heard all the jokes about in-breeding and I'd like to make it clear that they are offensive and we've moved on since the days of Wuthering Heights where the only opportunity for love was hooking up with your step brother on the next farm. However, there are some problems with relationships in small towns that apply to Hebden as much as anywhere and this seems as good a time as any to be open about that. To put it bluntly, there are only so many people to go round. It's perfectly acceptable here to go out with someone, then go out with their best friend/brother/sister, then go back out with them a few years later to check whether there was anything you missed first time round. Everyone understands. Hebden has always been ahead of the game when it came to recycling and making the most of limited resources. The influx of new residents will hopefully mean that this particular feature of the coolest town in Britain has almost been phased out. Ex-partners: Unless you married the person you went out with at school, most of those who grew up and stayed in a small town have at least one Ex knocking about. You may have merely snogged them once at a young farmers disco in 1984; you may have been married to them for 20 years and have three kids together. But one thing is a certainty: you will bump into that person at least three times a week for the rest of your life. And it won't be in a way you can prepare for, like Princess Diana when she emerged in that killer black dress after news of her divorce broke. It will be when you are at the dump, with no make-up on, by the garden waste skip. Or in the frozen food aisle of the co-op when there's no way out past the trollies. |
| Family: One of the things that keep people in small towns is the obvious benefit of having your family nearby. It also means you must be prepared at any given time to go out – even to the groovy Trades Club- and to see up to four generations of the same family (plus their dog) enjoying a night out together. Often it may be four generations of your own family. Understand that when this happens you will definitely be spending the evening with them, no matter what kind of debauched hell-raising you had planned. Cities: No matter how cool, gay-friendly or creative Hebden Bridge is, sooner or later anyone who grew up here wants to have a go at living in a city. For me, it didn't matter where as long as there were a lot of people and none of them knew me. I ended up spending three years in Coventry, possibly one of the ugliest towns in Britain and not long after The Specials had a number one with Ghost Town. It didn't matter. For me it was an urban wonderland, every day offering the possibility of something new, with more than three streets to discover and shops that didn't have half day closing on a Tuesday. I soon found out you can run but you can't hide. When someone at a student party commented on my strong accent and asked me where I was from I tried casting off my small town roots, saying breezily "Oh, near Manchester…" "Really?" he said. "That sounds like a rural accent to me." You can take the girl out of the small town… | Family: One of the things that keep people in small towns is the obvious benefit of having your family nearby. It also means you must be prepared at any given time to go out – even to the groovy Trades Club- and to see up to four generations of the same family (plus their dog) enjoying a night out together. Often it may be four generations of your own family. Understand that when this happens you will definitely be spending the evening with them, no matter what kind of debauched hell-raising you had planned. Cities: No matter how cool, gay-friendly or creative Hebden Bridge is, sooner or later anyone who grew up here wants to have a go at living in a city. For me, it didn't matter where as long as there were a lot of people and none of them knew me. I ended up spending three years in Coventry, possibly one of the ugliest towns in Britain and not long after The Specials had a number one with Ghost Town. It didn't matter. For me it was an urban wonderland, every day offering the possibility of something new, with more than three streets to discover and shops that didn't have half day closing on a Tuesday. I soon found out you can run but you can't hide. When someone at a student party commented on my strong accent and asked me where I was from I tried casting off my small town roots, saying breezily "Oh, near Manchester…" "Really?" he said. "That sounds like a rural accent to me." You can take the girl out of the small town… |
| Success:Otherwise known as showing off. There will always be those who stand out from the crowd, who have that invisible charisma or entrepreneurial spirit, marking them out from the herd at school and beyond. Most of those people know instinctively that they must leave the small town and give their talent space to flourish (see Leaving, below). But the ones who stay and stand out from the crowd will always be known as "a big fish in a small pond". If someone loses a bit of weight or suddenly starts wearing nice clothes it's viewed with suspicion. They are shining too brightly. They are heading for a fall. At the very least they will be having an affair or some kind of break-down. | Success:Otherwise known as showing off. There will always be those who stand out from the crowd, who have that invisible charisma or entrepreneurial spirit, marking them out from the herd at school and beyond. Most of those people know instinctively that they must leave the small town and give their talent space to flourish (see Leaving, below). But the ones who stay and stand out from the crowd will always be known as "a big fish in a small pond". If someone loses a bit of weight or suddenly starts wearing nice clothes it's viewed with suspicion. They are shining too brightly. They are heading for a fall. At the very least they will be having an affair or some kind of break-down. |
| Leaving: There's lots of songs about small towns and most of them are about leaving. Bruce Springsteen in particular elevated the experience into something desperately romantic. But however much I love Born to Run I could never make it fit my own (brief) experience of leaving. In 1989 when my parents drove me to Coventry Poly with a car carefully packed with bed linen and cutlery, it didn't really feel like the highway was "jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive". As I recall, we had a nice clear run on the M1 that day. London by the Smiths has more resonance when it comes to the idea of leaving a small town: "You think they're sad because you're leaving. But did you see the jealousy in the eyes of the ones who have to stay behind?" The ones that leave here for good go to live in the buzzing metropolis of London or the wide open space of Canada. They get in touch and ask if there's any news. They listen with thinly veiled horror as you tell them about the new deli range in the Co-op, or that the window cleaner asked after them, or that your mum's friend's dog had to go to the vet recently but is fine now. | Leaving: There's lots of songs about small towns and most of them are about leaving. Bruce Springsteen in particular elevated the experience into something desperately romantic. But however much I love Born to Run I could never make it fit my own (brief) experience of leaving. In 1989 when my parents drove me to Coventry Poly with a car carefully packed with bed linen and cutlery, it didn't really feel like the highway was "jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive". As I recall, we had a nice clear run on the M1 that day. London by the Smiths has more resonance when it comes to the idea of leaving a small town: "You think they're sad because you're leaving. But did you see the jealousy in the eyes of the ones who have to stay behind?" The ones that leave here for good go to live in the buzzing metropolis of London or the wide open space of Canada. They get in touch and ask if there's any news. They listen with thinly veiled horror as you tell them about the new deli range in the Co-op, or that the window cleaner asked after them, or that your mum's friend's dog had to go to the vet recently but is fine now. |
| The list isn't exhaustive but I hope it gives a flavour of the kind of things that will never change, no matter what The Times says. Luckily, it's possible for a place to be cool, creative and quirky as well as having all the qualities mentioned above. Things have moved on a lot since it was known as "Hemmed –In Bridge" in our youth. I wouldn't live anywhere else. Not even Coventry. | The list isn't exhaustive but I hope it gives a flavour of the kind of things that will never change, no matter what The Times says. Luckily, it's possible for a place to be cool, creative and quirky as well as having all the qualities mentioned above. Things have moved on a lot since it was known as "Hemmed –In Bridge" in our youth. I wouldn't live anywhere else. Not even Coventry. |
| Rachel Pickering lives in Hebden Bridge, works locally and has written previously for The Guardian. | Rachel Pickering lives in Hebden Bridge, works locally and has written previously for The Guardian. |
| Is she right? Please have your say. Meanwhile, here's what Ian McMillan thinks down in Barnsley, courtesy of the HebWeb, first and still best of the UK's best community websites. | Is she right? Please have your say. Meanwhile, here's what Ian McMillan thinks down in Barnsley, courtesy of the HebWeb, first and still best of the UK's best community websites. |
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