Sillitoe's Nottingham: Then and Now
Seaton Rifles
The Alan Sillitoe Committee is presenting a virtual tour of Sillitoe’s Nottingham for you on The Space, focusing on five locations from the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958): Old Market Square, The White Horse, Raleigh, the River Trent and Goose Fair.
Use the material from Sillitoe’s Nottingham: Then and Now to take your own interactive tour of the author’s city. iPhone users can download the Sillitoe Trail App and follow in Arthur Seaton’s footsteps around Nottingham, exploring the real locations of key scenes from the novel. Or download the Sillitoe Trail Factory Handbook, where the content is presented in the style of a 1950s cycle maintenance manual.
As part of the Sillitoe Trail Arthur Seaton, the defiant factory worker at the centre of the novel, reacts to the observations of the commissioned writers. We started off by asking Tom Keeling to be the voice of Arthur Seaton 2012 as he played him in the first musical adaptation of the novel at the Nottingham Playhouse in May.
As our project draws to a close we’ve asked Jason Williamson, the lead singer of Sleaford Mods, to take on the role as his band will be the last act to perform at our Sillitoe Day when the Mobile App is launched later this year.
Williamson could have been crafted from the very hand of Sillitoe, as he displays all the characteristics of his finest anti-hero. He is a front man with attitude, oozing with confidence and ready to take on anyone who dares cross his path. At times he’s led a controversial life, describing his past as ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on crack’. Song titles such as ‘Tramp stamps and trendy bollocks’ or albums such as Wank are deliberately confrontational, intended to rile. But they are also brutally honest, unapologetic, telling it as it is.
As he says himself: “I’ve never worried about pleasing the audience because I already know the music is good. The reason me and him (Andrew Fearn) are so sure about Sleaford Mods is we know it represents who we are, where we live and what we see on a day-to-day basis. It doesn’t want to be anything other than what it is. A big slab of realism. The whole country’s dying on its arse, and people are singing about why don’t we all come together, when they ought to be pissed off.”
You can listen to it or read the text below.
AYUP, YOU LOT. DID YER MISS ME?
I’ve been out of town fer a well-deserved holiday, lookin’ fer a bit of sun along the beaches of Skeggy, not finding it and chatting up some cheeky-daft gals instead.
I met this one with eyes as green as the tips of novelty matchsticks. She had hair the colour of butter, yellow and reaching for her shoulders. She wasn’t the kind of girl I’d normally go for which as much as anything drew me to her and we slept a sinful sweet kip together. Then her bloke text saying he was popping over which gave me the perfect excuse to get out of there. I slept like a stone split in two by a sledgehammer on the train back home and when I arrived in Nottingham me Aunt Ada told me that you lot were still rabbiting on about me on The Space. And you’ve been on a right old tour of Nottingham by the sounds of it.
Went to the White Hoss, did yer? The Bobbo, as we used ter call it. Bet you thought you’d get a pint in, like, have a look at them stairs that I fell down, only to discover it’s now a curry house.
Well there’s no point blurting about the death of the pub, better you should have popped in while it were still around. It’s gone now, same as a lot of pubs around the city. I remember The New Vic – a pub bang in the middle of the Viccy Centre. Try getting a pint there nowadays – you’ll get nowt stronger that an espresso from one o’ them overpriced coffee bars. Mind you, the Pitcher & Piano up Weekday Cross used to be a church but now it’s a boozer so it ain’t all doom and gloom.
I had a Vindaloo in the Bobbo before I went ter Skeggy – hottest dish in the whole of Nottingham or so they claim. Ate it in five minutes flat and then asked for me money back. Nah, I’ve got no loyalty to the Bobbo or any other pub. They can close down as many as they like, but it won’t stop me drinking or having a good time. Most on ‘em deserve to go, especially the ones serving poncey drinks. I’d rather have a glass o’ water straight out the Trent than any o’ them overpriced foreign lagers.
There’s still a few independent pubs left that serve quality ales but they’re full of old men dead from the neck up; them Camra lot who yap on so much about their ale they forget ta drink it. Wouldn’t have had so much to talk about back when yer drank Shippoes or Home Ales and that were it. Two choices o’ brewery and two choices o’ beer. And yer telling me them were good ol’ days?
Raleigh’s gone the same way as the Bobbo. I feel sorry for some of them blokes who’d worked there all their life but they should have figured out that them cock-eyed bosses will do owt to increase their profits and think nothing of stiffing you the first chance they get. And I’d do exactly the same if I was in their position. It’s the way it’s always been and always will be. They’d have been better off saving up for a rifle instead of paying into that union the daft gets.
I’ll not miss having rotten guts and an aching spine every day but mopping around all day is no good either. You’ve got to get up every morning or else it’ll send you mad which is why I like to go fishing with our Bert.
My old man used to go poaching before the war, so we could have summat to eat. He once did a month in quod, the poor bastard. Now I use a forged anglers’ license and bring him home a fresh fish every day.
A mate of mine used to do burglaries and then come down the Trent and drop all his loot in. He wasn’t interested in making any cash, the daft bogger. He just liked to watch something heavy make a dull splash. He should lob Ma Bull in but she’d make such a splash she’d end up emptying the whole river. Imagine that! The Trent an empty trench grouting through the city, everything lying on its bed yielded up to its rightful owner – or to them as got there first! Bikes, TVs, empty cashboxes, mebbe even a car or two – the collected rammel of decades of petty thieving, drunken pratting about and hastily disposed of evidence.
And I bet there’d be oddities you’d never expect. The kind of freak show stuff they used to exhibit at the Goose Fair back when it were a proper carnival rather than an amusement arcade in the rain. Waste your hard-earned, cannily-borrowed or benefit-bestowed money on rides and mushy peas when you could be inside, in the dry, pint in yer hand, eye on that curvy brunette at the bar and just waiting for her fella to turn his back. That’s right, mate. You. Goose Fair? All yours and good luck to yer! And if you bump into them Swaddies, tell the yellow-bellied boggers that next time I’ll be ready for ‘em.
But you know summat? I don’t have to stand around here in this sly and treacherous rain, telling you bleeders what’s what. The past is only good when what you pull up can be seen as part of the future. Tek a tip from me – unless you’re looking over yer shoulder for the law or a jealous husband, don’t look back. Leave the past to get lost in the mists of yesterday or it’ll smother you. Nottingham ain’t what it was in a lot of ways, but it’s still my city. And as much as them toffee-nosed weasel-eyed gets in the council try to ruin it, it’ll still be my city.
And I’ll tell yer summat else. You’ll learn more about Nottingham – more about any city – by walking around it, drinking in its pubs, and chatting up its women – than you will clicking through some pages on a website. My old man’d come home every day from the factory, call to our mam fer his tea, then sit in front of the goggle box and let his brain turn to mulch instead of putting his boot through the screen and clawing his mind back. And now there’s a billion on yer sat on Facebook all likin’ the same thing. So nowt much has changed then.
But do as yer like. Me, I’m logged off. I’m not a download or a pixelated piece of content; I’m a six-foot pit prop that wants a pint of ale. I’m a cunning bastard out there in a city that’s home, playground and battleground all in one. Whatever you say I am or tweet I am, that’s what I’m not. Remember that. You don’t know owt about me.
You can visit all locations on the Sillitoe Trail: Old Market Square, The White Horse the Raleigh factory, the River Trent and Goose Fair.
Use the material from Sillitoe’s Nottingham: Then and Now to take your own interactive tour of the author’s city. iPhone users can download the Sillitoe Trail App and follow in Arthur Seaton’s footsteps around Nottingham, exploring the real locations of key scenes from the novel. Or download the Sillitoe Trail Factory Handbook, where the content is presented in the style of a 1950s cycle maintenance manual.
Visit the Sillitoe Trail’s website or have your say about it on Facebook or Twitter.