A “sudden or temporary malfunction” didn’t really do it
justice. It was totally stuffed. Computers [and cars] are great when they are
working and a pain when they are not. I can barely believe that I had become so
dependent on it.
The last one turned out to be what my mother would have
described as “a pig in a poke.” I took it back where it came from in the
Victoria shopping centre and they eventually offered me a replacement. This
used to be the Great Central Railway’s Victoria station in the centre of
Nottingham. Below it, a vast car park fills the space where the trains once
ran. At street level, only the clock tower remains. From the depths of the car
park, you can see the entrance to the tunnel that took the GCR northwards under
Mansfield Road.
The railway was soon diving into a tunnel beneath Thurland
Street at the southern end of the station, too. It burst out into daylight at
Weekday Cross, a much photographed and frequently painted location [by the
admirable Rob Rowland, amongst others] adjacent to the Broad Marsh and High
Pavement, where the Contemporary art gallery now stands.
I enjoy gradually piecing together my mental jigsaw of
Nottingham’s railway past, picturing in my mind’s eye the scenes that I missed
while growing up over a hundred miles away. With my new computer now up and
running, I’m comforted that my journeys to the city are rarely wasted in my
imaginary world, either.
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