Place Prejudice

I’ll tell you now and I’ll tell you firmly, I don’t never want to go to Burnley – the first line of a John Cooper Clarke poem – gives expression to the idea that it’s fine to harbour prejudice against places; which helps me feel better about my refusal to go to Dubai. I want nothing to do with an artificial city that flouts the principles of ecological sustainability and is ruled over by hereditary tyrants who deem it their right to suppress political opposition and deny equality to the female half of the population. In any case, there is nothing there but bling, which is about as relevant to my life as haute couture to an Outback sheep-shearer. Moreover, although I recently read that a former industrial area in the city is being converted into an arts quarter, I am not convinced that it will turn out to be anything other than an art market for the wealthy.

Cooper Clarke is being humorous, of course, but strictly speaking prejudice is, I suppose, prejudice and it’s really not fine for me to dismiss Dubai, or any one of millions of other destinations, as unworthy of my visitation. Without first-hand experience of a place, all one’s impressions depend on anecdote or propaganda. In reality, of course, it is impossible to go everywhere and I must rely on my experiences of the places I can manage to get to. But it’s an imperfect science: over time, things change and conclusions that were reached years ago may become invalid. Take the case of Vesta curry, a pioneering product in the field of pre-prepared meals. As I recall, the packet contained dehydrated curry and rice, the proposition being that you could eat exotic food, at home, in front of the TV, without the hassle of going abroad, or to a restaurant, or learning how to prepare and cook it. I bought into the dream at first but soon realised that there was a compromise: it tasted awful. Consequently, to this day, I shun the packaged meals that populate whole aisles of supermarket shelves, despite the probability that culinary advances and consumer focus groups have led to considerable improvements on Vesta.

However, whilst I can happily live the rest of my days without pre-prepared dinners, I cannot say the same about travelling. Since I am not obliged to venture abroad for the purpose of work, nor to support a football team, I am free (not counting the occasional semi-obligatory visits to relatives or friends) to choose where I go. When deciding on a destination for its own sake, therefore, it’s down to either train-spotting – pursuing a particular interest – or whimsy based on, yes, anecdote and propaganda. I have never been to Russia, for example, a country which these days gets a consistently bad press. Yet I would like to look behind the headlines and commentaries. I am intrigued as to how a country with so turbulent a history of wars, revolutions, repression, famine and hardship – all the things we hear about in the West – has, nevertheless, produced so many great artists. In the fields of painting, music, literature, dance, theatre and architecture there is a plethora of Russian names known around the world as foremost in their field (although, unfortunately, the most widely recognised Russian name presently is Kalashnikov). Maybe I should go to Russia – or, more specifically, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where its artistic and cultural treasures are concentrated.

In case you were wondering, I have been to Burnley. It’s seen better days, to be honest, but I harbour some nostalgia for it as the birthplace of Dave Ratley, the first northerner I ever met, and a damn fine fellow – although he never wanted to go to Guildford.