Gone South.

Should you ever feel on the edge, at an all time low, like life has pretty much run as much of a course as you can bear then, before your thoughts begin to darken and turn towards a road from which there is little hope of return, at least not in this life, instead I should recommend the road to Southampton. It’ll make you feel so much better about yourself. It’s a form of therapy in a way. Therapy as a non-linear device to brighten one’s horizon. Merely a fleeting visit (there’s an M3 service station joke in there somewhere), such as the one I have just returned from, will most certainly litter your path with frustration, contempt, revulsion and regret and yet, somehow through the haze of disappointment a different view will take form and through this lens of a city the rest of the world – your world, the whole world – will seem to bear fruits of such flavour and abundance that your expectations of life will suddenly begin to skip gaily through meadows of optimism and promise, in a month that is forever May. Southampton is so bad it can do that much good.

For a start, Southampton is not really a place to live. Not happily. It is a city by default; there because it has to be, not because it should be. When you consider that an awful lot of the transient activity that supports the economy of Southampton is through it’s prominence as a port it brings it all into focus. Every ferry and cargo ship and cruise liner is there specifically to take you, or something, somewhere else, which means that for many people there is absolutely no point going to Southampton unless you want to go somewhere other than Southampton. Such is its lack of appeal that, during my three years at university in Portsmouth I never once felt the urge to jump on a bus and take the half hour ride next door; and Portsmouth is, I think you’ll agree, quite a considerable shithole in its own right. Naturally, such is the way of mid-ranking English cities that lie within spitting distance of each other there is an anxious rivalry, but it is a rivalry that exists as a battle not between which is better but rather which is the least bloody awful. I liked Portsmouth almost entirely because I studied there (I’m playing fast and loose with the word ‘studied’, of course) and because it seemed a good enough place to be young, drunk and daft, but when I went back a decade or so ago, and without those spectacles on, the scene was very poor. And yet, Southampton is worse.

The journey doesn’t help. It rarely, if ever, occurs to you to never, ever bother going somewhere on a bank holiday weekend until you are doing exactly that. And by that point it’s just too late. Crawling through herd traffic, sputtering off at junctions and creeping in at others. Watching the arrival time creep steadily further off towards the horizon, listening to your muscles itch and your arteries harder with every agonising mile. And if it isn’t motorway torpor it’s nothing short of urban persecution instead and in Southampton on a busy day being in a car is about as bad as it gets. It appears that the government must have offered Southampton some form of subsidy for erecting traffic lights as the city appears to have more, hot green, amber and red action than every global megalopolis put together. At night, from above, it must appear as if a huge, rabid glitterball. As a result the traffic is slowed down to roughly the speed of a particularly sturdy meat pie passing through the digestive system of a particularly sedate sloth and, consequently, most mechanics in the environs of Southampton are often surprised to learn that many cars tend to have more than two gears. An unwanted consequence of this, besides perpetual road rage, is that you get to see more of the city, more slowly, and so only a few minutes after entering it it dawns on you that you really rather hadn’t of.

What has happened to the heart of Southampton is exactly what has happened to almost every city in Britain. Years of neglect, underfunding, stupidity, bad planning and bad taste (oh go on, you can throw in Covid and Brexit as well, if it makes you happy) have left it scarred and soiled, cracked and stained, such that you can’t walk for more that eight seconds without seeing something that simply isn’t pleasing on the eye. There was, I tricked myself into thinking, potential to be had, but then I realised the potential had already been and gone; there’s something very disheartening about being somewhere that used to be better but has now fallen foul simply because everybody, almost simultaneously, has stopped bothering to care: a collective solution will never get anywhere without a collective will. And as a collection of people Southampton has very little to offer, at least on appearance. Slappers and chavs, sour, knotted faces, bad make up, worse haircuts and fabrics stretched and distorted with fast food and slow wits. Here is a place where Zizzi’s is considered haute cuisine and the sort of restaurants that offer a selection of spirit shots to complement every course. I ate at All Bar One, to the soundtrack of club music so loud my glass of wine thought it was an extra in Jurassic Park. Where, and when, did it all go wrong?

I am told that when they built the Grand Harbour Hotel (only a whistle away from the Isle of Wight ferry and access routes to cruise ships which almost take the breath away, such are their enormity and vulgarity; monuments to greed and shoddy entertainment) it was quite the jewel in the crown of the town, though I suppose at one point someone must have thought Stone Henge was quite the piece of cutting edge technology, way back when. Perhaps in the 90’s when it opened it might have looked pretty flash but it reminded me more of all those awful modernist concrete bowel movements that sprung up everywhere in the 60’s, usually on the site of something that would now be a heritage site, if it hadn’t been bulldozed by some ignorant, petty-minded local councillor. The hotel looks like someone has shat out a huge pile of concrete and glass and then used a fork and palette knife to mould it into the least attractive thing they could dredge up from their worst, and most confused, architectural nightmare. It is now called the Leonardo Royal Hotel but there was nothing royal about the bathroom, the view or, most notably, the wardrobe that I couldn’t close even though I really, really wanted to. Perhaps by royal they mean Princess Michael of Kent or Prince Andrew; all musty knickers and bad judgement. The restaurant was, for some reason I have neglected to investigate, literally splattered with photos of Marco Pierre White, which is enough to put you off your bacon and fried egg on the best of mornings. The place must make a fortune, because their prices are the only things left that could qualify as grand, but it appears that not much goes back into the bake. It is the sort of luxury Southampton deserves, not so oddly enough.

Through bank holiday traffic it took twice as long as it should of to get to Southampton and the same again to get back. This morning, through endless traffic lights and pitiless rain it seemed like the world was about to end. Apparently Southampton Pride happens this weekend, though there isn’t a lot about Southampton left for anyone to be proud of, unless you’re gay and like walking in the rain. What it needs is some love and some care and some kind of acknowledgement that there is more than just a waterfront and a port to take people away to where they would much rather be. I feel sorry for cities like this: the cities that have been abandoned, left to get on with their second rate football teams and their distant whiff of historical significance. Go anywhere around the centre and you’ll see hulks of the old wall and a sense of what a place this used to be and the power it used to wield, and then you trip up over a Pound Stretcher and a Taco Bell that used to be a branch of the Halifax and any sense of awe and wonder drifts way in the salty breeze. In fact, even the breeze isn’t salty, the way it is in Brighton, or even Portsmouth. It’s as if Southampton doesn’t even know what it is these days – who it serves and what it represents. Though I imagine if you’re Matthew Le Tissier you could just about rustle something good to say. But that’s hardly a complement.

G B Burton. 24.08.2024