Once Upon a Time…in Ironbridge
Monday Musings from Toy Town
“The Real Don Steele, 93 KHJ” boomed cheerily from the car stereo, a parting gift from my beautiful son after dropping him home last evening. “3.17 on KHJ. Totally intense, that’s me, the Real Don Steele. Simon and Garfunklin’ with Mrs Robinson…” and with that the wheels were rolling once more on yet another return to my spiritual home of Ironbridge but not in the year 1969 and the setting for Quentin Tarantino’s ode to all things love and friendship and the rewriting of Hollywood history, but a late Monday morning on the last day of June 2025 and the hottest day of our UK summer so far. By the turning for the cricket club and before the winding roads that cut a path through the heavily tree-lined woods leading to Ironbridge Simon and Garfunkel were already assuring me that Jesus loves me, heaven keeps a place open for those who pray, and they were rather concerned about the whereabouts of Joe DiMaggio. A nation was “turning its lonely eyes” to the long time New York Yankee and short-lived husband of Marilyn Monroe but “Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away” and by the time the beautiful sights and sounds of Ironbridge were upon me I’d been offered a tanning butter, a root beer, tickets to a film entitled The Illustrated Man, and now in sight of the oldest iron bridge in the world, I was singing California Dreamin’ and “on such a winter’s day” too. But it was 2025 and the very height of summer, not Los Angeles, California in 1969 when the leaves were brown and the sky was gray. I may very well be going for a walk, but this most certainly wasn’t a winter’s day and although Ironbridge does indeed have a church I’m not really the praying type (so I’m fucked for a place in heaven) and quite frankly all of this meandering balderdash could befuddle a stupid person, so shall we just return to safer ground and the topic of time travel instead?
Time travel has been a long running theme for this summer of our Lord in the year 2025 but then again, my life has often felt like one like long portal into the past and a crazed panic attack for a future not yet lived. I’m re-reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King again, but that’s no excuse. Be it 1963 or Tarantino’s 1969 I’m forever time travelling back to a November night in 1986, an early morning in 2021 or a similarly early morning 18 years earlier. The result of the latter is sat right in front of me as I pen these words dressed in a Coca-Cola t-shirt and gripping a PlayStation controller for all he’s worth. The other remnants to a time travelling past are sat on the shelves behind him, a grand old lady in a flower printed dress and the love of her life in the uniform of a sailor, a smile as wide as the oceans he conquered. I’ve long contended that photographs are a form of time travel and although I (or you) may not be present within those mementos and memories to the past, we can transport ourselves back to when the photographs were taken. My Mum and Dad are caught in the prime of their then young lives. Separately, my Mum is clearly sitting for a studio portrait of the time whilst my Dad is captured towards the end of his tenure in the navy. I can only guess, but I’d say they are both in their early 20’s, not much older than my beautiful game playing son sat mere feet away from me in a present day that has no need or requirement for a time travelling device. But the photographs? Where were they taken? Why? A special occasion? Where and with whom did they spend their respective days after the photograph was taken? I often wish I had a real time travel machine rather than the rudimentary, melancholic one inside my head to answer these fanciful questions for myself. Oh for the opportunity to see my parents when they had life by the tail and long, long before I was even the remotest glint in my Dad’s eye! These photographs are scattered among several of their grandson: a studio portrait when he was a young baby, his second birthday as he excitedly awaits to blow out the candles on his birthday cake, his first school portrait, his final one too. Time machines all.
As are the large framed prints that hang on the wall behind the young man (who flatly refuses to acknowledge that the baby/teenage pictures are of him on the shelves) as he largely ignores me as I scramble these words together. There are two framed prints hanging on the wall. The first of the two is entitled “Reflections of Elephants” (also known as “Swans Reflecting Elephants”) and just looking at this print I’m transported back to a very sunny summer’s afternoon in the mid 1990’s when I bought it and three decades later, the painting now forms part of a larger tattoo on my right leg of the artist, one of my lifetime heroes, Salvador Dali. Next to this framed print you’ll also find “Mountain Lake” (also by Dali) the older of the two and again, I can (loosely) time travel back to when I bought this as, having passed my driving test, one of my first solo journeys was to the Tate Gallery in London (where the original still resides to this day) and after seeing this (and his “Lobster Telephone” encased in a glass box) I simply had to buy the print that for three decades now has followed me on the surreal road of life and wherever I’ve travelled. I remember the day so well: Hoping my rust bucket of a first car would make the long journey to London, being relieved when it did (and when I arrived back home later!), my first time at the Tate Gallery, being overwhelmed by the heritage and history contained inside one building, feeling like a grown-up (even though I was younger at the time than my son currently is), hoping to see one Dali exhibit but seeing two, carrying the poster back to the car, driving home and feeling like a King of the Wild Frontier. A time machine. Framed prints on the wall of my first home, the summer(s) of love in the mid 1990’s, the shocked reactions of my friends to the weird and surrealist art their friend adored, a new Millennium, a new home, more summer(s) of love, new friends wanting to know why I was so obsessed with Salvador Dali. So I showed them these prints and many, many more encased in frames in other rooms of another house in another time, and I told them of the day I went to London and saw my very first Dali with my own eyes.
I could go on (I could weave time machine stories behind many of the hundreds of books that also reside on the bookcase behind the son who is still largely ignoring me as I write this…) but we need to return to yesterday (time travel?) as we’ve arrived in the picture-book toy town of Ironbridge and my spiritual home was a lot, lot quieter than I expected it to be. When I was here on Saturday the sun was almost ever present, bathing Ironbridge in hot and radiant sunshine for the second of their numerous festival weekends of the summer. Ironbridge was full to overflowing on the then hottest day of the year so far and although yesterday was even hotter, the sun failed to make an appearance until the dying embers of a Sunday that even without me I knew would have seen my favourite place in all the world bubbling over with the noisy chatter of the human family enjoying a weekend in a historical haven of tranquility on the banks of the River Severn. Today, or rather yesterday (see, time travelling again), I arrived just before Noon to a rather quiet Ironbridge, a handful of remaining tourists and the “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop” surprisingly closed. My friend and owner Jeremy clearly decided he wanted a Monday off and who could blame him? The heatwave sunshine had returned and armed with some bread for the ducks and my trusty time travelling book, I headed first for the Rowing Club (the tents and platform scaffold from the festival were being dismantled as I arrived) and I descended the steps to the river, kicked off my trainers, lit a cigarette, and dangled my legs in the coolness of the river. After a few pages of my book I looked around to see I had been joined by two elderly gentlemen, one paddling into the middle of the river in one of Ironbridge’s famous circular coracle boats and his companion jesting “I’ll put your falling overboard on social media!” and two much younger ladies who had the same idea as me (sans a book) and dangling their legs in the river. Although I had company now (and a reason to stop reading my book and people watch — a favourite preoccupation of mine) I couldn’t help but look at the disused bridge over this stretch of the river, the falling branches of trees on the other side of the river that would tumble into the river with a strong Autumnal gust of wind later this year, and the gently rolling motion of the river itself, and say aloud this was a mighty fine way of spending a quiet Monday on planet earth.
An hour later I strolled to my favourite spot on the river where the resident ducks congregate to make their summer home and all alone I spotted last summer’s flat rock submerged a foot or so in the river. Last summer it was forever on the shingle bank but no matter. Trainers off. Another cigarette hastily lit. I paddled to the rock, book in hand, steadied myself, and promptly sat in the middle of the river, making myself as comfortably at home as the fleet of ducks who surrounded me. Someone shouted out that I’d picked a good spot for the afternoon and I had. Up to my waist in the river, I could see and feel the tiny tadpoles darting in and around my feet as slightly larger fish occasionally startled me back to the absurd reality of sitting squarely in the river and without a single fuck to give.
It was the hottest day of the UK summer so far after all.
Minutes later, the older gentleman in the coracle awkwardly eased his way along the river. “I see you haven’t capsized yet” I called to him. “Plenty of time for that young man!” he responded with good cheer.
I watched him steer his way slowly down the river as I stood up from my spot in the shallows and dripping wet, I made my way back into Toy Town.
The picture section from yesterday (when all my troubles seemed so far away…)
Thanks for reading, much appreciated.
My book from last summer in Ironbridge:
"My Ironbridge Summer" - link to Amazon