2023: Will it End in Tiers?

You get here by nipping down a scruffy ginnel beside a repair shop, then along a neglected crescent of ex-council semis that must fly more England flags per capita than anywhere else in the country, squeezing through another gap overhung by unkempt privet hedges, and finally cutting across a track between two fields of decapitated cabbages and decimated rhubarb.

This is the short cut to Thorpe.

Not many people know it. Fewer take it.

But then there aren’t that many people wanting to go to Thorpe even the long way round.

Long way round takes you over this,

which must be the ugliest, bleakest, ghastliest man-made structure in Leeds (unless you know better?) Basically just a dog toilet in the sky. A tube of shit. A polytunnel of turd. A plasticated pipe of poo…

It’s also the only way many of the kids from the local estate can cross the motorway to get to Primary School.

I come to Thorpe two or three times a week, have done for almost twenty years. My mum and youngest sister live here – which is technically two-thirds of my close family (posh middle sister resides most regally in Rothwell.)

There’s one shop, the chemists. It’s easier to pick up Paroxetine in Thorpe than a pint of milk or a paper.

The 47/48 buses stop running early evening, and there’s no Sunday service (there is an Arriva bus, 481, which ends a bit later most days.)

The nearest pub is half a mile up the hill in East Ardsley, which is in Wakefield, and it’s grim.

But the local community centre is thriving and the small residential home on the edge of the village hosts the liveliest coffee mornings in town. People look after each other here.

Compared to the two new private estates that sprawl to the North and the South of the village, Thorpe is quite fortunate. Neither private estate boasts a pub, community centre, shop or functioning public transport for a good half mile. They are replete with parking spaces, however, and that I suppose makes up for everything.

I spent the whole weekend here dog-sitting my little sister’s Labrador and visiting mum while sister took her other half on a birthday break. I did the usual things I do when I’m in Thorpe; walked the dog, called in at the chemist, trekked the mile to the almighty Asda in Middleton to stock up on cake and milk for mum, climbed the hill to the grotty boozer for a disappointing beer, and mostly caught up on local gossip.

They can talk in Thorpe. They can tell a tale or two.

Leave the house for ten minutes and you’ll have half a dozen random conversations and hear at least six contradictory stories. If you want to know who scored the winning goal at the local high school football match, who is in/out of hospital, who just got a promotion/new car/bad haircut, who is responsible for the fly-tipping/untidy front garden/fancy plant pot display, or any and every shade of opinion on the machinations of the local council (for a couple of years all the talk was about the scandalous state of a traffic bridge which the council were doing bugger all about), you needn’t ask. Everyone here knows something or other about this and that and believes it’s their duty to pass the word along.

For such a garrulous and contentious lot there is a surprising lack of any opinion, judgement, speculation or even interest in what’s going on in the centre of the city they claim to be part of. I’ve tried to talk Leeds for years. Got nothing back.

This weekend I’d come to Thorpe fresh from Friday’s send off event for the Leeds bid for European Capital of Culture 2023. I’d brought stickers, leaflets, glossy promotional material and a considerable hangover from over-indulging at the free bar provided for the VIP party I’d managed to crash (council tax money well spent I’d say.) There’s a lot of talk in the bid about Leeds being a “two-tiered city”. I was going in one leap from the top tier to the bottom.

Thorpe is definitely bottom tier.

I stuck some stickers on lampposts and litter bins, put a leaflet in the chemist’s window, took a handful of 2023 literature to brighten up the pub and generally made a nuisance of myself bringing the good news of cultural plenty to the artistically famished citizens of WF3 (and no, I don’t know why it has a Wakefield postcode.)

I have to declare a bit of personal interest in 2023. I’m writing something for this project.

The piece about fish and chip shops.

I thought that having someone local (I have family here, how more local do you want?) contributing to the cultural jamboree – something about Northernness and chip shops, which surely anyone round here could relate to – may ignite a tiny spark of enthusiasm. Might encourage locals to read more about the 2023 bid. May at least, as the most desperate phrase in the English language has it, “raise awareness.”

I was wrong.

The nearest chippy to Thorpe is way up the Hill opposite East Ardsley Conservative Club, as Raymond, the local odd job chap, pointed out. “By the time you’ve walked all the way home they’d be clap cold,” he said, quite reasonably.

Even my mum couldn’t manage more than a feeble, “at least you’re working.”

And Gladys – 94, and been to the Blackpool Illuminations every year since 1950, but never been to a play, an opera, a ballet, or an art exhibition in Leeds – just chuckled as she put a leaflet on her knick-knacktastic mantlepiece, “do you think they’ll do something in Morley? I like Morley more than Leeds.”

I left a bunch of stuff with some kids who were hanging about at the bench near the bus stop. One of the older lads said, “2023? I won’t be in Leeds in 2023 mate. I’m fucking off. Anywhere.” But he promised he’d hand the leaflet to his younger sister, who he said liked “art and shit” at school, and wanted to be a fashion designer or go on Bake Off.

“It’s good to have ambition,” I said, watching the kids run off down the hill, whooping as they flung a handful of leaflets high in the air.

This is one of the bits of Leeds that has the lowest cultural participation in the city. The 2023 European Capital of Culture bid bravely promises to raise participation by 20%. If I’m still coming here twice a week in six years time I’m really going to enjoy watching that happen. I wish them all the best.

And if they want my advice, don’t bother with the plays, the opera, the dancing, the art, the top tier stuff – open a chippy. They really need a chippy in Thorpe.