Twice in the past week I have been accused of allowing my imagination to run away with me. A neighbour commented that my Beeston #HomeTourist post may have contained a factual inaccuracy, which it did not, and erred on the negative, which again I would contend is surely a matter of personal taste and temperament. Subsequently my nearest and dearest, whilst conceding that the individual facts of my tirade were sufficiently evidenced – she has long since been of the opinion that the streets of Beeston glitter and tinkle with more broken glass than Beelzebub’s kaleidoscope – chided me for giving the impression that I was an unreliable witness. I use words for show rather than sense, she said, I’m all style over substance. Reality is rightfully reported in clear and simple language, the truth best told in words that are plain and unvarnished. My heart is in the right place, she reassured me, but my head hasn’t been disciplined nor my spirit broken by the legitimate linguistic authorities. My prose is too rowdy, too gaudy, too effervescent and tart. In short, too purple. The public should be warned to read this stuff responsibly and in short measures, preferably in a venue licenced for entertainment of an adult nature. It is a menace to ordinary citizens, common decency and car ownership. I should consider myself a bad example . . . and it’s not very Leeds, is it!
Not very Leeds? Well, I suppose if you compare it to the official, glossy, corporate Leeds hype – pumped out by the Leeds Like It or Lump It brigade – then no, thankfully, I can’t say I could ever identify with that sort of guff, puff, fluff and chuff (these are technical terms; for further information see my website for details of my extensive writing consultation, seminars and workshops – my fees are astrological but your success is written in the stars!) If those sites are anything to go by the sun always shines, Harvey Nicks serves complimentary champagne to gasping passers by, the bins are emptied twice a week, the streets are full of ballet dancing, opera singing, poetry reciting, politically engaged, perpetually entrepreneurial citizens, and Beeston is just a bad dream best forgotten. Not that I have anything against marketing and branding the city; I just wish the writing had a bit more gorm and gusto. Why put gorgeous photos of brilliant buildings, stunning scenery and vibrant cultural events next to text that has about as much tang and bite as last months lemonade? And is it too much to expect consistent comma usage? Words on a page or screen have to appeal to the eye as much as the ear and higgledy-piggledy punctuation causes aesthetic offence. Maybe I’m just being pernickety, but why boast how Leeds is design led and style conscious when the words are barely worthy of a third rate suburban estate agent; lacklustre, anodyne, hollow.
I’m interested in all that’s denied, hidden, ignored and rejected by the official approved version of the city. Purple prose doesn’t fear the negative. Why not magnify, intensify, vivify? That’s what imagination is for, not to pretend that reality is otherwise, an escape into saccharine fantasy, but to embrace the negative and reclaim it, making the most of what’s available, transforming the mundane through a simple switch of attention and the application of a bit of ingenuity. Right now, from my window, I can see my neighbour hanging washing on a sagging line that zigzags from kitchen wall to fence post and back again. She’s knee deep in weeds. Marauding dandelions have taken over the whole garden, muscling out the few daffodils, well past their prime and gone grey and dowdy, that slope around the edges of the untidy patch. As she moves slowly along the line, pinning underwear next to t-shirts next to jeans, her flip-flopped feet press the plants against the grass, flattening the stems and twisting heads at a tormented angle. But slowly, peg by peg, as the basket empties and the washing dangles lower, the blazing yellow heads start to raise themselves, tickled into renewed tumescence by flirtatiously Can-Canning tights, springing to attention by shirt sleeves making unseemly advances in the slight breeze.
That wasn’t fiction. I could have taken a photo of the event, though I’m sure that would be considered rude and intrusive. It wasn’t just the facts though; I chose to frame an ordinary enough event in a certain way, lit from a particular angle, and splashed around some colourful words. What the seedy sexual imagery says about the contents of my unconscious is anybodies guess. If I write about dandelions and dirt and dereliction that’s because that’s what I am surrounded by. I don’t need to make up tales of post-apocalypic hell, I live in Holbeck. This is everyday life. But just because the conditions in Beeston are mean and impoverished doesn’t mean my response has to be austere and emaciated; I can use language as rich and generous, as plush and juicy and abundant as I can come up with. Words don’t cost me anything. That’s why I don’t get the scrawny, pallid, size zero, piss poor prose style of corporate Leeds – it should be strong and proud and regal like lions after a kill; instead, what’s that sound? . . . yes, it’s the nervous bleating of sheep munching on daisies . . . That’s the sound of champions? Baaaaa!
Anyone can write in a purple fashion. The corporate letter killeth but the spirit of purple bringeth life. Purple is generative, convivial, life affirming . . . and we don’t need a grant or local government go ahead to indulge in verbal pyrotechnics or a bit of lexical showing off. It’s what Leeds needs . . . go on, write something exuberant, extravagant, exotic, quixotic, it doesn’t matter if your postcode is Beeston or Harehills, Bramley or Seacroft, you can bring a bit of flare and fire to the feast, some spike to the party . . . Vermilion is the new black . . . permission to be purple!