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Leeds, Yorkshire
April, 1998
We are in Leeds, visiting with Catherine, who has almost finished her MA at Leeds University. Our visit has been longer than planned, as I still haven't got a start date for my archaeological job.
It is wonderful to see Cat, and to catch up, and to meet Cadbury, her temporary pet (yes, a black cat!).
However
Leeds is rather dull. Perhaps it is the weather, which is both dull and
cold. But the city is, despite a goodly supply of handsome and eccentric
Victorian buildings, plain. Its geography is flattish, and it lacks a
big river -- the River Aire wanders through, but it is canalised and the
city long ago turned its back on it, no doubt not wishing to make much
of what was once a murky, polluted waterway filled with barges and dead
dogs. Ironically the canal warves are now trendy places to live, with
warehouse conversions and expensive restaurants.
The Corn Exchange must be the oddest mall in the country, being circular and having an eclectic mix of condom and goth clothes shops and people giving palm readings and henna tattoos.
Leeds City Library is Victorian and echoeing, with lots of staircases and mosaic floors, but not many books, and a crowded reference section where the librarians talk in stentorian stage whispers loud enough to prevent old men nodding off over the newspapers. Not an Internet workstation to be seen!
The university is also rather plain and worn at the edges. Lots of 60s concrete (painted now) and uneven paving stones. The library is circular, and the computer labs frenetically crowded, with people having to literally camp out for hours in order to grab a machine when it becomes available.
Catherine lives in student housing, sharing a flat with Emily, Sandra and Xenia. It is badly designed and poorly maintained, apart from a fierce security system. Getting a telephone in one's room is almost impossible, and persuading anyone to repair a broken cooker absolutely impossible. So the flatmates, all from countries where gas cookers are rare, have nervously to light the stove burners and oven using matches.
We enjoy wandering Leeds market, which is half covered and half in the open air. The market building is splendid, with lots of cast iron everywhere and red dragons supporting brackets above the stalls.
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