Living the Dream

 Living the Dream

It was noon, one sunny, summer, Sunday, and I was walking down Parson's Street towards the bus-station. I was struck, as I often am, how polyglot we are in Banbury, how ethnically and culturally diverse. It speaks to the tolerance, and basic decency of a town that was for centuries a byword for non-conformity. The racial mix may be partly due to Oxfordshire's policy of housing waifs and asylum seekers in the cheapest housing available in the county. And there is as much evidence of cheapness in Banbury as of heterogeneity: pound-shops, nail-bars, charity shops, and rough-sleepers. 

Banbury, the second largest town in Oxfordshire, never attracted an upper class; but it grew moderately rich in the middle ages as a wool town. Iron ore abounds in the rust-coloured stone and clay; and ore was smelted here in charcoal bloomeries for at least 2.5 millennia.  But Banbury acquired access to coal with the completion (in 1778) of the canal from the midland coalfields. In the nineteenth century Banbury added metal-working to its skills, making farm machinery and bicycles, as well as blankets, horse-girths and plush.

Pedestrianised Parsons Street runs eastwards down towards the Cherwell, so it has a sunny (north) side and a shady (south) side. The former is favoured by cafés and pubs; the latter by the nail-bars and charity shops.  On the sunny side, at the chairs and tables outside 'Roma Coffee' , there was the usual cluster of slavic families, 

teaching the natives how to enjoy pavement life.

Sitting in the sunny doorway of a closed shop, a dishevelled man was angrily haranguing an imaginary audience. Nobody minded him. Grubby sleeping-bags and sheets of cardboard gave evidence of rough-sleeping in some doorways facing what was once the 'Cow Market'. Two elderly Pakistani gentlemen, in kurta and pyjama, were enjoying a bearded chin-wag. Beautifully dressed African children held their parent's hand, while a black-hooded, black boy on a black scooter, whizzed harmlessly past. Following her father came a little Indian girl on a bike with blue stabilisers and pink ribbons on the handle-bar ends.

        Under a shelter, down by the canal, a weather-beaten, white-moustachioed man guarded his half-dozen plastic bags. At first glance you might think he was selling something, but a second glance suggests the goods were of little value; except that they are his. A steady, sober man; day after day in the same place. I imagine he has a good decade of life ahead of him,  and that this was as good a place to wait as any other. Or he might move on; after all, he was not here a year ago.

I have occasionally found Banbury depressing. It, and its citizens, look a bit stuck; not going anywhere. But on this sunny day I took a fresh look and realised that my neighbours were not dissatisfied with their situation. I must try to see their lives as they see them; not using my perspective. In many cases I could plausibly believe that they were happy, or at least content; perhaps they were even living their dream.