Topophilia, Nottingham.

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Written, February 2010.

Very soon Nottingham will shoot to the top of the UK's "Nice Day Out" charts. Because Ridley Scott is at it again. Ridley and Russell Crowe are making a movie about Robin Hood. Robin Hood hung out in Sherwood Forest and often nipped into town to take a pop at Nottingham's sheriff. I went to Nottingham where I read Geography and History - and so I can’t wait for Ridley's remake.

At last our very English own Mr. Scott could / should / will reclaim one of our finest legends after we lent it out to Johnny Hollywood for far too long. Hollywood seems to enjoy pinching our national myths if only to slap American accents on them. "Norttinghaarrm." The Septics love the English sword slashing and the candlestick flinging that we do in our Great Halls. Possibly because they joined the world too late to have experienced our quaint brand of violence and class struggle first hand.

It's different in the Far East because when Oriental studios grab an English Samurai they not only tweak the pronunciation but they also contribute whacky esoteric dialogue...

>> “Young Grasshood. Should ye fight the Sheriff then ye have already lost thine inner battle.”

>> "But Master... I spent ages making these arrows. And the costumes. Because in our modern society Maid Marian said it would do my masculinity no harm to do thus."

I'm hoping Ridley does the job thoroughly and that we see King Richard whacked to death at Chalus Chabrol. I am hoping we get the dirt on Friar Tuck. Perhaps Ridley will blow the lid on the barons' expense claims in Parliament. We may even find out if Robin really distributed the co-op's pension fund according to need.

All the best Ridley. Don’t let me down.

So I looked up Robin Hood in my big film book. I nearly fell out my chair. There’s dozens of Robin Hood films. It's no surprises Nottingham's stuck with the Robin Hood tourist ticket.

The first was subtitles and pianos, 1908. Something similar followed in 1912. Then a groovy interpretation was released in 1922, in which my aunt fancied Douglas Fairbanks. (Hold up, remove the ambiguity there... My aunt wasn't in the film with Douglas. It was Douglas that was in the film. The " in which" refers to Auntie Brenda in the audience, fancying Duug. So my mum told me.)

In 1938 Errol Flynn flashed his weapon and redefined Nottinhm Hoodism for ever. This is the version that has Robin's hooley with the Sheriff, up and down the castle’s spiral stairs.

1946, 1948,1950, 1951, 1952, 1954. All rubbish. And all forgettable. Not even available tpo buy from amazon.

Between 1955 and 1960 it was thought a good idea to churn out a children's telly series about Robin. That was how I was personally inrobinated and first became Nottinghamised. They repeated this sterile hegemonic Robin to us over and over in the half term holidays; amid Casey Jones, Robinson Crusoe, Three White Horses and the Banana Splits. The opening titles had the famous tune. (Until then I didn’t know Nottingham had a Glen. I thought Glens were exclusive to Scotland and orchestrating swing bands.) Sneakily the lyricists described Robin’s morals as "feared by the bad and loved by the good", and cleverly ignored the political elephant sitting in the clearing; that the bad tended to have all the money.

1956, 1958, 1960.

1964, they gangstered Robin, they transformed Marian into a moll, and they staged it in Chicago. Three years of LSD later, with a west coast reposte the Californians had Robin and his Merry Spacemen living on the Sherwood Asteroid.

Then Walt Disney decides he’ll have our medieval archer done up as a cartoon fox. I bet you've seen that one.

By 1975 the Italians and Russians are both at him.

But... and this is the blinder... in 1990 the Japanese board the mythical bandwagon. This one is just mind boggling. It is 100% off legend. The theme song runs "Happy Walk Happy Walk." I'm assuming "Riding through the Glen" was too much of an oriental tongue twister. Under these lyrics we see animated racoons running about. As I recall, there are no racoons in Sherwood, and what's with the kids with big eyes? What do the Japanese feed their children?



I have a slight concern that Nottingham's Castle's might disappoint the Robin Hood day tripper who wants the portcullis and boiling oil castle turret Cutesie England version 1.3. Nottingham's current “castle” was knocked up in the 1670s when there wasn't too much fighting and defending to be done. Consequently, it was made quite homely and with downstairs curtains. Having said that, in 1831 Nottingham's inhabitants nearly burnt the bugger down.

In October of that year it went right off with the proles having a Goose Fair in the Old Market Square. The evening mail coach rolled in, by which time there'd been a fair amount of boozing. It's not good news in the mail coach envelope.

In London, the unelected Tory Parliamentary Lords had ruled that only affluent rural folk should get new voting rights. The Nottingham plebs in their factory mill city were left of the voting register and were expected to do what they're commanded - and first order was to stay out of the evolving demo cracy. Earlier the same workers had their hopes raised as they were promised they could have a vote. This was another excuse for getting lashed up at the Goose Fair.

They were miffed.

They finished their goose kebabs, chucked the silver foil wrapping in the fountains and marched on the castle owned by one of the big bad vote denying Tories, the Duke of Newcastle, and they torched it. After they went to Beeston, past where The university now stands, and they burnt some of that. They were livid.

Fortunately, the 'mob' didn't arson the Trip to Jerusalem public house tucked into the rock underneath the castle. Fortunately for me because as a student that's where my mates and I sat drinking pints of Theakston's Old Peculiar in its cavernesque rooms. You can still get pints of Theaks in the caves today, speckled on the top with sandstone dust that's fallen into it from the ceiling.

The Trip was called the Trip not because of the drugs but because in King John's times his crusading knights would stop off outside the pub. The medieval landlord and customers would cry between each other,

"Brave Knight. One for the roade?"

"Pray so, kind sir. T'woulde be rude not to."

- a wise decision considering the road from Nottingham to any English coastal port was going to be a very, very long one.

Another reason the Nottingham working class got shirty was because they worked long, hard hours making the shirts. They excelled at making lace that went on the cuffs to make the sleeves look good and to show people that the wearer had not done a scrap of manual work in their life. Hence why Nottingham has an olde rennovted worlde area called the Lace Market.

Being Nottingham, the lace industry and the Lace Market is also associated with riotous behaviour. Not long before the castle burning fiasco the unorganised workers were smashing up lace making machines and getting themselves labelled 'Luddites'. The Napoleanic War had ended and the army didn't need so many new uniforms (does this ring any modern day bells regarding war economies?). To save their profits the mill owners wanted to cut wages and outsource the tricky low margin lacy cuff making processes elsewhere. Again, does that sound all too familiar? Aye.

Voting riots. Lace riots. Then there's Nottingham's 1842 Chartist Riots - related to more pants in the electoral system. For the Chartist Riots 5,000 citizens tootled off to Mapperley and got arrested as they had a fight with the army (The Battle of Mapperley Hills). As you would.

However, we knew that the best rebel to have ever performed on Nottingham's waterscapes was Brian Clough, manager of Nottingham Forest Football Club, 1975 - 1993.

In Cloughie's first season Brian managed his merry team to a Division One promotion. In his second season he lead Forest's players to lift the league title. Brian therefore earnt the right to proclaim a couple of decades later;

"The river Trent is lovely, I know because I walked on it for 18 years."

Brian's merry men lifted two consecutive European Cups into Forest's trophy cabinet. This allowed Brian to complement his relationship with waterscapes and brag about his urban design and town planning competencies;

"Rome wasn't built in a day. I wasn't on that particular job."

Brian died in September 2004. wenty years after I'd graduated and moved on from the city's grounds.

However, when I return later this autumn it will be the Citizen Clough Statue that I'll be visiting first. He stands at the intersection of King and Queen Streets. He would love the idea of having his very own statue amid royalty but I think he'd be more chuffed about the renaming of the A52 between Nottingham and Derby to "Brian Clough Way." As a fair, solid, Harold Wilson Man, he'd understand the benefits in uniting communities.

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