January 11, 2008 | One Night Stand
I used Forbury Gardens, the Victorian park in the centre of Reading, as the setting for the scene where Eleanor talks with her best friend Hugh, just after she’s told him she’s pregnant by a man she doesn’t know (and who might look a bit like George Michael).
I spend quite a bit of time in the Forbury for one reason or another, mostly because Fecklet loves the fountain there. The park always seems to contain the following people:
The park is bordered on one side by a church in the shadow of Reading Prison, where Oscar Wilde served his sentence; on another by an upmarket hotel and restaurant, an elaborate courthouse, and a gateway to the ruined Abbey where there is a small plaque saying that Jane Austen went to school nearby. Between this is the entrance to the historic abbey ruins (where you can usually find one person getting drunk and another getting stoned). It’s bordered on a third side by a churchyard containing, among other things, a memorial to a railway worker killed by a freak tornado; and on the fourth by a very ugly dual carriageway next to a poorly designed retail park and a weird looking 60s office building.
This, to me, is fairly typical of Reading: you have a place of Victorian beauty juxtaposed with rather awful developments, mixed in with the genuinely appealing and quirky.
There’s an interesting urban legend about the Maiwand Lion, which I put into One Night Stand. Legend has it that after he’d finished the lion, the sculptor discovered there was something wrong with it (there are different versions as to what, but it usually has something to do with lions not really walking like that), and killed himself. This didn’t happen. I’ve heard almost identical legends about several statues and buildings, both in the UK and in America. At Brown University (where I studied), they say that the science library is sinking because the architects didn’t take the weight of the books into account. Apparently they topped themselves, too.
I liked hearing the legend about the lion. It made me feel at home.
Jessica Raymond says:
I always think of Reading as being a very modern town, so it’s interesting to read about the old and pretty parts
The park looks lovely! I imagine Frog would like it as he loves to stare at trees.
Jess x
Phillipa says:
Julie - Your statue story made me smile. Lichfield has one or two distinctions (the birthplace of Dr Johnson and a lovely catherdral) but we also have a statue of Captain Smith of Titanic fame. His actual birthplace, Stoke on Trent, apparently didn’t want the statue (how sad) so he now stands proudly in Beacon Park. I think they may have asked for him back and been refused…
PS That’s one buff lion…has he been working out?
Julie says:
Well, he hasn’t been walking apparently, because I hear that lions don’t walk like that.
That’s an interesting story about Captain Smith. You can imagine the council meetings, can’t you?
There are climbable trees in the park too, Jess, so Frog would like sitting in those.
Fin says:
I wonder if you’ll feature Smelly Alley?
I do love it but you never want to linger too
long.
Julie says:
I didn’t do Smelly Alley! It was a silly oversight, really, but the characters’ wanderings just never took them there. I will have to put that in a future book.
Fran says:
hellooooooo!
got your book! loving it!!!!!
the senior school i went to was meant to be sinking an inch or so a year…but let’s say, quite a few years later, it is still there and still same height….unless we are all shrinking at the same time?
i love urban myths…like the one where the woman is driving alone at night and she stops the car on seeing what appears to be a pram in the road….
Janet Mullany says:
What! No Smelly Alley???
Do the, uh, dangly bits of the lion still get painted red now and again?
The fountain in Forbury Gardens used to be a huge moss-covered monster with a tiny trickle of water; it looked like something from a badly-made horror movie. Last time I was in Reading I tried to visit the Gatehouse, but I was told told it had fallen down entirely in the late 19c and then rebuilt, so bore little relation to anything Austen had experienced.
Julie says:
I love urban myths too, Fran. I hope to do a book about them one day.
I haven’t noticed red dangly bits, Janet, but maybe I’m not looking too closely. I can understand why they would be tempting.
The fountain has been cleaned up and now flows with all its hideously tacky Victorian panache.