London image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

I went down to London for the weekend and hooked up with Stephen James-Yeoman at the BBC to discuss the Sillitoe project and discovered he was one of the drummers in the Industrial revolution scene at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. He looked knackered but was well chuffed to have been involved in such a momentous occasion. But he won’t be getting much rest for a while as he’s now taken over editorship of The Space.

I wanted to discuss the order of content for our Raleigh feature as well as a niggling doubt I had about a piece on Mike Breckon. Mike, a former Raleigh employee, was the team manager of the Canadian cycling team during the 1972 Olympics and witnessed the horrific terrorist attack on the Israeli team. As it was the 40th anniversary of the tragedy (and with Bradley Wiggins being the first Brit to win the Tour De France) it was very topical. However, it’s not relevant enough to our project. Our focus is on Raleigh as the workplace of Arthur Seaton and so I had to wave goodbye to this scoop – Mike said he’d never spoken in depth to a journalist about it before. All is not lost though, there’s an interview with him in the current issue of LeftLion but more of this in another blog.

I’ve had to make some tough decisions so far with the Sillitoe: Then and Now project but I’m a strong believer in going with the gut. It’s always right. For this reason I’ve dropped a podcast for the Raleigh section (because we have too much content and I don’t think the podcasts have been good enough so far) as well as Seaton Rifles, which I’ll bring back in for event four when we have very little content.

Another function of my visit to London was to visit the British Library to view a copy of Without Beer or Bread as I believe it may have a poem about Arthur Seaton fishing which was the basis for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. But once more it was a fruitless endeavour. I had learned from a previous visit that to obtain a readers’ pass you need proof of address. This time I took everything with me only to discover the readers’ room is shut on a Sunday. Unperturbed, I persuaded a man on reception to help me fill out the endless online forms and book requests etc and we rearranged my visit for Monday. He said the library would be open until 8pm. When I returned on Monday after various meetings, three meatheads in suits blocked the doorway and said the library was closed. It is open till 8pm, just not on a Monday. I tried to explain my situation but it was futile. The six eyes from this three-headed bureaucratic Hydra were dead.