This wasn't because it was modern, it had been constructed sometime back in the early 1980s. It was just that it looked modern. Because the current vogue in twenty-first century architecture was for an homage to the early 1980s. It's a good word, 'homage', and for those who don't know its meaning and can't be bothered to look it up, it means rip-off!
The plain folk of Brentford, who never took to change, had not taken at all to the building of the Waterman's Arts Centre. It had been built by out-borough contractors with out-borough money upon the site of the old gasworks, prime riverside land. And the plain folk of the borough considered this 'a bit of a liberty'. There had been some peaceful protestation against the development. And this in turn had led to the forces of law and order employing small measure of response. Water cannon, CS gas, the reading of the Raot Act, rubber bullets, baton charges, helicopter gunships and finally the passing of a special Act of Parliament, which sanctioned the use of the nuclear deterrent, if the peaceful protestors of Brentford did not stop blowing things up and burning things down and return at once to their houses and stop being such a bloody nuisance.
On this occasion, it seemed to the rest of the world that the plain people of Brentford would definitely lose their struggle against the forces of change. Although it had to be said that they weren't going down without a fight. In fact, so great was the amount of night-time sabotage mounted against the Arts Centre during its construction, that the contractors were forced to erect fifteen-foot-high electrified perimeter fences, topped with razor wire and watched over by guards in raised sentry posts equipped with searchlights and General Electric Miniguns. The building work was delayed again and again, the costs overran, the council (held for a while at gunpoint in the famous Siege of Sydney Green Street, when it was discovered by the plucky Brentonians that council members had not only backed the scheme but put in money from the local coffers) pulled out their financial support, the building conglomerate backing the scheme went bust and everyone involved in the project who hadn't either committed suicide, been fire-bombed, or threatened with hideous death, gave the whole thing up and abandoned the scheme. Leaving the half-built Arts Centre for the people of Brentford to do with as they wilt.
A meeting of the Brentonians had been held in the town hall (in Sydney Green Street) to decide the fate of the half-constructed Arts Centre. Many suggestions were put forward as to how it should best be demolished, but then a voice of extraordinary reason spoke up from the back of the hall. It came from Professor Slocombe, a venerable ancient, considered by many to be Brentford's patriarch.
'Why destroy what you have been given?' asked the professor. 'It is yours now. Why not make of it something that reflects the greatness of the borough? The borough that you all love so dearly. Raise a temple wherein to offer praise to the artisans of Brentford. Has Brentford not given the world some of its finest artists, its most gifted musicians, its wordsmiths and scholars, its craftsmen, its poets, riverdancemen and its makers of macrame plant-pot holders and personalized lavender bags?'
There was then a bit of a pause.
Then, 'No,' said a small voice near to the front. 'None at all that I know of
'Exactly,' said Professor Slocombe. 'Because Brentford never had an Arts Centre before.'
Well, it certainly had one now. Every resident of Brentford was a shareholder. Each had paid for and laid one brick, which possibly accounted for its 'modern' look.
It is true to state that the bastions of High Art and Literature had not been taken by storm by the Brentford Set. And the makers of macrame plant-pot holders and personalized lavender bags slept easy in their beds, free from the worry that the superior artisans of Brentford would presently usurp their supremacy.
But the Arts Centre had spawned something: the aforementioned Brentford Poets, of which Time Out had taken note and written up in their pages.
'Every man and every woman is a poet,' wrote the magus Hugo Rune. 'Though none are ever so great as I, and most are just plain pants.'
Rune had once made a memorable appearance at the Brentford Poets. Clad in his famous five-piece suit of green and chequered Boleskine tweed, wearing his famous ring of power and carrying his famous stout stick, his famous shaven head decorated with an elaborate henna tattoo of two nuns fighting over a BMX and his infamous size ten feet encased within complicated holistic footwear which smelled strongly of creosote and trailed tiny sparks as he walked. Rune recited his famous Hymn to Frying Pan. A five-hundred-and-eighty-nine-stanza epic verse dedicated to himself. He was accompanied by his acolyte, Rizla, who filled in Rune's pauses for breath and frequent visits to the bar with melodic renditions on the swanee whistle, ocarina, kazoo and bicycle pump/armpit.
All who witnessed the performance agreed that it had been a unique and moving experience and many converted at once to the Church of Runeology and remained Runies for the rest of their lives.
Others protested that there hadn't been time left in the evening for them to recite their poems. Hugo Rune had dealt justice to these philistines with his stout and famous stick.
But Hugo Rune had long ago shrugged ofFhis mortal form and joined the choirs eternal. Whom he no doubt entertained with his Hymn to Frying Pan, with fill-ins by Rizla on the armpit.
So thus it was that the Waterman's Arts Centre came into being. But, one might be forgiven for asking, HowSo The Brentford Poets'?
Good question.
It is a fact well known to those who know it well (and Hugo Rune would probably be amongst these), and curiously it runs in verse:
Wherever you find a poet
You'll find another near
And wherever you find two poets
You'll find they're drinking beer.
On the opening of the Waterman's Arts Centre, an affair almost as memorable as Hugo Rune's reading of Hymn to Frying Pan, although few there are, with the possible exception of Old Pete, who would remember it today, there hadn't been a Brentford Poets.
There had only been a Writer in Residence.
And this the long-forgotten author.
The long-forgotten author had been given quite a remit. Found a poets' group, it said. The long-forgotten author, bereft as ever of ideas (he was the kind of author who specialized in an homage) put an advert in the Brentford Mercury:
Poets wanted to perform at a weekly poets' get-together at the Waterman's Arts Centre. A free pint from the bar for everyone who reads an original poem.
The bar ran dry the first night. It was remarkable just how many drinking men of Brentford felt the muse so suddenly arise in them.
But the reviewer from Time Out, who happened by chance to be there for the Busby Berkeley Retrospective [7] showing in the Arts Centre cinema, was so impressed by the enormous turnout (he never even got close to the bar himself) that he gave the event a write-up.