Someone has to say it. Britain and Carlisle are falling. Problems abound in every possible direction. Towns and cities around the country looking more and more like a slipped on dog log. At this point, does it really matter whether you support red or blue? Hasn’t the circus show in America taught us anything? Whether it’s orange man or the corpse, who cares? Everywhere is feeling the pinch but nowhere more than the darkest farthest reaches of the country. Places where the cost of living crisis is a joke because there was never any living to begin with but plenty of crisis. I am of course referring here to the backwaters of Britain and in this episode we will discover (and then hopefully flee from) the farthest northern reaches of the country.
Ladies and gentlemen, keep your hands and articles in the vehicle at all times. And PLEASE do NOT feed the wildlife. Say hello to Carlisle! Yes, this is the one and only stop on this tour. We did advertise this adventure as the backwaters of Britain. Where else did you think we meant?
Here is the city of the lakes (apparently) but that’s just a name they use to desperately associate the miserable city with a place that attracts millions of people each year hoping to cash in on the action. Carlisle has absolutely nothing to do with the Lake District and you find this out pretty quickly and if it has anything to do with it, it’s like a really useless step father who pretends to have been there for you. Carlisle is a counterfeit bank note that it’s bearer claims is legal tender and tries sweeping the aisles of Poundland with, and then gets chased off by security.
It’s a Butlins holiday you were promised would be a Hilton experience. It’s a £50 taxi ride that should have been a tenner. It’s a really appealing looking AirBnB only to discover the owner has an online degree in Photoshop and you are renting out a dirty futon in someone’s garage with one suspect stain on it.
That isn’t to say Carlisle doesn’t attract people or have it’s worth because it does but it’s usually the vagabonds and criminals who are banished from the rest of Cumbria, that and transient walkers from afar who mistakenly end up in the Cumbrian no-go zone that is Carlisle and endure the underwhelming disappointment of Carlisle for all but a few minutes before carrying on their walking expedition. At least some make it out!
If Carlisle was a relationship it would be the time it takes laxatives to depart the body from consumption. And in that short period of time, prepare for evacuation. That IS your ONLY hope.
For a short period of time it’s almost like Carlisle is like any other place. If you are accustomed to the Lake District, you may think of beautiful vistas, epic mountains, trails that seem to go on forever. How civil, cordial, how decadent and diverse. An escape from the grind of everyday life. An escape is exactly what it is, an escape from civilized society. Carlisle has got a castle and some surviving medieval walls. It’s got a cathedral. It’s got countryside surrounding it. The history, the nature, the novel town-like feel. Idyllic. Perfect almost. Don’t let this facade pull you in.
Within a matter of minutes (when everybody realises something is off about the place), normality is restored and the sound of backfiring clapped out 90s bangers, petulant feral kids making noises that only a primatologist would understand and whining spitting and screeching rabid pregnant women and their gremlin children in toe along, the next stars in the making with a mugshot on the front page of every local gazette, with their chest beating, branch swinging knuckle dragging boyfriends. If you look close enough, you’ll see social services somewhere in the distance. The growling and haggard faces, the expression of misery and having missed out on a life worth living. Ah, the facade… it’s gone, along with any innocence you had left remaining.
Everybody in Carlisle seems lost and isolated as if their childhood was just one massive trainwreck of trauma, betrayal and abandonment. This is of course true as the area boasts one of the highest rates of domestic abuse, one of the highest rates of youth suicide and one the highest rate of child poverty. The list of accolades and accomplishments go on endlessly but nobody seems to care not least from the outside world where it’s business as usual.
You are left scratching your head sometimes wondering what is going on with how erratic and deprived the local rabble are. I believe there’s some good advice; do not make eye contact with them and whatever you do, do not drop peanuts because they will begin hollering to their mates and the jungle erupts into chaos.
Yes, Carlisle is a place where Vietnam, hippie communes gone wrong, brainwashing and acid would all be a home from home for most of the locals. A place ablaze with trauma and lost souls. A place where the modern experiment failed before it ever began. Where the idea of civilization never caught on. Surreal as if trapped in a bubble, of smack infused dissociation. Dissociation indeed because that’s what you need to stomach Carlisle for anything longer than a passing visit.
If not this then it’s more like a hellscape from the pages of the bible. Nails scratching down chalkboards, people being flogged in the street, devil worship and evildoing! Something otherworldly is at foot! Devil be gone! A medieval orgy of destitution, depravity and avarice. A place of corruption, where the lesser parts of humanity coalesce to form the darkest parts of the shadow that Jung so profoundly tried to educate us about. If there was a place for vice, Carlisle would hold the top spot. It’s a place where morals go out of the window and you can escape from your social responsibilities. Who wants to integrate into society anyway? Who wants to be civilized? Who wants to think about the consequences of their actions? A place where the constant fashion statement is how far you can go in letting yourself go. A place where social capital is something you put on your french fries at the local hoodlum ******** McDonalds.
If you think like this, you’ll find no end to the depths of possibility, and despair and dereliction, in Carlisle for it is a breeding ground of all things unhealthy and demoralized, like that crazy woman you met in the bar that one time who was your everything until you found out she was the town bike. Carlisle IS the town bike and she is passed around from pillar to post and everybody is hooked on the trauma bonded relationship. It feels so good and yet it’s so bad! Leaves you wanting more but leaves you progressively more empty until you’re left with nothing but broken memories. Carlisle will then take everything away from you and then kick you when you are down before proceeding to steal your wallet, if you haven’t already attempted to pawn it in the local Cash Generators.
Surely if there is the end of the road, it has to be Carlisle. Nestled in between absolutely nowhere significant, it’s the last bastion of civilization and well, the Romans discovered that wasn’t exactly the case thousands of years ago when they came over as they built a massive wall right across it, and then legged it. Still today, the poignant reminder that nothing much has changed in all those years. The home of endless wars all the way back to tribal days. Something must be in the water around here because nothing seems to progress. The locals have never really settled. Like someone withdrawing from ******, they thrash frantically into the night and awake in the morn to the same cycle of destruction. A home? Barely. The Scots fought for it but made the right decision disowning it and ever since, they have rightfully denied it was theirs like an illegitimate son and we all know there are plenty of those in Carlisle.
As if by divine grace, Carlisle has been blessed with accommodating the local’s spirit animal – the seagull. A flying white rat that barks, screeches, dive bombs and generally spends its life defecating from above and causing a nuisance. Most streets have cars plastered in seagull sh*t. The locals cannot stand them, which is fitting considering the two are very much alike. As they say, you attract what you put out and well, Carlisle is a lesson in how that can go so very wrong.
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