Coventry

Every year we spend the best part of a day in Coventry. This is mainly because our car dealer , TMS, is based there, where we go for annual service and repairs. As this is probably at least 25 miles away it probably seems rather unusual. However Volvo dealers are few on the ground and the most convenient near Cannock closed some time ago.

I prefer to go to a main dealer for servicing. This is more expensive but it does mean all the software upgrades are fitted at the same time, a facility many local garages won’t have.

Essentially provided we leave about 9 and return before 3pm we avoid the worst of the traffic. The location of TMS means circumnavigating Coventry as they are based near the airport. The A45 provides our route around the city but even that means contending with a lot of busy junctions.

The dealer is near a well travelled bus route so going into the city centre is no problem. Our first port of call is the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Over the 5 years we have been visiting we have explored practically all the permanent exhibitions. The most interesting is the city through the ages. We have very much reached the “do you remember…” stage where mid  20th century items excite our nostalgia. It is quite remarkable what changes have happened. They creep up slowly and then quite suddenly the world is different. The giant change in my lifetime has been microelectronics. ( mobile phones and the internet )

Even when I was at work in the early 70’s I remember arguing about whether we could justify adding a square root function to a new calculator. This cost £500 plus then ( thousands now ) and was the size of a typewriter. We thought we were very advanced having one large computer in the whole group of laboratories. Of course the scientific staff were not allowed near. this being reserved for a host of specialists.

Having looked around the Herbert we retire to its coffee shop for coffee and munchables, fruit loaf most recently. Then a walk into the shopping area by the cathedrals. The former cathedral was bombed out in the blitz in 1940 and the new cathedral is alongside with the old left as a ruin as a reminder. We have visited in the past and even for a non church person like me it is a moving experience.

The shopping area is looking a bit jaded now. After the war is seemed an impressively modern centre, all pedestrianised long before it became a general fashion Cars are separated into cavernous parks below the centre.

On this visit we spent some time in Waterstones booksellers. The basement ( adult non fiction ) was very quiet and I was happy to sit and read about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in a recently published book. It doesn’t seem very long ago and it is a slight shock to realise it has passed into history. It had nearly the same impact as when my children studied the Cuban missile crisis in history at school. I was a student at that time and it stays fairly vivid in my memory but as a history topic! All I can say is that history as a subject was different when I was at school; I recall being rather disgusted when we stopped at 1870.

I find it difficult to visit a bookshop without buying a book. I settled on a new book about Philip Larkin. I well remember reading the Andrew Motion biography when Frances had decided to study English at A level. I thought I should make an effort towards keeping pace with her. Along with a book on WW11 special weapons this made a reduced price deal.

We then went on past the main shopping area to Ikea and straight to the restaurant. Two mains, tea and coffee for £9, surely unbeatable value. We then made the mistake of looking in the shop. Ikea trails seemed never ending and we were quite worn out before returning to TMS.