Spooking the Trolleybus
Or
The Ghost Trolleybus of
Headingley
The Trolleybus Enquiry has now ended, Mr Cameron has
given his final closing, and all the papers and documents carted away in their
voluminous box files.
The controlled passion of six months
of Enquiry and years of preparation has now been spent.
There was a feeling like the end
of term and I was reminded of a ditty I probably haven’t thought of since I was
a child.
No more going round the bend,
The term is coming to an end
No more pain and no more sorrow,
We will all be home tomorrow.
It felt strange also to be
leaving behind something that had become so much a part of the objectors lives
over this last half year.
Finishing and leaving it behind
on Hallowe’en, the end of the old Celtic calendar year, the gateway to the dark
of the year. We have often made jokes
about how it was likely to end on this day and the amusing connotations. I had often speculated that it might extend
to Bonfire Night, which would have provided a worthy end for a cardboard effigy
of the despised trolleybus, but no, we were spared the extra few days, and
Hallowe’en it was.
But this draws us into a dark
realm of bizarre coincidence, strange connections and perhaps crazy conspiracy
theory.
It was a year ago exactly that
was the closing date for objections to the application for a Transport and
Works Act Order which triggered the Public Enquiry. So the entire process has been encompassed from Hallowe’en to
Hallowe’en.
Mere coincidence of course. But we now move into the imaginative world
of numerology as we notice that the Enquiry has taken exactly 72 days. 72 is a number much beloved of
mathematicians and numerologists alike, being as it is one fifth of 360, the
number of degrees in a circle, as well as being the number of years it takes
for one degree of the precession of the equinoxes. Being one fifth of 360 means that it is also the external angle
of a pentagon, and the internal angle of the points of a pentagram, the power
symbol used by a variety of occult and mystical belief systems.
So by this one might imagine that
the Enquiry has been encompassed like a pentagram within the circle of the
year. Spooky synchronicity, or just an
imaginative interpretation?
So far, so Goth.
But there are deeper and more
disturbing coincidences.
There is an old legend that
crossroads were sometimes made on the graves of murdered people or the sites
where murders had taken place, probably related to ancient customs were animals
would be sacrificed into the foundations of major buildings or forts. At the crossroads it is said that one could
summon the Devil at special times, such as Hallowe’en.
The trolleybus, which one might
be forgiven for holding to be at least the metaphorical work of the Devil,
would actually pass over such a place along its route.
Now I have to say at this
juncture that I speak as an Art Therapist of a Jungian inclination. The collective unconscious and group soul of
a community, or a place, is something which has been recognised throughout human
history as being of importance.
Seemingly only our modern technical civilisation is in denial of the
importance it holds, preferring to put all value in economic gain and leaving
no space for the inner world, the
numinous world of dreams and the imagination where our collective memories lurk
and linger.
It is at times such as
Hallowe’en, the gap between the years, the wood between the worlds, when we
need to acknowledge the existence of these ghosts, these phantoms that remind
us of their existence, like Cathy at the window.
NGT would make a crossroads and a
roundabout of the most tragic spot in Headingley, the spot on Alma Road where
the Yorkshire Ripper took his 13th and final unfortunate victim
Jacqueline Hill, on the evening of the 17th November 1980, thirty
three years before the Enquiry was triggered.
Thirty three is another number which is favoured by those with a
penchant for numerological interpretations, and there are groups who place
immense importance on this number.
I was given the opportunity to
reference the matter of the Ripper murder, which I had thought too occult and
recherché for the Enquiry, when Mr Thomas Walker crassly referred to treating
Wood Lane ‘sensitively’ because of the Ripper murder, thus opening this subject
as a matter which could be examined on.
Though in referring to the incorrect location, (where NGT wishes to put
a stop and shelter) he was concerned for extreme sensitivity, when the correct
location was pointed out to him, (Alma Road) and it was suggested that having a
crossroad roundabout was not a sensitive treatment of that particular spot and
memory, he sneered that he thought I was making too much of it.
As one who believes strongly in
the genius loci and collective memory it disturbs me to think that hundreds or
possibly thousands of people a day would pass over the unfortunate site on Alma
Road. Should they be shielded from
knowing this? Should it be denied as
too difficult to face and written out of local history so as to protect
commuters from the uncomfortable truths of our collective past? Alma means Soul.
I certainly know that I would
find it an unwelcome experience to know that I was travelling over this site of
desecration on a daily basis. Animistic
cultures, and any religion or belief system which acknowledges these realities
would say that this was a place of ill omen which should be left in peace and
not disturbed. The passage every few
minutes of a mechanical leviathan would mean that this spot would forever be
disturbed and in turmoil, never to rest as the spirits of the dead are meant
to.
The truth has a way of getting
itself found out, and try as they might, those like Mr Walker who wish to deny
the human importance of such memories only seem to provoke them when they
attempt to instead dismiss them as of no value. There is no more vengeful spirit than the spirit who is disturbed
and debased. The grateful dead are
those who are left in peace and honoured at the appropriate times. Hallowe’en is one of those times when the
spirits come out from the cracks between the worlds and seek to be honoured.
This is a deep Jungian process
which we represent by ghouls and ghosts and monsters in popular culture, but
they are also deep unconscious currents that connect us with the essential
energies of the world about us, buried though they may seem to be, hidden from
our daily lives. But as an art
therapist it seems to me that these things, if ignored, nonetheless find their
way out in our actions, our body language, slips of the tongue or nervous twitches. And sometimes they find their way out in
more structured symbolic forms only interpretable from a long distance.
It may be that some dark force is
guiding the trolleybus and showing itself through these numerological
symbolisms and strange coincidences with ancient practices and legends. Or it may be, that from a Jungian point of
view, the collective mind somehow organises our perceptions so that the
unforgettable is not forgotten. Like a
fractal forming around a point of chaos, or a pearl around a grain of sand,
reality, rather than being deletable, overwritten like the land which the
trolleybus track would be laid out on, is not infinitely malleable, but rather
has a character and a meaning which will come back to us until it is accepted
and integrated as part of who we are.
NGT takes no account of the
people, no account of the Soul of Headingley, or anywhere else along the route
for that matter, and that is why it has raised so much opposition.
Tonight is Hallowe’en, the gap
between the worlds when we gaze into that dark space and open ourselves the
weirdness hiding behind consensus reality.
The Inspector’s report knows
little of such things (although I did manage to mention the importance of
Social Anthropology in my Heritage cross examination), and will certainly not
be decided on the spooks and speculations of a maverick art therapist such as
myself.
But the world is a greater thing
than mere reason can account for, and while economic forces grind on pressing
for this or that, the deeper collective psychological forces of the collective
mind continue to work their processes and are the invisible context to this all,
whether acknowledged or not.
So kind reader, as Hallowe’en passes and the gap
in reality closes, put away these idle speculations and remember only that
there are more things in Heaven and Earth than can be dreamt of in any
philosophy.
