Many endings

We’re doing lots of things for the last time these days.

Our last dinner in our favourite curry restaurant, Punjabi Haveli, in the predominantly ‘Indian’ neighbourhood of Bury Park (Indian in quotation marks because the population is increasingly English – second generation or even, in many cases, third. But the food remains distinctly Indian and great).

Our last friend chicken from Chicken George, repeatedly awarded the prize as England’s best takeaway restaurant

Our last session at the Saturday badminton club, after perhaps 200 over the last eight years.

And these were just the things we knew we were doing for the last time. Earlier there were things we did for the last time without knowing there would be no further occurrences.

Our last Sunday afternoon chamber concert in a very little chamber with a minuscule chamber ensemble (never more than two players) in the lovely setting Wardown House.

Our last standup comedy evening where for a fiver you got to see six acts and, for an extra two or three pounds, you’d get a curry too

Even in winter, Wardown Park is a lovely place for a walk
Especially at sunset

Taking the dogs for a walk through Luton’s most wonderful feature, the string of parks, all grassland alternating with woodland and parkland, from People’s Park, to Pope’s Meadow, to Wardown Park and beyond, to ancient orchards and more woods by the stream that we like to glorify as the ‘river Lea’.

Still, though I’ll miss many of those things, what I shall miss the most are the people – and I hope that despite the geographical separation, we’ll keep in touch as much as possible. The friends from the Labour Party, including those who have become adversaries in today’s increasingly bitter battles; the friends from our two badminton clubs with whom we’ve spent many a wonderful hour on or off the court; and those who were just friends, and great to know. In a town where ‘White British’ is not the majority in the ethnic mix, it has been a delight to know this extraordinary mix of peoples, backgrounds, faiths, convictions, cultures, and sheer personality.

Many have asked me what I’ll miss the most, and that’s my answer.

This may all sound gloomy, but that’s just the nature of partings. This is the time of farewells, which are always cheerless. We’re looking forward to some new beginnings, but for now we’re dealing with endings, and they’re never happy moments.

Still, I can’t pretend that we’ll miss everything about Luton. And right at the top of the list of the things I shall be happy to see the back of will be the Luton Mall. It, as I see things, represents all that is least prepossessing about the town – and is also emblematic of what I see about Britain today that I’m only too happy to be leaving.

The Luton Mall was one of the earliest American-style malls in Britain, and it shows. It’s old and shabby, mildly claustrophobic which gives it a feeling of dinginess, lacking the airiness or light of more modern shopping centres. The only redeeming feature of the place is the quality of some of the shops.

Two of the best are Marks & Spencer and the department store Debenhams. I visited both last time I was there – another of that series of last-time moments – and reflected on the fact that both are threatened with closure. A Mall that badly needs redeeming losing two its most important redeeming features? What will be left? Just an empty shabby shell?

Luton Mall. Debenhams in front, M&S behind
Both slated for closure

That feels like the country writ small. What made Britain exciting was its openness and drive. It was the wealth of people from different places, with different concerns and different tastes, rubbing shoulders, learning from each other and building something better and more exciting together. Brexit has marked a break in that process, at least for a time. Like Luton’s Mall, the country is in decline.

The difference is that Luton didn’t choose its fate. Britain did and could stop it yet. Perhaps I should have stayed to help.

But, with two sons living in Spain, the prospect wasn’t attractive enough to prevent us deciding to go there. Hence the many endings. And I hope, after Saturday, a few new beginnings.