Mar 22, 2021
Andreas Airfield: The Aftermath of a Transformers Orgy
In Emily Bronte’s seminal literary work — Wuthering Heights — the author not only explores the vagaries of the ever-complex human spirit, musing on the ties that bind between the most troubled of souls; she also uses symbolism and stuff to show that the moors are wild, extremely shaggable things. Case in point, the arch protagonist of the book: Cliff Heathcliff.
Sir Cliff of Heath is all moody and handsome and, in this day and age, pretty problematic. Imagine bringing him home to your Mum. By the time she brought the bourbons out he’d be gnawing Dad’s ankles and harping on about “unutterable souls”. Easy, Cliff.
“Mum, you just don’t understand him! He’s a complex soul!”
“Sally. He uses cow shit as a pillow”
Basically, he’s a right mad fucker who lives among the untamed moors, foraging berries and wrestling with wolves. A gypsy Mowgli who’ll treat you like a bastard. Heathcliff: keeping Cathy’s keen since the 18th century.
Those moors though. As the book’s narrator, Mr Lockwood — a classic English gentleman bereft of only a Jeeves to satisfy his Wooster-ness — says of the melancholic, whirling environment that engulfs him — “…I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society”.
Which brings us neatly to Andreas Airfield. A place of dark beauty. Intensity, simmering gently. Where a desolate isolation clings to the starched air. Where madness can be fostered and nurtured, forming and coalescing with the thick casting grey gloom. A place not dissimilar to how Bronte depicted Heathcliff himself — “…an unclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone”. But you know, with Andreas Stores just up the road, like.
Now, I am delighted to confirm both ‘furze’ and ‘whinstone’ are not only the back-up gifts the 3 Wise Men had on them should the little lord kick off, they are also old wanky terms for gorse.
Andreas is an absolute teeming cornucopia of gorse! OF GORSE IT IS.
It is, at the time of writing, a circuit breaker. Which sounds a lot like an 80’s game-show. The kind of DIY, white-dog-shit gold that you just don’t see on the screen anymore. Cheryl Baker would, obviously, present along with a grinning pink shellsuit named Anneka Rice. Roy Castle pops up occasionally, jogging apropos of nothing, never uttering a word as he breezes out of shot. The title remains unexplained and everyone has a right good laugh.
But no. We realise, of course, the term ‘circuit breaker’ is an altogether less whimsical beast. It is, instead, a front-runner in the pseudo-bollocks COVID word Olympics. The kind of term designed by committee, and festooned upon the general public like garlands of actual human shit, to be worn with spurious pride.
Point being: Andreas Airfield. On the rare occasions where we have left our blissful, purgatorial lockdown lives, we tend to drag the kids to this mythical and vast playground of absurdity. It is a reliably demented, fascinating escape.
My wife grew up here. On this former Royal Air Force Station, a training establishment during the Second World War and burgeoning air gunners. A cursory wander round the vastness shows the rubble, ruins and relics of what came before. My sons wander and roam, excitable and consumed.
I take in the sights. Every time I’m here there’s something new. A lurid bright orange shell of what looks to be a discarded Nascar car, the words ‘living the dream’ etched on it’s decaying door. An office chair surrounded by nothing but a discarded sponge and one mitten. A Double Decker bus next to a Chippy Van. All tyres removed. I walk on and see my boys sitting atop hay bales, leaping about in open stretches of greenery. Next to the ramshackle air-raid shelters and dilapidated remains of yesterdays. The Portakabins, a defunct Stereo Hi-Fi, industrial-sized articulated lorries, endless spools of black film, pouring out of a box. Rogue wheels, everywhere. Engine-less motors, ransacked and obsolete. One simply says ‘slug’ and suddenly that biting chill in the air makes itself known.
This is a wonderland for the kids, as it was for my wife growing up. To me, this is part post-modern art exhibition vomiting into a skip; part end-of days Mad Max dystopian hellscape. But mostly, it’s the mechanical aftermath of a Transformers orgy. A groggy-headed Optimus Prime waking up with 15 exhausts in his hands and a forklift up his arse.
My eldest sits atop a mountainous pile of gravel, trampling through the dust that kicks up from his feet. Large blue tubes with gleaming yellow circular ends, looking like Nerf bullets for Giants, are just ahead of us, next to ambivalent cows. We stroll past the gypsy carriage, already desensitised to the batshittery on display. The generation game on hallucinogens finishes off with a tattered Anonymous mask lying eerily half-broken in a pool of mossy-green sludge.
We traipse through muddy banks and gravel, dashing past the outposts for local suppliers, merchant builders, meat suppliers and, presumably, souls of the damned. The boys explore an underground tunnel, an erstwhile monolithic rectangular hollow block. “Echo!”, they shout.
The skies above seem intensely grey, like enraged steel, somehow brimming with the intensity that this place bestows. How long would it take to be smothered by the howls of madness that dwell upon these lands? How long to be without refinement and to become completely removed from society’s stir?
“Daddy? Look at my metal knob”, says the eldest, positioning himself behind a thin sheet of pointy metal.
And on we go, into the great wild beyond.
