What I noticed in old holiday videos

I ended my last post with a mention of pedestrianisation, one of my current fixations. I had an urge to write a big juicy essay on the topic, but instead, I’ll just tell this little story about a recent epiphany.

In an uncharacteristic technological coup on my part, I digitised and edited several old camcorder tapes of family holidays from the last century. I have happy memories of these holidays, and the older you get, it seems, the more interesting your youth becomes.

Just as vividly as the trips themselves, I can remember the misery of coming back to Ireland. This was often at the end of August, right before school.

The videos show us walking around several towns in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, as it was in the corners of those countries that we spent a few holidays. All very nice, nostalgic, and very 90s. Unacceptable hair, excruciating teenage commentary, and so on.

Then I noticed an unexpected, but pretty glaring theme: pedestrianisation!

A main street. A lakefront promenade. A car-free mountain village. Or sitting in a square at a pavement café. The Mitchells were always in pedestrianised space.

Now, in a way, this was no big discovery. I knew, even back then, that ‘European’ towns and cities were much better at creating pleasant urban spaces than Irish and British ones.

But what I hadn’t thought about before was how this might have made me feel.

Those jarring homecomings. That post-holiday gloom. The undesirable Here and the desirable There! Maybe it wasn’t the contrasting weather, or being away in the last days of summer freedom.

Maybe I subliminally knew I was leaving behind a superior type of public space, one that simply did not exist in Ireland.

No more relaxed strolling, sitting outside, people-watching, listening to birdsong and rivers, examining flowers and architecture!

Wow. And if this was true, then my happy memories of the holidays of youth (which I think, if you are fortunate to have them, are pretty key in a person’s identity) I actually owe in part to something as mundane as a town planner, a committee, or a political party, having the good idea one day to let people walk around without cars driving close to them.

Imagine living somewhere like that.

Grim North Coast, One Year On: Slightly Less Grim!

This time last year, I did a blog post about depressing buildings and ‘public realm’ in the much sought-after seaside towns of Portstewart and Portrush. It got a big response, and I wrote some follow up thoughts. A week later, it appeared to inspire a supportive opinion piece in the Belfast Telegraph.

Naturally, as this year’s holiday approached, I was curious as to whether anything would have changed, for better or worse. And it turns out, it has got better! Marginally!

So here are a few ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots.

In the first blog, I pointed out the post-apocalyptic desolation of the children’s play park at the front of Portstewart. Happily, it has been spruced up. This wall…

…has had a nice lick of paint…

There are new seats and plants…

…and the prison yard lighting is now softened by this bunting.

The paddling pool also now looks healthier, and there is a new climbing frame, replacing the old broken one.

I had some pics of grim-tastic signage last year, and it was good to find these fresh new notices, even if they are a bit biohazard-y.

Another of my themes had been the assortment of plain weird buildings, one of which was this Portrush block of flats…

But it now looks like this. Ta-daa:

Round the corner at Ramore Head, the recreation area, where I have fond memories of playing tennis and crazy golf back in the 90s, had fallen into a long decline. But in the past year, it’s been regenerated, with this superb new play park…

Look closely, though, and you can still see that miserable little shelter up on the path.

In 2022, I also focused on the many dilapidated and frankly terrifying flights of steps in the two towns. They are as they were, apart from this one at the harbour in Portrush…

.

…which has a gleaming new railing, part of other public realm improvements in the vicinity.

Lastly, I’d had a big moan about the prevalence of pebble-dash finish on so many buildings in the area. I am pleased to report one success in the fight against this scourge. My exemplar, this one…

…is now history, and the building under development.

Overall, some good improvements. The bad news is that every one of the derelict buildings I photographed last year remains exactly as it was.

But credit where credit is due, small steps, etc.

Before I go, given that I’m currently drunk on my remarkable influence, I’ll just shout this out in the void: any chance of pedestrianizing Portstewart Promenade and Portrush Main Street? Only sometimes? Even remove one row of car parking from each? Just one??

How to write good academic subheadings

Subheading context

is not a good subheading! It’s not the worst either. But it’s the kind of thing I see a lot in student work and in published academic writing. It’s a fragment. ‘Context’ is a vague and overused word, including by me. No subheading is needed here anyway, not even ‘introduction’, since this first bit could only be an introduction.

Plus, how could something like a ‘subheading’ have a ‘context’? This subheading is the writer telling themselves that they are writing the opening bit. But it’s not helpful for the reader.

Doing good work

is another bad one, meaningless without explanation. (Read on to see where it comes from.)

I’m fan of subheadings. If a writer is not using subheadings, it may well mean they do not have clear, discrete thoughts with a logical flow and are trying to hide this from the reader.

But only recently has it struck me that subheadings must do much more than exist. They must do good work.

To illustrate all this, I’ll use a book that happens to be sitting beside me, a large, edited book about conflict resolution.

Examples of effective subheadings

That was a good one, I hope? It orients us to what is coming up in this section, and links back to the overall topic of the blog post. It is what we expect – a good feature of a subheading. Academic subheadings are not the place to be teasing, surprising, or arty.

My exemplar is a chapter on gender mainstreaming. The subheadings are:

Introduction

The roots of gender mainstreaming

The goal of gender mainstreaming

The practice of gender mainstreaming

Challenges to gender mainstreaming

Conclusion

Wonderful. We can see the land. We can see the horizon. There are even townspeople waving. We know where we are. Each subheading labels an aspect of the topic, and together they build up a picture of the whole.

Examples of ineffective subheadings

By contrast, the following package of subheadings, from a chapter elsewhere in this volume, is not so helpful:

Introduction

The identity paradigm

Stages of development as ongoing life projects

Basic human needs in Eriksonian perspective

Generativity crisis

Political ideas

Supervise the storytellers

Conclusion

The horizon is covered in a thick fog and we are drifting. Help! These subheadings have different structures, and it is not clear how they all link up and help to unfurl the theme of the chapter.

Now, you might say, just read the text, and it will all make sense. It might. But subheadings need to tell a story in themselves because the first thing the reader will do is scan them to see if this chapter is worth giving time to.

We’ve a million other texts to read. We need to smash the glass case, grab what we need, and get out of there. Let’s not make the reader work. As Stephen King wrote about fiction, the only thing the reader should have to do is turn the page.

Conclusion

is a very good subheading. It works for the reader, and it forces the writer to make sure they do have a conclusion.

And so my conclusion is this: first, make subheadings display a line of reasoning and relate to each other; second, don’t use word fragments but properly label what the section is about; third, use them to open up the overall topic. And don’t forget the…

References