In Praise of… Swindon

Our peripatetic scribe, Alex Wade, drops us a line about… Swindon. Granted, the place is in the news, poised as it is to become the UK’s first wi-fi town, but could there really be anything to say beyond an indifferent ‘well done, Swindon’? Read on for an unexpected eulogy.

Swindon is much derided. If memory serves the Wiltshire town features in books about the UK’s crap towns and is regularly pilloried by the comedian Dom Joly, who lives nearby in the bucolic Cotswolds. The claim that Oasis took their name from the town’s swimming centre is laughed at as much as Swindon’s labyrinthine ‘magic roundabout’ system is lambasted. As for its literary festival and occasional efforts to garner a ‘cultural reappraisal’, forget it. The fact that Swindon was the poor relation to David Brent’s paper merchant centre in Slough says it all.

Or does it? Having once lived near to Swindon – in the same idyllic Cotswold village as the estimable Mr Joly – I grew to like the place, even if I hated its roundabouts as much as anyone. I lived in Quenington for six years and would nip down to Swindon often, either to visit its shopping centres (they are legion, and excellent), watch the football team or to go to the cinema with my young sons. But most of all I would attend one of the town’s two highly rated boxing clubs. In my case (I won’t talk about the other one), I trained at Walcot Amateur Boxing Club, which is located in an old warehouse in the shadow of the County Ground, the home of Swindon Town FC.

I’d been through some chaos in my personal life, which led me to boxing, but the good folk at Walcot sorted me out. The chief coach, Harry Scott, was a Jamaican emigre in his early 60s. He was a man of a few words, great physical strength and endless integrity. He ran the club like an army regiment, which is exactly how a boxing club should be run. If you walked through the doors for a training session, that was it – Harry’s word was law. No matter if you might be feeling a little out of sorts; you’d walked in so get on with it, glove up and spar, sometimes with boxers of your own level, sometimes with men like Jamie Cox, who went on to win Commonwealth Gold and is now a highly regarded pro managed by Frank Warren. That Jamie went on to do so well is down to the discipline instilled in him from a young age by Scott and his fellow coaches, men like Dave Veysey, the club chairman, Dave Holyday and Harold, Harry’s son and a formidable amateur heavyweight. Tough blokes, all, but sound as a pound.

The more I trained at Walcot, the more I realised that something of the club’s ethos permeates Swindon. Not just in the old town but on the estates and suburbs, there are solid, hard-working people who take what life throws at them in their stride. And there’s more to Swindon than meets the eye. Today the town has a vibrant local paper in the Swindon Advertiser; many years ago it was the first place in the UK to have a public lending library. It’s not a bad place to buy a house, with the Times revealing in 2008 that only Warrington had a lower ratio of house prices to household income in 2007, with the average household income in Swindon among the highest in the country. The old town is atmospheric, pretty and brimful of good restaurants.  Hell, Swindon even has a celeb or two – Billie Piper was born there, so too the Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward. I think I’m right in saying that the rock band XTC also hailed from Swindon.

The wi-fi project is a partnership between the borough council and two private companies, Avidity and aQovia, which have formed a company called Digital City UK. It will result in free internet access for the 186,000 Swindon residents and should be up and running by April 2010. It’s not the town’s first venture into cutting edge technology – anyone remember Mondex? – but should set a precedent to be followed by towns across the UK.

Who’d have thought it – Swindon, a trend-setter? There’s just one place where I don’t want to see free wi-fi – within the walls of Walcot ABC. Fortunately, I don’t for a moment reckon that Harry Scott would allow it.

Swindon Magic Roundabout is by A.K. Neve.

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