I knew Reading would appal him, I tell W. How could it be otherwise? Driveways packed with Land Rovers and 4X4s … Mock Tudor houses … Mock Georgian ones, with pebbledash rendering and plastic windows, in great estates at the edge of everywhere … All the styles of history, and mocking history, laughing at it. All the styles, and all at once. This is the end of the world, W. said. The eternal end.
Reading University is a campus of the suburbs, W. says. He couldn’t think of anything worse. A campus on the edge of a town, like an out-of-town leisure complex. Like a DIY superstore …
Of course, so many of the interesting universities are buried in the suburbs, W. says. He thinks of Essex University. Of the University of Middlesex! But the suburbs of Reading are particular invidious.
It's so crowded!, he says. So congested! Labyrinthine estates with roads named after flowers, after colours, after days of the week. Hypermarkets and out-of-town retail parks. Death by Pet World! Death by Staples! And cars everywhere, cramming the roads. Big cars! Company cars, shining, pristine! BMWs, and that sort of thing. Cars and car-parks and front gardens tarmacked over and covered in cars.
Blank-box executive houses, inches apart, five to a plot in place of old bungalows. '70s semis with barn-sized extensions. New dormers on old houses. Gardens of gravel. Car-park yards. This is what prosperity looks like, W. says. This is home-counties contentedness.
The campus. Space at last. An expanse of grass. Yew trees. Don't be fooled!, W. says, as we follow the path. This is still Reading. He can already feel his thoughts becoming suburban, he says.
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