Apparently the Pendleton Bowling and Social Club shut down not long after a pandemic, after the owners couldn't raise funds to keep it going. I used to live opposite, well after it shut, and with no other properly social venue within a 30 minute walk, even I missed this place. Kids run about in here, climb on the ledge outside, and chuck things at stuff. That's until a parent finds them and drags them away from the crumbling neighbourhood institution.
Everywhere else in the building is pretty much pitch black thanks to boarded up windows, and aside from being light enough to film and record, there's something about this first floor bar area, where Christmas decorations were seemingly stored, where you can peer out on the world continuing outside of this pandemic snapshot, and where, like a deranged Jack Torrance, you can fill in the hubbub vacuum and empty, sodden sofas with imagined lively end of weekend conversations and old boys drinking mild in their Sunday best. Recorded on 28th April 2024.
