Chapel, Venice of the High Peak

It was on this day, March 3rd, last year that I wrote this piece but never published it. I thought I would give it an airing now, but please do not judge me by it. I love where I live and I would never seek to bad-mouth it. These are just observations of ennui in two places of extraordinary difference yet managing to engender similar feelings.


Chapel, Venice of the High Peak


Chapel-en-le-frith and Venice are the same: spend too much time in either of them and you go a bit peculiar. But that's probably where the comparisons should end. While Chapel may lay claim to being the 'Capital of the Peak' and 'Home of Ferodo brake linings' (the smell of burning rubber suffuses the town), I think it fair to say that Venice has bigger things to shout about (food, architecture, art, music and culture to mention just a few). Having said that, I did notice The Chapel Playhouse for the first time today after six years of driving past it and not. It's a reasonably imposing stone building (though clearly not that imposing if it's taken me over half a decade to spot it), but it hardly matches the Baroque splendour of Il Teatro La Fenice, home of Italian opera in Venice. But beggars cannot be choosers.

So, why on earth was I thinking of Venice as I was going about my mundane business in Chapel this morning? It's not an obvious connection, I admit. All I can say is that, having spent a morning at the dentist (worse, hygienist), the chemist, the dry-cleaners, the one-horse vets, the lightless Londis, the humourless newsagents (paying paper bill), the kids exchange shop, Morrisons (and the horrors of the passport photo booth), the flower shop and the handy hardware shop (duck tape, bird seed, light bulbs, baskets and ribbon) I was pretty well ready to shoot myself. Ok, I exaggerate. But I had certainly been plunged into mental 'weird world'. I find it a little hard to explain this as, over the seven years since I moved up from the south, Chapel has slowly but surely become part of the fabric of my home - yet the same sort of feeling swept across me that I often got in Venice in the days when we lived just down the Brenta Canal and I was a frequent visitor to this most stunning and extraordinary of cities. Chapel is certainly extraordinary in terms of the number of pubs that line its High Street and has secured its place in history thanks to Oliver Cromwell paying a visit here in the 17th century - but I think most would agree that 'stunning' it is not. Good grief, I hear you ask, where is she going with this? I'm not sure I know myself, but maybe it's something about extremes...

Venice is at one extreme of civilisation - and Chapel at the other. The former dazzles with it's uniqueness and beauty, a place whose former prosperity was rooted in both the arts and its trading prowess; the latter hits you with its utter ordinariness and plainess, and the solidity of its grey granite and working roots. A quick trip into Venice made you heave heavy sighs of delight at every corner; a quick trip into Chapel makes you think 'it's not a bad place really'. But remain just a little too long and the impressions morph strangely into sighs of a different kind. In Venice I always found that the thrill soon turned to melancholy; in Chapel, the gentle pleasure of an unremarkable small local town, albeit surrounded by great natural beauty, turns swiftly to alarming feelings of mild depression. Especially on a dull, damp, murky day. I loved Venice in winter, without the crowds of tourists clogging the bridges and alleyways and swarming all over St Mark's Square as abundantly and oppressively as the pigeons. But before long the milky mists, the damp smells of the grey-green canal water seeped through your nostrils and began to leave a gloomy, suffocating impression on your brain. What is this splendid city? Who lives here? Is it real or is it a stage set? At a certain point you just want to run away, back to a familiar world of real streets and real shops and real people living real lives. Get back to a place like Chapel. Or maybe not. For stay too long in Chapel and I develop an equally urgent need to escape the solemn granite and functional shops - to return swiftly to my green and oh-so-pleasant haven: my village, my house, my garden, my view, my breathing space, my sanctuary. A place that seems worlds apart from the small grey town just down the lane. And both are a world away from Venice.