Love Letter to my Home Town

By way of an introduction

This was written as a request for the facebook group Humans of Derby, who are dedicated to extolling the positive aspects of my home city - something we, as locals, typically do the precise opposite of.

I’ve mused, on occasion, about the curious apparent lack of ego Derby has as a city. Growing up here we would chant to each other in the playground “Derby born and Derby bred, strong in t’ arm and thick* in t’ ’ead”, as if being a bit thick were a badge of honour! The amount of times I’ve heard people who live here bemoan the city, highlighting it’s apparently endless faults, I long ago lost track of. On returning it was not unusual to get a response along the lines of “what d’ you come back here for? It’s rubbish!” This from people that have never left. And why would they?

I was born on Kedleston Rd, less than a mile away from where I now live. I was raised in Mackworth and Allestree, then out in Shardlow, and up in the Derbyshire peeks in Whaley Bridge, near Buxton. Further afield we lived in Nigeria when I was tiny for some years, and I struck out alone, and later with my own young family, making homes in Eastbourne, Brighton, London, Richmond-Upon-Thames, and eventually Walnut Creek in the Bay Area of California, just north of San Francisco, where we lived for just shy of 12 years. But something about Derby has always drawn us back.

Derby wasn’t always kind to the young artist that I was. It was built on industry and engineering, and prone to forget it’s artistic heritage, which was embodied in the long gone Joseph Wright School of Art, where once upon a time my dad was offered a place – though, as he reports it, he never attended it due to a general lack of understanding of what such a thing might imply. It wasn’t going to help him get ‘real’ work of the kind proffered by engineering skills. And that was in large part why, when I showed an aptitude towards creativity, my parents chose to support it. Even in today’s more enlightened times some people still push their children away from such pursuits, but I was one of the lucky ones for whom that was not the case.

As a boy, one community art competition sponsored by the local council refused my submission, believing my dad had drawn it. Later, the local paper would routinely refuse to cover the comic publications we produced as Mam Tor Publishing. Even the local comic shop seemed unwilling to help us promote our wares, feeling it would be too much bother to ask management of that chain of since gone stores for the right permissions. Even the university was disparaging when I approached it about doing a fine art degree, suggesting my comic work was ‘redundant’.

And yet things DO change.

For the last 37 years I have been drawing, painting, writing and publishing comics. I’ve been lucky enough to draw ‘Judge Dredd’ for 2000ad, ‘Spider-Man’, ‘The Hulk’ and the ‘X-Men’ for Marvel, ‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Batman’ and the ‘Green Lantern’ for DC. My comic of ‘Gears of War’ was the biggest selling comic of 2008. My Marvel UK comic ‘Death’s Head II’ remains the biggest selling comic produced in the UK for the US marketplace of all time. I’ve Drawn ‘Spawn’ for Todd McFarlane, and created my own work for Madefire in the form of ‘Captain Stone is Missing….’ And latterly ‘StarHenge’ for Image. I’ve also had two novels published, and a third is due for publication soon. Such pursuits, it might seem hard to grasp these days, were once considered puerile and viewed with either contempt or  with distain. Comic art, it was said, was not real art, not real literature. Ignorant pomposity framed the entire medium as a sort of genre, and a lesser one at that.

In recent times, though, Derby has celebrated my efforts in ways I could have never imagined, and that has been profoundly affecting. It started with a ten week retrospective of my comic work at Derby Museum, which, I am told, had record-breaking footfall. I met people at that show that travelled to the city just to see it. As a Derby lad that was incredibly humbling!

Since then I have been honoured with a ‘Made in Derby’ star in the Cathedral Quarter, a few strides away from the front door of Joseph Wright’s house, and closer still to a pub – an ever present feature of Derby, and a welcome one at that! Then two years ago the university offered me an honorary doctorate for my efforts. As clear an example of change and cultural progress as there ever was, and I feel extremely proud to be part of that revision, that rewriting of what is good, what is worthy, and what merits note.

When I thought of Derby having no ego I was wrong. It had, in a way, an inverse kind of snobbery. You didn’t get above your station. Dreamers were dark horses, or black sheep. You knuckled down, and did ‘real’ work. But this is not THAT city anymore. Derby is bursting with creativity and invention. It is filled with people from other places that have found a haven here. And increasingly there are those of us that celebrate it.

Of all the places I have lived, I’ve never found as much richness of life, such a sense of community, such warmth of human interaction as I have here. I see it with fresh eyes, having left and returned so many times over my 55 years on this globe. It might be battered, and it is certainly not perfect, but this is not a city in decline. Everywhere I have ever lived suffers the same complaints, and rightly so. We will forever elect occasional villains who’s glad-handing serves themselves, not the place. Town planning is full of such scoundrels. Roads will likely rob us of more beloved trees, developments will continue to be built on land we valued for its beauty. The old becomes the often no better new. But I see the blooming of boutique creativity everywhere, stealing through the cracks in the grim old facade.

A few weeks ago I was in Bristol, and I am hard pressed to think of a cooler city. The way it has developed its old mills, factories and docklands is outstanding. It is bustling with young, creative, and beautiful people. Derby is not cool. It never claimed to be, and never reaches for that kind of distinction. I confess, it has always seemed a shame that the city doesn’t seem able to utilize its own waterfront and some of its old buildings in such a celebratory, functional manner, and often its good intentions fall short, as bold statements and grand plans fade and are forgotten. But what it has it has in spades. There’s a pub on every corner pretty much – many of which have been here my whole life, from The Flower Pot to the Dolphin (though I do miss the Abbey at Darley Mills!). The beer is uniformly great. The city seldom feels sleepy. We’re in the middle of the country with access to everywhere, surrounded by some of the most stunning countryside these islands have to offer. We’re steeped in history that is written large in the old bones of the place. The red brick world at its heart is compact and embracing. And it’s all so walkable. The kindest, most humble people I know are from here, as are some of the most talented.

Derby is my favourite place in the world. There. I’ve said it. Not cool. Not beautiful. Not always kind! But very VERY human. I know and love it as if it were a singular, living being, warts and all. From its pubs, parks, it’s myriad communities, its triumphs and bitter failures, forgotten canal, under-utilized river, and the crumbling faded glory of past institutions, it’s an old, trusty beast of a place. Small enough to retain an identity and sense of itself, big enough to offer a taste of the world’s riches.

When it comes down to it, I’m very proud to be a Derbeian.

*Note: It would seem, in fact, that the term ‘thick’ was originally ‘wick’, but neither me nor my young friends in the 70’s had any notion of the work wick, meaning ‘quick’, so thick it was, and proud we were!