After reading The Handbook To Drifting (extracts) (Smith, 2010) I tried to look at the Grandstand in a new way.  My intention was to forget about the sentiment and memory contained in the site and look at it with the point of view that if I wasn’t part of the Grandstand’s past, why should I hold it so dear when trying to feel a response from the site.  The third instruction in this ‘guidebook’ was to use your senses, to “walk slowly and look for meaning in everything.”

When you explore the exterior of the Grandstand it is more achievable to think about what you can see and how your senses are engaging in terms of the present,  however when you explore the interior there is one particular spot where you can’t really forget the past.

The RAF emblem over a fireplace in one of the main rooms leaves very little else in your mind when trying to place the grandstand in terms of its meaning.  The meaning that you find here is that the grandstand played a part in the war and assisted the Royal Air Force in the Lincolnshire area.  You can understand the difficulty I might have in trying not to think about the past.

Another instruction in the guide to drifting particularly interested me and that was number 22: “When you encounter strangers, LISTEN to them.” I think it would be very interesting to go out and ask people what their opinions on the grandstand are and yet this would also counteract my new found ideal of not dwelling in the past.  I think what I’m trying to say is that people can not form an opinion of the grandstand if they don’t know what it is, or where it is, or if they’ve never seen a picture of it.  In order for them to express their feelings they have to know it, and this inevitably means knowing about its past.

I like to think that my attempted ‘drift’ in which I had an aim (not sure that’s exactly the point) failed to a point that I now understand more than ever that without the past we literally wouldn’t have a thing, therefore why on earth should I try and make any of that past irrelevant?

Works Cited:
Smith, P. 2010. Mythogeography. Axminster, Devon: Triarchy Press.

The question: what do you know about Lincoln grandstand?  The catch: no research.  The answer: honestly, very little.

I’ve driven past the grandstand a few times and I’ve recently walked up to have a closer look at it; so I know how it looks from the road but that really is about it.  Where other people may have knowledge of the history of the grandstand, I have images and scenes that my imagination has conjured up.  I think of the punters who would have been sat, twitching nervously as they hoped that the race would end well for them.  The excitement and equal dread that would have been thick in the air.  The optimistic sentimentalist in me imagines the children who have gone with their fathers and feel so lucky to have been made a part of the day and choose a horse; they have no idea what their decision could do.

I think of the conspiracy: was the bet fixed? How could that horse have fallen?  Then of course there would have been the jockeys who loved their horses and cared for them so dearly and yet put them through hell in those minutes of the race.

I can look at the grandstand and try to imagine the colour that it surely once contained.  I see the people that would have flocked there on race days to fill the seats and witness the spectacle.  A roar that would have erupted as the winners counted their profits and the losers counted their loss.  Now I look at the grandstand and I see a sign for a community centre, this means nothing to me as I have no knowledge of what it does.  For all I know it’s a sign to justify keeping a bunch of empty rooms.  I see cars, presumably visiting the community centre or the golf course just behind the grandstand.

The thing is, I really don’t know anything about the place, and even my imagined past seems to me slightly ridiculous, but perhaps that is because when I look at the grandstand now I see nothing more than an ornament – something to make the car park look nice.  I know there must be more to the place, particularly with the grandstand but for now all I have is my first impression and a starting point.  I feel sorry for the grandstand.