There are only two weeks left of the St Swithin’s Day project, and so far it has only rained on eleven of them.
In the meantime, I have seen or heard thirteen ice cream vans, which roughly works out as averaging out at one or the other – rain or shine – every single day so far. I have been careful to go about my daily business as usual and not go out of my way to chase the weather signs in a Francis Alys tornado chasing style, so at least I can trust my results.
The myth that it would be sunny or wet for the forty days following the 15th July has been disproved, for this year at least, and the fact that it was both sunny and then rainy on that day seems to have been reflected in what we have experienced since. What happens over the next couple of weeks will be interesting though, not least because the recent deluge (29mm collected on 10 August is the record so far) will have been welcomed by many because for now at least, it seems to have quelled the civil unrest on our cities’ streets.
Scary though it has been for us all, I had particular empathy for friends and acquaintances in the capital, and I certainly do not endorse those making jokes about the situation, but those of us familiar with the song must have seen the relevance of Morrissey’s warning that there was panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham, and watching the rolling news footage I certainly wondered to myself, will life ever be the same again.
Still, life has gone on for most of the country, and my investigations developed in a new direction when I was signposted (thanks Simon) to the excellent Radio 4 documentary The Ice Cream Van Cometh (broadcast on 30th July) in which Jim Carey (a sound designer) discussed in detail the origins of the familiar sound of summer emanating from ice cream vans.
Listening, I learned that Crewe was the worldwide centre of ice cream vans – I was three miles away when told about the documentary – and that the Chinese had invented ice cream before the Italians took it a stage further with their flavoured gelati. Charles II first brought ice cream to this country for a party in 1689, and gradually sellers used horses and two wheeled carts before motorised vehicles in the 1920s. The ice cream vans that we know originated in the late 1940s.
I was reminded that Justified and Ancient mentions ice cream vans, that Johnny Vegas and Francis Rossi are enthusiasts; the powerful, evocative noise was explained in depth, apparently owners treat the vehicles like their babies and they can tell if there is something wrong with the van from the music they play. The coincidences of the programme didn’t end there, I was also introduced to a work by Banksy that I had missed from his Bristol show a couple of years ago:
He too has been fascinated by ice cream vans since childhood, he believes they are perfect for selling ice cream because they are themselves ice cream like, and signalled a loss of innocence when he burnt out a van in the foyer of the gallery – an eery premonition of some of the scenes we have witnessed this week.
Some people apparently complain about ice cream van noise levels, and one of the most popular tunes is based on OOH OOH ANTONIO a 1908 music hall classic. Different songs are inputted into a computer and digitised, with sitar variations used in Leeds and Bradford. These “timeless” songs, according to Vegas, “take you back to a point of your past” which is why police once played chimes to a group of marauding youths to pacify their drunken anti-social behaviour – I wonder if this approach has been considered by Cameron and his COBRA group at all?
The documentary ended with mentions of ice cream on TV and film, from Robbie Coltrane playing a Glaswegian seller involved in the wars, to an episode of Chucklevision; The famous Boddingtons advert, and horror films (no doubt partly inspired by a Margaret Roberts joining a team of scientists in 1949 and developing the Mr Whippy)
In their heyday there were 20000 ice cream vans across the country, now there are around 5000 due to social change and supermarket freezers. Leanring more about them has reminded me to appreciate them a little more, whatever the weather – as Vegas said, we need to support them as what might life be like without them when they are gone?
