The History of reality checkpoint
Sometime around the beginning of 1974, I gathered up my pocket money and made my way into Cambridge city centre to buy Pink Floyd’s latest, The Dark Side of the Moon.
I hurried down Mill Road (where Andy’s Records would open their first shop later that year), past Parkside Pool where I’d learned to swim, and crossed over to Parker’s Piece, the rough diamond of green that separates town from gown.
Taking the well-used route between the here and the University Arms Hotel, I would have noticed that the lamppost at the centre of Parker’s Piece, where its two footpaths intersect, had recently been emblazoned with a rainbow of colours.
If you were around in Cambridge in the seventies or eighties, you’ll no doubt remember the lamppost like this.
According to the name painted on its plinth, this was Reality Checkpoint – which is how this spot has been colloquially known now for almost fifty years. It is now included by name on Cambridge City Council's official map of Parker's Piece (albeit in minuscule writing) and on Google maps. X marks the spot. Just ask any local and they’ll direct you. It’s famous. It must be the only lamppost in the world with a Wikipedia entry.
Reality Checkpoint, Parker's Piece, Cambridge, 1974. Photo: Stephen Turner @stephenderfel
My parents would have called it the "Four Lamps" (not to be confused with the traffic roundabout near Midsummer Common). But I – like most people these days – have always known it as Reality Checkpoint.
All these years on, Reality Checkpoint has become fixed in the Cambridge collective consciousness and it's a fascinating bit of local history. The name has appeared on tourist souvenirs, in novels and on t-shirts. It was even briefly the name of a Cambridge techno club in the nineties. In 1996 it was designated a Grade II listed building.
So, is this where reality begins? Or ends?
Some say it marks the unofficial point where the ivory-towered, privileged university city dissolves into the working town that surrounds it. "Out there, beyond the checkpoint was a world of dusty privet hedges and brick terraces, graveyards and primary schools, takeaways and video rental stores. Mill Road was real life," wrote Edward Hollis in 2009.
Others have suggested it was once a transcendental beacon, no doubt at the intersection of two ley lines, a touchstone for late-sixties and early-seventies hedonists to aim for on their way across the Piece. As a teenager in the seventies I imagined it might have had something to do with Pink Floyd. Perhaps their erstwhile leader, Syd Barrett – by 1974 a legendary recluse living somewhere in deepest suburban Cambridge – could sometimes be found here, checking his own reality?
Ok, I know now that Reality Checkpoint has nothing to do with Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, but I wanted to find out how far back the name went and track down the person who painted it in those bright colours.
One thing is sure, Reality Checkpoint is far more than just a corporation lamppost.
