My Northern City

A northern lass, my nearest city is Manchester. A city I love dearly. Powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution and commercial hub for the now defunct Lancashire Cotton and Textile Industry, these days Victorian grandeur sits side-by-side with modernity.

Catching the train from Horwich Parkway, it takes around thirty minutes to reach Manchester Piccadilly, the city's biggest railway station, whose electronic boards and crackly announcements signal national as well as local trains. Yet, as I arrive, on a dull, overcast Saturday, the station seems quiet and suspended, like a lone traveller sitting on a bench between trains. 

 I take the tram to the Northern Quarter, passing from one side of the city centre to the other courtesy of one of Europe's best tram networks. As a nation, we abandoned trams in the late 40s and 50s believing  them to be an old-fashioned method of transport. Prompting light hearted entertainers Flanders and Swann to develop this daft little ditty:

  Last of the trams

In the 1980's Manchester, always a forward thinking city, reintroduced the tram making it easy, along with the free metro shuttle buses, to get around. I am lulled by their gentle swaying motion and soft choo-choo whistle, alerting pedestrians to be aware trams are passing through the city's streets.

 Stepping off at Shude Hill, I make my way to the somewhat trendy Northern Quarter, where hipsters mingle with Stag and Hen parties at weekends and where the façade of the old fish market has been conserved as a wall around blocks of recently built apartments.

(Old fish market)

Walking through the narrow streets and back alleys ...

(RSPCA Charity Shop)
 
...I soon arrive at my destination...-



Manchester Craft Centre
(Wonderful craft centre)

...and my favourite jewellers

RA Designer Jewellery



where I purchase two pairs of earrings and then amble back across the city toward King Street, with its imposing architecture.

Sadly, as I make my way across the city, I notice far more homeless people than I have noticed for many, many years, since the 1980's in fact and wonder how much this has to do, as in the 1980s, with having a well established Conservative government.



I make way my way to Waterstones on Deansgate, where I get carried away and buy five books before settling down in the cafe for a piece of flap jack and a large Americano
(Although I have posted on a Sunday, I will forward this for T is for Tuesday via Bluebeard and Elizabeth, as I work on Tuesday making it difficult to post a longer entry on that particular day.)
  T is for Tuesday (even on a Saturday afternoon :) )

Finally, I head for Manchester Victoria Station, which has recently undergone further modernisation (I am old enough to remember when they changed the access to the platforms in the late-mid 1980s; I preferred it when there were tunnels rather than overhead steps but they must have had their reasons.) The new upgrade is very much in keeping and effective, giving a smarter feel to the station and a more space for the busy tram stop. As part of the refurbishment, the tiled wall map of the old  Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway has been restored, as have the old shop fronts.

I read one of my books on the train as the not so dull, dull day turns to evening as I travel homewards.



Related posts:

Second visit to London

A virtual journey to the Dove at Hammersmith

Invited to share a drink with The Altered Book Lover. I  decide we should go down to the Thames at Hammersmith. Cutting through the quieter terraces that lead from busy King Street to the river, we take a detour up river along the Mall as far as Chiswick Eyot and back again. The early spring air is sharp but the sun is shining and we are warm enough so long as we walk briskly 

Just before we reach the narrow passage way, which houses our destination, we spot a sign outside the annex of a large Victorian villa and spend half an hour admiring the designs of C19th fabrics at the William Morris Society.

Then, cosy inside the annex of the tiny hostelry, we look out over the pier and watch the muddy river forever flowing to the sea and wonder at all the history it has silently witnessed.

Written on a journey

Outside,  fine but dull grey mists leave the ground chilled.  Inside the rapidly moving train people engage with electronic devices. No more friendly conversations with people thrown together for two hours around the compact tables of a second class coach.  Each of the passengers around the table is sealed inside their own private space.  Sometimes, when I look up, I see  the woman with the short blond hair looking at me . Perhaps she wonders what I tap into 'one note' on my little machine. Does she intuite that I write of her? Perhaps she is relieved she is not forced to converse with me?

The clouds become less dense and the warmer light behind penetrates through.  The train continues through the heart land of the country. 

As I often do on the train,  I listen to an episode of Desert Island Discs.  I choose June Brown,  the actress,  now aged 90 years old. Her relationship with music is engaging.  I think she would need conversation should she share a train table,  though I suspect I would need to upgrade to first class

I walk From Euston to St Pancras down Phoenix St accompanied now  by Catlin Moran doing her Desert Island Discs. Two very different but equally engaging women.  Caitlin, I am sure would chat away the whole journey,  should she happen to sit down at my table or walk between stations with me.

Settled on the fast train to the East Kent Coast, I pull out my paperback and ponder why I am fascinated by the places and spaces in between.

Look! We have come through

DH Lawrences's famous words were written about his relationship with his lover, as they defied convention and culture and overcame the obstacles that faced their love. Nothing quite so romantic for me but after two difficult professional years in which the institution in which I work 'required improvement' we got the necessary 'good'.  Not that things have got easy mind, the challenge of teaching the new syllabus and the demands of teaching adults and young people coming back - and not always voluntarily - for a second, third or even fourth chance, is still as difficult and rewarding as ever. To say nothing of working in the most emotionally volatile but amazing team this side of the Irish Sea!

And indeed, to say nothing of being the late-middle-aged daughter of elderly parents - praise the Lord for supportive sisters!

'More for less' is the mantra and we seem to wait in vain for the government to step  back and fund us properly. Meanwhile, a possible take over from a richer and more powerful institution stands in front of us. More unknowns.

Nothing stays the same; everything changes and sometimes I long for the past when it all seemed simpler but then as my old senior manager used to say, 'hindsight is  wonderful thing.'

In a couple of days' time, I go to spend time with my recently widowed father and connect with the Kent coast almost 300 miles from my northerly home. How I love to visit Reculver on a cold February day or shop for nice treats in Canterbury.

Hopefully, I will have time to write abut my journey before I go back to the all consuming life of a full time lecturer in further education.

Song of a man who has come through

A winter walk as the sun goes down

 (Photo taken on a different day)

I am lucky to live not far from the West Lancashire Moors, recently given SSI status by the powers that be. A very good thing which should, hopefully, protect it from fracking should it come our way, which I fear it will if the government's energy policy continues unabated and local authorities are overruled.  Beneath the Moor lies the small town where I live and my avenue is built upon the gradual hillside which signals the end of the Lancashire/Cheshire plane and starts the upward ascent to the moors. Behind the neighbouring avenue is a small clough, known locally as Nellies' Clough, home to Hawthorn, various spruce, the odd sliver birch and a culverted stream which finds its way into the River Douglas and beyond. This is where I like to walk when I have been couped up at home too long.

Not just Sunday but New Year's Day;  today the paths were very quiet, a handful of  people walking or exercising their dogs. The sun sends a golden glow across the land, as I walk up the hill, up the wooden steps out on to the narrow path. Turning around I see below me quite a steep ravine, to the spot where the culvert crosses the path and the fields open out. I imagine this is an old place, an old path, a way where medieval carts came down from places like Belmont on their way to West Lancashire.When I reach a certain point, now bracketed on one side by 1970s houses and a wooden fence, I feel the expanse of the plane opening up before me.


It looks as though there are  some changes to the broken down old barn, where I wish for, but never see, the owls that are rumoured to roost there. The ivy has been removed from the windows and the wall rebuilt. It is no longer possible to push through the low bramble to the old iron gate that faces towards Bolton.  This is as far as I will go. As I walk back down the sun is softly blinding.

Now alone in my tiny office, the sky has turned a transparent yellow rising into an almost sapphire blue as evening takes hold.

(photo taken 1.1.17)

Two rainbows for Andrew

Andrew's funeral was quite lovely, if funerals can be described as such. It took place in a beautiful old church, tower  dating back to the fourteenth century. His brother read a most moving eulogy and, as we stood around the graveside and the curate read from the burial service, a rainbow shone over the green spaces, copses and houses that covered the land below.  Disappearing  from view, it was soon followed by another, spread in a larger arc across the landscape as far as the West Pennine Moors and it was hard not to believe he, and we, had been blessed.

Memories, a few bevies and a bite to eat were shared afterwards in a panelled side room at Wetherspoon's. His immortal innings - 14 for  150 balls to force a draw -  will not be forgotten.

How to get my soul back...part 1

The end of October brought sad news. A dear friend, who had suffered bravely for a long while, passed away. As I guess it often does for most people, such events put things in perspective. For me, this has cut through the daily grind of working in a system, which lost its heart and soul to number crunching quite some time ago. Yet, being aware of this has not affected the fact I have, somehow, over the past few years become a total slave to it. A loss of soul on my part.  Never has it been clearer that I have let the bastards grind me down. For a start, I did not visit my friend enough, although my husband did. Too busy working at home, as well as working, at least temporarily, crazily unsocial hours. It's not that I dislike my job,  only that it has become so relentless that my line manager, who is around 17 years younger than me has quit without another job to go to.

So...how do I keep my soul in the 'relentlessness' of my occupation, which is not seen as a problematic by those who govern but rather as the correct state of affairs endorsed by those whose role it is to oversee us?

Well, this weekend I only did one small job and rested. I've also been reading Alan Bennett's 'Keeping On Keeping On' - Diaries and miscellaneous writings 2005-2015. An apt title that applies to everyone really. As for me, I can't just throw the towel in, not for another 4 years at least, unless I am made redundant with  a  reasonable pay off.  But keeping on keeping on need not be as bleak as I have let it become lately. I need to remember to take time out for myself and for others. Because if I don't one day they (and me) just won't be around any more.

I also took some time out last week to write a little Eulogy for my friend for the facebook thread his cricketing pals have set up to mourn his passing.


His funeral is on Thursday and I think it will be quite special.  I hope his memory will remind me not to be such a slave to the system and help me to tread more of a middle course and get something of my life and my soul back. I also hope and pray that he is now at rest and in peace in God's timeless embrace. 

Meanwhile, here on Earth, I take comfort from what Alan Bennett wrote in the introduction to 'Keeping On Keeping On ':

In the ten years covered by this book politics has impinged more than I care for...I fear that there will be a Tory government for the remainder of my life. And with it England dismantled...As the government continues to pick the state clean...why should it stop? If there is money to be made out of the probation service why not still exhibit the insane? Is there any large corporation nowadays which one wholly trusts and which doesn't confuse honesty with public relations?

 Some of these sentiments I more moderately voiced  in King's College Chapel in 2014...I could have suggested then that taking a leaf out of the government's book the Church of England too should run solely for profit, parson's given targets and made to turn up at Epiphany with statistics of souls saved. Except the trouble with such jokes is that they are a joke no longer and in this senseless world in which even the bees find the government arrayed against them, moderation is hard to hold on to. (Bennett A, 2016)

Why take comfort from such bleakness? I guess it is because when someone I admire as much as Alan Bennett is able to articulate so well what is going on. I know that he speaks for many alienated souls. My mind flies back to one day last week, when I listened to my colleague comparing working in this sector with fighting J.K. Rowling's dreadful dementors

I began this blog by taking about getting my soul back but maybe it is not that my soul is lost, merely that it is alienated by the soul sucking Voldemorts who currently run the show.


How to unfreeze my alienated soul: 
Step number one: the oppressors  do not own me. 
Step number two: take time out.
Step number three: remember at all times who I really am.