Last time I went to Manchester it was on a double-decker
bus; grand old ‘White Ladies’ bus-folk called them. I was eight years old,
bundled up in what appeared to be a miniature replica of field marshal Rommel’s
desert coat; all buttons, collar and long bottom bit down to my ankles. And my
school cap, cocked at a jaunty angle, gave me that rakish, Bogard cocky look, minus
the cigarette.
Anyway, my mother and Aunt Belle insisted that I would enjoy a day at Bellevue Zoo; so off we jolly well went, commandeered the upstairs, foremost seat and ended up in Manchester. But that was a long, long time ago...
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| Me, aged 8 |
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| White Lady |
Anyway, my mother and Aunt Belle insisted that I would enjoy a day at Bellevue Zoo; so off we jolly well went, commandeered the upstairs, foremost seat and ended up in Manchester. But that was a long, long time ago...
However, that fateful wheel has turned full circle; the cap, coat and White Ladies are all gone, ditto Bellevue Zoo, but the rest is still there.
I’ll start my déjà vu treat in Manchester’s Victoria Station
– bursting for a pee. Through a haze of scaffolding and protective walk-ways I
thundered off in search of a loo – any loo, Victorian grit stone fronted or
otherwise; I was past caring.
‘Over there, on the right!’ My astute, darling wife had
spotted the sign and shepherded me through the entrance; a customary blaze of
white tiles and stainless steel turnstiles reared up in front of us; men to the
right, ladies left. Bloody things wouldn’t move; I mean the turnstiles. They hungered
for money and in abject horror I looked at my wife; a yard to our left, three
bladder-stricken elderly ladies rummaged through their handbags for change. At
the point of my jumping the barrier, red digital lights beamed out instructions
and demanded coins.
‘Tens and twenties,’ I hoarsed and pleaded with my eyes for
my wife to get a move on. My state of urgency had ramped to DEFCON 3. A minute at the outside and I would be forced
into vaulting the turnstile. The elderly ladies fed their gate with ten pence
pieces and the turnstile clicked once. One elderly lady disappeared. I could
hear her chuffing and cursing her way along some inner corridor. More coins;
two more elderly ladies and streams of verbal abuse directed at the city
council; then on a count of thirty pence, the gent’s turnstile granted me right
of way. I looked back once; my wife was still laughing. A phalanx of white,
porcelain urinals loomed in front of me. I made it to the first – just...
