Manchester, Street Food & Very Special Books!

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. 

Me, aged 8

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...