What it's all about

Yesterday I spent the day in Manchester.I don't usually spend Saturdays here, but I had tickets to go and see the Tord Gustaven Ensemble at the Royal Northern College of Music in the evening. I planned to head for the Old Parsonage in Didsbury to see an exhibition and performance by Sarah Coggrave in the afternoon. Before I set off for Withington and Didsbury I went in search of the Nico Ditch in Platt Fields. When I started this new blog, I intended it to be about those things that are close by, still waiting to be discovered. An Anglo Saxon earthwork in Fallowfield is one of them. Later, walking through Withington I recalled the squat where I lived for a short time in the summer of 1973 and met my first husband. Ghost Busters at the Scala cinema with its late night films and audience participation. Hanging out at The Red Lion as a teenager. The Victoria pub, with its amazing elderly lady pianist who could play any tune with Mrs Mills flair. A favourite Italian restaurant where I ate farfalle al salmone for the first time, now a regular home cooked dish. Walking on, I passed the Bridge Club that Omar Sharif was rumoured to visit when he was in town. Houses where friends used to live. Places where I think they still live. My first experience of babysitting. A sudden memory of where an old boyfriend had lived. Bedsit manoeuvres and flats with windows open, Grateful Dead on the air. I took a photograph of the house on Central Rd where my two older children were born, the eldest to the sounds of Vini Reilly's guitar, drifting through from the next door room. On and on. Along Burton Rd, past long vanished shops where I had worked, where I met my second husband. Ghosts and presences. The old Midland Hotel, the new tram stop. The Ape House,Village Green, Northen Grove, Rabid Records. Back and forth across the years. My own stories attached to places I didn't expect to see again. Taller tales told of bombs under drug squad Jaguars. A dog that used to shop lift tins of food from the delicatessen. Ceremonies in the cellar of a green grocers to get rid of the bad luck attached to the shop next door. Vintage clothes and fair isle jumpers. Walking down Barlow Moor Rd, I recalled yoga classes where baby came too at Fielden Park. The Cheese Hamlet is still going strong. Is there a hologram of Carol and Trevor's old shop there behind a new facade? There were houses I recognised and houses I had never noticed before. Edwardian villas, and Victorian cottages, Arts and Crafts family homes and flat conversions. Were they hidden behind hedges, or did I walk round with my eyes closed ? By the time I got to the Old Parsonage I was somewhere else in time and space. Fletcher Moss was where we walked our new dog, our first shared responsibility before children came along. I sat there one sunny Saturday, trying to come to terms with the implications of winning enough money on the pools to continue the homoeopathy course I'd started and thought I couldn't afford to finish. My own sense of history was overwhelming, but I was also curious to know more about the places I hadn't remembered and recognised. Perfect timing for Sarah's exhibition, A House in Didsbury. We had met when she came to the archive where I work to do some research on the owners of the house where she lives. The name of the house led her back into the story of the Armenian community in Manchester, and her exhibition and performance was in response to that. I had no idea how rich my own sense of my past would be in that small area of a South Manchester suburb. Where the Tord Gustavsen concert took me later will have to wait for another day. One last thing. I travelled back to Manchester today from Bakewell on the transpeak bus. There were roadworks and hold ups in Hazel Grove. While we were waiting, I got talking to the couple behind me. He was brought up in Withington, and as he talked about the area, he told me that his elderly mother had played piano at the Victoria pub back in the day, back in my day.