Hobbit in the Habitat? Not Quite.

I have a few projects at the moment that have been put on hold due to a local oral history project that I volunteered for. This has taken precedence because, sadly, some of the people that I was due to speak with died before I got the opportunity, and I have also been to the funerals of two people whose stories I have managed to preserve.

So the clock is ticking. Talk about a deadline. Literally.

In pursuit of finishing this endeavour, I was due to catch a train to interview a Bishop who lived on my estate in the 1970’s.

“Who are you going to see this time?” my daughter, Millie, asked.

“I’m going to see a Bishop. And guess what my first question is?”

“What?”

“Is it true that you can only move diagonally?”

Long pause. “I don’t get it.”

Things didn’t fare any better with my older daughter, Courtney. She asked me “Where is it you are getting a train to?”

“Chapel-en-le-Frith.”

One of those pauses again. Must be a family thing. “What does that even mean?!’

“It’s a place,” I explained, deciding to slip back into English. Historically it was the upperland area between Saxon land and Viking land, and I love that kind of stuff.

But I didn’t go there (metaphorically speaking). I had a train to catch.

Peak as in ‘Peak District’

At Manchester Piccadilly, I made the fatal mistake of looking at books in WH Smith, something that is always liable to distract me. It was only when I saw some bottles of Buxton Spring Water on a shelf that I suddenly remembered why I was there.

“BUXTON!”

That was the destination my train was heading for, with my stop coming two stations before. It was, dare I say it, divine intervention of my dawdling. And off I dashed.

In short: I made my train, on disembarking was met on the platform by the Bishop (“Jack?” “Andy?”) and was charmed over lunch by both him and his wife. Not realising on my arrival just how close to the station that they lived, I declined the offer of a lift back to the station, insisting that I’d like to walk. I am an ex-postie after all.

And who doesn’t love Autumn in Derbyshire?

However, quaint though the local train station was, what I didn’t realise was that trains to Manchester ran only once every hour, and I had forty minutes to wait.

Just as the rain came in with a dampening down of mood.

I’m sittin’ in the railway station . . .

There was a shelter on the opposite side of the tracks, (the Manchester side), so I could sit down and take in the setting. There was nobody else around. Windswept and empty, it was obvious that the locals were all au fait with the timetable.

The type of rain that Peter Kaye made famous.

At first glance, looking to the opposite platform, I thought that this said ‘Home of Frodo’.

Ferodo is a brakes company.

A friend later told me that when she was there she’d thought that the sign said ‘Home of Freddo’.

Hobbits/Chocolate . Maybe chocolate hobnobs?

In the autumn chill I was pretty sure that at least some of the locals were snug and warm.

Snug as a, well, you know.

I couldn’t help but contrast my surroundings with this welcoming depiction of the town. I think a bit of artistic licence had been used, especially with the climate. I could just feel that heat. Almost.

Looks lovely, doesn’t it?

The time soon passed, (with still not a living soul arriving to keep me company), and my train rolled in to puncture this almost picture-portrait of times past. But not before the clouds broke and I was given one more contrast before my departure.

Chapel-en-le-Frith by sunshine.

Celebrating The Big Five-O #3: Edinburgh

After my last two posts recounting my Liverpool jaunt on the cusp of my fiftieth birthday, I’d intended to do this final, third post concerning my follow-up trip to the Scottish capital. But (how dare it), life got in the way!

I wanted the trilogy of Big Five-O posts shared before the turn of this year, and so to meet that deadline I’ve decided to do the final one this way: a pictorial guide to my three night stay. It obviously won’t contain the usual eccentric conversations that seem to plague me wherever I go, but at least it will give you a little flavour of my time there.

My first night on the Royal Mile, looking all Christmassy. The lights draw you up towards the castle.

Dramatic, eh?

Its ghosts shut away behind those walls.

From the cold and the bustle, I took some welcome respite inside St.Giles’ Cathedral, movingly regaled by a practising choir.

The castle was that impressive I decided to do it again, the next day, in daylight. Not because of ghosts or anything . . .

Down the barrel of a gun

From the inside out

I might have been in Scotland, but I turned down the chance to hold a Golden Eagle to instead give my change to an American busker who was covering the Stones’ Honky Tonk Woman.

Then, after that bird of prey, I saw another Scottish symbol.

Not sure what he was playing, but it wasn’t the Stones.

I hope he made it back.

I had a spare twenty minutes so I thought about nipping in here to become a wizard.

On one of the Christmas market stalls:

Obviously I had no money left after that busker.

When I’d been up at Edinburgh Castle I’d spotted this extinct volcano, known as Arthur’s Seat, in the distance, and decided the next morning that I’d climb it. Like you do.

Problem was, Storm Barra was forecast to hit that very day. What could possibly go wrong?

So I decided to take another path. In a storm. How Radical is that?

It wasn’t too bad when I set out. A little breezy. It got breezier as time went on.

The cap was swapped for a woolly hat. The zip of my waterproof coat went higher as I did. The view was worth it, though.

Any which way but down.

I spent twenty minutes or so up there, offering to take a few photographs of couples and groups who’d likewise risked the weather.

There was a larger group, a Spanish class, who made the summit a little after I did. I offered to take a photograph of them all for posterity. One of the students was a girl with an expensive looking camera around her neck. I’m not sure exactly what was being said between her and the teacher, but she seemed very reluctant to hand her camera over to me.

Eventually she did do, motioning me to ensure the strap was around my neck as we took position on the summit edge. “Back a bit . . . “

Of course, the damn thing wouldn’t work, or I wouldn’t. After a couple of attempts, handing the coveted camera back and forth, the teacher handed me his phone instead. “These I can work!” I said. Thankfully it did.

The clay-coloured rain pools at the top.

With the weather worsening, my eyes streaming in the wind, I decided to begin my descent. After around ten minutes I noticed that corvids were gathered on both sides of me, maybe amazed at my foolhardiness.

Were they a bad omen? Nah, they might be carrion crows but I’m Jackdaw, don’t forget. I see my feathered totems wherever I go.

Shit! I’m outta here!!

I made it down okay, which you know, because, well, this post that’s been written . . .

(Oh yes – I stopped by the ruin of St.Anthony’s Chapel along the way.)

I even had time to visit Easter Road, home of Scottish football club Hibernian, which I’d spotted from my vantage point.

And that was about it, my friends. A brief summary of my stay in Edinburgh. There was more to it, of course, but hampered by both space and time I’ve given you the bare bones.

Heading back to the Royal Mile from Easter Road the storm finally unleashed some of its fury and I had to make my way through a snowstorm. I think I’d got my timing spot on.

I dried out in a Starbucks, passing the time writing a poem and talking to a couple from Yorkshire. I also kept an eye on travel disruption updates and was able to journey home the next day.

Fifty. Let’s do it all again.

Yes, it’s Manchester, alright.

Milestone Mystery Tours

It’s happened – after looming large on the horizon for so long I have finally reached the milestone of fifty years on this planet. Millstone, milestone, I guess it’s all about perspective. Half a century and I’m still here.

My original plan to mark it was to take a trip over to Paris to visit the grave of one Jim Morrison (for what’s a Happy Birthday without a cemetery?) 😂

But, with all of the shifting sands of Covid requirements, I decided to postpone that for now to remain on this side of the Channel. And so my next couple of posts will be about what I did instead, including a few nights spent in the breezy Scottish capital of Edinburgh.

The first, though, will be about a tour I took my fourteen-year-old daughter on. A hopefully inspirational tour of a certain neighbouring northern city, centred upon a certain neighbouring northern pop group . . .

Castle Rock

With my fiftieth birthday fast approaching, I’ve been marking it by taking my daughter on a Beatles tour in Liverpool and then spending a few nights alone up in Edinburgh (both of which I’ll speak about at a later date).

In the meanwhile I’ll just leave this with you, taken on my first evening in the Scottish capital. Amidst the music and lights, keep an eye out for James Bond and the Big Yin popping in too.

Confessions Of A Conversational Vampire

I’m a conversational vampire.

I absorb snippets of conversations from total strangers that later find a home in the mouths of fictional characters or the middle of a City Jackdaw post.

It’s not intentional. It’s not as if I’m a professional eavesdropper or anything. It’s just that I seem to pick things up when out and about that stay with me. The people out there are just great.

‘This train is the Northern service to Leeds.’ That was the announcement that kicked off the latest episode.

Then, despite the next statement stating that the next stop would be New Pudsey, one half of the young couple sat facing each other at the table opposite mine, on the other side of the aisle, jumped into life.

“Shit we’re in Leeds! Is this Leeds?” she asked in alarm. Betraying zero trust in her male companion, she turned wildly to catch my eye.

I shook my head. “This is Bradford.”

“Well, where are they goin’?” she asked the lad, now dismissing me as I’d served my purpose. She was referring to a group of girls that had just left the train and were walking across the platform outside of her window.

“On holiday?” he replied, sounding bored.

“On holiday? Dressed like that? They look like they’re goin’ to a festival!”

It was obvious that that was where these two were going. The Leeds and Reading festival was about to start, and she was sporting the festival look. Doc Martins with stockings, topped with a garish, tie-dyed shirt and silver-sequinned wings stuck to her forehead. Her boyfriend (I presumed) had similar artwork studded above his eyebrows.

“Who would actually holiday in Bradford anyway?” she continued. “No – they’re dressed for a festival.”

If that was the case then those girls had exited at the wrong station, despite this carriage being crowded with other young . . . what? Was there a term for these kids?

I googled what do you call a person who attends a festival?

Answer: one who attends a festival.

Genius.

I tried to get on with my book but now I couldn’t help feeding. Like I said, I’m a conversational vampire.

“I’ve read they’re gonna have stalls set up where you can have your Covid jab while you’re there,” she went on. “Are you gonna have it?”

He shrugged, still looking disinterested. I began to suspect he was hungover.

“I don’t know either. I mean, I get it if you’re old and that. If you’re a certain age, say over forty, it’s a risk. But we’re young. Nearly everyone at the festival’s young so what’s the point? And you know that it can make your kids disabled? And it alters your DNA. Apparently.”

Old – over forty? And that last bit, like a disclaimer: Apparently.

I realised I was shaking my head and tried to immerse myself in my book once again, re-reading the same lines in an attempt to drown out this endless soliloquy. I slowly began to build up a wall of resistance and finished my chapter by the time we rolled into Leeds station.

I left the train and that young couple somewhere behind me to join other commuters on a busy escalator. We rose up to a walkway which took us high over the railway lines to then get another escalator which took us down to the ticket gates.

Those should-have-been unremarkable seconds were enough to feed again. It was a male voice, immediately behind me.

“Social media has given people too many mental issues, man. There’s men dressing up as women, women dressing up as men, aliens dressing up as children. Everyone’s lost their identity. They don’t know who they are.”

Well, of course I was curious. Who would be pursuing that line of reasoning, most of which I could go along with? Except . . . aliens?

Turning around would be too obvious, so instead, after reaching the end of the escalator, I took a few steps and then hung to the side on the pretence that I was getting my e-ticket up on my phone. I had a quick glance as they passed. These weren’t two young naive festival goers, they were a couple of professional looking men around my age.

Totally not what I was expecting. It just goes to show that you can never predict the type of thing that goes on in a person’s head.

As often happens when in a transitory place, I wondered where these two were heading, and more beguilingly where their conversation would lead too. But I had to let them go, I had my own destination to reach. And anyway, by now I was fully sated.

Roaming In Rome, Connecting In Retrospect

What a difference a bit of sunshine makes to our locked-down spirits!

I sat a while in our town centre gardens, drinking a coffee while watching people come and go. It was almost, almost, like the world before, when nothing impinged on our intentions and freedom other than schedules and finance.

The new warmth took me back even further, to around 2006, when I was in Rome. I would get up early and after showering go for a walk along the Tiber. Along the way I’d call for a bottle of water from a small shop that I knew of, tucked away down a small backstreet, that was championed by the locals as it didn’t charge the inflated prices that the others inflicted upon we tourists.

I would loop a route back round to take in Peter and Paul in St.Peter’s Square, up there high on their pedestals, before the crowds arrived with their clicking cameras and eager eyes. As the day wore on, with the sun well on its way to reach its zenith, there were no shortage of churches that I could choose from to seek respite in their cool stone shade.

It was on one of those days, easy and long, that I was sat having a beer next to the Colosseum when my wife messaged to inform me that the girl we fostered had shaved off her eyebrows!

Talk about being hooked right back into the ‘real’ world back home.

It’s funny how different places bring different memories, small connections that lead into each other over time. Hopefully soon there will be new places offering new memories and connections to be made down the line.

Anyway, that particular memory found a home in my second poetry collection In Brigantia, born of a conversation with one girl that made a connection with the recollection of another.

Snaps and Snippets

from 2013: the things you hear and the things you see.
By the way, the film The Gunman that was being filmed on Tower Bridge?
It was all a lie! When the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who aired I saw the helicopter flying around the bridge, carrying a superimposed Tardis. “I was there!” this Whovian exclaimed. All cloak and dagger stuff.

City Jackdaw

Well I had an idea about a post I was going to do on here about my recent trip to London. But everything has gone pear shaped due to me losing most of the photographs that I had taken on my phone.

Damn Gremlins.

Deep breaths.

Nostalgic thoughts of Polaroids.

So, instead, from what I have salvaged, I will just post the shots that I do have along with snippets of conversation heard along the way.

Boudica hopping on.

Buckingham Palace

“Hi Millie, it’s Dad. I got that photograph of the Queen’s house for you.Was she there?No, she was putting her wheelie bins out around the back”. 

“King Charles had a crane with a wooden leg“.

“If you don’t like your personal space being invaded, do not go on the tube“.

From St.Paul’s Cathedral

“If you don’t like heights…

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Rochdale Blues

Have mask, will travel. Border crossings, on a damp and languid day.

Heading once more back to Manchester by train, having started a new book, Water Shall Refuse Them, along the way. The author, this being her debut novel, has been getting comparisons to Shirley Jackson and, although I’m only fifty or so pages into it, the protagonist does have a bit of Merricat about her.

Rochdale, the penultimate stop on my journey, in the dark, wet afternoon never looked so bleak.

The next few weeks are looking bleak, too. With rising figures, Rochdale is on the brink of following Leicester into a possible new lockdown. Though I don’t live in the town, my own town comes under the borough of Rochdale, and another lockdown is the last thing that any of us want.

After leaving the train, I caught a bus outside of this Rochdale Road pub, The Marble Arch, established in the Ripper year: 1888.

A renowned pub that brews its own beer, it has been some years since I’ve been in there. Possibly over twenty.

Maybe I should have called in for a pint, today, while I still can.

On Poetry:Inspiration

City Jackdaw

For me, my poems serve as a diary. When I look at them I can remember where I was when I got the idea for each one, and what it was that acted as the initial inspiration. The opening poem in my book, Heading North, is called Midnight, July.

The title indicates the when, but not the where and why.

The words for this one came when I was sat in the back garden with a coffee. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I was looking up at the stars and wondering whether we could be alone or was there life somewhere out there?

We writhe 

with a rage to know 

the unknowable,


blind to great masses

that dance in dark orbits. 

And a soft, summer wind 

on a night beneath stars 

is no balm.

While I was sat there, neck craned in the quiet of the…

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Two Cities Laid Low

A few posts back, I shared some photographs of a journey I made between two Northern cities, Leeds and Manchester, when the country was on the brink of lockdown. I had to make the return journey last week (essential travel allowed) and, with the UK now a month into lockdown, I took these photographs to share with you all to document these unprecedented days. I probably, hopefully, will never have the chance to see my city like this again.

This first one shows the seating arrangements in my local bus station, to enforce the social distancing. Only the opposite end seats were available, first come first served (though there weren’t many takers).  An unenthusiastic game of musical chairs.

Again, on the bus-alternate rows of seating available. The driver taking my fare said it was the most he’d taken all morning.

Manchester, message delivered.

Looking towards the usually notorious Piccadilly Gardens.

Market Street.

I saw neither tram nor cycle, just the odd jogger taking their allotted moment of exercise.

When a passing bus departed, the city fell into a strangely hushed tone.

St.Anne’s Square, scene of much mourning and festooned with flowers following the Arena bombing.

Deserted thoroughfares.

Many shop doors and windows wore similar sentiments from their owners. Some just a stark notice that no goods or money were left on the premises, in lieu of any opportunist thieves moving into the city.

Not a drinker in sight.

Moving now towards the train station.

The statue of Gandhi outside the Cathedral. The only figure caught in motion.

Ever since the lockdown the weather has been glorious. The place would have been swarming with shoppers and drinkers and more.

Looking towards the Football Museum, symbolic of the sport that has now been suspended.

I could take a photo in the middle of the road, with little fear of trams or vehicles.

Looking towards Angel Square from the rear.

Victoria Station. Could it be that I was the only commuter?

More social distancing, now musical urinals.

Sinks too.

There was only me and this railway worker.

Only for essential travel

The train I caught had originated in Liverpool, passed through Manchester and was bound for Edinburgh. I alighted in Leeds, the station there similar to the one in Manchester.

Leeds. Snippets of conversations that took place with the few people that I encountered I intend to print elsewhere.

Millennium Square. Manchester and Leeds-two northern cities laid low by an invisible foe.