The Hanging Gate

After the Great War, my mother's aunt ran a pub called the Hanging Gate in Salford.  My grandmother was staying there when she met my grandfather.  My sister-in-law and her partner now live in a smart flat on Salford Quays, a stone's throw from the rougher side of town where Doddington Street was; it has now vanished and been replaced by a rundown 1980s council estate.  On Saturday afternoon I walked from the Quays to Doddington Lane, which is all that survives - the name - of that area.  

I was walking between worlds, a hot stormy afternoon of sticky streets and heavy air, waiting for the storm to break.  I was walking backwards in time, tracing streets my grandmother knew in 1920, trying to see survivors of that time.  Street names, a church tower, a broader pattern of streets swollen for increased traffic.  Nothing to see, just graffiti and litter and modern decay.  I found Doddington Lane but no Doddington Street.  

It is 4.30 in another Salford.

Warm, a cast-over day, a work day.

A Saturday for shoppers and fat cars,

a view from a balcony.

4.30, they would have been dusting

polishing glasses

woodwork and brass

wiping stained glass clean for five.

Checking the pumps, the damp of the cellar,

cool on a day like today

(Even now I am drawn to cellars)

cobbles in earth, as if drowning.

The beer's brassy depths

settled and calm in dark vats

awaiting parties, laughter, 5pm.

I see my grandmother's room

settled and calm above the old words

saloon, snug, bar.

A room jammed into roofbeam, slate-space,

a Lowry rattle of window

opening onto chimney pots, brickwork, slops lane.  

And yet

Of the old city nothing survives above ground.  

Doddington Lane of the old names remembers

Youth and shaved heads and a wilderness of dogs.  

Landscapes and Music

We have had two days of pub rock from a beer festival here.  Not bad music and not badly played, but dull, old-fashioned, run of the mill.  Predictable, obvious.  The only piece that brought me up short was the Irish famine ballad 'The Fields of Athenry'.  It may sound obvious and predictable to play Irish folk music to an audience of beer  drinkers, but the context made me pause.  I have always heard Irish folk in (Liverpool) pubs, where it has real resonance as the music of poverty, despair and above all exile; but listening in Wales it had anti-colonial echoes, the music of history.  And I was reminded that even in the souvenir shops of Dublin this music was the sound of the country, that however weary and jaded the sound at least old songs and therefore historical memories were being kept alive, along with the skills to play traditional instruments.  How to maintain this without the overwhelming sense of political injustice (and even horror) is the key; but the Irish seem to have managed it.  

And I have been thinking about landscapes and music with regard to Liverpool in another context.  It always fascinated me as a child that anyone outside Liverpool listened to the Beatles, as they seemed so rooted in the city.  Their songs are full of references to landscapes and real places, along with the word play that characterises the city.  Why would anyone in America listen to that?  A strange idea, I know.

The Jackdaw's Tale

A monologue written for the Knighton Serendipity Festival in July.  I hoped to capture town mood and complexity, hidden lives, sunny cobbled yards and hot streets.  In 500 words!  Give or take.  It is bright and breezy and draws heavily on Under Milk Wood, as a lot of writing does these days, from 'Penny Lane' to Alan Bennett.

See all of town from up here.  Clouds on the hills, slow moving as old rivers, a Knighton day, bright as pies and dark as secrets.

   

Sun comes up, Young Evans is late for the late train - which is late.  Lucky it’s late every morning.  

Susan Jones and Wayne Thomas arguing again, look.  She could do better.  Give her a kiss, lad, say sorry.  

There’s Mr Peter Harris from Barclays, smart as a new pin.  Likes a sup with the lads, watches the match in the Plough on good days.  Woke up in Swansea once dressed as a mermaid, they won’t like that in the bank.  

Long Meg from the hill farm, in town for wine gums and dry peas.  Turns at Tuffins, bumps into James Robinson, visitor, stout boots; quick sorry, walks on, never forgets her eyes.  

Wayne Thomas, look, slouches by the clock tower, knows he’s in the wrong.  Nods at Dai Redbrick, in town for his hair, fresh from the rolling fields, not used to dry land.  

Lunchtime tummies rumble.  Costcutter girls run ragged, sandwiches out by the gallon.  Mr Pugh takes his pint in the George and checks his watch against Tom Brass the Milk.  

Hot and quiet, hot and quiet.  Asleep in the old school artists dream of paint and underwear.  Bells ring quietly in antique shops.  Stanley Paris trims Dai Redbrick, thinks of his watering.  Mrs Billie Williams with her organics and her good skin, gazes lustful at Mr Hughes the Paint, working opposite.  Really Mr Tom Lewis, on the run from another sour marriage.  Waves a brush and plots escape.    

Hot and quiet, hot and quiet.  Three women off the Shrewsbury train, here for tea in the house at the top of the hill. Cousin Ernest, home on his half-day, thinks of cream cakes and cousins.  

Hot blue sky and steep roofs.  Mr Edwards’ cat, look, fast asleep above his geraniums.  Children off the noisy bus, all suckipops and cigarettes like their parents, growing fast and thinking naughty.  Costcutter girls are polite but firm, no alcohol sold and no more than three dozen in the shop at any one time.  Poppi Thomas, does the cooking now their mother’s gone but no relation if you ask, calls in for fish paste and soap for tomorrow’s tea.  

Those ladies have reached Cousin Ernest’s house, look, all out of breath with the view.  Tea’s laid, scones and butter and jams.  Staying over, are they, or heading for the late train?  

Lamps being lit, pubs open again.  Tom Brass early in the George.  Wayne Thomas clutches Mr Edwards’s geraniums, off to do the Right Thing by Susan Jones.  Mrs Billie Williams lays the table for one and thinks bad thoughts as Mr Hughes take his overalls down.  Young Evans walks from the train past Mr Pugh, clicking the padlocks in the bank.  

Night falls, soft as eyes closing.  Tom Brass on his uncertain way home, waves unseen at Mrs Billie Williams.  Stanley Paris falls asleep in his roses, dreams of razors.  Wayne Thomas is forgiven, for the last time.   Clouds on the hills, slow moving as old rivers, a do-nothing day, a Knighton day.