WAR AND PEACE, SALFORD STYLE

We went to Salford on Saturday. In order to get there, the journey, rather naturally, involved taking a chance and choosing to drive once more on the roads of Manchester whose less than spectacular clarity and inconsistency in their road furniture design, coupled with my own ineptitude as to what day it was, had led to the fiscally imprudent incident I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, this time I was far more careful, no doubt to the great irritation of all the other motorists sharing the roads with me, but I’m hoping that I have successfully negotiated another afternoon out without inadvertently finding a way to supplement the coffers of the big city as I did so, but I doubt it, and now await another official-looking slim white envelope of doom with a certain amount of trepidation.

The reason for going was to see an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North about War Correspondents, which, as it unfortunately transpired, had already finished its run and was no more. “Runs until January 2012” sadly obviously didn’t mean the bit of January when we were there. We were a bit disappointed, but it was our own fault for not checking first, and, as the museum is the most fascinating and deeply moving place to visit, it was not a complete waste of time to go.

We parked up in the car park, with a stunning view across the water towards “MedioCrity”, in a complete gale which meant that the IWM viewing platform didn’t seem like a good idea. To anyone, as it happens, as the opportunities to take the elevator up to the top were “fully available”.

Obviously the bad weather had kept the reporting teams from the BBC from venturing out from their brand new palace of news as they normally do to hold interviews with the general population just so long as they are within a quarter of a mile of their headquarters because there was no sign of any of them. Well, it was a Saturday, I suppose, but I do sometimes wonder if this methodology of doing their vox pops has something to do with the lengths of the cables on their cameras, because they used to do much the same back in the Oxford Road days when their own lobby worked as a backdrop to all of those dreary and ill-informed opinions for many a long year. I always suspected that their editorial policy when it came to news and their opinion polls involved little more than asking the people in the office what they “reckoned” too, and wondered whether the “unrest” that so tarnished Salford’s reputation last August was less widespread than it first appeared. Certainly, the area around the Lowry seemed to have emerged pretty much unscathed.

Anyway, we went inside the museum anyway because it is always good a place for contemplating upon the folly of mankind. We bought a catalogue and ventured upstairs which was where we found out that the exhibition we were there to see was over and a security man was standing in front of a chained door next to a sign announcing that they were in the process of setting up the next exhibition.

So, instead we went into the main hall and I was utterly bowled over by the sculpture called “The Crusader” by Gerry Judah hanging just there next to the full sized Hawker Harrier that put the old Airfix models I used to hang on my bedroom ceiling into perspective. I’d have certainly needed some strong string to hang that one up. Strangely, in terms of its detailing and texture, the sculpture reminded me, in a much grander way of course, of the spaceships I used to build when I was younger, which made it all the more impressive when I considered the hours that he would have had to put in.

The exhibition space was then plunged into semi-darkness to run one of those amazing sound and light displays that they do so well and which fill the entire room and somehow manage, as is the intention I suppose, to really get to you. This one was about “children in wartime” and was truly thought provoking, despite the loud and incessant cackling coming from a group of unseen visitors drifting across the room and rather spoiling the mood. When the lights came on and after taking a moment for some suitable reflection, I looked about for them so that I could scowl at them sternly, but they were nowhere to be seen, so, after a brief look around at the exhibits, and taking another moment of reflection at the World Trade Center fragment and the remains of the car bomb, we headed off towards the gift shop.

Then it seemed reasonable to come to the conclusion that lunch was in order and, after stopping to give directions to someone else, we headed across the bridge, noticing that the screams were getting louder. As we got nearer, it seemed that a huge crowd had gathered which seemed an impressive response to a bit of old Shakespeare in this day and age, but of course it wasn’t. Instead it was the screaming hordes queuing up for the horror that is the “Britain’s Got Tawdry” auditions which seemed to act as a very big distraction to many of the people around us, craning their necks in an effort to see what was going on instead of checking that my pizza didn’t burn.

After my less than peaceful meal spent with a group of excited schoolgirls screaming at each other just over my right shoulder (although it probably wasn’t my right shoulder that was getting them all so agitated – unless it was in their way, of course), I went shopping and got away with it fairly lightly really because most of the other shoppers seemed to be transfixed by watching the queue outside slowly diminish, whilst leaving the queues inside the shopping centre mercifully short. I also only bought six books, which also qualifies as “getting off lightly” in my experience.

It’s strange really how opposite things sometimes collide in your life. Minutes after I had been musing over the suffering and dangers experienced by children in wartime, I found myself facing a crowd of children reaping the benefits of growing up in relative safety, security and freedom, and I know without any doubt how I prefer the world to be, but I suppose that I was slightly disappointed when I thought how very few of the people in that excitable crowd had also been in the exhibition hall when that sound and light show had been running, perhaps to give them a reality check instead of merely being exposed to the shallow trappings of reality television.