SHEFFIELD

I went to Sheffield for the weekend once, when I was about fourteen or fifteen and, to be perfectly honest with you, I’ve never been back and I’ve never wanted to. I’d like to say that this is not Sheffield’s fault, but, for once, I’d have to admit that it possibly is.

Although it probably isn’t and has more than a little to do with my own neuroses rather than anything else, but we’ll come to that.

The point is... NEVER. Been. Back.

You see, when I was a youngling, one of the labels that you could level at me was that I was a Methodist, and one of the things that Methodists did with their offspring in those days was to send them away twice a year on weekends of activity and fun courtesy of the MAYC which was not a misspelling of Mayo, but was an actually thing which involved an Association of Youth Clubs of the Methodist persuasion.

Once a year this would be in London and involve sleeping bags, church halls on the Isle of Dogs, picnics at Alexandra Palace, concerts in the Albert Hall, and a march through the streets, past Whitehall (my first “Maggie… Maggie… Maggie… Out! Out! Out! Occurred on one of these, three days after her election in 1979), and on to a rally in Trafalgar Square.

The other weekend each year would be allocated to “A.N. Other” British city which led to such exciting weekends as “Tyne Time”, “Lincoln Imp-act” and the “Mancunian Way” as well as the “Sheffield Shuffle” which explains why I was there that day.

Whilst I’m sure that I had a lovely time, nowadays the only thing that I can recollect about that weekend was the window being shot out of the coach that I was travelling on and, given that it is the only time so far that anyone has actually taken a shot at me, I have tended to take it personally, even though I hope that it wasn’t personal, and Sheffield has been forever branded, in my mind at least, as a “war zone” and a place to be avoided at all costs.

Was I traumatised by these events? I don’t think so, really, but I have stayed away from the place ever since. After all, it might have only happened once, but of all the places in the world that I’ve been, it happened there, and, given that I’ve only been there the once, in my mind that means a full one-hundred percent of my visits to Sheffield involved me being shot at.

I’m sure that it’s a lovely place, if you like that sort of thing, but it’s never going to be high on my personal list of places to go.

After all, I only really know it for three things; The Shopping Centre, Sheffield Steel, and the World Snooker Championships.

And let’s be honest, there are other shopping centres to go to, most of my personal steel requirements can be acquired pre-rendered from elsewhere, and I can watch the snooker perfectly happily on my television without having to spend any time in a room full of other people (which is a scary enough thought as it is) worrying about whether I’m going to start coughing or worse at a crucial moment.

So, I’m sorry, Sheffield, but you’re not the place for me, and I can’t really see anything bringing us together any time soon. You have nothing that I can think of that you can tempt me with and, whilst I’m sure that you have your fans, and a fair few people with fond memories of you, I don’t think that I’m ever going to be one of them, and I think we just need to accept the fact and move on with our lives, dodging the endless stream of whizzing bullets as we go.

Just wait until I tell you what I think of Portland, Oregon…

EASY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING...

One of the advantages of getting into town early is that you get to see all of the places that are usually packed to the twelves with busy, busy people looking a lot more quiet and sedate than they might otherwise be, but with the advantage of daylight making them seem far less scary.

Not that just looking less scary can guarantee anything.

Anyway, I thought that it might be nice to share what that busiest shopping thoroughfare of the city of Manchester looks like whilst pretty much everything is still closed and most of the people are still coming round and facing their Sunday mornings, or battling our way through the traffic to get there and filling up those quiet streets with the hustle and bustle of thousands and thousands of busy, busy people filled with purpose and spending power...

Peaceful looking, isn't it...? Almost pleasant...

Although, if it was like that all of the time, pretty soon there wouldn't be any shops left for anyone to go to... but I suspect that that's another rant for another time. Instead we should just take a moment to enjoy the serenity of the moment and try not to think about the poor guy and his dog who were sleeping in a doorway just out of the edge of the frame.

Sorry that it's just a quick bit of nonsense today but I'm in a bit of a hurry...

LOOK UP!

I know that nowadays most people seem to go into Manchester for the shopping or the concerts or the pubs and clubs, and that’s all well and good if you’re into that sort of thing, but the last time I was there (Saturday April 13th, 2013 - if you were wondering when the pictures were taken...) I didn’t really have anything much to do and I was able to take a step back and look up to a line above the shop fronts and I saw some terrific architecture that tend to spend a lot of time just not being noticed by all the busy people who are far too entranced by the shiny baubles and trinkets on display in the windows at ground level.

If you do have the time, though, it’s worth just taking a moment to look up, because there are some great buildings in Manchester, both modern and dating back to the boom years following the industrial revolution, as opposed to the other boom years which ripped the heart out of the city centre and led to the demise of many of the older buildings.

But there are enough of those fascinating and rather intricate old ones surviving amidst the gleaming glass and steel to give an impressive hint of the old city.

If you just look up…

GUMPTION

One of the things I did see, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say saw and heard, in town recently, and something which I thought must have taken a heck of a lot of gumption, was the girl who stood all alone in St Ann’s Square in the centre of a big city on a Saturday afternoon, belting our operatic arias for the general amusement (or otherwise) of passing strangers.

Strolling around town with that slightly purposeless “I know, I’ll head to a bookshop” air you sometimes have when you’ve been abandoned in favour of a haircut, I turned into the square just as she was finishing singing one, so I only got the last couple of bars, and, to be perfectly honest with you, I’d assumed it must have been some kind of P.A. system until I spotted her standing there all alone at the base of one of the statues.

I paused for a moment, but she stood there for a moment looking slightly awkward before turning around and looking for all the world as if she’d finished for the day, given an attempt at some spontaneous street theatre her very best shot and had decided to give it all up and go off to grow Begonias or something.

Perhaps I ought to explain; “Going off to grow some Begonias” is my own default position for implying that I should perhaps be doing something else rather that whatever it might be that I’m currently doing. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be any better at growing Begonias than I am at any of the other many things I demonstrate supreme inadequacy at doing, but it remains a handy “get out” phrase. For all I know, our budding opera star was also a prize-winning Begonia grower, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.

A direct line to something almighty... presumably.

Anyway, as I barged my way through the Saturday shopping crowds towards Waterstones, and passed the very subtle advertising hoarding now almost completely concealing St Ann’s Church, she started singing another, and her voice was both beautiful and breathtaking as it cut through the gabble and the traffic noise of a busy old Saturday lunchtime.

I paused for a moment, as a tear almost formed in my eye at the sheer beauty of her voice and that moment, and I resolved to bung a quid into whatever hat or paper cup she was using to collect her cash in as I headed back in the other direction, but by the time I did that, she had gone, melted back into the crowd, and been replaced by two kids and a beatbox which didn’t have quite the same emotional resonance with me.

You could argue, of course, that if she’s going to be a professional singer one day (assuming that she isn’t already one) that standing up in front of a crowd of strangers is something that she’s going to have to get used to anyway, but I think that it would probably be far more easy to do that in the intimacy of a concert hall than in the high street where the passers-by are less likely to show restraint if they don’t like what it is you’re doing.

The cynic in me, of course, sensed a certain amount of opportunism. After all, was it not one of the “Footballing Cup of the World” tournaments that brought opera to the masses once upon a long ago by blurting out snatches of Nessun Dorma at every opportunity…?

And whilst we’re at it, have they not finally sorted out this Footballing Cup business yet and worked out who’s best at it once and for all...? Looking at it as a bit of an outsider, it seems a very indecisive business to me…

There were a heck of a lot of buskers that day. It must be a sign of the times, I suppose. A chance to use whatever skill it is you might have to amuse and entertain and (hopefully) make a few bob. After all, we all know that times are tough financially, possibly never more so for the students and the other youngsters, so if this is what they choose to do with their Saturdays, and people are prepared to give them a little something for their trouble, then why not? If nothing else, if they are planning upon having a career in the entertainment professions, then it’s probably pretty good experience for them, too.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that, even if I could sing (which I can’t…), I don’t think I’d’ve had the gumption to do something like that. Mind you, I still wonder how the singer in a band has the gumption to stand up in front of his mates and claim to be able sto sing, either… so well done to you if you’ve ever managed to do that, because you’re a far braver soul than I’m ever likely to be…

VINTAGE STUFF

Saturday began with a loud click from somewhere in the house fully waking me up from my dozes at ten past five in the morning. I looked across at the clock and the LED digits were not there which meant that I very quickly realised that a mysterious power surge had tripped the trip switch and that there was no power. I staggered downstairs, flipped the switch back to its “on” position and, when all the lights refused to leap back into an instant blaze of glory, went back to bed to lie there worrying that the house was now going to burn down around my ears.

At ten past seven, the sound of the boiler finally leaping into life told me that there was now power again and so I got up, made a cup of tea, and went to check that none of the electronic devices that had been plugged in overnight had been zapped by the surge. Normally in the fuzzy dawn of a weekend morning I would have spent some time putting the bare bones of a few of these random nonsenses together in preparation for the coming week, but with the delights of even semi-digital living having been denied me for those two hours, there may be one or two gaps in the schedule over the coming weeks that will quite possibly never be filled.

Instead, half an hour later, the rest of the household was rudely awakened by the need for us to go out and catch a train for the big city, “Big Plans” for the day having been made weeks ago which hadn’t taken into account the ongoing excessive sleepiness of those involved. Those same “Big Plans” had, incidentally, meant that I had to refuse a kind offer of a free ticket to a concert on Saturday evening, which is, quite frankly, the kind of offer that I never get and which came as a massive and pleasant surprise and the refusal of which also probably meant that I am unlikely to ever be offered such a thing again.

Still, the household surfaced, clothed itself and sipped its tea before driving to the station and putting itself into the dubious hands of the increasingly rare public transport system for the duration and, three quarters of an hour later, we were deposited in the big city, and we hopped on a free shuttle bus. This gave me the opportunity to ponder upon some of our own signage after my adventures abroad lately, and I mulled over the question whether the “Bar and Grille” really does have a mesh at the front of the bar much like the one when “The Blues Brothers” appeared at that Country and Western club, or whether that’s  just the point of that typo, or whether it’s just something that I think is a typo but which actually never was…

Then I spotted a supermarket advert bearing the slogan “Helping you spend less every day” which I really doubted the truth of. After all, it’s not really their job to help you spend less, is it? And, by definition, if you’re in their store you are spending more than you otherwise would be… but I suppose that it’s just semantics, when you come right down to it, isn’t it…? I was also perplexed by the word “Wagamama” hanging from several lamp-posts because I’d genuinely never heard of before, much to the beloved’s doubting surprise. Mind you, I also find myself asking why, in the advert for that shiny new smartphone/tablet thingy, do they extol the virtues of “doing something nobody else can” whilst showing two people colouring in exactly the same picture...?

I’m a marketing executive’s dream, me, aren’t I...?

Shortly after this, we found ourselves at the “Patiserrie Vallerie”, where we had always planned to be at, and ordered breakfast because there was still a good hour or so before the doors of “Judy’s Vintage Fair” - the main purpose of our venturing out that morning - opened for the day. In fact there was still a good half an hour even after we’d eaten the breakfasts, and I did end up wondering whatever happened to the mushrooms, but didn’t comment upon it at the time. After all, any visit to an eatery, including all of the ones I visited that day, managed to confirm to me my own suspicion that I am indeed “The Invisible Man” when it comes to being noticed by the staff, a problem other people do not seem to suffer with quite so much. After this, a mighty bookshop called me through its tempting portals which is always a mistake as I immediately spotted at least a dozen volumes which I’d love to read, none of which I had previously been aware of, but, luckily, I was able to resist them, although, having scribbled down a few titles as I strolled around, how long I manage to resist at least some of them remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, strengthened by this rare victory over the powers of retail spending, we strolled over to the Ritz and joined the queue for the opportunity to buy some “Vintage Stuff” and we mooched around the fair for a couple of hours, looking at the “vintage” clothing and listening to the “vintage” music and spending some cash (for it is cash only – some kind of tribute to vintage shopping methods, I suppose) on old stuff. I’m rather surprised to discover that “vintage” now seems to include at least three of the decades in which I grew up, and also rather alarmed to discover that many of the “funny looking” clothes still lurk in some of the darker corners of my wardrobe…

After this we sought out thirst-quenching drinks at “Eat” (well, it does what it says on the sign) whilst we waited for our cinema tickets to become valid, and then actually went to the “AMC Cinema”(the one built inside the old warehouse and with interior design that resembles the “Overlook Hotel” in “The Shining”) to see the new Mr Johnny Depp movie “Dark Shadows” which was okay, if not quite what we have come to expect from Mr Tim Burton, although I’m sure it appealed far more to the kinds of bright young things who go “Squee!” whenever that tiresome old cliché of the vampire movie (and “being young and pretty forever, sigh…” wish-fulfillment nonsense) turns up. I did like the cameo from old Mr Dracula himself, Christopher Lee, though.

Nice touch…!

I’d been rather impressed at 10.30 AM at how empty the city had seemed. By 4.30 PM this was no longer the case and we had to negotiate ourselves along Market Street through thousands of miserable-looking people all shopping miserably or shouting pointlessly. Still, I simply have to accept that this is what people do. However, as I’m usually fairly disappointed by what people do for most of the time, it shouldn’t have surprised me that it bothered me so much.

Happily, we then tracked down “Bakerie” in the Northern Quarter with surprising ease. We had fully expected to be traipsing around for hours looking for the place, only one of us having been there before, and that being some time ago and with someone who actually knew where they were going. Anyway, having found the place where they had left it, we managed to have a rather excellent meal before heading home on one of those rare trains out to the wilds, arriving home, having had a lovely day out, far too late for me to have possibly used that ticket.

GOING INTO THE BIG CITY

A soggy scene in the Big City

I ventured into the Big City on Saturday. This might not appear at first to be much of a revelation, but I realised last week that it’s actually been a very long time since I’d last been in to have a day just mooching around the shops. To be honest because I’ve kind of got out of the habit in recent years after the changes in my professional lifestyle, and I have the kind of unsettling feeling that it may be as long as three years since I trudged those bright pavements.

As I skulk in my shared hermitage (if that’s not too oxymoronic) out here on the rim, there are very few people who just pass by and suggest a couple of drinks in town and it’s become such an ordeal and upheaval to get myself there from here, even for the most exciting sounding events, that I can rarely be bothered with it nowadays, preferring to flit out rather unlike a ninja when I need a pint or two of milk and flit stealthily up to the keyboard to obtain anything more specialized which then gets the actual lugging by the stout fellows from Her Majesty’s Postal Services.

No wonder they hate me.

So, why did I have this sudden change of heart? Why was this grey old carcass suddenly inspired to slither its weary self into the very heart of the throbbing Metropolis on a soggy Saturday at the tail end of February? Well, t’beloved had to go in to attend a seminar and recently I’ve started to find that whenever I’m left alone in our castle-ette, I tend to get a little bit twitchy and find that those precious hours get frittered away either at the keyboard (which I already spend most of my week doing, so that’s not all that healthy) or parked in front of the TV watching my old tat and waiting for her to come home whilst giving myself a hard time for wasting all that time, without actually doing anything about it.

This is how whole lifetimes just slip away.

So, I thought it might be fun to go in to the city with her. Perhaps we could have a little breakfast on the way, Coffee and a Danish, after which I could see her safely to her mysteriously located destination and then head off alone to potter around for the intervening few hours and see what shops had survived the great cull caused by the recent recession.

Sadly our planning was slightly off because we’d not checked the weekend rail timetables the night before and so the relaxing Coffee and Danish option kind of got scratched even before we set off into the continuous bucketing rain of a typical Blogfordshire day. Having parked the car at the station and done my usual ritual of getting rained on a lot whilst I skittered back and forth a few times to check that I’ve actually locked it and set the handbrake, we stood for a while in the diluted urine puddles of the railway station rain shelter and, only minutes after it was due, hopped on a battered old piece of rolling stock which was only leaking slightly, and within 40 minutes we arrived at the shopping centre that the main railway terminus has now disguised itself as.

We passed unmolested through its shiny, glittery display of wares and headed out once again, into the rain, hoping to catch one of the three free bus services across the city to the other major rail terminus, the old Victorian one that still resembles a railway station and hasn’t yet had its own massive makeover as a retail hub. It took us a moment to realise that the No 2 route which went where we wanted to go didn’t actually start from here, and so, with only a slight pause for me to acquire the soggy foot which would stay with me throughout the rest of my day out, when I stood on a loosely fitting paving slab, we boarded bus No 1, whilst I continued to mull over whether it is possible to get trench foot from a paving slab.

Some might ask why we failed to take advantage of the gleaming newish Metro system to make our journey across town? Well, of course, we were wondering that ourselves, but had been unreliably informed that all services on that particular branch had been suspended, and it was only once I had bid my farewells to t’beloved later on that I noticed one of the metrocities merrily chugging its way out of the station we had achieved by our more convoluted methodology.

Coffee Shop ceiling

For after the free bus No 1 had deposited us at the extremes of its circular route, I boldy suggested that we didn’t wait for the now mythical No 2 bus to come along as we had a line of sight to our destination and it wouldn’t be too far to walk. Several lifetimes later, after negotiating the rabbit warren of pedestrian routes designed to snag the unwary foot warrior into false hope, we arrived at the Victorian gothic pile with a good half hour to spare before the seminar, and had a kind of diluted variation on our planned exciting breakfast by sitting in “Pumpkins” and having a Coffee. It was an impressive space to put a coffee shop in, to be honest, with all the old Victorian trimmings like the glass dome still intact. I sipped at my Victorian coffee and mulled over which part of the Empire it might have originated from whilst grey-haired gentlemen carrying strangely shaped bags which spoke of long-planned Saturday missions and outings mulled around us, and another group of gentlemen discussed their opinions upon the source of the finest Fish & Chips in the North-West of England, which boiled down to either Ramsbottom or New Mills, apparently.

So t’beloved and I went our separate ways for the day. There was one shop I really wanted to visit despite it’s slightly scary position in one of the scruffier neighbourhoods because I’d been considering an online purchase of something that qualified as proper tat, and I thought that the High Street version of the stores might just have it in stock to save me the postal charges. They didn’t, of course, and so my morning was already spiraling into failure. I trudged sulkily around the music and book stores that I remembered and which still survived (sadly very few) but by about 10.30 I’d been to pretty much everywhere I’d wanted to go and realised that I still had about three and a half hours to fill before my planned rendezvous with t’beloved and our planned lunch.

I guess part of the problem was that I wasn’t looking for clothes or pong or household tat but I ventured on, spotting things that I thought t’beloved might be interested in to tell her later, like the four day offer on crockery in a favourite tea shop chain and the details of a book-signing that she might be keen to attend. Then I went back and forth between the bookshops I’d already visited, comparing the prices of some republished Dashiel Hammetts (which rather excitingly - I'm hoping you're getting the irony here - varied from £3.00 to £7.99) and realising that price comparison is so much easier online. I also spotted some enticing books that I’d previously been unaware of but which I’ll probably buy much cheaper online later.

Sigh!

Olde Worlde charm

I needed a coffee. “It’s people like me who are killing the High Street” I thought as I sat down in a bookshop later to drink my Cappuccino, and the thought quite ruined the taste. I did spot a rather lovely run-down looking building from out of the window but had to wait a while for the mother and daughter sitting in front of it to go away before I pointed my phone to take a less than impressive picture, lest I be thought of as being a freakish stalker type.

The times we live in, eh?

So what did I achieve after my morning alone in the big city? Well, I bought some cards I needed to have in, rediscovered a cheap music shop that I’d half forgotten about and bought some DVDs at a bargain price that even the Internet had so far not been able to match, and pondered a lot about the people I’d seen. From the obnoxious, insufferably smug, self-obsessed clotheshorses in the department stores to those other people wearing the scariest looking clothes I've ever seen on a person. I did occasionally wonder whether they had access to actual mirrors in their homes, because I couldn't imagine anyone actually choosing to be seen out and about dressed like that. Then there were the ‘broken’ people who seemed to be everywhere. I saw a man struggling along, carrying his new “Vax” and a girl carrying an incongruous wooden shoe rack, and somehow the time passed. Eventually I met t’beloved for lunch and after venturing around more shops (and starting to feel a touch ill – perhaps my lunchtime pizza was a bit dodgy...) we headed home.

I get told from time-to-time that I need to get out more and it does me good to see people.

Now I’m not so sure…