By John Hargan
Location: The Three Arrows Inn, Middleton Road, Middleton
‘I’ll see you later’
Mike slammed the front door behind him and stepped out into the sharp night air. He smiled to himself in anticipation of his Sunday night trip to the Three Arrows to meet the lads. It was a chance to escape the pressures of family life for a couple of hours and enjoy some male company.
And just being in that pub made him feel better. It was the pub he had first drunk in, over 25 years ago, and it was the pub where he had first met his wife. The Three Arrows was the one constant in an ever-changing world, sat there at the end of Middleton Road, perched on the edge of the northern boundary of the city, the protective wall of Heaton Park at the back of it.
The pub was busy when he got there. Mike found his friends in a corner by the bar. He was met with the usual coarse greetings and Mickey-taking but he took it all in good part before getting his round in.
One member of the group was missing: Jimmy. Mike loved Jimmy, as they all did. He was their resident comedian – a hail fellow well met type who was popular with everyone.
They met Jimmy one night while discussing the possibility of getting the landlord to find them a set of darts, so they could have a game of 501 on the dartboard that hung in the area of the bar that nominally passed as the vault. The darts game had been a regular feature of their nights in the Three Arrows, before the new manager had decided he wanted to make the place a watered-down gastropub.
The manager had politely told them that they didn’t have a set of darts behind the bar any more.
‘Imagine that, a pub called the Three Arrows and it doesn’t have any darts!’
That remark had been Jimmy’s introduction to the group. He’d been a regular since then, though no-one saw him outside of the pub or on any other night than a Sunday.
Mike particularly loved Jimmy’s stories about his exploits with women. Jimmy was a salesman of some kind, though no-one was quite sure what he sold and no=one much cared. What mattered were that his tales of meeting women were always amusing, sometimes downright hilarious, as these sometimes naïve and always frustrated housewives fell for Jimmy’s feeble chat-up lines every time.
The boys carried on chatting in their usual way but there was a sense that the night wouldn’t really start until Jimmy arrived. Paul, who like Mike was a great fan of Jimmy’s, texted him to see where he was.
‘Apparently, he’s with one of his girlfriends now,’ Paul reported with some glee.
‘That’s Jimmy,’ Mike said, raising his glass in toast to his hero.
The conversation returned to the usual topics of day-to-day frustrations with their wives and children, or with their bosses at work. Mike made his own contribution, telling everyone about his failure to lure his wife, Christine, into a night of passion after they’d watched a raunchy late-night movie on TV.
‘You should get her to have a word with me.’
Jimmy was here. The boys cheered in a sarcastic manner.
‘We thought you’d never get here,’ said Paul.
‘Nearly didn’t,’ Jimmy replied. ‘This one was all over me.’
‘How come you’re seeing her on a Sunday night?’
‘Her husband goes out and she was so desperate to get more of me, I had to fit her in, so to speak.’ The lads all laughed. This was Jimmy in fine form.
‘So while some poor mug is out there getting bladdered, you’re sorting out his old lady?’ Mike asked.
‘Too right. He’s busy with his mates, I’m busy with her. Lovely house they’ve got too, on Heaton Park Road, big semi. He must have to work his you-know-whats off to afford that place.’
‘What’s her name?’ Paul asked.
‘Chris, short for Christine.’
‘Crazy Christine!’ Paul said, all the boys laughing with him.
‘Yeah, Crazy Christine,’ Jimmy laughed.
Sunday night out with his mates? A semi on Heaton Park Road? Christine? Mike thought to himself.
Jimmy was still laughing when Mike’s right fist landed on his mouth.
Turns out Jimmy wasn’t that funny anymore.
John Hargan was born in Blackley in 1966, and now lives in Didsbury. He is possessed of an unhealthy fascination with Manchester City.
By Lydia Unsworth
Location: Moss Lane East, Rusholme
time and tide wait for no man
although there were times i was tied to it
tied to rough faces
and mice running out of clothes
we had outgrown
or ground down into silence
thread-bare
-ing our souls to anyone who would listen
or at least anyone willing to raise the stakes
through our hearts
HGVs shake through kitchens
and mugs rattle in unsteady hands
the walls came down
but it brought us closer together
six in a bed on christmas day
it makes life easier
to only need one bucket
one mop
for all the tears
in bedsheets, lining
faces
itching into unknown pillows
with suspense or suspenders
because that’s what waiting feels like
or it feels like another can of beer
a floor made of recesses and
beached bodies
wailing
without the elegance
required of catalogue poses
which pile up by the door
bearing the names of ex-tenants
and a new kind of evolution
for £238pppm
all inclusive
Lydia Unsworth says: ‘Biog: 27. Girl. Born in Salford. 1982. June in the evening. Studied art. Study maths. Moving to Poland for a while.’ http://gettingoverthemoon.blogspot.com
By Sean Gibson
Location: Bus Stop, Stretford Road, Old Trafford
A disturbance in the distance,
The traffic lights twinkle – late
As usual, so casual,
In tell-tale attire,
The tired white coat
And dash of pink.
Lazy, she loiters,
Lumbers towards me,
With a clunk,
And a…
Clink.
She’s a noisy beggar.
This is Yesterday,
Today
…
And Tomorrow
Sean Gibson is a 17 year-old A-level student at Xaverian College, studying ancient history, maths and Spanish. He enjoys singing, reading, playing the guitar and playing and watching football. He enjoys writing creatively in any form but his preference is poetry. He hopes to go to university next year, to study ancient history. After that, who knows?
By Steve Garside
Location: Drive-through car wash, Molesworth Street, Rochdale, OL16 1TS
I’m waiting in the queue for the car wash again. I come here almost every week. There are four car wash options on offer. There’s the one-seventy, which amounts to a sharp blast of jet water on your wheels and a fat manky brush across your windscreens before the main wash, the two-sixty, which is roughly the same as the one-seventy, and the other two, which I never use, because at four quid and five twenty they are a bit pricey for me. Besides, all they seem to include above the other two cheaper options are more suds and more pre-wash elbow from the young lads who work the car wash. And they are almost always supervised by the sharp lingering hint of cheap spliff smoke.
As far as I know, this drive-through has been here for about ten years and owned by the world’s biggest car wash company. When it was new, the shiny glint off the eye-catching fascia boards and the assorted border planting delivered me to another time.
On the road side of the car wash, about midway down its length is an obelisk-shaped stone that juts up from the ground about three and a half feet. The mounted legend records this as the site where the wartime singer and actress Gracie Fields once lived.
The first time I ever went through a car wash was with my stepdad in his gold-coloured Vauxhall Viva. I remember the soft nudge of the thick chain loop as it lugged in behind the front tyre. With the handbrake off, gear in neutral – and the engine killed at the key – the deliberate ride began; filling me with all the anticipation of the fairground (with the windows wound all the way up of course). Waiting, watching, as the soft brushes surrounded the car, scuffing and buffing the enclosed Viva back to cleanliness, back to shininess, back as far as when it was almost new.
He loved that cigarette-smelling car. As a family, we drove everywhere in it, conquered steep hills in Devon and figured through mist in Scotland. But the car, the age, the man are all gone now, and I am left here in my own car, with the CD player on, at the mercy of the tug of the chain as it draws me inexorably on, through the first smudge of suds as the brushes whip up into their preset positions, and I pass through the parlour of Dame Gracie Fields, again.
Steve Garside is a self-taught visual artist, poet and writer, who has performed his poetry many times and has recently read his work on BBC Radio Manchester. http://stevegarside.co.uk
By Ian D Smith
Location: Fog Lane Park, Burnage
He always did what Jamie Oliver told him to because Jamie Oliver was cool. Jamie told him to freeze blackcurrants because they were delicious when they were frozen and it was quicker than making a sorbet.
‘Sorbet,’ he repeated. ‘Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’
He liked the sound of the word sorbet.
On the hottest day of the year he went out to Fog Lane Park and made his fingers purple picking a bagful of blackcurrants. He slammed them in the freezer and washed his hands. ‘Sorbet! Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’
He pushed the sofa into the front garden, opened a beer and waited for the blackcurrants to freeze.’Sorbet! Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’
He went inside for another beer and then he forgot about the sorbet. He went to bed and he slept and he forgot about the sofa.
It rained a lot in Burnage and by morning the sofa was soaked through. It was too wet to bring indoors, so he left it out to dry. He left it through August and September. He left it through autumn and all the way into December.
Christmas Day came and on Christmas Day he always did what Jamie Oliver told him to because Jamie Oliver was cool. ‘Sorbet!’ he cried. ‘Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’
He remembered the blackcurrants and took them out of the freezer. He opened a beer and went outside and sat down on the frozen sofa. He ate the frozen blackcurrants and he reckoned Jamie was right, they were tasty and it was far quicker than fussing around but it was a bit bloody cold, too bloody cold for sorbet. ‘Jamie bloody Oliver,’ he said shivering. ‘I’ll give him a bloody sorbet.’
Ian D Smith was born and raised in Stockport, and now lives in Wiltshire. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmith’s University of London, and has published many stories. http://www.iandsmith.com
