By Jon Atkin
Location: Southern Cemetery, Chorlton
After the mourners had left the grave
I hung back to gaze
At the flinty names.
Mary-Ann – ‘Devoted Wife’,
Gilbert Treaves – ‘Called to the Lord’.
If you believed the stones,
All who lay about were Sunday’s children,
Loving, kind, and full of grace.
What if they proclaimed instead
The true life lived,
Those darker thoughts and deeds
Which death conceals?
Alec Browne – ‘Had no sense of personal hygiene’.
Matthew Woolton – ‘Kleptomaniac’,
Elizabeth Cox – ‘Feared water in all its forms’,
Harry Bilton – ‘Choked at 51,
In a sweaty bondage game’.
And then those sadder truths;
Martha Livesey – ‘Died in a solitary bed
Mourned by none’. Dr Tom Rogerson –
‘So bitter at life and all in it’.
Eleanor Fortnum – ‘Devout and quiet
Murderess’. Suddenly, the stones
Seemed eager to impart their secrets.
And what would my stone speak?
‘He feared life more than death’.
I smiled an inward smile
And walked towards the gate.
Jon Atkin helps run the Manchester Literature Festival and the Manchester Amateur Choral Competition. He writes only occasionally.
By Jackie Kay
Location: Chorlton Ees park
Take yesterday, for example. I came home after being away in the Big Smoke. Nobody calls London the Big Smoke anymore, but I was feeling my age. I was settling my son into his new council flat in East London. We spent a few days bustling about London getting him the things he needed: a desk, a chair, shelves, a duvet, a duvet cover, a kitchen bin, cutlery…We did it in record breaking time, but it was daunting; the traffic, how each neighbourhood in London doesn’t necessarily have the shops you need, and you have to go large distances to get ordinary things. It was all a big, stressful hassle.
So I came back to Chorlton and breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t feel like I live in Manchester; I feel like I live in Chorlton. I can spend happy, glorious days without going into the city at all. Chorlton allows you to be self-sufficient. So yesterday the first thing I did when I got home was walk my dog in Chorlton Ees. I walk to the end of my street, turn left and there it is! It is Manchester’s first nature reserve, part of the Red Rose forest, stretching for thousands of acres, and it is right on my doorstep. If I was energetic enough I could follow the river Mersey all the way to Liverpool, or I could walk to Didsbury along the riverbank, passing the odd statuesque heron. But usually I walk through the woodlands and meadows in any number of different directions. I love how wild it is there, the way that the density of the woods remind me of childhood, or of how the imagination works. There’s something secretive and knowing about the trees, and if you spend enough time in their distinguished company, you actually feel yourself getting better.
Walking a dog is more of a talking point than pushing a pram; people always stop and ask about the breed of my dog and tell me about theirs. ‘We’ve been out since eight thirty,’ an old woman tells me about herself and her dog. ‘Been to the vet. She’s got problems with her kidneys, is on medication, is costing me a fortune, but she’s worth it,’ she says and walks on, her proud bushy dog walking beside her. She looks like the only pennies she has to rub together, she’s spending on her dog. (It moves me how she used the pronoun ‘we’ to describe herself and her dog, like they are an item, a team.)
By Mike Duff
Location: Victoria Station
So I’m walkin down Miller Street headin toward Victoria Station. I’ve had a drink an it’s getting late. I notice a figure swayin in front of me. I recognize immediately the United shirt (it’s one of them green an yella ones brought out to commemorate the centenary an Newton Heath’s part in it). I fuckin hate Newton Heath, fuckin smackheads an women with ‘honey I shrunk the giro’ kinda faces.
As I get alongside him our eyes meet. I look away but he’s seen me.
‘Fuck me with a wooden broomstick an call it the brush off, if it aint me old mate Bobby Doyle,’ he says in a drunken slurred Welsh voice.
‘Right Bernie,’ I say, ‘where you off?’
A gleam comes into his eye an he offers me a can of Stella. ‘Not seen you for a long time Senor. Off to the Press Club, you wanna come?’
An I notice the Welsh voice has mellowed to near Mancunian after thirty years in the City. Quite a few of them spent in Strangeways an other of Her Majesty’s guesthouses.
We walk along together. It’s maybe half two in the mornin.
An me mind gets lost in useless thought as the tangents of time take over an I think about the first time I saw Bernie. We were on a train headin for Victoria Station, just like now, both aged about 14. We’d bin to Blackpool. Davis was with a gang of Miles Plattin lads an I was with me cousin Rafferty. Rafferty knew them all so no hassle.
It was a good laugh at first flingin light bulbs an toilet rolls out of windows, an other kids stuff. The train was one of them old sorts that had a corridor that ran right down the side of the train an you could swap compartments at will. No ticket collector on. So no authority figure to safeguard the interests of Mr. Commuter.
Anyway the train stops at Preston an this suited man gets on. Our compartment is full so he settles down in one about four away. Ten minutes pass by an we get bored. There’s a little Livingstone in even the youngest Mancunian so we go explore. There’s a girl with a good size pair of tits in one carriage but her boyfriends with her an he’s built like Jean Claude Van Damne on steroids, so we leave them well alone.
We move a little farther down an we come across Mr. Suit, an he’s chosen to be alone.
‘Never mind, we’ll relieve the boredom,’ says Davis, who is firmly in charge.
An we all pile in.
‘These seats taken?’ says Rafferty as he climbs on the luggage rack.
The little shithouse. No chance of gettin punched up there. Our host moves a few things for his uninvited guests, puts them in a briefcase, an then commits suicide by speakin.
‘No you’re alright,’ he says.
An I wince; he’s got a Scouse accent, a posh one but Scouse nonetheless. There’s a stunned silence at our end, we’ve caught an enemy spy. ‘Hey who’d you support, our kid?’ says Rafferty as Bernie blocks the door.
By Rajeev Balasubramanyam
Location: College Road, Whalley Range
Our hero has fifteen tattoos:
On his back: his sons’ names, a winged cross, and the words ‘Guardian Angel’.
On his left arm: a picture of his wife, her name in Hindi, the words ‘Forever by Your Side’ and ‘Ut Amen Et Foveam’ − So That I Love and Cherish. On his right arm: the Roman numeral ‘VII,’ two angels, a classical design, the motto ‘In the Face of Adversity,’ and ‘Perfectio In Spiritu’ − Spiritual Perfection. Running from his nipple to his groin, a Chinese proverb: ‘Death and life have determined appointments. Riches and honour depend on heaven.’
His body was his work, his body was a work of art, and we have ruined it, Malini and I.
But no, my wife is not to blame.
I am a proud proud man. I have a scar running from my eye to my chin. I made the mark myself after I painted my last wedding portrait: Mr and Mrs Sanjeev Shah from North Harrow who requested that their Audi Q7 − ‘Keeps you and your family safe’ − gleam grey in the silence between them.
But this was how I paid my bills.
My name is K− and I am a political miniaturist. My works are vast, spacious, sweeping, panoramic − oh yes! − but with detail so tiny I can fit all humanity on a shrinking white canvas. The closer you look, the finer a story you hear:
Hiroshima: August 6, 1945: twenty seconds before impact.
Banks, restaurants, offices, cafes, brothels, railways, dentists, hospitals, schools. Children, parents, invalids, lawyers, thieves and priests. Above them all, three aircraft, cross-sectioned: the Enola Gay, the Necessary Evil, and the Great Artiste. Colonel Paul Tibbet, smiling, crying, erect. It has been my habit to strip away surfaces as I please. X-ray upon x-ray. Skin sheared. Walls removed. Life in all its allness. You can even see his semen.
New York: 9/11.
Similar to Hiroshima, but we cannot see inside the plane.
London: 7/7.
Sex, everywhere sex. London’s whores in basements and castles. Royals piercing bleeding mouths. Parliament and palace laid bare. In a Liverpool Street hotel, Netanyahu is on the phone. In Downing Street, Blair is too. In Russell Square, a bus spews arms and legs.
They didn’t like this one, and I was punished. ‘A propagandist.’ ‘An inciter.’ ‘Crudity of style.’ ‘A heavy hand.’ And then. Nothing. They simply left me alone.
We lived off one salary after that. I became aloof. In anger I cut tiny drawings all over my body, the pain loudspeaking to my brain in protest. I cut a whip into the sole of my left foot, a flame into my right; I was going to remove my toe when Malini intervened−
‘I’ve been to the doctor−’
And soon we had no income at all. Like these folk.
By Nicholas Royle
Location: Off Ringway Road, Moss Nook
I am interested in straight lines.
I was born in Manchester, but left at the age of 17 to go to London, where I lived for 20 years. London doesn’t really do straight lines. There are straight roads, of course; they stand out. The A5. The A1, for a bit. The A30 as it approaches Hatton Cross tube station and the perimeter of Heathrow Airport. No one can miss those. On the ground, on the map.
When I moved back to Manchester I became aware of a number of less obvious straight lines. If I stand in the bay window of my bedroom and look into the bay window of my neighbour’s bedroom, I can actually see through that bay into the bay of the next house and so on down the street.
If, on a dark night, you come off the M60 at junction 25 and head north up Ashton Road towards Denton, you see the road surface shining ahead of you in a straight line. Only at the last minute do you see that your road – Ashton Road – bends sharply to the right. The road that appears to continue in a straight line, Castle Hill, is actually a left turn off the main carriageway. To take it at that speed would lead you quickly into difficulties, even if it looks as if it’s the right thing to do.
Drive south down Holme Road in Didsbury, alongside Marie Louise Gardens, and turn right at the bottom into Dene Road West. Ahead of you the road is invitingly straight. Certain features conspire to conceal the much bigger and busier cross street, Palatine Road: an overgrown bush hides the stop sign, a speed bump obscures the white markings of the junction itself. I always want to drive straight across Palatine Road and into Mersey Road without stopping. It looks as if you should be able to. There’s a risk involved, perhaps, but it’s a risk worth taking. A risk you should take, even.
