By Lydia Unsworth
Location: a bus stop, Portland Street
The city has upped and folded all of its motorways; asked me to step down from off of its ring road.
We are not in love, the city says.
We have been together for nine years and now the city is leaving me. We have spent every moment together; I in its arms and it in my mind. I have flown away like that butterfly, which is always said to return if you let it. And each time, I did; I was no deserter in essence. I could not stay away.
We had our ups and downs, I and the city. Each time we met, the city had developed, was reshaped. I tried not to notice, not to give the city the ego boost it was inching for. I didn’t mention the Beetham Tower; and, when the Urbis announced it was to become a football museum, I took it to be a childish prank aimed at attracting my attention, and I looked the other way.
The city had its motives and so did I; there was a time when our desires were the same.
The city had been calling me for weeks, leaving messages in the papers and on the faces of my friends. I came home as soon as I was able. I called the council and we arranged to meet.
It was high season but the city spared me an hour. We went for a coffee. The city picked me up with a smooth breeze and set me down onto a Starbucks bench. The Starbucks was new and I stared at my latté and pretended not to notice the change.
The city expected something from me; its traffic lights were on amber, blinking. We stared at each other over the steaming cups and I knew we had lost something; it wasn’t just that I couldn’t remember the postcodes, or that the streets were vandalised with new words and new names; it was something more, something vital, the city didn’t have a place for me, it wasn’t going to rent me any more rooms or promise to keep me safe. The city and I were through. It was taking away my personal photographs and handing me a road atlas.
This is what I am to you now, said the city.
By Andrew Beswick
Location: The main junction in Stretford (where the tram station/canal is)
across Stretford
quarter moon
hilltop
the sign says
no poems please
in the cycle lane
danger of over emotional cyclists
don’t look for meaning
in the canal basin
don’t fall in love
with tattered old buildings
be careful where you ride
don’t get dreamy eyed or tragic
just concentrate on the traffic
Andrew Beswick is a Manchester-based writer who blogs at Moon Printed Shadows. http://www.andrewbeswick.blogspot.com/
By Lydia Unsworth
Location: Oxford Road (outside the University of Manchester’s new visitor’s centre)
There is a small section of double-yellow lines along Oxford Road, just in front of where the Mathematics building used to be, where some leaves were trapped between road and roller while the paint was being applied.
When I have guests and they ask me what there is to see in Manchester, I take them there.
We will be approaching the place and I’m all ‘here it comes’ and ‘get ready!’ and they are looking about them for a sign, for a flashing light, for a pointing arrow, for something larger than anything.
And then I point to the ground. I’m jumping about now, telling them about how I once did a double-take while riding my bicycle. About how I stopped and got off, lifted my bike up and onto the pavement. About how I came back and turned around and knelt down with my camera. About how I walked the length of these imprints of leaves, photographing each one in turn.
I point out my favourite.
I ask what they think, if they have ever seen anything as perfect as these.
And some of them do enjoy it, although some of them look at me strangely and ask for the way to the museum.
I think that’s how I know who my friends are. Or who they will be. I like the kind of people who appreciate the coincidental timing of the double-yellow lines being repainted and the falling of leaves.
Lydia Unsworth blogs at gettingoverthemoon.blogspot.com
By Sadie Fisher
Location: Audenshaw Reservoir
‘And by the time we’ve walked around it, you will have your answer,’ she said.
The thing seemed insurmountable. It looked like it would take a good hour or two, maybe more. But she was adamant. Well, if that’s what it would take, so be it. It was typical of her unreasonable demands that she would elevate the conversation into some sort of unseemly contest, some test of strength. I looked down at my muddy Converse. They’d be a lot dirtier before this afternoon was finished, that’s for sure.
‘Alright,’ I sighed.
As one we turned and began walking up the short gravelly track. The sky was a light feathery blue now, denying the fact of the muddy puddles around us and the height of the water in the reservoir. Even on Sundays the M60 that girdled the reservoir was busy with families visiting families visiting families. But the hiss of the traffic had long ago ceased to register in my mind and I wondered how to proceed with the conversation. Looking down I noticed that Rachel had come prepared for this hike, her stout red leather walking boots looking like veterans of the Lakes.
‘Why are you wearing trainers?’ asked Rachel suddenly, our minds as always thinking about the same thing whether we liked it or not.
‘I always wear trainers,’ I replied, somewhat indignantly.
‘Didn’t you notice it’d been raining?’
What she actually meant was ‘didn’t you notice our relationship was going off the rails?’ but I didn’t rise to it. After all, it was a long way round this reservoir.
‘I didn’t anticipate traipsing through the mud,’ I defended myself. ‘What’s wrong with the Arndale?’
‘I wanted to break our routine,’ said Rachel. ‘We never do anything different.’
By Martin Zarrop
Location: Portland Street
People talk to you here
but not in English
and the rain is cold
on the grim streets
that run for their lives
past empty Victoriana,
lost empires.
At night, the city
sheds its humanity, lies
unwashed in the glow
of fag ends, crushed
and dying among
the grey detritus of
northern mouths.
Martin Zarrop is an (almost) retired applied mathematician who started writing poetry in 2006. He is currently midway through an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester University. He attended Rainy City Stories’ recent Writing About Place workshop in Hale, with Nicholas Royle.
