From Albert Square to Stockport Road, via a windswept Scottish cliff

You may have been wondering what fat Barry from Eastenders has been up to, since the fateful day when he was pushed off a cliff somewhere in the Scottish Highlands by his crazed girlfriend Janine and plunged to his certain death on the wave-crashed rocks 100 feet below. Well, I can exclusively reveal that he has been far from idle; he has in fact been posthumously travelling the length and breadth of the country lending his weighty presence to the unveiling of renovated branches of KwikSave. The tour has taken him to Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and also to somewhere near Blackpool. But Wednesday was a red letter day indeed- the day that Barry from Eastenders came to Levenshulme.

This event was greatly heralded on our one mile stretch of the A6, with adverts on the bus stops and, in the store itself, flyers at the checkouts featuring The Great Man's big, daft, unmistakeable face. So when the day came, I really really wanted to be there- but it was a work day, and (entirely unreasonably in my view) the civic authorities had not seen fit to grant each and every working person resident in Manchester M19 a day off work so that they could tell their grandsons they were present the day a famous soap star cut the ribbon at the newly revamped supermarket. And Charlotte couldn't be there either, because- well, she wasn't really that bothered, and in any case the unveiling was scheduled for 9:30AM, which is young Frankie's time for screaming the house down before having his morning nap. So we will just have to make do with a second-hand account delivered by one of the checkout girls to Charlotte when she and Frankie did manage to make it down there later in the day.

According to our eyewitness, Barry from Eastenders completed his duties with great aplomb and no little verve, as might be expected of an experienced TV star with previous form in such diverse locations as Bridgnorth and Blackpool. The Great Man addressed a few well-chosen words to the sparse gathering of blue-rinsed soap fanatics who had braved the torrential rain for the chance to wheel their shopping trolleys to within feet of Albert Square's most hapless ever second-hand car salesman, and then cut the ribbon to let his audience loose on the store's lusciously-restocked aisles.

At which point, I would say, the rain-defiant, tartan-trolley-wielding pensioners must have got quite a shock. Because while Barry may have been a useless car salesman, and (to judge from the nature of his untimely demise) an even worse judge of female character, he is clearly in no mood to mess about in his posthumous career as a redesigner of neighbourhood supermarkets. In a belated visit to the store tonight, I found that not only were there upmarket items like prawns, olive oil, and three different kinds of Alpen on sale, but that the rather quaint section featuring Irish groceries has been spirited away and replaced by an aisle full of expensive colour tellies and DVD players. In short, Levenshulme Kwik Save has been gentrified good and proper, and things round here will never be the same again.

The gentrification of Levenshulme, mind you, is a process that started a couple of years ago, when the Commonwealth Games were due to be held in the city, and the civic authorities realised that in order to get from the airport to the vast new stadium whose construction they had financed on the East side, the visiting athletes and dignitaries from all corners of our once-great Empire would need to travel down Stockport Road, and straight through the middle of a run-down district whose very existence they had more or less forgotten about. Within minutes of this realisation, teams of builders were dispatched up the A6, and almost overnight the area was transformed, with stylish Victorian-style streetlights and black metal railings everywhere, and on the corner opposite the Horseshoe pub, a European-style square we Christened 'the Piazza', from where the authorities had removed (possibly using a large municipal hook) the neighbourhood's former population of unsightly old Irish blokes in bad cardigans, and replaced them with photogenic boules-playing olive-skinned septuagenarians they had borrowed from a margarine advert.

And now they are selling avocados in Kwiksave. It is all quite incredible and you have to wonder where it will end. Is it only a matter of time before the shoe-repair shop reopens as a juicebar, The Regal Dry Cleaners as a high-class Gentleman's Tailor, and the 'Nip into Noreen's' Cafe as a sushi joint? Well, maybe, but I think these days are still some way off. For one thing, the drinking joints are still defiantly 'old Levenshulme' in character, and there are still plenty of old-style boozers where old Irish men in bad cardigans happily sup pints of Guinness, apparently unconcerned by the threat of the giant municipal hook, while their nephews play out small neighbourhood dramas at the snug tables.

The typical A6 boozer is a little bit like the Queen Vic in Albert Square, Walford, in fact. So I should imagine our illustrious ribbon-cutting visitor from Wednesday will have felt quite at home, and I shouldn't wonder if Barry called in somewhere for a swift half before catching the train back south. Well, I suppose once you have been shoved to your death off a windswept Scottish cliff, you probably think you can survive anything, even a lunchtime visit to Hennigans on Stockport Road. I tell you what, he is a brave character, our Barry- and I wish him all the best in his exciting, post-death career.

Comments

[Jo Myhill]

Imagine my surprise to come across this blog whilst developing my web search skills at work (dossing to you and me). Now I knew him as Joff and he knew me as Jo York when we were both at Wolves. Good to hear that Geordie humour again - jo

[JonnyB]

Might I point out that loads of people bunked work and school to join in with the 'how great we are, we won the rugby' thing in London?

Surely you'd not get into trouble for BARRY???

[jonathan]

Jo York! Well, as I live and breathe! It is me allright- I bet it gave you a shock to find me, especially as you were looking for our Bushbury neighbour Gavin Lok (how did I know that's what you were looking for- oh, we have our ways and means, and a screen we can go on to tell us what people were looking for on Google when they found our blog...) Did you find him by the way??

It is great to hear your dulcet Northamptonshire tones after all this time also, Jo- I am going to write you an email forthwith and without delay (because I like skiving too).....

Joff