Thumbs-Up/I Am A Pigeon

Thumbs Up

Day Whatever plus two, and you set off for the daily constitutional into a North West in the grip of what that nice young man on the BBC regional news Owain Jones is calling a ‘Mini-Heatwave’, and you will take his word for it. The over-worked frontline staff within your inner wardrobe department, however, do not appear to have got the memo, with the consequence that you can maintain your unblemished record for the week so far of emerging blinking into the teatime sunlight in attire wholly unsuited for the conditions- in today’s case, a woollen green cardigan, a thick black raincoat, and a winter hat. Taking the first incline over the railway line at Davenport station, you become hyper-conscious of the potential for tiny sweat droplets from your overheated brow to alight upon unsuspecting passers-by with grave consequences, so, in the spirit of neighbourly solidarity which has become emblematic of these times, pin yourself tight to the metal railings separating the narrow pavement from the Garners Road junction, and damn near get your right ear severed off for the trouble, by the wingmirror of a passing Tesco’s delivery vehicle.

Outside the expansive front-garden of the semi-detached on the corner of Woodsmoor Lane and Broomfield Crescent, a greengrocer’s crate filled with varying sizes of plastic plantpots. ‘Help Yourself’ reads the scrawled inscription on the accompanying strip of cardboard, and as it happens, you’re presently in the market for plantpots, having only just this week succeeded in recovering the rickety plastic stand-up B and Q greenhouse from the cupboard under the stairs and assembled it at its perennial station in the backyard. So, ignoring the cautionary inner voice which yesterday persuaded you against the impulse acquisition of the Observers Book of Postage Stamps (circa 1973 edition), you obey the written instruction to the tune of a half-dozen choice items from the top of the tottering pile- offering as you do towards the empty bay-window a hesitant ‘thumbs-up’, in what you guess, in the absence of any learned social practice to date, may be the minimum gesture of courtesy applicable to the socially-distant transaction just undertaken.

Over the trainline again at Woodsmoor Station, a sharp left onto the terraced section of Moorland Road- recalling, as you do every day, how you were intent on buying a house on this very stretch when first considering upping sticks from the inner city to the outer suburbs, what was it now, 7, 8 years ago? From an upstairs bedroom window, a frail-looking elderly lady who may have become your next-door neighbour, if the Real Estate Market in South Manchester had operated slightly differently back then, talks into a handheld landline telephone while gazing out into what, for the old and vulnerable, has become the Forbidden Land of the Outside. You catch her eye, and a nod is exchanged, closely followed, in unspoken but mutually understood common recognition of the poignancy of the moment, by a wave.

Onto cheery Egerton Road- the last leg. The white cat with the black speckled head, who has been expecting you, emerges from a different drive from last time- a stray perhaps, or merely an itinerant? Whichever, he’s in especially garrulous form this afternoon, and you pause for a good two minutes while he addresses you in a series of lilting miaows, quite possibly on the subject of how the declining hospital death rates today being reported across the North West may mask a more disconcerting trend, the extent of which is yet to be ascertained- for mass fatalities in the region’s carehomes. Agreeing that The Lack of a Commonly-Accepted Set of Real-time Statistical Information Must Surely Hamper The Combined Efforts of the Scientific and Political Classes to Flatten the Curve, you go your separate ways. Today has not been a bad day, all available data considered. Tomorrow may be a better one, yet.

.............................

I Am A Pigeon

Day Whatever Plus Three. Across the green and up onto the main Bramhall Road. It’s the scheduled just-past-5PM start today so you’re heading into the height of rush hour, or at least you would have been, when such a phenomenon existed, and the A5102 from Stockport centre to Bramhall village would have been clogged up across its entire 3-mile stretch with near-stationary traffic, mostly private cars housing one inhabitant each, happily going about their business of clogging up the suburban air with a noxious mixture of deadly fumes. That was in March, or as it is now known, the Olden Days. In this present age, anything more than the occasional car happening past comes as a surprise, so when the temporary roadworks traffic light between the Garners Lane junction and the shut-down Jolly Sailor pub switches from red to green and six of them sweep past in near succession on the nearside southward carriageway, you feel the blood-pressure rising at the unfamiliar commotion, and it occurs to you that, almost overnight, you have developed the approximate tolerance to road traffic of an inhabitant of the 1950s; a retired seamstress, perhaps, in Hemel Hempstead. Not that you’re complaining; this new sedate pace of life could turn out to suit you down to the ground and would possibly even count as idyllic, if it wasn’t for the… well, you know the end of that one.

Escaping the unspeakable hecticity of the main drag, you head left down the tree-lined semi-detached section of Woodsmoor Lane, which by the way is adapting quite splendidly to the New Normal, and unsurprisingly so, since, what with its quaint Level Crossing and sleepy sub-postoffice and steady succession of handsome pastel-shaded baywindows, it had never properly emerged from the 1950s in the first place. Up at the top of the second telegraph pole on the left-hand pavement, a brief but brutal wing-to-wing combat engagement between two middleweight grey pigeons comes to an abrupt end when the more slightly-built of the two concludes that discretion may be the better part of valour, and social-distances himself off to take up a prime sky-facing slot on the adjacent lamppost. The victor, ruffling out his breast-feathers in an expression of pride, lets out a couple of rounds of his species’ never-changing four-tone exclamatory chime, the second syllable stressed: ‘I am a pigeon! I am a pigeon!’.

Reaching the far-side foot of the Woodsmoor Station hump-back-bridge, you go to head right for the Great Moor Co-op/ Great Moor’s Co-Op/Whatever It Is Calling Itself This Afternoon. And then, remembering the very-possible-near-brush-with-death within its crowded, capilleriesque aisles which you recounted at excruciating length on these very pages just 24 hours ago, you stop, execute a smart 180 degree heel-turn, and head sharp left instead, along the narrowing, sloped-towards-the-carriageway pavement of the terraced section of Moorland Road which marks the start of the return leg of your regular Figure of Eight route. Heading up the side of the Grammar School grounds and approaching the level crossing, you dial down the already-sedate promenading pace to adopt a slow-motion softshoe shuffle, in the hope that the overhead lights may flash into action adverting of the opportunity of an expectant five-minute barrier-pause, followed by the gratifying rush of a Northern Train escaping suburbia for the hills.

There appears to be nothing doing on that score though, so you head on over and are exactly half-way across the tracks when the klaxon goes off, the lights start blazing fourteen to the dozen, and a sharp creaking from above tells you the lofty red-and-white striped barrier is about to perch itself with Victorian-engineered precision on your forehead. Performing a short, involuntary Irish jig on the down line, you get the hell out of there, then, the sanctuary of the sub-Post-office side of the junction having been attained, lean your forearms against the track-side railings to catch your breath, and presently, to be rewarded for your courage in the face of mortal danger by the fleeting vision, for your eyes only, of the 17:26 Service for Hazel Grove and Points South. Its three carriages between them house precisely one passenger; a balding, be-suited gentleman with a face like the winning combatant in a Woodsmoor pigeon-fight. He gazes back at you at 60mph out of a side-window, blissfully unaware of how near his private conveyance for the afternoon’s commute home may have come to flattening you to an untimely death and shooting all three of you- yourself, him, and a distraught Northern-train-driver, Still Too Shocked to Comment- onto the front page of tomorrow’s Stockport Express.

Last leg now, and in keeping with the regular Thursday night timetable, you take a slight diversion off the side of the homeward green and head down the Davenport shopping parade to join the back of an already-four-man queue outside of Bargain Booze, there to equip yourself with the three bottles of BrewDog ‘Lost Lager’ (£5.97- a snip!), the first of which will (after an hour’s quarantining on the utility room lino, of course) form the finely-chilled accompaniment to the evening’s 8PM Clapping For The Frontline. You might chuck in an extra 10 seconds of rousing applause tonight, exclusively for the gimlet-eyed train drivers of the Buxton line, and for that matter, for the unseen operators controlling the workings of its outer-suburban levelcrossings. We’re all in this together, after all.

Comments

[kono]

I'm quite enjoying these, who knew the dangers of deserted streets? In the span of two days you almost lost an ear and were smashed by a train! Not to mention the level species of suburban humanity! On a walk yesterday i looked up to see on elderly woman talking on her phone in her front window and had the same interaction, a smile and a wave and then on down the hill. And as a huge fan of The Smiths don't think i didn't catch the Reel Around the Fountain lyric in the header ;)

[jonathan]

I know Kono... I had imagined the 'stay at home' advice was just so we could protect ourselves from the deadly invisible virus... but it turns out that mortal danger also lurks in plain sight!

And yes- spotters badge for you there on South Manchester's Finest. Reel Around The Fountain is probably my favourite Smiths song... and that snippet is probably my favourite lyric.

(Sidenote on The Smiths): A few months ago, in our local independent café/bar type place. They've got a bloke with an acoustic act on, Friday, early evening. A mix of standards and his own creations, you know the sort of thing. About twelve of us in.

Act (perched up on a high stool, guitar at rest on his knee): Right. That was 'Hey Jude', by the Beatles. of course. Now, how about some Smiths. What's your Favourite Smiths Song, anyone?'

Me (shouting out from a table in the corner): Reel Around the Fountain!'

Act 'Er- What's Your Second-Favourite Smiths Song?