Crinklybee

Quarterback

Day Whatever plus ten, and as you set out across the green at the end of the road you’re especially pleased for the anticipation of an hour of uneventful suburban routine, at the close of a so-called working day which had not been going too badly considering- until you remembered midway through the afternoon that it was Tuesday, and therefore the day when you do a week’s worth of shopping for the self-isolating pensioner who lives in the house behind. Which was all going swimmingly, until you got to the car-park of Stockport Sainsbury’s, and flummoxed beyond reason by the task of remembering all of the items now deemed necessary for an expedition to the supermarket (money; shopping list set out in order corresponding to this particular branch of Sainsburys’ labyrnithine ‘snakes-and-ladders’ style one-way system; bags for life; smaller bags made out of netting, for the storage of fresh vegetables; spare, desanitised pound coin for the trolley; detergent-infused wet wipes for the steering wheel/trolley handle; miniature plastic bottle of desanitising liquid for the hands), you manage to lock your carkeys in the ignition. Leaning against the bonnet in the sunshine, waiting for Frankie to jog the two miles into town with the spare ones, you console yourself with the pleasingly retro nature of your self-imposed misadventure, achievable as it is only by car-owners persisting with clunky hatchbacks fitted with old-school mechanical door-entry technology, as opposed to these idiot-proof non-touch mini-laser-guns you see people swishing about nowadays. You’re an idiot, in other words, and proud of it.

Her Majesty’s government having now decreed ‘unlimited exercise’, the Council have unlocked the gates to the tennis courts across from Davenport station, allowing a half-dozen of the neighbourhood’s residents to indulge in post-working-from-home singles matches. The haggard-looking bloke walking past with his teenage son, half-emptied can of Tennents Super Strength in hand, doesn’t look like he’s going to take up such ostentatiously wholesome family pursuits any time soon. As you step back into the driveway of the Mormon church to let the chattering pair by at the socially-accepted social-distance, the bloke acknowledges the gesture: ‘Thanks, mate’. Such common courtesy is easy enough- but for the rarity with which it is proffered by the more outwardly respectable tennis-set who commonly frequent this particular stretch of leafy pavement, you would suppose it was as tricky to execute as an overhead forehand smash.

Over the Woodsmoor station humpback, and the exertion of overcoming the incline has left you sweltering in the persistent early-evening heat, so you take a diversion off the scheduled route into the quadrangle of Great Moor Park and plonk yourself down on the same bench where, in similarly drained circumstances this time last week, you partook of a bottle of fizzy mineral water and a packet of Hula-Hoops just purchased from the Co-op. This time the twenty minutes’ worth of shade afforded by the towering trees will need to be enough to revive you. Off to your left in an adjoining paddock, the only other inhabitant of the park- a shortish middle-aged bloke in expensive-looking grey tracksuit-and-hoodie combination- amuses himself by chucking an American football, quarterback-style, in the direction of the overgrown grass-borders forty yards distant. Standing back to appraise the accuracy of the effort, he looks pleased enough- then trudges off to first retrieve the eye-shaped projectile, then send it back, opposing-quarterback-style, whence it came. You reflect that as sole ball-pursuits go, it doesn’t look the most self-absorbing option- then chastise yourself inwardly- after all, we’re in this together and too far gone by this stage to start questioning each other’s leisure choices, surely to goodness. Also it could have been worse- he could have been playing golf.

On the corner of Egerton Road and the Crescent, you stoop down to greet a grey and brown-patterned cat which is emerging from a gravelled driveway. Startled by your too-enthusiastic attempt to engage it in conversation on the day’s topical developments, the animal darts into the road, where it escapes by the breadth of its handsome whiskers being flattened by a passing Toyota Corolla. Further spooked, it sprints diagonally across the lawn of the garden opposite then plunges headlong into a bush. Its views on the Continuing Stand-off Between Ministers and Teaching Unions on the Timetable for Summer-Term Return to School remain unrecorded.

Deciding you’ve strewn enough neighbourhood havoc for one afternoon, you take the right onto Bramhall Lane and head back home over the railway bridge. The tennis courts are now deserted, affording an uninterrupted view over Cale Green park and into another astonishing South Manchester May-time sunset. We may be starting to come out of the other side, but it’s going to take a while yet, and in the meantime, we’ll take our comforts and joys where we find them: a crimson evening sky; a sliced backhand return past the wife; a forty-yard overarm release to an imaginary running back; or a steady supply of cornershop-issue lager at a neat 9.5% proof. All in this together- but each to our own.

Green Shoots

Day Whatever Plus Eight, and that nice young man on the BBC Owain Jones has warned of that potato-grower’s nightmare, A Late Frost. You’re a potato grower yourself, so you should really be taking a diversion off the scheduled route, and heading right off Bramhall Lane and down the side of the closed-down Jolly Sailor pub to the allotment, there to lay over your just-emerging King Edwards a length of fleece, or more likely (since you’re pretty certain there’s no actual fleece in your shed, there never has been) a cobbled-together substitute protective layering featuring a tattered old blanket you reckon won’t be missed from out of the spare room, and selected pages from the Review Section of last Friday’s Manchester Guardian. However, you’re a creature of habit- at least as far as weekday teatimes are concerned, during this present business- so you take a left.

The residents of Woodsmoor Lane either didn’t tune into last night’s televised address by the Prime Minister during which he formally commanded the nation to ‘Get Back to Work, if you possibly can’- or they did tune in, but not until the PM had got to the later part of the address, during which he solemnly instructed the populace to ‘Stay at Home, if at all possible’. The driveways of the semi-detached section remain full of the vans of the self-employed, their white front bonnets covered in five weeks’ worth of accumulated front-garden-blossom. The exception is a black Ford Escort van emblazoned with the logo ‘Commando Joe’s Boot Camps Ltd’- which has, for reasons apparent only to Commando Joe, reversed round the corner from its habitual station on Egerton Road, to take up residence at a not-obviously-more-sought-after location not ten yards distant.

Down towards the station, you’re overtaken by a yellow-streaked ambulance, travelling at 15mph but with its sirens blaring. Reaching the centre of your ‘Figure of Eight’ route, it takes the left angle towards the Level Crossing, turning its sirens off as it does so. Ten seconds later it passes you in the opposite direction, again at a snail’s pace, but with the sirens on again. On out of sight towards Bramhall Lane, the speed picks up, and the sirens go back off- then, just audible in the distance now, back on. The overall effect is to jar the senses into heightened awareness, and you reflect that if the government now wants the nation no longer to ‘Stay At Home’ but instead to ‘Stay Alert’ (whatever that means), then sending the NHS emergency fleet careering in slow-motion around the residential avenues during its occasional spare moments in this disconcertingly haphazard manner may be precisely the place to start. You certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

On the terraced section of Moorlands Road, a black-and-white cat with a pointed nose emerges from behind a skip full of rubble, and looks ready to engage you in conversation on the topics of the day. No sooner however have you begun to outline a provisional personal perspective vis-a-vis the challenges facing our elected representatives with respect to balancing the competing imperatives concerning the Preservation of Public Health and the Revivication of the Economy, than it swiftly turns about heel and slinks off up a ginnel. Left there muttering to yourself like some sort of street-eccentric, you carry on regardless; the audience for your considered views now consisting of a discarded bright-orange Sainsburys Bag For Life, which presently decides it’s also heard enough, and takes the opportunity to be lifted off the ground by a handy gust of breeze and flutter off at knee-height in the general direction of the Grammar School.

The driveways of cheery Egerton Road are festooned in Union-Jack-patterned bunting, and guarded by brown recycling bins brimming with empty bottles: the residue of Friday’s socially-distant 75th Anniversary of VE Day Celebrations. A man with a bushy ginger beard, oblivious to the festive surroundings, is hunkered down at the front of his broken-down transit van, hammering at its front axle with a hammer while cursing under his breath. You think of stopping to offer some help, but decide you’ve done enough for the War Effort for now, even if the last part of your nominally 9-5 working day involved you turning off the computer, lying flat on the carpet in the spare room, and partaking of an impromptu Siesta, like some sort of amateur cartoon Spaniard. The Green Shoots of Economic Recovery- you remark as you head off for home, to no-one in particular- would be well advised to wait a couple of days to show themselves above ground, at least in this neighbourhood. Delay sowing all but the most hardy seeds until the danger of frost has passed, goes the gardening wisdom. There’s a lesson in that, for us all.

End It With A Kiss

Day Whatever Plus Seven, and with the mini-heatwave that has been cracking the flags since lunchtime showing no signs of abating, you’re immediately thankful for the shade afforded by the lofty trees lining the green at the end of the road. Perhaps these sudden, intense bursts of sunlight will be what Spring 2020 becomes remembered for- or was there another thing? Oh yes, that.

The wide open boulevard of Bramhall Lane is intersected at intervals by gravelled driveways leading to grand, ancient family dwellings long-since converted into privately-run care homes affording Genteel Retirement Accommodation for the Moneyed Classes. The exquisitely-tended-but-featureless lawn outside of the first one after Davenport Station is patrolled by a single black crow, who, taking exception to encroachment onto his manor by a grey squirrel, hastens it away with a flap of the wings. The bush-tailed rodent slinks off to carry out a close inspection of the perimeter of the eerily silent building- as if searching for signs of life. He might not be looking in the right place.

Down Woodsmoor Lane, a crow-black Four-by-Four containing a middle-aged-man in a smart white shirt beeps a cheery post-socially-distant-visit farewell to a beige-curtained semi-detached house containing within its porch an older, frailer man in a Marks and Spencers cardigan (also beige). As the vehicle heads out of sight at the main-road turn-off, the older man dallies a while in his square-fronted goldfish bowl, picks something or other up (A letter? A vase?), puts it down again- then, without any obvious enthusiasm, retreats into his dwelling-place.

Over the Woodsmoor Station humpback. There are Wednesday Night Provisions to buy, so a dalliance with the wasp-thin aisles of Great Moor’s Co-Op is the order of the late afternoon. The left-hand pavement of Delamere Road, which forms part of the pedestrian route to the Hospital, is decorated by hopscotch courts drawn in pastel-coloured chalk. Between two of them, using the same tools, a child’s written message, underlined with a heart-shape: ‘Keep Safe’.

In front of numbers 21 and 23 Delamere Avenue, two large women in tent-like floral dresses, either of whom would stand a more than sporting chance in a Stockport-Wide Biffa Bacon’s Mother Lookalike Competition (now there would be a Zoom Event worth tuning into), spread themselves liberally across cheap-looking plastic garden furniture to converse in voluble comfort over the socially-distanced gap separating their adjoining pave-cracked driveways. The subject is a neighbourhood controversy being played out over Social Media (Facebook? WhatsApp? Snapchat?) and the woman in number 23 is sure of the right course of action: ‘Next time she puts something on- just reply with ‘thanks’, and, then end it with a kiss. That’s all.’

Queuing outside, and then again inside, the Co-op. Avoiding eye-contact with the haggard-looking professional local drinker behind you, who looks ready to invade your government-authorised two metres of personal space, whether to tell you a joke or poke you in the eye, you’re not sure. Taking a more-than-usually avid interest instead in the headlines on the newspaper rack to the right of the tills. On the front page of the weekly Stockport Express: ‘£2.5 MILLION BLACK HOLE IN TOWN HALL VIRUS RESPONSE’. Feeling suddenly peckish, you skip out of the queue and the wrong way up the one-way-system into the central aisle housing the crisps, where you pick up a multipack of Hulahoops, for £1.25.

Back across the maindrag and, calculating you have plenty time to spare before meeting Frankie for a two-man kickabout in the fields behind the Jolly Sailor, you sit down on a park bench in near-deserted Great Moor Park, unsure as you do so whether such sedentary recreation, however fleeting, may count as that new thing: ‘flouting’. If it does, then you’re not the only one- as four benches away a pair of black-clad teenage girls (Goths- do they still have those, nowadays?) chat together. Presently, the taller of them gets up to stand under the branches of a nearby tree and strike a moody pose, to be captured by the shorter one on her mobile phone camera, portrait-style.

Over the level crossing, and you’re twenty yards along Egerton Road heading for home, when you realise that the rendezvous for that kickabout was not quarter-past-seven like you’ve been thinking all the way round- but quarter-to. You’re late already- but also thoroughly knackered now, the weight of the Co-op shopping bag dragging your arms down to the ankles in the still-insistent heat. Hunkering down on the kerb lining the gravel-path of another carehome driveway, you get out the bottle of Buxton water you’d pencilled in for half-time, and glug half of it down in three quick swallows, following them up with a second packet of Hula-Hoops, for the energy. Hauling yourself back to your knees, you feel like a new man- whether or not one ready to trap a ball on the half-turn, take a look up, and strike it unerringly into the top left hand corner of the goal, past the outstretched arms of a helpless ‘keeper, you’re not sure, but you’ll have a go. You get out the ‘phone and text Frankie: ‘Five Mins Away. Be Right With You: X’

Siren

Day Whatever Plus Six, and, managing to squeeze through the Garners Lane Joggers Passage without undue contact with lycra-clad humanity, you emerge onto the wide, leaf-lined, European-style boulevard of Bramhall Lane into the bright sunlight of another identikit suburban spring teatime. The double-decker number 378 bus making stately progress on the near-side carriageway is empty of passengers, and most likely will remain so as far as Wilmslow, if the past-What is it now, 6 weeks?- is anything to go by. The unsung, underutilised frontline worker at the steering wheel, who is sticking to the advertised timetable come what may, stalls for a good two minutes at the bus-stop opposite the closed-down Jolly Sailor pub, more in hope than expectation. When no rush-hour custom is forthcoming, the vehicle pulls out laboriously into the still-vacant thoroughfare, and wheezes off in the direction of the Woodsmoor roundabout, billowing thick black exhaust fumes into the newly unpolluted air.

Down Woodsmoor Lane, and you’re starting to recognise- or starting to think you recognise- some of the regular pavement-pounding teatime punters. The serious-looking, thick-set bloke in the crumpled white shirt and black-framed glasses for instance, who you’ve got down as a consultant at nearby Stepping Hill Hospital, on his way home from another punishing double shift. Or the wiry, track-suit-sporting fellow on the racing bike, who you definitely know from somewhere, until you realise he’s actually a cross between your Cousin Neil (you know, the one who drives lorries full of fertiliser in County Durham) and the ex-Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs.

At the far-end of the Woodsmoor Railway Station humpback, a miniature Royal-blue-backed roadsign contains the cartoon figures of a pedestrian and a bicycle, an oversized capital ‘H', and the wording: ‘Stepping Hill Hospital – 0.25 miles’. You head the way it’s pointing, then as the towers of the infirmary incinerator hove into view across the deserted playground of Great Moor Park, take the left up Norwood Road towards the Co-Op, where- this being Friday and therefore the start of the weekend, whatever a weekend is nowadays- you’ve given yourself permission to brave the bobsleigh-narrow aisles, but only for the time it will take you to locate the stock of own-brand Italian lager and avail yourself of two 660ml bottles, at £4 the pair. Forty seconds later you’re out of there with four of them, inside a Manchester City-coloured carrier bag of tenpence strength.

Back onto the main, Roman-straight drag, the carrier bag jangling to your step in the near-silence. Just for a moment, this stretch of the A6 is devoid of traffic as far as you can make out either way- until, the sight preceded by the sound of its wailing siren, a banana-yellow-striped Emergency Ambulance races up the hill and speeds past you towards the main entrance to the A & E, just out of sight. That’s become such a common occurrence you almost don’t notice. The same as yesterday morning on your shorter, pre-work walk, when, lost in reverie by the Esso Garage on the corner of Kennerley Road, you looked up to find yourself gaping at a coffin- then the bouquet adorning it, the hearse it was inside of, and- finally, the twenty-car cortege of black-clad mourners in its wake, as the entire procession snaked its way past the petrol pumps, and onto nearby Stockport Crematorium. Another one, biting the dust.

Over the level-crossing, up to the centre-point of your figure-of-eight route. A hundred tiny white blossom-fragments erupt at the touch of the breeze into sudden movement across the tarmac, scattering in concentric circles, like a village playground-full of angelic schoolchildren spied from distant heights. On the opposite side of the road, the thickly-built man in faded bootcut jeans posting a letter looks like a cross between the ex-Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney and a steak and kidney pudding. The two of you set off in the same direction along opposite pavements, and there is real and present danger you’re going to be stuck in precise marching formation together from here until the Egerton Road turn-off- until, in an unspoken but mutually understood gesture of intimacy-avoidance, he ups his pace ever-so-slightly and you slow yours down, pausing furthermore to stoop to one knee- ostensibly to tie your shoelaces, but actually to examine in minute detail the design of the manhole cover at your feet.

Satisfying yourself that you are in the presence of perhaps the immediate postcode district’s finest example of the classic, Stanton and Staveley ‘Centurion 600’ Model (large, charcoal grey, square-shaped with rounded corners, diagonal hinge, prominently texture-patterned with raised grid of alternately-upside-down ‘V’ shapes, approximate vintage 1950s), you head right along Egerton Road, and for home. The white cat with the black-speckled head is once again absent, which is a shame, as you would put good money on him sharing your close interest in the neighbourhood’s street furniture, and would value his opinion on the ascetic qualities of the Stanton and Staveley, as against those of (say) the AC Woodrow and Co (London) specimens to be found outside the Chinese takeaway opposite the train station (slightly smaller in overall square shape, more rounded corners, spaced-out grid pattern, double ‘letterbox’ style openings to one diagonal half of its two-part construction, presumably to facilitate lifting by patent tool or standard ‘jemmy’). It can wait though- it’s a long old haul this one, as is becoming abundantly clearer by the day- and there will be more than enough time to analyse how we got here, before we even start to plot the way out the other side.