Crinklybee

Cake-slices

Day Whatever Plus Twelve, and you set off across the green at the end of the road into the tree-lined suburban epicentre of yet another mini-heatwave. It’s a late start today- quarter to six- and sure enough the old bloke from number 43 is engaged in the consumption of the fortieth Benson and Hedges of the day at his clockwork-regular station on the green’s single black-metal bench, accompanied by his small, white, passively-smoking dog. It’s got to be- what?- twenty-eight degrees in the shade, but, alongside his habitual sour-faced expression, the old bloke is wearing the same nicotine-stained brown-and-white-checked suitjacket that perennially adorns his gaunt frame. Faced with this implacable neighbourly presence your choice is stark and binary: the short, diagonal, shady path past the bench (bringing the necessity of a terse exchange of grunted greetings), or the longer, curved, sun-blasted route around the paved perimeter of the green (in which case you can get away with a quick glance sideways and a raised-hand salute from thirty yards away). The latter option wins hands-down, as indeed it has done every time the choice has presented itself since Day One. You’re as much of a creature of habit as he is.

Off the main drag and heading down Woodsmoor Lane, passing a semi-detached residence where another socially-distant familial visit is reaching its concluding scene. A polo-shirted dad and his young flowery-dressed daughter half-obscured in the porch; their smartly-bloused visitor- the man’s sister?- backing off out of the driveway. ‘Bye-bye, Angela!’, shouts the girl, bravely, but there are tears welling up behind the voice. Her dad, mid-wave, rejoins with encouragement: ‘That’s right love- we’ll see Angela properly when the germ-germs have gone away’. The woman, a wan smile briefly playing across work-weary features, retreats into a black saloon car and exits, at 20 mph, stage right.

The dwellings along each side of the section of Woodsmoor Lane bordered by the junction with Egerton Road and the beginning of the railway station humpback are served by four wooden telegraph poles of standard height, spaced approximately forty yards apart. A multitude of thin black wires span out from their apexes, each one leading to the drainpipe-corner of an individual residence, and if you stand directly under a pole gazing upwards you will see how their pencil-lines, most of them straight and taut, the occasional one bent and drooped, dissect an imaginary circle of sky into unevenly-proportioned cake-slices. Picking a point at the first pole on which to anchor your revolving view, you carry out an itinerary of the wires attached: seventeen. The count at the successive poles varies, as may be expected, according to the amount of houses in the immediate vicinity of each: eleven, sixteen, then seventeen again; that outriding lowest figure accounted for by the intervention of a crossroads flanked by generously proportioned gardens. At the fourth and final pole, graffiti in black marker pen, scrawled by necessity vertically and upwards, along the curved brow of a slim grey-metal bracket which runs up the pole’s length: ‘Caz is 100% Fit’.

Heading towards the level crossing, past the stretch of terraced houses facing the austere stone wall which guards the grounds of the Grammar School from the vulgarities of The Outside. A spindly and jittery old man emerges from a front doorway, simultaneously climbing astride an even spindlier and more jittery bicycle. Pedal-wobbling towards you, his already-tenuous balance compromised by the necessity of retaining clasped in his right hand a large, plain, white, empty carrier-bag, he essays a cheery greeting: ‘How do!’. It’s a promising beginning, and you consider initiating a bout of social discourse which in the best-case scenario may lead to a robust but informed exchange of views on the timeliness or otherwise of the just-announced relaxation of the governmental rules concerning the gathering of up to six persons within the confines of residential gardens. No sooner however have you returned the opening compliment than the man has spirited himself away, past the Moorland Road junction and into the narrow tree-shadowed avenue heading due East. He might want to bedazzle you with his air of mystery, but you’ve been round this block a few times and you know precisely where he’s headed: off to the Co-op on the A6 for his tea, or you’re the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Onto cheery Egerton Road. Peering upwards in response to a sharp, rustling commotion overhead, you espy a sparring pair of middleweight pigeons, embarking on a championship bout, scheduled for twelve rounds of three minutes each, under Marquis of Queensbury Rules. An exchange of uncomplicated wing-to-wing combat ensues, which while falling short of the rarified tastes of the purist, holds more than adequate sporting drama to retain the interest of the passing amateur. An evenly-contested affair seems decent odds to go the full distance, until midway through Round Four the darker-winged pigeon fighting out of the left-hand corner unleashes an inelegant but devastating swirling right hook which sends his adversary scuttering backwards in mid-air into the outer branches of an adjacent tree, where he succumbs to a technical knock-out on a Count of Eight.

Heading back over the Davenport railway bridge, you cast a furtive glance across the now-shadow-spattered green and, seeing that the bloke with the checked brown suitjacket and the plain white dog has made his clockwork-regular evening departure from the scene, you take the short, straight, diagonal route home. You’re glad of the shade; we may have reached the summertime pigeon-fighting hour of dusk, but there’s some cruel heat left in the day. This bout could still go on a while, yet- and if it ends on a split-decision, you wouldn’t be surprised.

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.

Field Trip

Day Whatever plus four, and by the time you set out across the green at the end of your road the rush hour, or what counts for it nowadays, has abated. On the becalmed stretch of the main Bramhall Lane between the Garners Lane Junction and the Woodsmoor Lane turn-off, vehicles on the thoroughfare are outnumbered by items of litter on the pavement- to whit: a plastic Lucozade bottle (standard size, orange flavour); a triangular package, also of clear plastic construction, which formerly contained a sandwich purchased at the Co-op (wholemeal, tuna and cucumber), and an empty, half-squashed silver-sheen packet of Lambert and Butler cigarettes (message from Her Majesty’s Government in bold capital letters on the front- ‘Smoking Increases the Risk of Impotence’).

In the driveways of the semi-detached section of Woodsmoor Lane, the internal combustion engines of handsome saloon cars lie idle, while their owners wrap up another week of Working From Home (or maybe also Lying Idle) in the upstairs spare bedrooms. A navy blue mini-single-decker number 372 bus, making stately progress along an-already-usually-quiet residential byeway it now has entirely to itself, fades out of view to crest the station approach and loop round Moorland Road then back over the level crossing, reappearing not two minutes later to pass you on the near carriageway- its destination display now showing ‘Stockport Town Centre’. Its only occupant remains the driver, white-haired, world-weary, and sporting the international springtime uniform of his metier: checky short-sleeved shirt, duvet-material bodywarmer, crumpled baseball cap.

Along the return stretch of your own lone, scheduled route, every untended area is an explosion of dandelions: a 20/80 ratio between yellow flower-headed ones and their cousins (parents, children?)- you know, the ones with stems topped by cloudy Afrocuts of a million tiny white seeds each. At the wide-paved junction of Woodsmoor Lane and Egerton Road, you pause by a six-yard square of municipally-owned communal lawn and count, between both varieties, eighty-eight of them. Doubting if you’ve captured every one, you move along to a more advantageous viewing point, and undertake a thorough recount: One hundred and two. A third, more painstaking exploration, utilising the ‘divide the area up into small, manageable, imaginary squares’ technique recalled from Geography field trips, reveals fully One hundred-and-Twenty-four. It’s no wonder, perhaps, that you only got a Grade Four CSE in Geography, back there in 1984. To say nothing of a ‘U’ (it meant ‘Unclassified’, which is what they gave you when you had more or less filled in your name at the top of the paper then fallen fast asleep) for Mathematics.

The near-absence of engine noise, along with the continual presence of promenading householders, conversing in twos or speaking alone into their mobile phones, combine to present optimum conditions for eavesdropping. Chance snippets of overheard conversation invite you to build their full, lurid backstories:

‘Oh Josh- that’s her boyfriend. I know! Still, it was all in the- the spirit of things- you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah- it was brilliant. Bloody brilliant. I’m doing Prestbury now- 10K. No mate- I said Prestbury.’

‘What did you say to him then?’ ‘Say to him? I said nothing, Didn’t even react. Not worth it.
’
Reaching the end of Egerton Road, the speckled-headed cat can’t stop for his usual exchange of views on the day’s headlines, given that he is being benignly pursued across a spacious frontlawn by a brother-sister pairing of giggling infant-school-age children. ‘Ah, this one is a friendly one!’, exclaims the girl, while her companion, who has his back to you so you can’t tell whether the full elite sporting kit he is wearing reproduces the colours of Newcastle United or Juventus (you hope the former, but imagine, in this district, more likely the latter) attempts to catch him by the tail. The cat, showing no immediate desire to strike up an amiable acquaintance with either of them, slinks off tail-high into the sanctity of a rosebush. A shame, because his views on the Prime Minister’s Continuing Reluctance to Articulate a Coherent Exit Strategy would surely have been illuminating.

Onto the homeward stretch of Bramhall Lane now, and into the twilight of what is now a traffic-free post-post-rush-hour, you make a tactical diversion onto the wider left-hand pavement opposite the train station, and regret doing so, as you find yourself hemmed in by a socially-distancing-but-still-a-little-too-close-for-comfort hungry-half-dozen cluster awaiting permission to enter the Mayflower Chinese Takeaway and pick up, first-pre-ordered, first-served, their Friday night dinner. Slaloming head-down between them and onto the empty thoroughfare by the traffic lights, you sidestep a discarded empty supersize packet of Morrissons Deluxe Range ridged crisps (Braised Beef, Real Ale and Caramelised Onion Flavour). Offering a silent thanks (to whom- you’re not sure) for the continued availability of such first-world riches during these troubled times, you head over the pedestrian crossing for home. There may be no exit route mapped out yet, but we’ll get out the other side of this particular field-trip, one way or another. Got to tell ourselves as much, in any case.

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.

Everything is Going To Be All Right/ Trojan Horses

I've started a 'Lockdown Diary'. The intention is to chronicle the suburban everyday, as observed during my regular unchanging daily walk around the neighbourhood- during these strange times when absolutely nothing is happening at all (unless, of course you count the absolutely massive, epoch-defining thing happening in the background).

I've got some saved up, so the first four will come, today and tomorrow, as a pair of 'Double-A-sides'. Withforth and Forthwith, then:

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

Everything Is Going To Be All Right

Teatime on Day Whatever of lockdown- and you set out for the bracing government-sanctioned 60-minute circular walk around the neighbourhood which, now that you have joined the Working From Home Masses, has replaced the grinding stopstart hour (an hour and a half, on a bad day) of brain-numbing anticlockwise crawl along the M60 as the end of your workaday routine.

The route you’re taking today is the exact same one you’ve embarked on since Day One (whenever that was)- a fact that you’re grateful for as you cross the diagonal path over the green at the end of the road in a burst of Springtime sunlight which pierces half-blindingly through the towering trees. That much you’re used to- but today the Stockport climate has an additional trick up its sleeve, in the form of a brisk Easterly wind, and not just Easterly but, as that that nice young man Owain Jones will later inform us during his customary closing slot on the Regional Evening News, emanating from the North Sea coast off Finland.

Sure enough the cruel disconnect between the idyllic, almost Mediterranean appearance and the actually Nordic objective experience of the weather has been sufficient to comprehensively discombobulate a populace already battered into near-mental-submission by God-knows-how-many-days of 24 Hour Rolling Death Bulletins, as may be evidenced by the comically varying outfits chosen as fit for the purpose of a short suburban constitutional within the next 400 yards. These range from a skimpy white short-sleeved blouse with pair of flip-flops (twenty-something shop-girl chattering excitedly on mobile phone on Moorland Road), through an extravagantly patterned summer holiday shirt accompanied by unbuttoned suit-jacket, medium-weight beige slacks and faded genuine classic Adidas trainers (middle-aged male ex-discodancer on corner of Flowery Fields), up to and including a full-length double-quilted zipped-up-to-the-top black trenchcoat (Chinese female mature student or possible frontline healthworker, stepping up the pace to tackle head-down the punishing incline of Woodsmoor Station approach in the face of gusts reaching upwards of 80mph).

Judging yourself by comparison to be nothing less than optimally attired in a fetching combination of battered Decathlon running shoes, the Just-About-Smart-Enough-For-Working-From-Home brown denim trousers and a blue fleecy jumper, also from Decathlon, which has demonstrably seen better days, you descend the humpback road-bridge on the far side of Woodsmoor station and- in a departure from this evening’s published schedule- execute the sharp-right-then-immediate-left combination which will set you up for the longish stride up Norbury Avenue in the direction of the Co-op on the A6. Hiking up the thoroughfare, first on its left-hand pavement, eventually on its right, you pause outside of a selection of its more well-kept front-gardens, just long enough to take in the innocently charming detail within the photocopier-paper-sized children’s artworks, bay-window displayed as signs of solidarity with neighbours and passers-by alike in these troubled times. Amid the now-ubiquitous rainbows, a single yellow tulip, its crayon-scrawled caption in NHS Blue: ‘Everything Is Going to be All Right’.

Crossing the threshold of the Great Moor Co-Op (or as it rather grandly chooses to brand itself nowadays, ’Great Moor’s Co-op’), you remember- too late, again- why (whatever it’s called when it’s at home), this particular main-drag minimarket has fallen from personal favour, owing to the narrow-gauge minisculinity of its aisles- a feature which, while annoying but tolerable during peacetime, must surely be classified as a downright risk to public mortality during these- well, let’s coin a phrase and call them unprecedented times. It’s too late to turn back now though, and a fraught twenty minutes ensues, spent slaloming at close quarters past the protruding stomachs, knees and trolleys of variously-girthed all-comers, fourteen times up and down the preservatives aisle in vain pursuit of a cardboard six-box of Linda McCartney’s vegetarian sausages, for the love of Jesus Christ. You’re on the verge of giving up when it jumps out at you in plain sight, from behind the Birds Eye Potato Waffles.

Back outside on the main drag, you’re safely socially distanced once more from any representative of that suddenly lethal species- suburban humanity- but still a vegetable short of a full Monday dinner. So a further unscheduled stop is added to the itinerary, this time in the sparsely-populated-but-serviceable fresh produce aisle of a Shell Service station you’ve never even registered the existence of before today, where, sufficiently charmed by the exotic allure of a heap of chilled twopacks of pointed red peppers, you part with £3.60 in return for a fistful of them at a paycounter attended by a man dressed from head to foot like a Formula One slipstream tyre-changer . This final flourish to the evening’s in-home catering in hand, you return to the regular circuit, heading due West up Woodsmoor Lane, where the sight of the flashing red cross on the electric lights bookending the level crossing tells you that the evening’s walk is set to be interrupted most gratifyingly by a pause of up to ten minutes, awaiting the high-speed criss-crossing of two near-empty Northern Services, scheduled respectively to terminate at Hazel Grove (18:06) and Blackpool North (19:44).

On the home straight of cheery Egerton Road you exchange comradely nods with a handful of well-dressed early-evening promenaders evidently of no-fixed-destination, and engage in lengthy conversation with a black-dappled white cat who emerges from a winding drive of dilapidated gravel construction to miaow at you pointedly, quite possibly in doing so making perceptive reference to an opinion piece in today’s Daily Telegraph on the subject of Ministerial Failings in the Nationwide Provision of Personal Protective Equipment. Agreeing that the situation on the frontline is one to be deplored by all right-thinking citizens in this day and age, you go your separate ways- the cat to forage in the undergrowth for unsuspecting young specimens among the suddenly thriving local population of red-breasted robins, and yourself to stride the last hundred yards back over the railway line and back across the homeward diagonal path. Another day, before this is all over, you might try it the other way around. God knows, the touch of variety might be welcome enough, for the two of you.

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

Trojan Horses

Day Whatever plus one, and you do yourself the favour of calling it a Working From Home day half an hour early, because after all, who the hell is watching, and set out across the green at the end of the road in the pursuance of the exact same teatime walk you’ve been doing ever since Day One (whenever that was).

The sun is beating down again, this time unaccompanied by yesterday’s biting Easterly wind emanating from off the Finnish North Sea coast, a balmy state of affairs which the local populace- or at least those few of them who have chosen this particular close-of-play hour for their daily government-sanctioned excursion into the near outdoors- have perceived as their cue to take yesterday’s brazen April flip-flop/skimpy disco-shirt wearers, and raise them by the factor of one further removed layer of clothing. A man bent over double in his front-garden on Bramhall Lane is properly going for broke, busily shovelling topsoil into a wheelbarrow while wearing nothing other than a pair of khaki shorts. If slow-motion suburb-wide strip-poker becomes another communal lockdown thing, like Thursday-night clapping for the NHS or punishing the neighbours with dirty looks for excessive visits to the Spar shop for milk, then your money’s on him- either to go home with the kitty, or to get arrested for indecent exposure.

The people of Woodsmoor Lane have taken to leaving plastic storage boxes on their front garden walls, filled with a selection of the no-longer wanted contents of their bookcases and accompanied by cardboard-felt-tip-penned messages encouraging you (as well as I suppose, other passers-by) to ‘Help Yourself’. Pausing outside a bungalow, you’re tempted by a dog-eared circa-1973 edition of the Observers Book of Postage Stamps, but think better of stuffing it in the inside pocket of your greatcoat- your own bookcases being full enough already of no-longer- wanted contents, quite aside from topical considerations around the potential for deadly diseases (or one particular deadly disease, at least) to gain entry into the familial home within the folds of such tiny, papery, randomly generous Trojan Horses.

Up at the Level Crossing, the wind- what little there is of it today- has dropped away to a nothingness, so the castaway black bin liner which you watched yesterday becoming hopelessly entangled by the gales in the antlers of the TV aerial on the end-house before the barrier and subsequently bucking bronco-like in a vain attempt to escape, in doing so risking yanking the broadcasting apparatus from its chimney-stack mooring, now simply hangs there on the side of its adopted home, limp and drained of whatever powers it once possessed, like a forgotten episode of Countdown . The regrettable decline in the quality of the televisual spectacle forces you to seek ways of making your own entertainment, you know, like in the olden days, and for the return leg of your circular walk (which you will really need to stop calling circular because strictly speaking it’s nothing of the sort, but instead a sort of elongated and wobbly figure of eight) you become fascinated by the myriad makes and designs of the neighbourhood’s gas, water, electricity and telephone manhole covers.

So much so, indeed, that you end up adding an extra lap of the Davenport Park estate to the end of your route, just so you can check whether their particular ancient gutterside contraptions bear, like most of those up Woodsmoor Lane, the castiron-moulded signature of ‘John Needham and Sons, Stockport, England’ or , like their cousins in adjoining Egerton Road, that of ‘Grundy’s of Tyledsey, Lancs’. It turns out they emanate from neither of these stables, but from –well, perhaps that is a topic for another walk, on another day. We could all- like the near-naked wheelbarrow-digger of Bramhall Lane- risk getting ahead of ourselves here, and that would not be about to end well. Funny times we’re living in these, and you really can’t be too careful.