Among The Beautiful People

Eagle-eyed readers may have noted that I ended my last ramble in a deli.  "That's a bit odd," you may have thought.  "A small village with its own delicatessen?"

Thing is, Chelford is slap bang in the middle of the "Golden Triangle".  Bounded by Macclesfield, Winsford and Knutsford, this is the premier region of the North West for the idle rich.  This is footballer territory, self-made millionaire land, home to Coronation Street actors and entrepreneurs.  It's a place where money is the most important topical conversation - who's got it, who hasn't, and what it's being spent on.

The deli was a fine example of a place for people to spend money on stuff they didn't really need, like their wallet was too heavy and they needed to empty out a couple of twenties somehow.  Jars of mysterious oils.  Boxes of delicate chocolates.  Foreign breads "baked to order".  Bags of "kindling" for £3.50, artfully tied up and designed to be displayed rather than burnt.  The proprietress - who I thought had sneered at me as I took my seat, until I realised she was French and therefore couldn't help it - was showing a WAG her new Christmas stock.  The husband looked perfectly normal, ordinary in fact, tapping on his iPhone, but the wife's hair was too white-blonde, her heels were too high, her tits were too big.

I paid up for my sandwich and tea.  It was chicken and pesto, so I wanted something a little minty to take the taste away; there were tins at the checkout but they were £2.50 for a tiny box so I veered away sharpish.  I ended up buying a packet of Softmints on the way back to the station.

Alderley Edge is the glistening jewel of the Golden Triangle, its Fort Knox.  Alderley Edge is full of nouveau riche, tans and necklaces and short skirts and tight trousers.  Alderley Edge is restaurants and estate agents and nightclubs; Alderley Edge got a reality show on MTV about its glowing residents; Alderley Edge was the home of the Beckhams when they were only semi-legendary.

Given all this, I expected its station to be beautiful and scenic.  I forgot that people from Alderley Edge don't take public transport.

The pre-formed concrete awnings that were unloved.  The blocky footbridge.  The closed ticket office.  It was scruffy and uncared for.  The land around it had been sold off for redevelopment, leaving it hemmed in by flats and shops.

The presence of a station probably adds 5% to the house prices, but no-one uses it.  There's nowhere to park your Jag for starters, and everyone knows that cabbing it is infinitely preferable.

I trekked up to the road, the only person to alight, and got my sign picture.

It was laid out in front of me: the village hub.  Like Hollyoaks, but not as common; you wouldn't get far with a Scouse accent here.

I turned away.  I didn't want to wander round the glitzy village centre with my sweaty, in need of a cut hair, and my grey anorak, and my cheap fifteen quid backpack.  I'd lower the tone.

Instead I headed for the Wilmslow Road.  I found a gem out there - Aldeli; another delicatessen, yes, but housed in a giant 1950s glass building.  It looked like it had once been a car showroom - there was a Texaco garage right next door - but it looked like an alien spacecraft, landing on the Cheshire Plain to deliver Klaatu on his peace mission.  It was brilliant, and if I hadn't stuffed myself already in Chelford, I'd have gone straight in.

There were more dining places as I carried on out of town; a shuttered up pub next to a restaurant/hotel next to a luxury dinner experience.  I'm always baffled by these out of town nightclubs that footballers seem to frequent; if you're earning £30,000 a week, I suppose you don't mind paying for a taxi to get you there and back, but what about everyone else?  And they always look awful; terrible music and overzealous bouncers and expensive drinks.  I suppose that you're going there to try and hook up, or to be seen with the beautiful people.  You're not there for a good night out.

A bypass took away most of the traffic between Wilmslow and Alderley Edge a few years ago, so there's now an underused dual carriageway connecting the towns.  Lining the road are the kind of expensive villas bought by people who want the postcode but can't afford the really good houses.

I passed Phillip Alexander, bespoke tailor (two branches: one in Wilmslow and one in Saville Row, which tells you all you need to know about the area) and arrived in the town properly.  I'd prepared for the visit by reading Miranda Sawyer's wonderful Park and Ride: Adventures in Suburbia.  She grew up in the area in the Seventies and Eighties, and paints a vivid picture of the town and its pretensions.  At one point, it even had its own credit card, the Wilmslow Card.

Sawyer's book was published in 1999, and even then she was shocked by its relentless upscale climb, with a bistro in the sports shop and an empty store by the old cinema turned into a gastropub.  I'd love to know what she thinks of it now, because as far as I could see, there was nothing but eateries, night clubs and pubs.  I don't know what the residents of Wilmslow do when they run out of Cif.  There was a department store, Hoopers, which has only four branches nationwide: Torquay, Harrogate, Tunbridge Wells and Wilmslow, and so I didn't dare go in because I was afraid they'd smell my working class origins and have me gutted for the pate in the restaurant.

The only other kind of business in Wilmslow was home interiors.  There were furniture shops and lighting shops and designer tile stores and so, so many kitchen shops.  How many kitchens do people need?  Even the most luxurious mansion usually has only one kitchen.  You don't have en-suite ovens, or loft conversions so you have more room for a walk-in larder.  There must be people who change their kitchen on a semi-annual basis, because I can't work out how all these firms can survive otherwise.  I guess if they get one person to pay £300,000 for new taps then that pays their mortgage for a year and they don't need any other clients.

I will concede that Wilmslow seemed like a very nice town, and it was certainly pleasing to find one corner of the country where there weren't boarded up shop fronts and Cash Converters.  It should be noted that the local MP is George Osborne; these two facts may be related.  I wouldn't want to live here - I couldn't afford to live here - because even though it was busy and thriving there was a certain death behind the eyes.  People spending money without joy.  Wilmslow felt like a weirdly upscale ghost town, where the same figures shuffled from one store to a restaurant to a pub and then on again, repeating the cycle, doomed to go round and round without ever really enjoying themselves.  I felt that Wilmslow would be best as I'd experienced it, as a day visitor, passing through and thinking it was decent enough before going home; it seemed like a very small world to live in.

The influx of day trippers probably explained why Wilmslow station was in a much better state than Alderley Edge.  It was neat and well kept - Northern Rail had clearly thrown some money at it quite recently.  I headed up to the platform to wait for the Manchester-bound train, passing a woman who dripped fabulous en route, conducting a heated conversation on her smartphone beneath a mighty hairstyle.

Up top, there were four well appointed platforms, one of which was surprisingly busy.  There was what looked like a group of outdoor-bound students, some well-to-do couples.  They were waiting for the Virgin train to London, which pauses here on the way from Manchester.  Most importantly, as far as I was concerned, there was TV's Les Dennis.

I actually have a sneaking fondness for Les Dennis.  He's the kind of old style trouper we don't seem to have any more - king of the Saturday night variety show, and easily the best host Family Fortunes has ever had (yes, even better than Bob).  His breakdown on Celebrity Big Brother and his self-parodic appearance on Extras just added to the appeal.  Plus it's hard not to like someone who emerged alive from the wreckage of Amanda Holden.  He was keeping his distance from a man who was - let's just say "merry", shall we? - and who was shouting what a great guy Les was.  Which he is, but I'm sure he'd have preferred to be anonymous.  I certainly didn't attract his attention, taking a photo from the opposite track while looking the other way.  Which sounds creepy, now that I think about it.

And that's why I will never be comfortable in the world of the rich and famous.  I couldn't wait for the train to arrive and take me back to where people were normal and ordinary and dull.  Just like me.

Adventures in Space and Time

It's a curiously satisfying word, Sandbach.  Try saying it out loud.  Sandbach.  The short "a" in sand, the soft "ch" at the end.  There's something almost Welsh about it.

While the town of Sandbach is a pretty medieval market town, complete with a Saxon cross and tiny squares, the station is flung out on the A533, almost out of town.  If it was being built today, this would be a park and ride station, but back in Victorian times it was simply a case of sticking a station wherever the line happened to pass by.

It's an ugly 1960s building that's been built mainly for the convenience of the staff than the passengers.  Half of the building is devoted to Network Rail accommodation, with misted out windows, while the ticket office has the kind of opening hours that can only be divined through consultation of the runes.  Indeed, I skipped passing through it altogether, getting into the station through a side gate.

There must have been problems on the line during the rush hour that were only now settling down.  The fast train to Manchester had been delayed by ten minutes, and a GBRf freight train was being held at the side platform to let the passenger services by.  It clicked and grunted impatiently, dying to plough onwards, like a bull in its pen.

Fortunately the fast train just skipped the smallest stations; it still called at my next stop, Holmes Chapel.

The buildings here were even shabbier than at Sandbach, barely more than prefabs.  The blue and white Northern Rail branding gave them a mock-Tudor appearance, even more pointless stuck on a box by the side of a train track.

I walked up and over the railway bridge behind a woman with a pink rolly suitcase.  She wasn't walking very fast, and because I kept stopping to take pictures, I never actually overtook her.  I think it started to make her nervous, because finally she stopped on the street corner and fiddled with her case until I passed.

I like the clarification on that sign that it's Furniture FOR HOMES, just in case you was trying to buy an oak four poster for your hamster.

I decided to take the more direct route to my next station, Goostrey, which meant leaving Holmes Chapel and walking down an industrial road.  Ordnance Survey had this area marked as Works, but it was clearly in need of updating.  One set of factories on the map was now being turned into a housing estate, with a new roundabout for access and scaffolding poking over the top of advertising boards.  The others had been joined by small red office buildings for tiny businesses.  Where the factories had ceased to be useful they'd been obliterated, ready for redevelopment into more houses.

That little expanse of bare concrete was still signposted as Royal Mail.  [NOTE TO SELF: insert News Quiz-esque witty satirical comment about the destruction of the postal service here].

After a while the industry stopped as well, and past a couple of houses that were very keen to tell you they were on a Private Road, I was out on a pavement-free country route.  It was a national speed limit area so there was a constant burr of fast moving traffic, but the grass verge was generous and not too overgrown so I didn't have to risk walking in the road.  There were a couple of hairy moments as I swung round chevron signs just as a truck appeared round the corner but beyond that the only danger was soggy socks from the dewy grass.

On my left the Twemlow Viaduct suddenly appeared, 30 metre high brick arches that carried the railway over the river Dane.  Down on the ground this epic piece of engineering seemed completely unnecessary - I could probably have jumped the river myself with a decent running start - but it underlined the Victorian attitude to railway building.  They could have had the railway come down into the valley, then a little bridge, but it was better for the trains if a huge viaduct was simply built across the whole thing, so they did that.  Always ambitious.

I bet Her Majesty was deeply touched by that beautiful, heartfelt tribute to her Jubilee year.

I skirted the edge of the village, passing sodden fields churned up by tractors and trees stripped bare of leaves and fruit.  Occasionally the road would be shaded completely, and out of the morning sun, I felt the sudden chill of November sneaking through.

I turned left by a rusting red telephone box for the last half mile to Goostrey station.  For a while it was just more late Autumn English countryside, then a vision of the future rose up out of the trees.

The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank is still the third largest movable radio telescope in the world; it was number one when it was built.  I loved space exploration as a child and so just the name Jodrell Bank carries with it an air of mystique, of probing the unknown and the unknowable (it's also a comedy euphemism for masturbation - another reason to cherish it).  Its position out here in the Cheshire countryside, right by the railway line, speaks of a very practical, unglamorous attitude to space and exploration.  Jodrell Bank exists in the same canon as Doctor Who and Quatermass and 2000 AD; fantastical stories of science fiction that exist in the mundane.  Only the British would create a tv show about a cantankerous pacifist in a time traveling call box that didn't work properly; only the British would take its window to the stars and stick it in the parish of Lower Withington.  We always keep one foot on the ground, even as we look up at the heavens.

The telescope remained a companion to me as I progressed.  A couple of healthy looking women in lycra jogged past, carrying in a conversation even as they burned up the calories, and then Goostrey station was there, crouched under a mound of a railway bridge.

Goostrey looked like it hadn't been touched in years, which surprised me.  No starry murals?  No glow in the dark moon transfers?  Not even an ALF saying Alight here for Jodrell Bank?  There was a bit of a car park, but nothing advertising its proximity to the telescopes.  In fact, there was still a British Rail sign, right above a British Telecom phone box, which made me wonder if I was experiencing a time slip back to the 1980s and a Tripod was going to come crashing over the treetops.

Still, it was prettier than the previous stations, with the air of a country halt about it.  The building was firmly locked and padlocked: a neat sign on the door said If you require access to this room, please contact any of the following numbers for the combination, and then a list of people from the Friends of Goostrey Station.  I was tempted to call up and say "I just fancy having a nose - what's the combination?" but I didn't.  In fact, I struggled to think of what you would want access to the room for - there was a shelter on the platform, so if it was raining, you was safe.  Perhaps you can hire it for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

It was just a brief little skip to my next station, Chelford.  It's a bit in the middle of nowhere, Chelford, so I'd pencilled it in as a rest stop, rather than walking on to the next stop.  Plus it was lunchtime, and my stomach was starting to rumble.

I left the 1980s brick building and went in search of somewhere to eat.  There was a butchers, and a branch of the NatWest; a man had fallen down outside the greengrocers and a small crowd was gathered to attend to him.  I'm afraid I didn't stop to help.  I could hear someone was already on the phone to the ambulance, and there was a woman on her knees attending to him, and a couple of people who were just watching.  I didn't have anything to contribute; I got a First Aid badge in the Cubs, but that was twenty odd years ago - I'd probably break his hip as I tried to manhandle him into the recovery position ("yes, I'm positive you're meant to have your left foot behind your ear").  It didn't stop me from feeling guilty for the rest of the afternoon.

I passed Chelford Farm Supplies, which seemed to cater more for horse riders looking for tackle and Barbour jackets than pig feed, and then wandered out towards the Egerton Arms, on the edge of the village.  I just fancied a pint and a sandwich, but it was a gastropub, with the emphasis more heavily on the "gastro" part.  Every table had a long menu and knives and forks, and it was buzzing with customers and waitresses.

Instead I slipped next door, to Jones Deli, where I found a whitewashed table by the window and ordered a chicken and pesto sandwich and tea for one.  Yes, that's right; I passed up alcohol in favour of tea.  I must be losing my touch.