Downtown

It's a new year, but some things never change.  I'm still arsing around on trains.  In this case, it was a real repeat run, as I returned to East Didsbury.  I first visited here in - blimey - 2013, and it was all very familiar.  Still a blank empty station, made even more maudlin with a sheen of January rain.  There was a slight excitement on exiting in the form of a new ticket machine, a sleek slab of glass touch screen tech:

Otherwise it was another drab Manchester railway station.  I was here to collect a stream of tram stops: the Didsbury line, stretching down into the posh south of the city.  Five years ago I'd got the tram out and then taken the train; this time I'd done it the other way round, as part of my commitment to supplying new and innovative content at all times. 

I knew the Metrolink stop was vaguely north of the station, but there weren't any signs pointing it out.  I mean, why would you?  TfGM really, really hate signs.  Information is for losers.  I set off across the busy stream of traffic, or rather, around the traffic.  Getting across meant a series of staggered pelican crossings, which first deposited me on the centre of the roundabout.  As roundabouts go, it was very nice, but it wasn't actually where I wanted to go.  Across the way, the Parrs Wood Entertainment Complex loomed threateningly, a big slab of cinema and chain restaurants, a Death Star of fun. 

Another set of traffic lights and I was on the side of the road by the Tesco.  I could now see the yellow flag of the Metrolink in the distance, a tiny bit of colour amidst the grey, but I still had to use another pedestrian crossing to get there.  I couldn't help but wonder if there was a better way of doing all this.  There's also a bus station outside the cinema; it's as though the transport planners understood the value of a tram, train and bus interchange, but thought people would really enjoy a nice walk in between changing modes.

At least I was finally here, at the East Didsbury tram stop.  Its tracks still pointed hopefully towards Stockport.  There's not much chance of it happening now - Metrolink has its fasr more exciting Trafford Centre extension to play with - but East Didsbury dangles, gently hinting every day that it'd really prefer not to be a terminus, if you get its drift.

A gentle electric shimmy down the tracks and I was in Didsbury Village. 

I apologise in advance for the quality of the sign selfies, and not just because my big red face is in them.  The low winter sun meant that every other photo I took was splattered with light, and a lot of the time I couldn't see the screen so I was just mashing at the shutter button and hoping for the best. 

Didsbury is desirable.  It's invested with the sheen of middle-class respectability, the discreet glamour of restaurants and wine bars and an M&S Simply Food.  BMWs and Audis purred past, while mums with pushchairs moved from artisan shop to coffee shop.  It's got money; not the flashy, brash cash of a Wilmslow, the more money than sense strip of designer clothes and kitchen shops.  This is the cushioned money, not rich but well off, the privileged glow of a nice house and meals out and wine without thinking about the bills.  It has a musical instruments shop, for goodness' sake, violins and cellos proudly on display in the window.

It also contains the new middle-class mecca: Aldi.  I'm not sure when Aldi and Lidl became the new go-to places.  Suddenly people were banging on about "the middle aisle" over chardonnay at dinner parties the way they used to eulogise for Waitrose.  Perhaps people have realised that paying £2.50 for a slice of cauliflower when you can get a whole one for pennies is daft; perhaps there isn't quite as much money swilling about as they'd like you to believe.   I did notice that this branch had been updated with the new logo, introduced last year.  They've not got round to refreshing the one in the North End of Birkenhead, for some reason.

I crossed the tracks just as a tram clattered underneath the bridge; on the side a plaque told me this was a 1989 replacement for an 1875 bridge.  I wonder how the people of Didsbury felt about the trams.  This was a railway line for the best part of a century, until Beeching closed it in 1967.  The only thing that remains of the old Didsbury station is the clock tower outside Tesco.

That was forty years of quiet isolation.  There were buses, yes, but not the rattle of trains and trams.  That link to central Manchester probably added something to the house prices, but the big houses that backed onto the line?  Probably not so keen.  And it's hard to be exclusive if you're really easy to reach.

Lapwing Lane was a pleasing row of Victorian villas and well-built housing association flats, ending in a row of shops outside West Didsbury tram stop that were a little further down the economic scale from the village centre.  There was still a deli and a hair salon, but there was also a chemist and a newsagent, and the restaurant on the end was a Pizza Express.  I love a Sloppy Giuseppi as much as the next man but now they're everywhere; they're Nandos with a crispy crust.  I was more intrigued by the pub over the way, the Greenfinch, which had an outsized leather armchair in the garden and an appealing looking sturdiness.  Is it too early for a pint? I wondered, then remembered it was barely eleven a.m. and felt ashamed. (Dry January is not a movement I subscribe to, because my birthday is slap in the middle of it and I refuse to be sober on that day, but I did wonder if I should re-examine my drinking habits).

There was still a Christmas tree outside the tram stop.  A few days after Twelfth Night, fine, but this was three weeks into the New Year; take it down, it's just depressing now.  A persistent Christmas tree is a reminder that the good times are gone.  The tram was pulling in below me, so I dashed down and snatched a hurried picture.

Burton Road came with a warning from the future.  That vague fancy for a pint of bitter had registered with the gods, and they put on a bit of street theatre to knock me back on the path of righteousness.  Two drunks fell out of the tram with me, rolling over each other, cans of lager in hand.  They staggered towards the exit, taking in their surroundings with an unsteady stare of suppressed anger.  I hung back and let them get way ahead, and considered switching to alcohol free beer.  (I didn't of course, because no-one drinks beer for the taste, but I did at least consider it).

At street level, West Didsbury's Pizza Express had been replaced by a Pizza Hut Delivery outlet, and that seemed about right.  There were still restaurants and pubs, but they were homier and less polished.  They were also more ethnic; Didsbury's restaurant scene had seemed resolutely European, but here there were Indian and Chinese options. 

I walked past a boutique called Bond, which obviously caught my attention, and turned right into Cavendish Road.  Opposite, a good old-fashioned hardware store clung on, the kind of place I love to see as I whizz by on my way to B&Q.

There was the noise of children in the playground fizzing in the air as I walked past tight little terraced houses.  They all had curtains or blinds or screens covering their front windows to shield the contents from passers by.  I would find that horribly depressing; never being able to look out at the street because you don't want people looking in.  Never any sunlight.  There was a pocket park, where two women in hijabs gossiped over pushchairs.  A man walked past with a shaggy Golden Retriever; the bottom half of the dog, from the belly down, was black with mud from some ill-advised jump in a pond. 

I ended up on Princess Road, the huge dual carriageway which goes from the city centre out to the M56.  Manchester is blessed with these wide, straight roads to whip traffic in and out of the suburbs.  When originally built they had tram tracks running down the centre; now the trams go beneath it on the old railway line, and it's just a strip of scabby grass.

Withington is a slightly misnamed tram stop.  The actual district of Withington is a mile away; in fact, Burton Road is closer.  It was in a bit of a desolate spot though - the tram stop is mainly there as a park and ride - and the nearest landmark was the Southern Cemetary next door, a distinctly cheerless name for a transport hub.  So Withington it was.

I got off the tram at St Werburgh's Road with two teenage girls.  They were wearing their pyjamas and had their hair pulled into tight buns; no fucks were being given, and I was scared of them.  They yammered on and I tried to work out how to take a sign pic without incurring their scorn.  I hovered a bit, so they could leave, but it seemed they were waiting for the Airport tram.  Then, blessedly, I spotted St Werburgh's Road has an arch, and I dashed off before they noticed I was fat and old and decided to tell me.

I'd been here before as well, in 2011, but that was before the line had even opened.  Back then I'd never ridden a Metrolink tram.  What a different time it was.  Again, I took a different route; I hate to repeat myself.  I vanished into a road of semis, heralded by the noisiest cat I have ever heard.  From the first moment I turned into the street I heard its mewling, but I couldn't see it anywhere.  I assumed it was close.  A few minutes walk and I finally spotted it, sat calmly on the pavement opposite, miaowing repeatedly for no apparent reason.  It fixed me with a cold stare and I carried on, still hearing its bellow.

A quick kink, a glimpse of a distant office tower, and I arrived in Chorlton Cum Hardy, which is a filthy name.  It sounds like a Tumblr slashfic about Chorlton and the Wheelies; I can see why Metrolink went for the far tamer "Chorlton" for the name of its stop.  The shops here were rough and unkempt, a Chicken Cottage, a Star News, the brilliantly named Booze Corner.  It did feature something I'd never seen before: a Metrolink inspired cafe.  In London, you often see Tube-related business, skirting the copyright law to hang off the back of the famous brand, but this was my first tram-based one.

They've got the font and the white circles and everything.  Sadly, that seemed to be it for the theme; I don't think there were booths in the shape of trams or anything. 

I took three pictures at Chorlton and that was the most flattering.  IMAGINE.

A busy tram arrived and took me to Firswood.  And hurray, another arch!  I really can't work out why some stops have arches and some don't.  Stops with access from an overbridge seem to have them more often, but Chorlton didn't, and I've been to stops with level exits that have them too.  It's not a particular branch, or an era of opening; they've been applied to older routes as well as the new ones.  It's a shame, because they're about the only piece of distinctive station furniture the Metrolink has.  The rest of it's just a posh bus stop. 

Firwood is on the fringe of Old Trafford, as I realised when I saw signs advising Permit Holders Parking on "event days".  What a monumental pain in the arse it must be to have two major sports stadia on your doorstep; just as the football season finishes, the cricket starts, and you spend your Saturday picking chip papers out of your hedge.

I walked along the straight-as-a-die Seymour Grove towards Trafford, which was a mistake.  The lack of landmarks or even curves meant my mind wandered, or rather, turned inwards.  I slipped into darker thoughts, thoughts of death and decay.  I've turned 41, a frighteningly adult age and one which means I'm probably in the second half of my life; on top of that, my mum's finally retired and the BF's mum is in a nursing home.  Everything seems to be winding down, and it's been weighing on my mind a lot.  I became distracted and downcast.

It didn't help that my surroundings were resolutely unlovely, a strip of tarmac with mean looking semis crouching against the traffic.  The office towers, from a distance, looked mildly impressive, until you got close and realised they'd been turned into dark apartments.  The only joy was a house with a beautifully crafted pair of front doors, made out of wood and easily the best bit of the entire building. 

While Didsbury's Aldi had received a makeover, this one hadn't even survived; the building was shuttered and up for lease, the Iceland next door hanging up a faintly desperate Open as Usual banner.  Then a strip of takeaways with pictures of food in the window, none of which looked even vaguely appealing, just lumps of brown with lettuce.  The subtle menus and outdoor terraces of South Manchester were a long way away.

Trafford Bar had a delightful surprise; a proper station building.

This had been Old Trafford railway station until 1991; remember that Old Trafford tram stop, which is next to the cricket ground, was called Warwick Road when it was served by trains, and the station next to the soccer stadium is called Manchester United Football Ground.  Frankly I'm surprised anyone ever got to any events by public transport, as they all seemed to be deliberately named to confuse outsiders.

It was a nice little building, with interesting features, but sadly missing a purpose now.  Metrolink doesn't need ticket halls, and there are roads either side for access, so the building sits empty and unloved.  I went down to the platform and discovered the grimmest tram stop yet.

It had, just barely, been converted from its railway days, but the facilities were terrible; an actual bus stop on the southbound platform, while the northbound shelter was just a bit of corrugated tin supported by struts.  There was a turnstile at the side, a practical measure to accommodate football crowds on the one hand, a harsh-looking barrier on the other.  The only plus was that this was the end of my trip; not a high, by any means, but at least I could head home.  That always makes me smile.

Be Here Now

Manchester's tram network is starting to get annoying.  It's good, it's clean, it's fast, and it keeps expanding.  It's that clever, pretty friend you have on Facebook whose status updates are all "OMG! Just found out that painting I bought at the car boot is a long-lost Rembrandt!" or "LOL It's so hard being teetotal when you keep winning magnums of champagne in competitions!".

Last month Metrolink opened yet another line - a route out to East Didsbury.  Since Ian was up from London again, and Robert was about as well, we decided to have a trip out on the new tram and then collect some stations on the way back into the city.

After grappling with the ticket machines on the platform at Piccadilly - only two were working, which is no problem in one of the busiest railway stations in the UK - we boarded a tram into the city.  There was a lengthy pause at Piccadilly Gardens, while we changed drivers; Ian had to be restrained from breaking into the cabin and driving it himself.  Round the corner, a poor woman was stood alone on the Moseley Street platform, looking confused as the tram swept past.  She clearly hadn't noticed the half-dozen THIS STOP IS NOT IN USE signs pinned all over the fence.  A change at Cornbrook, and finally we were on an East Didsbury tram.

The early part was familiar enough; in fact, I'd been on this route on my very first Metrolink ride.  At St Werburgh's Road, we pulled away from the platform onto new tracks, passing the under construction Airport spur as we did so.  The track follows an old railway line that was Beechinged, but much of the infrastructure - bridges and underpasses - is new for the Metrolink.  Not so new that it hasn't been graffiti'd.  South Manchester's street artists have pounced on the new blank canvases of concrete.  There isn't much street art, though, mostly just people writing their name in permanent marker and colouring it in.

We travelled all the way to the terminus at East Didsbury.  There's a park and ride here, with space for 300 cars, and it seemed to be well-used already.  The island platform was full of passengers heading into the city for shopping.  There are two tracks here, which seems like a bit of a waste for a terminus, but it's another of those "live in hope" constructions.

The railway line continued from here through Heaton Mersey and on to Cheadle, and the Metrolink planners have pointed the line firmly in that direction.  Stockport is temptingly close to that alignment.  There's little chance of it being built, but you never know, right?

We crossed the tracks and walked back up the line towards Didsbury Village.  It would have been easier to just get off at the earlier stop, but then we wouldn't have ridden the line right to the end, and that sort of thing is important to me and my tribe.  Under a road bridge there were hints of old railway infrastructure; tiled walls covered with tags.

Didsbury Village is a charming little place.  I've been here a few times, as I have a friend who lives nearby, and it's got a great mix of shops and restaurants.  There's a place called The Cheese Hamlet, and I feel the need to record the "To Brie or not to Brie?" gag I made at the time.  Obvious, perhaps, but I do love a pun.  The arrival of the Metrolink can only make it more desirable.

After coffee and paninis amidst yummy mummies and men reading the Daily Express we left the village for some proper station collecting.  Trams are all well and good, but their stops are basically shelters with a bit of concrete attached; it's not architecturally inspiring.  We walked out to Parrs Wood Road, past the copyright baiting Didsbury Perk and towards East Didsbury station.  It's separate to the Metrolink stop - there's about 200m difference - and it was far more unloved.

A hamster run of ramps and steps carried you up to the platform.  There was a waiting room, with windows thick with dirt and scratches, and that was your lot as far as passenger facilities were concerned.  It was clear that East Didsbury and Didsbury were similar in name only, a bit like South Wimbledon Tube station; it's trying to capture a bit of magic fairy dust it's not really entitled to.

On the platform, Ian found a map and pointed out station names to me.  "Have you been to Hall i' th' Wood yet?"

"Not yet."

"How about Patricroft?"

"It's on the list."

"Dore & Totley?"

"No."

It was a little dispiriting.  Where the hell had I been?  I've been doing the Northern Rail map for over a year now, and there's still bloody hundreds of stations left on it.

Luckily a train came along to interrupt his line of inquiry.  We travelled one stop south, to Burnage, a station that was even less inspiring than East Didsbury.  Everything at Burnage seemed to be boarded up.

Burnage is, of course, the home of the Gallagher brothers, meaning I could wheel out both my Liam impression and my long-held animosity towards Oasis.  I was on the side of Blur in the Great Britpop War of 1995; my brother was on the side of Oasis, so the week Roll With It battled with Country House for number one was a hotbed of sniping and taunting (even more than usual).  I won, of course, because I always do, but eighteen years later I have to admit that Country House is not a very good song.  Roll With It isn't either, to be fair.

I just wasn't an Oasis person.  I will freely admit that Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory? are great albums, but they are pretty much two halves of the same train of thought.  Even now I have problems remembering what track was on what album.  Be Here Now is the sound of cocaine and partying and self-indulgence (there is absolutely no reason on earth for All Around The World to be NINE MINUTES long) and the rest of their albums have the odd ok single that's a bit like a B-side they might have put out in 1996 but are otherwise forgettable.

Blur, on the other hand, are amazing.  I'll freely admit that they've had their dodgy albums too - Leisure is like a chick that's broken out of its shell too early, unformed and unfinished; Think Tank is too fractured; The Great Escape too decadent.  But each of those albums contains a handful of tracks that hit the target full on (Sing, She's So High, There's No Other Way on Leisure; Out of Time, Brothers and Sisters and Crazy Beat on Think Tank; The Universal, Best Days and Fade Away on The Great Escape).  And a song that misfires on a Blur album - something like Mr Robinson's Quango - is still trying to be different and innovative, whereas a misfiring Oasis song is just dull.

And then you have the just plain great albums - Blur and 13 - and the masterpieces: Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife, both of which are as perfect as it is possible to be.  Oasis has never written a single track which can even sit in the same room as Advert or Sunday Sunday or Turn It Up or End of a Century or London Loves or This Is A Low.  The minute of noodling that is Lot 105 contains more imagination and experimentation and joy than the whole of Heathen Chemistry.  I mean, after the band split up, Liam and Noel both went on to release albums that sounded like they were made up of tracks found down the back of Creation's sofa.  Damon Albarn went off and formed Gorillaz and wrote an opera based on Monkey.  Case closed.

(I will concede that Alex James is an annoyingly smug Tory cheesemongering twat.  But Coxon and Rowntree more than balance him out).

Ian and I, as Britpop veterans with the scars to prove it, filled in Robert with a rough history as we left the station.  He was too young to pogo in the indie room of a club to Road Rage; he had never worked out a series of dance moves to Supergrass's Alright; he'd never known the heady joy of seeing Pulp get to number one on the chart with an album about class war.  Robert reached adulthood at a time when number ones were going to Craig David and Westlife, which tells you all about the collapse of human civilisation you need to know.

Beyond the station entrance was a parade of shops, including Sifters record shop, which actually appears in an Oasis track (Shakermaker; it's on Definitely Maybe.  I looked it up).  I imagined the young Noel in the store, buying second-hand albums and taking them home, then lovingly copying all the good bits and pretending he wrote them.  You can imagine my delight when I saw a poster in the window, here in Gallagher territory, for a music festival called Parklife.

The most surprising thing about Burnage was how posh it was.  It was working class, yes, but the houses were generously proportioned Corporation semis, with gardens and driveways.  There was parkland and wide avenues.  From the way Liam and Noel had spoken, I'd imagined them being dragged up in a terraced house somewhere, playing on cobbled streets and fighting in ginnels.  It was used as a stick to beat the art school Blur with; their claim that they were proper rough, unlike Damon and his Estuary vowels and evenings down the dog track.  Burnage seemed quite nice.

It even has a blue plaque.  Louis Paulhan flew from London to Manchester in 1910, the first man to do so, and the plaque commemorates the spot where he landed.  It took him twelve hours to make the flight; four hours in the air, plus an overnight stop in Lichfield for refuelling.  I've flown from London to Manchester - you've barely unbuckled your seatbelt before you're coming in to land again these days.  The road where he made the landing is named Paulhan Road in his honour.

We cut across Ladybarn Park on route to Mauldeth Road station.  Our debate about whether we were heading the right way was picked up by a local, who turned back and said to us, "Station's this way.  Train leaves in three minutes.  Follow me."  He looked like he had just finished fighting a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with his bare hands, so we thanked him then let him get on ahead so we wouldn't have to be on the same train.

A video tape had been unspooled across the path, a delightfully retro touch of litter.  Normally I'd be complaining about some inconsiderate sod making the place a mess, but it just reminded me of my childhood; there were always unspooled cassettes in parks, usually hanging from the trees.  Can you decorate a silver birch with an MP3?  No you can't, which is why my childhood was better than today's kids' childhoods.

Hanging back to avoid The Man With The Golden Knuckledusters meant we missed the train into Manchester, so we wandered round the corner to get some water from the local Londis.  The assistant shouted over our heads to a departing customer: "You know Eileen's back in hospital, don't you?"

"I didn't even know she were out."

This end of Burnage was more Asian than the other one, with a Halal butcher and Indian restaurants.  An office building had green Arabic written on its front, with the English translation on a sign round the side.  There was still enough custom to support a hefty pub though, with Saturday afternoon drinkers hovering in the doorway for their ciggies.

As we approached the station, Ian made a suggestion.  The trip through South Manchester had taken less time than I'd thought, and so we'd polished off the stations I'd planned in superfast time.  We had ages until our dinner reservation.  Why not collect a couple more?  Why not collect Gatley and Heald Green, the next two stations between East Didsbury and Manchester Airport?

And that, folks, is exactly why we are friends.

We went to the southbound platform of Mauldeth Road instead of the northbound one.  The ticket office was undergoing reconstruction, but judging by the blank facilities on the viaduct, I doubt the new structure will rival St Pancras International.

Gatley had more of a rural vibe.

You don't get many wooden awnings on station buildings any more.  Yes, it's been done over by the Purple Gang, and yes, it could do with a clean, but most of them have been pulled down as too much hassle to maintain.

Gatley also has two station signs, which is just showing off.

We let two Jewish gentlemen with matching pullovers and skull caps pass, then crossed over into the suburban backwaters of Gatley.  Long avenues of discreet homes curved into one another.  The streets were empty; the only people we saw were builders putting together a new bay window on a house, and a pair of boys in Manchester United colours tossing a football from hand to hand.

It was while walking through Gatley that I was involved in probably the most niche conversation I have ever been part of.  The topic was thus: "Which now-retired ITV regional ident does the Arriva Trains Wales announcement chime sound most like?"

THIS IS A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED.

We went through the options - Tyne Tees?  Yorkshire?  Thames ("Here they are now MORECAMBE AND WISE")?  Finally Robert did some YouTubing on his phone, and came up with Anglia, which he then played at full volume in the street.

I took a moment to dwell on that little chat and I could make only one conclusion.  "Fellas.  I think our virginities just grew back."

The road swung past a row of local shops and a nice looking pub, and we were forced to concede that, yes, this looked like a pretty nice place to live in.  Then an EasyJet plane roared overhead, skimming the tops of the trees, and we remembered just how close we were to Manchester Airport's two runways.  We postponed any estate agent searches.

I like it when railway stations are surrounded by shops and libraries and people.  It feels so much more lively and part of a community.  Park and rides out on the edge of town are all well and good, but they're often sterile and dead.  Heald Green station was slap bang in the middle of the excitement.

It is not, however, in the middle of Wythenshawe, despite the presence of signs advertising the shopping centre.

I dislike these commercial Attractive Local Feature boards (CALFs?) anyway, but plugging a place that they cheerily admit is 1 and a half miles away is just taking the piss.  Plus Wythenshawe is going to be getting its own tram link soon enough, and I bet the advertising money will vanish the minute that opens.  If you must have this form of craven advertising, it should be truly local; I'd have rather seen a plug for the nearest Subway sandwich outlet if it was "only two minutes from this station!".

It had been a fun afternoon.  Station collecting is a lonely business.  It's nice to find a couple of kindred spirits who don't mind larking around in Manchester's suburban sprawl.  Thanks again, Robert and Ian.  Always a pleasure.