MICHAEL Morrison, the central character in The Choreography Of Ghosts, is distraught at the critical panning of his second novel Walks Through Weeping Cities, in which he charts the demise of his town’s past glories by stalking its streets and struggles to see a palatable future. The reviews said it was “too dark, too bleak and devoid of hope”. We join him on one of those walks…
I STEP off the bus with no pre-installed map to determine my day. I had persuaded myself I would approach it without emotion but am unable to do so. Experience should have told me that would be the case.
It’s late morning and the interchange is busy with people out to do their daily shopping rather than having it delivered because it gives them something to do, someone to meet.
Others have benched themselves for a while, maybe hoping to get into conversation, some are on their way to meet family or friends, a number are there for nefarious reasons, some simply because it’s warmer than being outside.
A coin toss tells me to go left and I head into the 1970s bin men strike, Yorkshire Ripper territory. Back street, back-to-backs, victims of what passes for progress, backing horses above themselves to propel them elsewhere, anywhere but here.
There was fear round these parts 50 years ago and there’s fear now, but it’s of a different kind.
Dog shit, discarded take-away packaging, dumped settees, disused toys and prams, the odd shoe and a doll, discarded and dysfunctional fridges, microwaves, even a toilet.
There’s a condom in a puddle down an alleyway over which dirty water from the guttering spills out into overflowing bins and onto broken paving slabs. Who on earth felt the need…?
Yes, there are the stereotypical used syringes and other unsavoury waste, but I do not hang around this forsaken and unloved space for more than a few seconds.
Hope of a kind lies round the corner in the form of a number of shops offering goods from Poland, Slovakia, Romania and one boasting the ability to meet the needs of the whole of Eastern Europe. They are labelled convenience stores but there’s nothing simple in a life that forces you to travel thousands of miles for your groceries.
Who lived in these streets before and what purpose did these buildings serve? The butcher and the bakers our parents and grandparents, maybe even us, recall now offer a multitude of betting opportunities and flavours of vape. The pubs are drop-in or “business centres” with little reason to drop in and no evidence of commerce being taking place.
Those who queued round the corner for their Friday fish and chips are long gone, the intoxicating smells of frying that enticed them in replaced by those of grilled burgers, fried chicken and kebabs.
Even the curry houses that eventually existed alongside them have disappeared and the only outlets for alcohol are staffed by those who do not drink it. Garish signs are everywhere, offering cheap everything you don’t want or need - “short of nowt you want” as people used to say.
The roads are potholed and pavements cracked but a brown sign offers a route to the tourist attractions, so I obediently follow its instruction. It takes me through a park, its gardens well looked after, its greenery cut low, but its museum is closed today and I soon discover the same applies to the town centre.
Maybe there is no such thing anymore, with the main stores, the supermarkets and the like now elsewhere. Information boards and blue plaques tell of what once thrived in this place where even the ghosts of the shops, the markets, the pubs, have long taken their hauntings elsewhere.
Unlike cities, towns don’t recover from industry’s death. At least they haven’t yet. The money is simply not there.
The Wetherspoons is busy though. It’s cheap, clean and those who used to work - the ones who are still alive - can drink away the afternoon with those who they once quenched thirsts with after long hard shifts in the now demolished grimy mills (another walk around a nearby city will tell a different story of industry’s architecture being preserved in the form of art galleries and luxury apartments). They are loud, sweaty and funny. They haven’t quit life, just given up - or been given up on - on what it used to be. Watching and listening to them, maybe it’s even better now. The years, decades even, in between though?
The supposedly great industrialists, civic leaders and planners of yesteryear - as corrupt as ever then - would weep were they to return to survey their empire, but times change and futures cannot remain the same.
There is positivity though. There is a future. There has to be.
It’s just that it’s hard to see what it is. It’s different from what we once knew and that can be hard to take. For some it will prove impossible.