The Ardwick Rocket

Every morning on my way in to desolation row I turn off the main road onto a steep hill that leads me over a railway crossing down a twisting lane to Clayton Vale Valley. This little patch of green in the murky grey city that I live and work in is a Mecca for naturalists and old farts who are nearing the end of their lives, but insist on becoming at one with nature. How they can put up with the stench of cow dung that permeates the place I cannot imagine. But they do, so many come now that its getting harder to avoid knocking them down, they are a menace always looking up at the tree tops, or down at the fauna and never in the direction they are walking. I could take another rout but then I would miss passing the Grey Mare pub that I once took Maddy to for a meal, its become a ritual now that makes me feel a little closer to her. Though I could never imagine telling her that the smell of cow shit reminds me of that day we spent together.

This morning as I drove across the little bridge that spans the river Medlock in the valley the smell wasn't as bad as it usually is, so I stopped near the tourist information centre. This is basically a few bits of wood that have been nailed together and painted green. I got out of the car to have a look around. As I crossed the road a motorbike came screaming down the hill and narrowly missed me, he wobbled a bit but he carried on the bastard, I gave him the finger and got back into the car.Its funny how everything in this world connects one way or another, the mornings episode had triggered memories from forty years before, when I worked with a chap called Dennis who loved motorbikes. The first motorbike I had I bought from him, it was a 125 cc Excelsior, with three gears and a seat that looked like it belonged on a penny-farthing. But it was mine and even if it didn’t go very fast, it sure felt like it did. It had maroon and gold livery and a speedometer that proudly announced a top speed of seventy miles an hour. I took that speedometer at face value and tried everything I could to get it to go that fast, but my efforts were in vain. Until I had the bright idea of turning the piston barrel around 180 degrees so that the carburettor was at the front with a big air scoop, and the exhaust was at the back and ran under the seat.

At the time I worked for a company based in a mill on Palmeston Street in Ardwick. The mill overlooked the river Medlock and every morning before the eight o clock hooter went of signalling the start of work, people would hang out of the windows that backed on to the river chatting and drinking tea. On my way to work one morning I decided to see what this baby could do. As I came down Pin mill brow I opened up the throttle and settled into the racing position oblivious to the fact that because the exhaust pipe had been modified it ran too close to the fuel pipe feeding the carb.

The fuel pipe melted and spewed petrol all over my pants and jacket, which was then ignited from the hot exhaust pipe and I became a ball of fire travelling at very high speed, well high-ish. I turned into Palmeston Street, and made straight for the mill gates. I didn’t have much road left, so I did the only thing I could, I skidded into the mill yard scattering people in all directions and made a beeline for the narrow ally at the side the mill which led onto the river.

I hit the sandbank, the front wheel dug in and I was catapulted through the air still burning into the river. I rolled around for a while to make sure the flames were out, then stood up and took off my crash helmet, to be greeted by thunderous applause from the workers hanging out of the mill windows. The bike was a write off; so I left it where it lay, over time it sank into the sandbank and became a nesting place for rats.

Later on that year Manchester suffered one of its worse downpours for a century, the river Medlock swelled its banks, Daisy Nook was flooded and enormous damage was done along its length. I remember hanging out of one of the windows watching the river rise higher and higher until it became too dangerous to stay in the building. The rivers power was enormous, as it crashed past the mill, it brought all kinds of things with it, furniture, a car, wooden fences dogs, cats and a cow, dead of course. For years I wondered where the cow could have come from. I found out years later that it had been swept into the river from a farm somewhere in Clayton Vale, although it wasn’t called that in those days.

On the day that Maddy and I ate our Sunday dinner in the Grey Mare, we drove around the nicer parts of Manchester, I was determined to show her that where I lived wasn’t all run down houses and shuttered shops. I took her to Daisy Nook a pleasant little village not far from Clayton Vale. She was delighted by its quaint tidiness and neat gardens, she told me that she would love to live there, really I said, Sure she replied, who wouldn’t want to live in a place where ya don’t have to get out of the car to knock on someone’s door. It always makes me smile when I think of that.