A trip to Manchester Art Gallery to catch the last day of Protest, an exhibition celebrating the life and art of Derek Jarman.

I booked a late return train to give me time to do something else with the day, without knowing exactly what that would be. As a teen, I could happily spend the entire day in the city and Manchester still holds that charm and allure for me. However, after a few mental calculations I decide to spend rest of the afternoon in Hyde, the town of my birth and upbringing between 1971 and 1990 and the town that I would be escaping by spending the day in the city.

In the 1980s, the 210 service would go directly from Piccadilly Bus Station to Gee Cross, taking me and my Brian Eno LPs back home. I also caught it from my secondary school in Denton, a few miles further down the line. Years later, if the number pops up in another context, I still think of it as being a ‘reliable’ quantity. These days, no bus seems to go further than Hyde Bus Station but this allows me to revisit the miles leading up to my former address.

I want to revisit the environment around the house I was born in and grew up in. We never moved during that time and my mother remained there until her death in 2009 (my father died there a few years earlier). Inevitably, the terrain has been keenly embossed on my memory. This visit was prompted by the reading of around 170 letters written and exchanged between my parents from 1959 to 1966, totalling around 2000 pages. I always knew about the letters, knew where they were kept, but had never read them or really felt motivated to do so. Covid-inspired introspection prompted me to absorb the letters over the past few months, illuminating the unknown years and events that led up to my existence.

The journey is very familiar and it feels as if just a few weeks have elapsed since I last travelled this way.

Facing the bus station in Hyde is the compact Astoria, never actively a cinema in my lifetime and barely registering at all during my childhood, but now a source of fascination like all other ‘invisible Cinemas’. In 2022, its original sign is still just about visible, the name retained for its later time as a Bingo hall. Nearby, something prompts me to dip into a side alley (which turns out to have a name: ‘Borough Arcade’). The alley runs behind what I remember being a supermarket and now still trading as a discount store. In the upper reaches are the remains of the neon sign which once advertised the supermarket to the shoppers of the busier Market Street. This sign was never lit in my lifetime and it is a surprise to see it still there. The alley wall space it occupies is now low value ‘estate’ and removing it would represent too much time and energy. Alleys such as this are where to find those old commercial survivors. The supermarket itself is a blur: no clear memories other than the colours cream and oxblood, both of which may also have been on sale somewhere in the market. Large weighing scales with a huge dial up to 20 stone, for the personal use of shoppers. Curious how that was once a public service. How old was I if I remember being three stone? 1p secured the measure; scales made by Avery of Birmingham.

Across Clarendon Street is the children’s roundabout ride, surely not the same one I knew in the 1970s but certainly occupying the exact same space. Maybe every element has been replaced. The vehicles themselves are hidden by boards as it is a Sunday, but the upper reaches are adorned by painted characters from Finding Nemo and Toy Story, films whose earliest viewers are now in their 20s and 30s. Mickey Mouse, now well into his 90s, is here airbrushed to recapture his youth. Through my teens, I watched as the vehicles I knew from childhood were replaced until nothing familiar remained other than my favourite: a miniature, dark green double decker bus. With my pink-tipped sweet cigarettes or licorice pipe, I would pretend to smoke on the ‘upper saloon’ until around 1977. The timeless children’s game of recreating what you saw around you. A polite but unenforceable rule seen on Manchester buses: Please Do Not Smoke. On an older bus you might see the request No Spitting, a public drive to curb the spread of tuberculosis.

Nearby is The White Lion, still trading and adorned with the tiled relief of a proud lion, made in six separate pieces. A rich, golden-brown hue, like a tangy sauce. The pubs of Hyde are largely a mystery to me, known only from the outside. My parents never came here and my own drinking days began in nearby Ashton-Under-Lyne, where I attended college aged 16 - 19. Hyde pubs therefore still hold some mystique for me, an unknown quality. Many were tiled and richly glazed, an attractive and expensive adornment but one which was chosen primarily to facilitate an easy clean up the next morning. As a child, I knew that only pubs and butchers did this.

Not accessible today is the indoor market which absolutely held an enduring and deeply magical allure. Many weeks I could choose a dinosaur from the toy shop cabin and there was a coin-op vehicle ride for children on each level. The food stalls held just as much intrigue. The fish stall near the entrance with exotic-looking steaks of larger fish that we never bought. ‘What’s that one mum?’ I asked of one such puck. ‘Cod’ advised an elderly lady, helpfully. A silence from me as I knew the rule about strangers, but then an urgent order to thank her from my embarrassed mother. Then there was the dreadful day I asked for fishcakes from this market: what I thought was merely a new shape of fish finger for a penny more was instead a mix of fish, dry potato and bitter herbs in a bright orange coat breadcrumb. Retching through tears, I just couldn’t see how it was considered food. My thrifty mother hated to see waste, though relented at my sheer anguish. My food tastes became stuck for years with that incident, reluctant to try anything new again.

I am drawn to residential side streets that I’m sure I wouldn’t have used when I lived here. There is something liberating about exploring these streets thirty years later, places I’m unlikely ever to return to. I find an alley behind a church and suddenly I know where I am. My sister once attended school here but left after a year as it was considered by my parents (and sister) to be too rough. Her accent had changed to adapt to the new conditions and my parents withdrew her. Elocution lessons were considered to undo the impact of the flat Hyde accent, and the school (in an unrelated incident) was later demolished. Clues to my parents’ aspirations on leaving Huddersfield to a town where nobody knew them. The further reaches of the alley are new to me, used by locals only, so I walk like I’m heading somewhere in particular to avoid any suspicion. The path deteriorates to shattered tarmac and is clearly for access to backyards only. I take advantage of a steep gap in the houses that looks like a stream sometimes runs through it and escape onto a the familiar and busy Mottram Road.

I try to to find my friend Steven’s house, a large detached home on an elevated garden: his father worked in advertising. For a moment I’m convinced it has been demolished, the garden now thick with weed trees and rhizoming irises but it still stands just a few doors down from where I remember it. One summer, as teens, we walked through local woods, my red wooden jumper too hot for the day. We encountered a folly in the form of a miniature castle. I remember being surprised and delighted that there were still such discoveries to be made in Hyde, a place I thought I knew inside-out. A shade of my childhood was still intact at a time when my peers shed theirs with glee. There is no sign of this crenellated structure but I do find a footpath that looks like it will take me around the edge of town. In recent years, these routes that skirt a town, largely unknown and unused by the pavement brigade, hold a beguiling attraction. Paths that sometimes predate the roads. Green Lane - a clue in the name that this is all it has ever been. An aspect that I always liked about Hyde: how quickly gives way to rural. I am not dressed for the change, preferring to blend in at Jarman than to be suited to muddy footpaths.

The whole hillside oozes rainwater which may have taken days to get to my soft, blue, low-rise shoes. A tough-looking horse occupies a field many feet lower than the path. The railway is carried over the path with a single arched viaduct. Godley station is near. More horse farms -‘stud farms’. Everything is in craggy grey-green stone, walls and houses, with 17th century survivors amongst the farmhouses, a flavour of Hyde before it became industrial on a greater scale. I cross Mottram Old Road which would lead to my village if I turned right but I’m not ready to go there yet. I want to continue to prowl around and then descend from a height.

Here is a familiar name: Apple Street. I walked here in the late seventies, having set off on a sponsored walk with a pack from the local scout hut…a wolf-pack and a back-pack. Six epic miles. The local landscapes I had never visited or even knew about were probably mere dog walks for the Arkelas. Apple and cheese sandwiches were provided, though I didn’t eat cheese, or crusts. The apple core was tossed into a bush, which displeased the walk leader, who considered it litter. I still bristle at his well-meant idiocy: how many apples must have returned to the earth here over the centuries? Apple Street becomes steep and is surfaced in textured concrete, adapted to allow cars –and poorly-shod walkers– to ascend in safety. I realise I was here just a few years ago in an old car, turning to our passengers in the back seat, urging them to ‘hope harder!’ as the engine struggled alarmingly. I didn’t recognise it then as the Apple Street of my cub crawl: it needed me to be walking it to do that.

The hill-climbing illusion: there’s always one more rise when you crest the current hill, imagining you are surely now at the peak. Radio masts crown this hill: assume any mast is the hill’s true pinnacle and rest when you reach that. This is Werneth Low, offering a spectacular view across Manchester, with regular overhead flights to the airport. The view is surely one of the reasons my parents moved here from Huddersfield, via Whalley Range. The vista of my childhood had many brick chimney stacks rising from the land, textile mills and hat factories, a few still belching smoke and stink. Now none stand. Folk singer Ewan MacColl lived for a time nearby on Higham Lane, his ‘Dirty Old Town’ being the city of Salford, just beyond Manchester. Industrial folk artist LS Lowry lived in nearby Mottram.

The walking here is good, this is the foothills of the Peak District. I realise I can’t navigate this expansive terrain at will and only a small triangle of footpaths feel familiar. My parents were not adventurous explorers, or perhaps they were restricted by children in the distance they could go. We regularly came to Werneth Low to walk or in winter to sledge, but rarely any further. Even as late as the 2000s, I couldn’t tell you where the Peak District was, yet basically I lived there. Around the times of my parents’ deaths, I had time to explore the wider landscape on foot and discovered several lost valleys, some wonderful pubs and a towering wooden crucifix on a neighbouring hill, all utterly unknown to me. It won’t happen today, but I will return to understand these footpaths. Better too late than never.

A few minutes with the view, then a steep descent of Joel Lane. This next section is the landscape that made me. There’s no pavement in the upper reaches, so you should face oncoming traffic. What was an annoyingly steep walk or alarming cycle plummet in 1981 is now intriguing for its mix of buildings: all are very different and built centuries apart. There’s Harvey’s House with its lopsided pitched roof and asymmetrical windows. Harvey was a school friend, or possibly from even earlier, about whom I can recollect nothing other than his name and the distinctive house his father built. Further down is a stone farmhouse with a later brick wing. The stone section looks very old, maybe 17th century. That enduring ruggedness that houses needed then. Then the lane dips beneath the height of the houses, a holloway and a clue to its long established use. It means a further steep climb to the door for anyone arriving home. One house has an octagonal tower like a lighthouse built into the corner, glass on seven sides, upper coloured glass elements. What must it be like to occupy such a tower? A cluster of bungalows, one being the former home of my friend Andrew. How steep was Joel Lane? 1 in 3, we estimated, though his father suggested a more modest 1 in 8. That felt so obviously wrong in 1981 that I was embarrassed for him, but of course he was right.

Further down is Slateacre Cottage, the name being a long-ago farm, taking the form of two attached houses with the initials GPJ and a helpful date for researchers: 1757. Handsome, dark red brick. The solid garden wall is the same solid stone as the farmhouse higher up but brick at this time a message of wealth. Elevation meant prestige. Then a detached house in brown brick– not local– with a steep rambling moor of a garden. A ship in full sail illuminating the stair well. Here a pavement finally greets pedestrians, the wilderness now all done. Set back from it is a stone horse trough, which may be the oldest thing on the street. Wedge-shaped and still gathering water from the nameless stream that runs through the hill. A simple and elegant engineering solution: rainwater spills out just where horses are thirsty from the work needed for the hill. There is another small well or spring further down, recessed into the wall. The neighbours’ son Ian told me there were trout in the water, just below the surface. He could see them; you just needed to let your eyes relax. This now is absolutely the realm of my childhood, the fringes and limits of ‘playing out’. Every kerb stone is significant. A row of stone houses, elegant in a regency way. One was once the ‘Travellers’ Call’. This is earlier than my memory, though a neighbour (now forgotten) remembered it as a pub.

A wonderful building next: a simple, single storey structure, whitewashed stone. A row of four tiny, square windows, or rather glassless apertures, and one larger one. No door. A curious wall on two levels, the lower one is part of a boundary wall around a garden. The structure was a curiosity in childhood: aged eight, I remember another neighbour’s kid edging along the lower wall and climbing through the open window, pantomiming falling into the darkness. We could see stored wood inside. Whenever my parents drove us home, the beacon of its whitewashed walls signalled we were now back. Many years later when looking at the register of listed building in the area, one property on Joel Lane was recorded as being an 18th century hat making workshop in someone’s garden. How interesting, I thought, where was it, could we see it? Then realising this curious white shed was it. Here the felt fabric of hats was rolled out, drawing water from the spring and turning it into steam, which left through the five square vents. An epiphany to have that long-familiar, dormant edifice transform into something with its own story.

Then off Slateacre Road, the avenue I lived on: Arnold Avenue. An unusually long plot of land with three separate, narrow gardens lined up. Beyond the upper garden, a wild meadow with the brook surfacing briefly there. Dens, traps and fires, geese and for a while, a horse that was surely at the centre of someone else’s childhood. An amazing view over the reservoir and the two cities of Manchester and Salford. Urgently familiar. I was born there in 1971 and lived there until 1990. Returning regularly until 2009. Being so constant means it features regularly in my dreams. It’s a Cul de Sac (and ‘unadopted’, so no corporation tarmac) so wandering down there would be a very visible act. This is as close as I will get.

More water ahead: a reservoir that was decommissioned some time in the 1990s and which quickly grew over with trees. A story now which may have altered with retelling, but at its core is the truth. The time in the early eighties when Kay, the neighbour’s kid, suggested we cross the frozen surface of the reservoir. How silly, I thought, as we slipped past the water authority’s green railings. But seeing her chipping and hacking at the thick ice with a stone convinced me it was easily thick enough to bear our weight. At the half way point, twenty metres in, a creaking sound and a white ribbon appearing below our feet prompted a gentle but immediate but U-turn. We silently scaled the bank, returned to our respective homes and never spoke of it again. ‘That is until now…’ My life has contained a few close calls like this, variously featuring cars, cliffs and the sea.

Joel Lane levels off and the houses come closer to the pavement. ‘Loughrigg 1682 cottage’ (as the plaque reads) is as rugged as its Cumbrian counterpart. This was the home of Hyde mayoress Kathleen Grundy, who early one morning in 1998 was killed by a fatal injection of diamorphine administered by her doctor Harold Shipman. It was the final (or rather, the penultimate) killing by ‘Dr Death’: a nickname he acquired before, not after, his arrest.

Then two doorsteps that I loved from a very young age, perhaps as young as three or four. Like the horse trough, the door steps here are wedges. One stone block has a flat top and sides but rounded vertical corners, which seemed to me to be like a tin of spam. The step was painted red which strengthened the meaty connection. I could taste it when I saw it. The step has since been painted black but the red coat is still visible where it has flaked. Another stone step here has been tiled in robust, red earthenware. These two of all the doorsteps of Hyde fascinated me. The row of houses here, two and three storeys, are fronted with an older, narrow pavement of stone flags, widened in the mid 20th century. Further down, on the reservoir side are two small, stone cottages before the lane becomes exclusively brick. The older is apparently from 1669, a year stated with plastic door numbers glued to a slate. The later house has been stuccoed and whitewashed but still retains its original date plaque, which reads 1738 in convincingly wonky numerals. This plaque yields further clues to ownership: the initials IC, a black star and some indistinct floral designs. The I is formed from entwined strands and may be a J. A few years ago I awoke from a dream set here, in this last cottage’s build year. The townsfolk walked in the lane, doffed their felt hats and greeted each other, and me, with such warmth and openness, that I felt the loss on waking. A dream from a time when there were no strangers in your street and few in your village. Another memory of a memory set somewhere around here: my mother recalling a Dutchman who stood on his doorstep smoking a pipe and with ‘frogs’ on his jacket. To a child growing up in the 70s, this could only mean vinyl or embroidered patches of cartoon characters. Years, decades later, I realised she meant ‘frogging’ or ornamental braid. I don’t know if his glamorous puffing overlapped my lifetime, but I have created an image if needed. More vivid a memory is the sweetshop in the lower section of the road, still evidenced by the corner chamfer where once the door stood, and now a domestic property. Two kinds of Refreshers were sold here: in a colourful striped roll for 7p or as a single soft, wrapped sweet, yellow with a sherbet centre for a hefty 2p. Both are still available. Whenever anyone offers a ‘refresher course’, I think of these sweets and this shop.

Another shop at the bottom of Joel Lane: Lynes the Grocer. Our neighbour Anne Robinson, mother of Ian the great trout deceiver, worked here. Freddo frog, maybe 3 or 4p. Dry biscuits featuring a moulded relief of cows, stamped with a decorative, wheaty border. Too young yet to read the words ‘Malted Milk’. My sister would buy pot noodles here as a teen, aware the news would get back to our mother. Opposite is the Grapes Hotel, a proudly handsome pub with tiled interior and coloured glass features, and a huge sign advertising the fine ales and stout to travellers, this being an important junction for travellers. Only in my 30s would I step inside this beautiful pub, steered until then by a vague warning from my parents that it was ‘rough’.

Finally, we are off Joel Lane. I pop into the churchyard of Hyde Chapel to look at the stocks: are they as old as I remember? And why were they in a graveyard? It seems the wrong place for public humiliation at the hands of the villagers. Certainly they are old: 1712 says the stone bracket (the wooden elements restored in 2000). Two sets of beautifully rendered initials: HB and GC. V cuts, lettered by a stone mason used to making headstones. A guess: H for Hyde, B for Boundary, GC for Gee Cross, which is where we now are, although geographically GX is a subset of H. Perhaps the stock end was also a boundary marker as an economic measure. Therefore the stocks had to go somewhere along the boundary at a populated place. The graveyard postdates the stocks, it absorbed them rather than removed them. A project for next time: look for more Hyde boundary stones to see what they look like. Historic England’s website of listed buildings and structures doesn’t explain the initials, suggesting there is still a mystery to be solved.

I cross Stockport Road past the site of another after-school sweetshop (a grocer but only one of their wares interested me). Greenhalgh’s, though Andrew pronounced it ‘Greenhalches’. A pivotal moment in my childhood was reached when I asked the price of the leftover sugar fizz, once they had sold me their last cola bottle. ‘No charge’ Mr G replied, happily dispensing an ounce of the valuable chemical crystals into a white paper bag. A few times over the years, this prize became mine if the timing was right. I walk down Knott Lane and on to Enfield Street. A curious Victorian building here where my sister had ballet lessons. Stepped gable, Flemish style. It was a school associated with the church, dating from 1889, and making the best of its side street setting. Aged 16, a former schoolfriend rented a flat near here, having found work immediately on leaving school. Instantly an adult, while I was still in search of cola cubes.

The memories thin out on this automatic D-line toward the schools I attended in childhood. Here is where various minor friends lived, prompting me to imagine what it must be like to live in a house with a garden trellis, a toaster, or with cars driving past at speed at night. I try to find a favourite short cut, the snicket. It has been gated off now, probably after too many burglaries, accessible only to resident key holders. A token thirty feet of paving stones through the grass and a badly concreted drive. In the grass here, I once found a pile of toy cars, in a terrible state. I was mystified and so left them. Looking back, it was surely an early instance of goods being left out for chance collection, an adult knowing that children regularly took the route. The pile was too tidy to have been left by a child at play, and too ruined to be current toys, their dull silver chassis now flip-flopping. Wedge-shaped Alfa Romeo Carabo, a concept car in vivid purple metal flake, now hopelessly marred.

Both the infants and junior school are still intact, dense with memories. Sunday means I can stop to look through the railings. The single story building seems largely unaltered, the playground still painted with play shapes and games. It is now augmented with basketball hoops and climbing walls. Generous windows. The raised tile section where I played an office-bound Cowley, to Keith and Kevin’s far more dynamic Bodie and Doyle. ‘What does he do?’ I asked, not being allowed to watch The Professionals, or most things on ITV. ‘He sits and writes’. So aged eight, I stood behind a waste bin and mimed writing in my office as K&K skidded around the playground. This imagined office also contained the wall where I kissed my first girlfriend Jacqueline. This is the meadow where in the summer lunchtimes of 1979 J and I played house, a younger school friend Melanie being our daughter, preparing salads of dandelions and dock leaves. A mysterious cuboid of granite, always to be found by the fence, stood in for unsliced bread. Its rotund upper side gave it a convincing loaf shape, straight from the oven. We could barely lift it. Disappointedly, this loaf has now disappeared from the edge of the meadow. Why can’t people just leave things alone?

Another short cut further down suits my route back to the bus station, a cobbled alley connecting two residential roads near the school. The arrangement of the stones is broken up in places and then the mystery of the tough old loaf is solved. A child freed a cobble (or rather a ‘sett’) on their way to school and brought it with them, or perhaps over several days.

I take the back streets out of curiosity, possibly for the first time ever. The street names here celebrate royalty: King Edward, York, Balmoral, Sandringham, Windsor, Frogmore (this last being Jacqueline’s address – its namesake the marshy burial place of Royals). Yet another former sweetshop, familiar by its corner door. The idea is that if your customer entered by one corner you could see them arrive from wherever you happened to be in the shop. Some pubs do this too. A corner door doesn’t suit the usual layout of a house, so now they are bricked up, leaving the tell-tale chamfer. This particular one was infrequently visited, being well away from my route home from school. Its bricked doorway is exceptionally well done, only a floating floral keystone above a driveway lamp gives the game away. A bridge over a former railway line reveals an active walkway stretching off through woods I only vaguely can recollect.

Henry Street, which runs parallel with the main route of Market Street, yields several new, if minor, discoveries. These are terraced houses, which estate agents of the 80s called ‘cottages’, built in Hyde’s dark, variegated brick. Curious industrial buildings have today been made domestic but which must surely be very dark inside. Curiously, I think what it would be like to live here, as if I don’t know. On one of these side streets was an art supplies outlet and studio, where I bought my first oil paints aged 15. ‘You don’t need black, try purple and brown’ advised the ginger-bearded owner who years earlier had graded a spaceship interior I drew in pursuit of a rare cubs badge. ‘No shadow is that deep,’ he explained. Later memories surface from 1988, based around my college years in nearby Ashton-U-Lyne. Pete, a mature student at 25 lived somewhere round here and I would stay overnight after last orders, at a time when two pints was as much as I could get down. My friends then tended to be the older students, highlighting my keenness to understand adult life from non-relatives.

I rejoin Market Street and that’s the circular walk complete. At the bus station, no-one is travelling to Manchester – or anywhere it seems – on a Sunday evening. In best Sunday tradition, nowhere is open for me to buy pop fizzy sweets but I still have an apple and a bottle of warm water. I rest for the first time in maybe three hours’ avid walking. My muddy shoes and clothes are now dry and the dirt can easily be brushed off as I return to the metropolis.

‘Fleas Do Not Smoke’

Spaceplay for the Win

Past Where the River Bends: Searching for Spiderland.