And as the crimson winter sun dropped behind my favourite, Stephenson’s High Level Bridge, a lonely elevated promenade, I could see what the London staff were thinking as they gazed at the city coming alive for the night. You could see the cogs turning behind their widening eyes. You could almost hear their thoughts: Why would I not want to live here, and see these sights every day, breathe this air, walk these streets? Perhaps my house won’t triple in value overnight, but I won’t live in a financial clearing house, at the whim of an absentee landlord, in a city whose heart is shrivelling. When Geordie R&B act the Animals sang ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’, the ‘better life’ they were in search of lay many miles south of the Tyne, presumably in London. Now the reverse would seem to be true.
I remembered my night at the opera in Leeds and how I raced to the station down crowded streets, awash with tipsy midweek revellers in miniskirts and daft hats. They were loud and lairy, a little too much for comfort maybe. But we are brothers and sisters under the skin, they and I, and they are good people at heart. My people. I have a bit of the peasant in me, a clever one I like to think, but I have come to realise that as much as they annoyed me at the time, I’d rather be running with them down a street in Leeds than watching a baking programme at the end of the Northern Line. That’s the problem. I’m hopelessly biased. The Northern Line just doesn’t go far enough north for me.
When I was a kid my dad would moan that I ‘didn’t come awake till bedtime’. ‘Night Owl’ was always one of my favourite northern soul tunes. When I hear a grown person use the phrase ‘school night’, I shudder a little inside. The days are long gone when I want to stay up every night till dawn. But I still am proud of the fact that the north will follow sport, eat out, learn French, go to art galleries, walk up hills with head-torches, stay up late and have fun. Between the stern compulsion of work and the free creativity of play, in the friction and clash of the two, we find ourselves.
Let us go then and wake up the night, that sleeping patient that Prufrock found etherised upon the table. Let us arm ourselves and be guided by what an old friend of mine from Hindley used to say, ‘If I die with 50 pence in my pocket, that’s bad budgeting’ or, my particular watchword, ‘All things in moderation, including moderation’. We’re going out, on a school night, if only because that’s what the boss doesn’t want us to do. The hooter has gone, school’s out and, as Richard Hawley of Sheffield put it:
‘Tonight the streets are ours.’
Let’s go, eh?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following people offered invaluable help in many different ways during the writing of this book. Some pointed me to places or books. Some got me into things. Moreover whilst many of the trips and journeys I undertake on my books are solitary adventures (which explains why you might have seen me making furtive notes in a chip shop, museum or nuclear reactor near you) over the course of this book, I was often accompanied by some of the following people. In any event, here they are listed part alphabetically, part chronologically, slightly randomly and mildly nervously as I fear I may have left someone out. If it’s you, forgive me.
Clare Hudson
Dee Wallace
East of Eden WI
Elizabeth Alker
Lizzie Hoskin
Lorna Skingley
Helen Hobday
Henrie Rowlatt
Simon Entwistle
John Leonard
Faith Wilson
Peter Young, David Morris and all at Dobcross Silver Band
Luke Bainbridge
Justin Moorhouse
Simon Moran
Tony Howard and all at FC United of Manchester
The Tone Deaf Society
Ian and all at Belle Vue Aces Speedway
Jackie, Ian and all at British Crown Green Bowling Association
Peter Salmon
Paddy McAloon
Johnny Marr
Richard Hawley
Pawlo Wintoniuk
Elaine Constantine
Elle Rees
Opera North
Durham Literary Festival
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Copyright © Stuart Maconie 2015
Lyrics to ‘Duw It’s Hard’ used by kind permission of Max Boyce
Text from ‘Why doesn’t Britain make things any more?’ by Aditya Chakrabortty
© Guardian News & Media Ltd and used with kind permission
‘Morning, Noon and Night’ by Philip Larkin © the Estate of Philip Larkin
reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
Text from Giles Coren’s review of Aumbry, Manchester © The Times
used with permission of News Syndication
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First published by Ebury Press in 2015
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ISBN 9780091933814