Cheshire Life

GO AWAY! 

Cheshire Cat by John Tenniel

The gestation period for an attack of Cheshiria may be anything up to six weeks. Sometimes, however, the innocent victim may instantly exhibit severe symptoms arising from even a fleeting encounter with a Range Rover emerging from the warm red embrace of a Cheshire farmhouse. One bite is enough.

It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that the last line on Mandallay’s Post Office address is Cheshire. That County Palatine is surely a lovely place, but we do not live there. Mandallay rests in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, and before that was invented, Derbyshire reached West to the River Goyt to include Marple Bridge, all of which apart from the Bridge itself arguably lies on the East bank.

Nevertheless, the contagion of Cheshire has swept up from the lowlands, a soft wind of sweet pastures warmed by dairy herds and Agas, bearing bling and blondes to the Bridge.

Even the briefest contact with Cheshire can bring me out in a rash. I now know that Mandallay goes on full alert some days before my return from a tour of duty. The household has tried many techniques to forestall or mitigate attacks of Cheshiria. Tactics include house-cleaning, laying in dark chocolate, moving furniture to hide evidence of animals, and scattering handfuls of the “Excellent Work” postcards mass-produced by the boys’ Specialist Exaggeration College for teachers to hand out when students arrive in school before the bell.

Years of exposure have made Mrs M, and me too, to some extent, better at managing Cheshiria. Just as a resident of Freetown or Juba immediately recognises the symptoms of malaria, and knows just what to do before they sink into delirium, I know that the only thing to do when Cheshiria strikes is to dive for cover in a darkened room before everyone else catches it.

Even so, I wasn’t expecting an outbreak in John Lewis at Cheadle Royal. I should have known. After all, Cheadle Royal Hospital is well known to the Mandall ancestors as a refuge for the spiritually challenged.

All I was doing was trying to buy a suitcase. Now that Mrs M is a student of Contemporary Literature and Culture at Manchester's greatest seat of learning, I thought she might recognise a post-metrosexual irony in my patronage of the Samsonite brand. She didn’t doubt it. M3 explained to M2 that Samsonite is for five stone weaklings with nothing else to boast about.

The Partners at John Lewis were of course as obliging as ever, but they were out of stock of the particular contraption I sought, and had to summon one up from their online chums. By the time their till had connected to the internet, and the internet had connected to my bank, and my bank had connected to something else that wanted the passcode to the security code to my password to the freelance credit card, and I had connected my phone to Mandallay to find out what said passcode was, I was so late for my next appointment that, well, yes, I snapped. Not quite that bad. Let's say I was a little dyspeptic. I'm not proud of it.

I left in a hail of patent leather handbags amidst the stench of hair lightener. Then I got stuck in the car park because a man in a bad pin-striped suit was having a stand-off with the Scouser who was washing his Jag.

On the A538, a herd of Fresians blocked a squadron of yellow minis emerging from a Garden Centre where their drivers had been lunching.

Once I finally got to The Priory in Hale Barns, I was so very late for my appointment that I took a small risk. Instead of parking off-off-Rappax Road, I charged over the bumps along the long sweeping drive to the car park, knocking a couple more Range Rovers into the roses, and found myself, like Mr Bean, doing a four-wheel drift followed by twenty-nine point turn between a BMW and an Audi to get into the last space.

By now, my Cheshiria was full-blown. Hives had erupted all over the Fiesta too. I dashed into see the doctor, who was mercifully running late too.

I am happy to report that the shaman appears to have had a very pleasant holiday, and has lost a few pounds, so he’s doing very well. His bill will be along shortly. I always find it good value, because it helps me wave away all doubts whenever I issue my own. In fact, this is one more good reason why a quarterly visit to a consultant psychiatrist is the secret of success, or at least survival, for many modern freelancers.

There are days when I like to delight or bore you with the varied pleasures of home on the Bridge. In truth, there are more days when I find it easier to not to dwell on the people, so I blather on instead about a soft mist on the Goyt, or rainwater blasting rocks out of its course as hurtles down Linnet Clough.

There are also days when I’m grateful to be somewhere else. On days like that I find myself saying I come from Marple, or even Stockport, instead of Marple Bridge or Mellor. Its pretty little hamlets like Moor End and Brookbottom can go hang. On those days, what was once magic and warmth is just mud and mither.

And there are days too, when even grimy old “Stockport” sounds too colourful. As though a bit too much of Lowry got snagged on it, even in black-and-white.

Old Steps, Stockport

 L S Lowry

On those days, I find it best to say I live in Manchester, which is technically true as Stockport is in Greater Manchester. At least it’s somewhere they’ve heard of. And whatever they think of, it won’t be anything to do with me.

I do not, however, live in Cheshire.

This is a work of fiction. No cats, counties or hair products have been harmed in the making of this column.

An alien world on our planet

“Beeping’s never good.” Professor Brian Cox is sitting inside a rather tatty submarine called Alvin, and is descending into what he calls the “deepest depths of the ocean”. It is the only time I’ve seen Brian worried.

I can’t quite get used to young Brian being a prof. He looks more an M-Nought, big brother to our M1, M2 and M3. I have to check to see if he is wearing long trousers.

Still, once he gets onto his Wonders of the Solar System, Professor Brian Cox is unstoppable. One moment he stands inches from the edge of the Grand Canyon, hands in pockets. The next, he's flying us through rocks of ice that make up the rings of Saturn, or he’s driving a Rover across Mars. And we all thought Rover had gone bust.

It’s all a bit like No 72 on a Thursday evening. Here am I, innocently trying to write my column, when asteroids start slamming around the kitchen. M1’s iPod is bust. He’s convinced it’s M2’s fault, so he’s just taken it out on a toasted sandwich that just happened to be M3’s, not M2’s.

My phone beeps. It’s Mrs M. How did we manage to communicate before Mrs M could send me 50 texts a day? “Micro wave smoking” the text reads. I am tempted to reply “too young”, but it’s usually better to draw a few deep breaths, and wait for the next text or two to announce their arrival. Then I can safely anwer "OK" or "yes" without either of us knowing which text I am replying to.

Then the electricity conks out. I make my way downstairs, which is in darkness apart from a beep which sounds as though it is coming from one of the piles of shoes and sports kit. The tomb of the unknown beeper.

As Brian says, beeping’s never good.

M3 is our expert at re-setting the circuit-breaker thingey. The answering machine is the first to break into life: my mother re-reminds me that we haven’t spoken for Some Time. Then it’s the dishwasher, and the digital radio that always starts up at full volume after a power cut. Finally, the microwave buzzes into life – its fan roars – it gives two beeps – and the lights go out all over again.

On board Das Boot

One kilometre down inside the Puerto Rico trench, Professor Brian Cox has overcome his nerves and is admiring tube worms and fish, all quite unconcerned that they are living in an atmospheric pressure a hundred times that at sea level.

From upstairs, the faint bleep of an uninterruptible computer power supply turns into a continuous wail, then dies, along, I fear, with my script. I sit in the dark, illuminated only by the phone of M2 who is holding its glowing screen in the direction of the fuse box.

Stop engines. 1000 metres beneath the surface of the River Goyt, I listen to the plates of my submarine creak, feel the water dripping off overhead pipes onto my neck. The propellor of the plucky Royal Navy corvette above is silent. Its Asdic pings off my hull.

Flower class corvette HMS Arbutus. Sunk 1942

I wait for the next depth charge from my dear family.

“This has got to be the closest thing on earth to going into space,” says Brian. I suppose he's right.

Next week’s column will be coming from further afield than usual, contract permitting. The column – or, come to think of it, the contract – may be late, but I’m sure both will be worth waiting for. I’ll keep you posted.

Roman Codswallop

What with all this ice and snow, I almost got the camera out. But all the scenes I wanted to frame had been snapped up a thousand times over. And then there are all the historic photos on the Marple website too.

No scene has been snapped more often, they say, than our dear Roman Bridge over the Goyt. 

© Copyright Peter Fuller and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Codswallop! That bridge is about as Roman as my nose. It’s time to set the record straight.

History is not what it was. I’m not with fogeys who pine for the days when some kings were Good (Richard the Lionheart) and some kings were Bad (King John) and preferably Deformed (Richard III).

We must embrace modern scholarship. I have therefore ensured that what follows has been certified by one of our finest reality-TV producers, as well as by an acclaimed radio journalist and acknowledged authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The year is 55 AD. The Romans have been bossing those southern softies around for years, with the honourable exception of Queen Boudicca (known in the Mandall household as Mrs B).

Here up North the battle for control continues. Between the River Goyt and the Irish Sea, the Romans occupy the boggy lowlands of Gorblimia.

But the Upacrustian fort overlooking the plain is staunchly British.

In between, lies Marple Ford, astride the River Goyt as it journeys to Liverpudlium.

Marple Ford

Upacrustia and Gorblimia come together in the Rhodberis family. Mrs Robby is an Upacrusta from Mellor. Whereas Mr Robby is a Gorblimi from down below in Marple. They live at the Blasted Oak public house at the Mellor hill fort with their sons, the Three Rs.

Mrs Rhodberis  - Robby for short - is at the foot of a ladder, laid against the Blasted Oak. She is shouting up at Mr Rhodberis (also known as Robby).

“What’s with the new sign, Robby?”

“It’s a make-over,” replies Mr R. “For the Romans.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with ‘The Blasted Oak’.”

Mr Robby shrugs. “Oaks are so last millennium.” He waves towards the plan. “Down there in Gorblimia, you can’t move for Oaks and Druids: 'Old Oak', 'Oak and Cauldron'. Potion of the masses if you ask me.”

Mrs R interrupts him. “I didn’t ask you. You’re only a Gorblimi yourself. We’re Upacrustes in Mellor. True Brit.”

(There is a silence. The producer wanted Mr R to light a cigarette at this point, but the PA got all precious about it.)

“Fur cloak and no loin cloth,” he mutters.

“That’s enough of that, Webbed Feet,” she snaps back. She points at the sign. “What’s it say then?”

Mr R sighs, and says loudly and slowly. “It says ‘ROBIS VOBIS’, and it means ‘Robby’s is good for you’.’’

“Can’t stand that Latin muck.”

“Latin brings the soldiers in. Look at Private Castra and Captain Bollux. Castra brought in half the camp privates on Friday night.”

Mrs R is now considerably vexed. “This is a clean house. We never have any trouble, as long as the Gorblimis sup in the midden. We don’t need your foreign garlic-eaters, you low-life collab– ”

Mrs R holds her tongue, almost in time.

After the advert break (Explore Holidays, Low Temperature Ariel, and Resolve) the couple are more conciliatory.

Mrs R unclenches her gums: “I don’t mind the Romans, really, but you let one in, and the next minute they're all over you like lice.”

“That Private Castra can get you anything. Salt. Nylons. Hello! –”

Mrs R: “I don’t think I want anything he’s got, thank you very much. Now Captain Bollux is another matter.”

“What’s Bollux got that I haven’t?”

Cut!

Living on the Edge

They’re shooting Mrs Peppercorn tonight in the Bridge. Her film crew is going to blow snow all over us and pretend we’re a Cornish village. Town Street will be closed for three nights, which should infuriate and delight us all in equal measure.

Edgy stuff, a production like this: what will happen if we’re already covered in the wrong sort of snow? I sha'n’t sleep for worry.

Three nights! I hope Mrs P and the crew will grace our pubs and restos between takes. To be honest, some of them have a bit too much Cheshire bling for Mrs M and me. As regular readers will know, we prefer the Regent Cinema, where my lady bestows the briefest of infra-red glares on anyone who whispers. This suits me fine. Also the magnums are only a quid.

The Edge restaurant in Marple overlooks the Peak Forest Canal as it hurtles down 16 locks and 210 feet to a viaduct over the River Goyt (then known as the Mersey) on its way to Manchester. “Hurtling” is of course relative. It took Mrs M and me all day to wind 16 sets of the sluices up and down, while a chorus of little Ms looked up from their Nintendos to chant “Tom Mandall Turn the Handle!”

Although the “e” at the end of The Edge in Marple is falling off, by design of course, our visitors won’t need crampons to reach their table. Carpers may say that we exaggerate when we talk of “peaks” and “forests”, but we really do live on the edge here by the Bridge. We live on the edges of Stockport, Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, Peaks and Plain. We used to be part of Derbyshire too (and, always up with the times, the Church of England has just moved us from the Diocese of Derby to that of Chester.)

Daily, we bestride our less-than-tectonic plates. Bridgers attack the terrain from early morning: a Pringle of golfers absailing down the links of Mellor Golf Course, or a Lycra of bikers grinding up to Lantern Pike.

Once Mrs M and the kids are out of the way, I lace up the chunky English shoes that I imagine are favoured by social anthropologists, for my morning stride with faithful Bono into old Derbyshire, and perhaps exchange greetings with the farmer fattening his cattle below St Thomas’s. Meanwhile, my neighbour leaves his half of our semi, and walks down to Town Street for a latte behind The Guardian at Libby’s; then he crosses our Goyt-Mersey-Rubicon for an off-peak return with the humanities staff to his Mancunian seat of learning.

Some of us free-lancers are currently more free than lancing. So, after a seemly interval in which we might have been responding to urgent emails from Lord Mandelson (no relation) or skyping Bangkok, we congregate in our trainers, we gentlemen of the road, track and tow-path. We jog down to the (not quite) Roman Lakes and up to the canal, over the Goyt, scrabble up through Brook Bottom till we finally top the Soldier’s Knob with its blasted Cross.

We may be on the edge of riches or repossession, but this knob where a Wesley may once have preached will still be here tomorrow. And perhaps that new contract will turn up...

Home to number 72, our ledge on the edge. Let’s go mad, Mrs M: Lancashire black puddings, with bubble and squeak for tea.

I raise the plump satin horse-shoes, dark as aubergines, to embellish my ear-lobes, for the delight of Eminem.

“Can’t we have fish fingers?” says M2. Go prick thy face, thou lily-liver’d boy!

Watch out for shrapnel, Mrs P.

Piccadilly Circus

“It’s like Piccadilly Circus,” says Mrs M. The snow has gone, the schools are back, and the road works have resumed at Cataract Bridge. So Town Street is as congested as the chest of a November Stockport baby.

Like many places, we have our own driving code. My nephew in Stroud showed me proudly that whatever misdemeanour you commit, the oncoming vehicle, be it dust-cart, Polo or even white van, will wait with beatific composure till you pass.

My erstwhile lass in Boston, Mass – now something important in Highways – once gave me a tour of her city in her 20 year old Malibu, mainly views of Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. “Cut ‘em dead: don’t look ‘em in the eye,” was her motto.

In the Bridge, we are flashers. We flash to let people through, give two flashes to thank the flasher, and the shortest of blips to acknowledge the grateful blink of a bus released from incarceration between a skip and a hard place.

And, while our fingers hover by the headlamp stalk, our eyes are busy in the mirror. Well, I never: there’s John at the wheel: I wonder what’s happened to his collapsible bike, or are his knees giving him trouble again?

They don’t generally say that if you stand in Town Street long enough, the whole world passes by, but I shall. The brother-in-law’s father for instance was evacuated here from Cheetham Hill, and talked of his home in Mellor as a magic place. Back in the old days, when I still smoked outside, I was rolling a cigarette (ah! the glory days) with a new acquaintance in someone’s back garden when I realised we had shared a flat in Brighton, and they’d got here via Birmingham and Trinidad. Then there was the film-maker I bumped into, and found he had once been married to my mother’s cousin... I won’t bore you with more.

Cognoscenti will assert that some of these people live in Mellor, or Rowarth, or Marple. But that’s not the point: they all pass through Marple Bridge, because it’s miles round if you go by any other way. Indeed, it seems that half the local children live on the Mellor side, but go to school in Ludworth, while the other half live on the Ludworth side, and go to school in Mellor. Via Town Street.

Except, of course when Town Street is shut. After the River Goyt, in spate, washed away its embankment, Town Street seemed to be closed for ever. First the bank, then the gas main, then the bridge: it went on for about twoyears. So we roared around the narrow lanes, turned grass verges to mud, trashed tarmac. And flashing was definitely suspended. We gripped the wheel with both hands as waves of Discoverys charged us down.

It was a May evening when a black cab brought me home from Stockport Station, along Glossop Road, and right at the Travellers Call onto Ley Lane. Over Mill Brow, and through Hollywood, the evening sun filtering through new pale leaves. The driver had slowed, unfamiliar with the road, nosing around bends.

“It would be quite something to live here”, he said, “something to aim for”. Something to be grateful for, I thought, as I have been ever since. Most of the time.

We clattered up Chatterton Lane onto the moor at Shiloh Road, and dropped down by Five Lane Ends into Moor End, with Manchester before us and the Cheshire plain beyond.

Conserving Energy

I know my readers need no introduction to the importance of conserving energy. You may even have heard of “10:10”, a lobby group that wants us all to cut 10% of our energy consumption in 2010. (Here's the link: 10:10.)

The Mandall household has been hard at work on this. The boys for instance have taken to putting our new digibox on “pause” for hours, just at the moment before the car explodes: think of the energy that saves!

Mrs M has been getting ahead with the washing. I bought some rubber balls to go in the dryer. The more we use them, the more energy we save! I also think the towels are fluffier, but Mrs M is silent on the matter.

From the above, you see an example of the division of labour in our household. I buy the gadgets, Mrs M does the work, and the boys are, well, busy growing.

Mrs M generously says that the division of labour is not unfair. For instance, I’m in charge of the garden. I’ve been hard at work saving energy since November, when I started listening to snippets of Gardeners’ Question Time, hoping to hear Bob Flowerdew tell me that it’s time to hang up my spade and take a well earned rest from my labours.

November is long gone, but with luck, frost and water-logging will save me the energy of lifting spade or Flymo for weeks yet. And it will certainly be a while yet before the earth passes the trouser test. This is my mother’s energy saving tip. Lower your posterior onto your seedbed. If you can count to 20, remove your over-garment and try again. Only if you can do this in comfort, it’s time for sowing.

When our plastic greenhouse blew over again, I decided to research whether the blast off the Goyt would drive a DIY turbine on the roof, and help the Mandalls through the recession. However, I’ve not seen these advertised since someone pointed out that they can consume more electricity than they generate, and can also shake the chimney to bits as well as the neighbours’ nerves.

So it’s back to saving energy. My top tip is to visit the ironmongers in Marple, rather than trail into the DIY superstores in Stockport. Straightaway I’ve saved 10 miles of driving! Of course I could just shop online to see who’s offering a bogof on insulation, but Hollins offers more fun for less energy.

I spent a happy hour there researching key-hole covers to stop the howling draught through the back door. The better class of covers come in boxes and are called “escutcheons”. These sound a bit heraldic for me. I imagine a knight charging up the drive from a jousting contest in his shining Range Rover. He proudly fixes an escutcheon plate on the front door, and presents his fair damsel with a golden key.

I settled for a brass-effect key cover in a blister pack. Mrs M makes hardly any fuss about the extra fiddle getting the key in the hole.