The Fingerpost at Bowness

First impressions of Manchester, England, after eight weeks of Spain, Portugal, and France.

It feels like everything is red brick or glass and steel. Heavily industrialized. It feels like Coblentz's "The Blue Cat of Castle Town" character Aruna Hyde has run amok. The buses are double-deckers, not because they're quaint, but because the ridership is so dense. Four-coach trolleys are as common a sight as the two-coach articulated trolley. I have seen very few single-coaches.

Everybody is in a striding hurry. Madrid moved quickly, but not at this frenzied pace. Even strollers clip right along. However, in marked contrast, since the sun is out and the temperature is in the teens (70s US), people are asprawl in the grass singly and in groups. One bunch of seven men and women we clumped in discussion. Another single skeletal old man was down to his expedition shorts, asprawl and asleep, face to the sun, shoes, socks, and shirt in a pile beside him. Women are taking advantage of the warm weather in . . . abbreviated . . . fashions.

Coming off the train and down the slidewalk I caught this painted iron column capital.  I love the detailing color adds, especially when I consider that all those gleaming pristine white columns the Greeks left us were polychromed to a fare-thee-well when they were raised.  All the statuary was painted in lifelike or better colors.  Sometimes elegance is brightly colored.

I FOUND AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKSTORE. Imagine that. And a bookstall on a street corner. And a student-friendly bookstore/pub which was remodeling and didn't have their books out. (A different bookstore's employee told the the student store was a great place to buy a pint and sit and read, but not really to buy.)  The drowning husband-and-wife found surcease at the bookstore after eight weeks without access. That's only a book a week. That's not bad.

Neil Gaiman and Nicholas Monsarrat I know. The rest were all recommended by the bookstore employee, a published writer himself.  

Talk about "all a-jumble." There was a mostly non-fiction side to the left in no particular order I could ascertain, and a mostly-fiction bin on the right in a dam-sided tabletop bin. These are almost all hardbacks.

I found a 1959 collection of Monsarrat's short stories there for a pound. The mostly non-fiction were individually priced, and the mostly fiction were priced aa a pound each.  

A fellow in the shop at the same time as I found a title on the shelf straight back beside the glazed-in "office" where the owner was reading with the aid of a magnifying glass. Upon asking, the owner told him "You know that's expensive? It's out of print." He acknowledged both questions, and I escaped with my loot before I heard the definition of "expensive."

I was starving when I finally found this shop, but I had determined I would not eat till I found something to read.  I am delighting in the pace of the title piece "The Ship that Died of Shame," and equally delighted at the tavern where I devoured fish and chips (of course) with peas (they will mash the peas for another 60 pence) (?).

After that break I went to Aldi's, a flaming beehive of haste and narrow aisles, such an indescribably different experience from the Aldi's in Limoges, France, and bought groceries to cook at home and stop hemorrhaging pocket money.

And, of course the bathroom humor here tickled my male sensibilities. I deleted the shot of the stainless-steel trough I haven't seen since Navy boot camp in '65, but the blue circular sign on the building wall near the train station stopped me in my tracks . . . and I -did- look up the word. It means what it looks like it means.  I wondered why this was "retained for posterity."

The brown rectangular sign is down a hall in a restaurant in the train station complex . . . and, well, it just sort of sums everything up.  What I absolutely did not photograph outside the train station was the pair of blue tactically-clad Metropolitan police with 9mm semiautomatic pistols on their hips, clubs at their waists, and semiautomatic rifles cradled in their arms across their body armor.  It's a shame that today we feel the need to have armed force in our major cities everywhere in the world.

World War I is recorded everywhere in stone and bronze. In the small park near the air bnb we're in is a square column memorializing the campaigns of the local "Pals Regiment" from this little town-now suburb. And, just out the door of the train station complex, this bronze of gas-blinded soldiers led by a one-eye soldier on a crutch . . . and the citizens, who pass it daily no longer see it, no longer see their grandfathers or great-grandfathers, who have become family stories and pages in history books.

Books and movie references . . . from "The Hobbit" to "The Man from Uncle" just abound and delight.  The black and bronze sign in the park announces that part of Bilbo Baggins's clan relocated in Manchester is irrefutable proof.  How do you -not- make that connection?  In an obvious display of international and intercultural goodwill, there were seven full-sized human circled on blankets in the grass engaged in quiet conversation.

As is the sign for UNCLE at Orient House.

When I was a kid I loved "The Man from Uncle" with Napoleon Solo and Iliya Kuriakin as the US and Russian protagonists.  Their parent organization (U.N.C.L.E. - United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) was ostensibly an international shipping company, and I really want to remember it was something like "Orient Import and Export."

I found it.  I found secret world headquarters.  The final proof happened inside the front doors.  The receptionist told me Uncle was an apartment complex, and behind her were over two dozen patent mail boxes, sealed. After my exposition about the international spy thriller, she duly wrote down the title and promised to explore its possibilities.  The surveillance team assigned to me when I left was really good; I never caught sight of any of them as I headed on into town.

"The Gospel according to Uncle Pat."

Street fair yesterday; going back today for lunch or tea.

I'm going to have to pace myself. This world is so rich and diverse and abundant and ever-opening.

Life is Good.