MIDDLEWOOD LOCKS, WASTELAND 5.26AM
I’m content to confess that I’ve spent much of the last decade, maybe longer, hoping to find a portal to pass through. In my head, the city is full of them, and I simply need to turn around the correct corner and I will be gone, into another dimension, an alternative version of Manchester and Salford, of shadow lives and other outcomes.
Given the unlikely nature of this happening, I’ve accepted a compromise, where I travel down certain paths and streets that feel like they could be portals, and I allow my imagination to do the rest of the work. Sometimes, the atmosphere of such discovered spaces is strange enough to cause me to feel as if I’m on the very cusp of some other dimension, slightly removed from the reality I live in.
There’s a path not far from my studio, that slopes down to an old canal that goes nowhere, trapped between the River Irwell and a main road, where it disappears. The path is overgrown with trees and bracken that form a meagre Holloway across its gravel. Rubbish, such as beer cans and vodka bottles, is strewn either side, caught up in temporary fencing placed there by developers, who one day intend to change the area.
A thin drizzle fell from a dense sky of low hanging clouds, as I made my way down this path, the reflected city light softening the darkness around me. Red warning lights on recently built apartment blocks smudged into the grey mist, causing a bloody sheen to smear the still surface of the canal. I studied two geese gliding towards me, parting the red water, and staring intently back at me. A large goods train passed along the adjacent viaduct, its diesel engine growling deeply through the early morning air.
To my left, above the curving towpath, rose a steep embankment. Recently felled tree trunks lay fallen, as if shot. I found a gap in the fencing and climbed up to a plateau, squelching through puddles and mud, and the first corvid of the day cawked loudly as it passed overhead, triggering a chorus of others to reply.
I came to a halt and looked across this large wasteland. Newly constructed flats encircled the area, and I noticed how few lights were on in them. On the estate I’d recently visited, many of the houses were already lit by this time. Was it really possible to judge the economics of an area by the simple assessment of lights being on or off at 5.30am?
A folding chair and a small barbecue had been placed facing towards the city. I looked at the empty seat and considered that a chair is never really empty, that it’s impossible not to imagine someone recently having sat there, that therefore a chair is always occupied by someone, or aghost. In the distance I could see another chair, more sturdy and expensive, like you’d see around an outside table in a Cheshire garden. It too was directed towards the city skyline.
I wondered if the chairs were brought by a single person, or friends who had then decided to sit away from each other. Either way, I thought of the people that had gone to the effort of bringing this furniture to this place, and the delicious solitude they must have felt looking at the dense city growing before them, perhaps somehow feeling invisible and safe on this strange patch of land.
Two ducks, a male and female, landed nearby me, and began to peck at the grass. A couple of geese soon joined them, strutting about and barking to other pairs that had now gathered on this manmade hill. One of them turned to look at me, and extended its neck aggressively. I was in their world, it seemed, and not the land of steel and concrete surrounding us. I turned to go back to my studio, and the clouds lifted, causing the red warning lights on top of the buildings to become sharp and defined. Bedroom lights began to switch on. The ordinary day had arrived once more.
