Fear and Loathing in Manchester

On Saturday morning I take a bus from Leeds to Manchester, it’s a pleasant one hour drive which I slept most of the way which is just as well because here the tour comes close to turning to disaster as I go off the rails and almost end up stranded.

On arrival in Manchester I walk 0ut of the National Express Bus Depot onto Piccadilly and I am immediately struck with the pace of this place. Everything is going at 70 miles an hour. I have no idea where I am and only a vague idea of what I am doing here. It’s 11.30 am and the Jeff Beck concert is 9 hours away.

We have a rental car that we want to extend for a few days so I decide the first thing to do is pop into the Hertz office on Piccadilly and have a friendly chat with them and make amendments to the arrangements. That’s the first cock up.

Piccadilly in Manchester isn’t so much a place as it is a district, it would probably cover 4 square miles, but it’s the most intense 4 square miles that a wee boy from Waikaretu has ever been in his life. I’m looking for a big sign that says ‘Dave, we are here in this building waiting for you” or at least a sign that says Hertz.

There might even have been one, but after walking around Piccadilly for 2 hours I conclude that it is playing hide and seek with me and has won. I turn on my cellphone to ring and Anne to tell her and notice my phone is about to go flat. This sets up the potential for complete disaster later in the day. I text Anne a brief message along the lines of “Can’t find Hertz office after 2 hours, giving up, phone nearly flat, will text bus times later”.

I turn the phone off to conserve the battery. This turns out to be the lifesaving decision of the trip so far.

I have noticed a free inner city bus doing the rounds from Piccadilly Station on a route around the town. I grab a free inner city street map from the Railway Station and jump on the bus and stay on it for two laps to get my bearings on the layout of the city centre. It doesn’t help much because these old cities were not planned, they basically unfolded around ancient roads, train stations and canals. I do notice a Hard Rock Cafe so I get off and buy a T Shirt to prove I’ve actually been to Manchester and was able to find something.

There are shops everywhere and I consider doing the shopping thing but decide that I will probably just exhaust myself walking around the town shopping districts and lose my bearings before taking a wrong turning somewhere and end up getting mugged by junkies down a side street.

Instead I head back to the National Express Bus station and find a coffee bar over the road and plan to sit the day out there.

The coffee is exceptional, in fact it’s hard to find bad coffee in Manchester, but this is very good coffee and I have a table to myself with an ashtray and a good view of the people as they zoom past.

I’m joined by a guy about my age and his son and after I tell him where I’m from and how amazing I’m finding things here we break into a long discussion about the history of Manchester.

He offers an interesting perspective on it as his passion is the architecture and they way it’s being ruined by developers. He tells me that essentially the historic buildings of Manchester were built in a 40 year period during the transition from Edwardian to Victorian design and is the most visible remaining example of this kind of architecture in the world. But it’s under threat from progress.

For example there is an old tower building over the canal that allows for goods arriving by barge to be craned onto different levels for rail or road transport. This building is being turned into a multiplex.

He describes what should happen with great pride for his city. In the discussion he asks me what I’m doing in Manchester and I tell him I here for a concert at the Apollo. He asks who is playing and I tell him it’s Jeff Beck. He tells me he saw The Jeff Beck Group at the Apollo in 1968.

We chat a bit more about history and music and then he has to go but before doing so he encourages me to have one more look to find the Hertz office and gives me precise instructions where to go.

Before doing this I go back to the bus depot and talk with the ticket office about my trip back to Burnley. They tell me that yes, I can buy a ticket now but don’t need to, there will be plenty of seats on the bus and although the ticket office closes at 10pm I can buy a ticket at the machine on the wall later. They say that first I should try another bus company who might be able to get me closer to Colne with their service which would mean an earlier arrival time and Anne wouldn’t have to wait up so late to collect me from the bus station. I walk the 1/2 mile up to the other bus company ticket office but find that their last bus to Nelson is at 10pm and I’d miss too much of the concert if I took that bus so I decide to stick with the National Express bus at 11.00pm from Manchester arriving at Burnley at 12.25am. I turn the phone on and text this to Anne and turn the phone off again.

Can you hear the Jaws theme music in the background yet?

I follow the instructions to find the Hertz office I was given to the letter and find myself two miles from where I started with the realisation that the Hertz office must have been either moved or stolen.

It starts to rain.

I do my best not to get too wet and work my way back to the railway station and decide it’s close enough to dinner time so enter the first place I see. I order Cottage Pie with chips.

I sit down and notice I’m in a diner for derelicts and down and outs.

Perfect.

I finish my dinner quickly and decide to just go to the Apollo and wait for the concert doors to open. When I get there I find I’m not alone and there is a large number of Jeff Beck fans waiting outside the backstage door. Apparently Jeff Beck usually comes out and meets his fans before the gig and signs albums and poses for photos.

This turns out to be one of the days when he decides not to.

The doors to the Apollo open at 7pm. The concert is fantastic.

As Beck winds up the show with A Day In The Life I decide to skip the encores and leave and head back to the bus dept to make sure I get my ticket and don’t miss the bus.

The first thing I notice is that Manchester at 10.30pm is a different place to what it is a 5pm. It’s noisier, busier and a whole lot less friendly looking.

I get to the depot and find the ticket machine is out of order. My bus is the 540 from London to Burnley via Manchester. I talk to the driver of the next bus to leave the depot, he’s going to Liverpool with a half full bus and I tell him that I tried to buy a ticket earlier today but was told that it wasn’t necessary and that I should use the ticket machine but now I had no ticket because the ticket machine had shat itself.

“Don’t worry” he says, “the driver should sell you a ticket, they do in 99.999% of cases. You’d have to be very unlucky or strike a complete bastard who refused to sell you a ticket”.

Have I given you readers too much of the story yet?

My state of mild concern has turned to fear and loathing now so I turn the phone on and text Anne to say “Ticket machine puckerood – need to buy ticket on bus from driver”. I notice the phone has one bar left so turn it off again straight away.

It’s now 10.40pm, the bus should be here in 10 minutes so I go outside for a smoke.

Now I don’t usually enjoy smoking, it’s a filthy habit and one I’d love to kick one day but this cigarette is about the best thing I’ve had since Buddha sticks.

I must appear to be enjoying it because every bum in Manchester walks up and says ”Have you got a spare ciggy mate?”

It’s now 10.57pm. The bus from London hasn’t arrived yet.

I notice an arrival and departure screen like they have in airports and see that my bus is running an hour late. Instead of leaving Manchester at 11pm and arrving in Burnley at 12.25am it’s now scheduled in at 11.55pm and arrives in Burnley at 1.25pm

I turn the phone on, it’s making those battery about to die sounds now, text Anne the bad news, turn off the phone and go outside for a smoke. A girl walks passed and says “Mister you look like you are really enjoying that smoke”.

It seems that every second person in Manchester wants a free ciggy off me and I endure a gauntlet of  bludgers asking ”Have you got a spare ciggy mate?”

I used to be surprised when this happened but now it just pisses me off. What in earth is a “spare” cigarette? Is that one that is in my packet that I was going to throw away instead of smoking? What’s in it for me to stand on a street and hand out free cigarettes to people?

After about the 6th person asked me this my answers to them are starting to indicate I’m more than pissed off. I promise myself the next person to ask me for a “spare” ciggy I’m going to ask them why I should give away ciggys.

Luckily it never happened.

At 11.45 the 540 from London to Burnley via Manchester pulls in. I approach the driver as he helps people unload their bags from the carrier box on the side of the bus. He is clearly stressed out over the bus being so late and someone is bitching about something in their bag being broken and he’s not too customer friendly about it.

He fends of the grizzler and walks back to the front on the bus where he meets me.

I say to him “Hi mate, is this the 540 from London to Burnley via Manchester?”

He replies “No son, this is the 540 from London to Manchester, it’s not going to Burnley.”

I say “But it says Burnley on the sign above the front windscreen”

He says “Have you got a ticket to Burnley?”

I say “No, I tried to buy one earlier today but the lass told me not to bother as I could get one from the ticket machine but it’s broken”

He says “So that means you haven’t got a ticket then. Thanks for clearing that up”

He then jumps back on the bus and starts to clean up. I tell him about my conversation with the other driver who told me that it was up to the driver to sell me a ticket in a case like this and he started getting pretty wound up.

“Look, you haven’t got a ticket, there are no passengers on the chart so this bus isn’t going to Burnley” he points out.

I stand my ground though and say “OK, I just need to clear a few things in my head for the record, this bus is the 540 from London to Burnley via Manchester, it’s an hour late, I tried to buy a ticket earlier but your company ticket office recommended I come back when they were closed and use a ticket machine that was broken, I checked with another driver who told me only a complete and utter bastard of a bus driver wouldn’t sell me a ticket and I’ve come 12,000 miles to spend the night in a bus station because you are that bastard? Have I missed anything?”

The driver is now glaring at me and launches into a tirade about me being the only passenger and how stupid it is for me to expect an entire coach to go to Burnley for just one passenger.

We stare at each other for too long in silence.

He says “Well fuc#en get on then, we’ll take the whole fuc#en coach up to fuc#en Burnley just for fuc#en you”

He’s a bit pissed off by the sound of it, and he hasn’t stopped yet. When I get on the bus I sit up the front.

“You can’t fuc#en sit there, piss off down the back” he tells me.

“Which seat can I have then?” I ask.

“Any fuc#en seat you like but not that one”

I grab a seat not too far back and we are under way. Finally. I turn the phone back on and send a brief text to Anne. – “On the road, C U in 90 minutes” I turn the phone off.

The driver is going off up the front.

“Fuc#en Burnley. Buuuuuuuurnley. Off all fuc#en places to go it has to be fuc#en Burnley. Not Bolton, oh no, we’re going to fuc#en Burnley, Fuc# me”

As we speed through Manchester city he doesn’t stop. At an intersection some skateboarder type is standing off the pavement and in the bus lane, not realising he’s got Mad Max gunning for him.

“And look at this” the drivers says to nobody “another fuc#en clown”.

The skateboarder flukes his luck by getting out of the bus lane before the driver has a chance to turn him into roadkill.

By now I’m shitting bricks. I’m on a bus with a psychopathic driver in the middle of god knows where. I realise I haven’t done up my seat belt and wonder if the penalty for that is death by 38 inch BF Goodrich tires repeatedly being applied to your head. The seat belt goes on in record time. I’m starving and I have a Subway cookie and a Mars bar that I’d saved for the trip home stashed in my bag but I’m fearful that if the driver hears me eating he’ll put me off the bus with glee.

I shut the fuc# up and start to calm down and after a few more miles the funniness of it all starts to register.

We carry on in a stoney silence for another 30 minutes.

I notice we are now on the motorway. That’s not the route the bus is supposed to take. Before long I see a sign that says Burnley 19  miles. The trip that should have taken 90 minutes is starting to look like it’s only going to take 60 minutes.

The driver starts talking.

“You’ve been lucky tonight mate” he says.

I wonder if this means he’s going to kill me quickly without torturing me first or if he means that I’m going to get where I wanted to go safely.

He continues “This bus was supposed to go to {- and here he describes the route he should have taken – } but because you’re the only passenger I’ve taken a few shortcuts.

I say “Well, I really appreciate it, and I’m sorry the night hasn’t been a good one for you but thanks very much”.

The ice is now broken and we start chatting about what the fuc# I’m doing in Brunley and I explain it all.

Before long we are both laughing and talking about Manchester and England and Waikaretu and so on and before we know it we are at Burnley Bus Station.

I turn on the phone and ring  Anne and tell her we took a few shortcuts and are here 30 minutes early. Anne tells me they are on their way and will be 30 minutes. The phone dies.

I ask the driver what he’s going to do now and he says he’s going to get off the bus and have a smoke. He offers me one. I guess it was that spare cigarette all those bums in the city were looking for. I decline his offer but we stand outside and he smokes his smokes and I smoke mine, like it should be.

I tell him the people who are going to pick me up are 30 minutes away and he says that Burnley is not the safest place at this time of night so he stays with me until Anne arrives.

I told him about my blog and how he was now part of  a bloody good yarn to add to it and asked if he would be good enough to pose for a photo with my 10 ton taxi.

He said yes.