Reflections on Northern Spirit

By Saba Haider

I am not from Manchester or Lancaster or Blackpool. I am not from Lady Bower or Ramsbottom. Nor am I from Northern England. Actually, I’m not English. In fact, I’m not even British. I come from a place across the pond and far away where the Queen is on our money but our television is American. Our spelling is British, but our accents aren’t. Our winters are very long, cold and bleak.

Some of my English friends tease me, saying: “Canada is the result of a scandalous affair between America and England. A mutt. England’s step child.” I can see their point.

And although I love Canada and, of course, I always will, I’m the first to admit that from a very young age, the North of England was my fantastical haven. I daydreamed my way through high school in southwestern Ontario praying for the day that I could live my life in peace, in Manchester. I’d never been, but I knew all about it. My spirit, I felt, was already there.

Other teenagers go through phases like rap, or hip-hop or gangster or rocker or punk or football or drugs or whatever … I am the only person I know that went through a ‘Manchester’ phase. And I’m not simply talking about music here. Sure music had a major influence – my first item of music acquired when I started high school was the Stone Roses debut, introduced to me by a girl named Angie who’d just moved to Cambridge from Widnes, Cheshire that I had befriended. The album blew me away. I had already heard bands like New Order and The Smiths because my older brother listened to them. But, despite the fact there were so many people around me that were into the same music, nobody else was into Manchester — the place, it’s people, it’s geography, it’s ethnography, it’s history, it’s existence.

Sure, there were loads of teenagers walking around Toronto in 1989, ’90 and ’91 saying they were into Manchester, but they were specifically referring to the indie music coming out of Manchester at the time —bands like the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses and Charlatans were huge in Toronto … but I was actually into the city of Manchester, which, if you didn’t know, is 30 metres above sea level.

I had a picture of a sign that I’d cut out of the University of Manchester undergraduate prospectus (I’d sent away for it two years before my UCAS application would have even been due) on my wall. It read: “And On The Sixth Day, God Created Manchester” next to my bed. I was fifteen, and I believed it was true.

As a teenager, one of my favourite playwrights was Shelagh Delaney, from Salford. Her voice was so Northern, I felt. She wrote about the plight of the Northern working class so well, I thought. She’s still one of my favourite writers. Bless her.

I had a pen pal in Blackley. Lynette. I met her through a fanzine I found at a Morrissey concert in Toronto. She was actually American and living in New Hampshire at the time, but she soon met Darren, some Northern lad in Blackley (through the same ’zine) and moved to Manchester to marry him and live happily ever after. I was happy for her. Lynette was lovely and she became my pen pal in (and crucial link to) Manchester.

This is back in the early 90s, before the internet took over all of our lives, and Lynette and I wrote to each other probably every other week for several years. She filled me in on daily life in Manchester and I wrote to her about my boring teenage life in Cambridge, Ontario. Lynette was probably ten years older than me, but never made me feel that I was in another sphere to hers. She wrote to me about the pubs she went to, the offices where she worked, her husband and married life, gigs she went to, shops she visited and people she met. I drank it all in. Altogether we corresponded for at least ten years. But when my twenties arrived, university and jobs and travel and recurring heartbreak provided me with a multitude of distractions. If I recall correctly, Lynette and Darren ended up getting a divorce. Regardless, we lost touch.

But for the years that Lynette and I were pen pals — and this is years before eBay was even an idea, she supplied me with all the Mancunian paraphernalia I could’ve asked for. I had posters from the Royal Exchange Theatre above my desk and a selection of flyers from gigs at the Hacienda and other venues and pubs in and around Manchester wallpapering my room in Cambridge, Ontario. Back then, I could’ve probably given you directions from Stockport to Daisy Nook, because I’d studied the map I found at the library so carefully.

Unlike any other place in the world, Northern England’s people — all of them — share what is known and understood as the Northern Spirit. I treated the sheer idea of it as magical. When most teenagers in Canada of my generation were dreaming about being in places like Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal; San Francisco or New York or Paris or London or simply Australia … I dreamt about life in Manchester, England.

That was fifteen years ago — and Manchester has changed a lot since then, I’ve been told. Today, I know that Manchester is cosmopolitan and undergoing ongoing regeneration. It boasts designer apartment buildings and gourmet restaurants … the Hacienda which was home to some of the greatest influences of my youth, is now a block of overpriced (but rather nice) flats and penthouses. But, the Manchester I fell in love with was the poets Manchester — the one that still exists in my head, and in my heart. And, it’s the only one that I can see and feel and touch, every time I go there.

The poet’s Manchester is a hidden gem — a secret I don’t want to share with the world. I don’t really want Manchester to become any more chic than it has become. And I don’t particularly want Mancunians to sip lattés and discuss the increase in price of sun-blushed tomatoes at the health food store, although some of them do, and that’s okay.

I believe the Briton’s Protection, is a truly great name for a pub.

I like my Mancunians sipping greasy tea with their roast dinners; enjoying warm ale with their curry, unwilling to pay more than what something is worth, proud of where they’re from, and warm, welcoming and curious towards each and every person that comes and visits their city. Those are the Mancs I know.

I remember being rather pleased with myself when not too long ago, I recognized a patron at The King pub, in town, as being a National Express employee from Chorlton Street station. It’s a small world, I thought.

I remember the first time I went to Salford, a year ago. Being a big Smiths fan growing up, I had to do the obvious pilgrimage of Smiths sites at some point. One day last winter, on our way out of town for a drive in the Lancashire countryside, a Manc friend of mine drove me to the Salford Lads Club — so I could visit the site of the cover of The Queen is Dead album. It was a bleak Sunday afternoon, but I was grinning. I popped into the newsagent across the road to buy some orange juice and wine gums, and struck up a conversation with the old lady at the counter. “I bet you’re not from here,” she said.
“No, I’m visiting,” I replied. “I bet you get a lot of visitors here to have a look at the Lads Club.”
“Yeah, particularly in the summer,” she said, adding “They still play here all the time.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The Smiths,” she replied as-a-matter-of-factly. “I hear them in there sometimes.”
I paused to look at the tiny, friendly, senile old woman. “Cool,” I replied, smiling.

My Manchester looks beautiful when it rains. The leafy streets of Chorlton, Didsbury and Fallowfield look like postcard pictures when the streets are silent and grey. I am enjoying my new haunt, Ye Old Cock, next to the wonderful peace and tranquillity of Fletcher Moss gardens, where I’ve had some nice walks.

Last Spring, I met a group of very old ladies in Didsbury, out for a stroll in Fletcher Moss Park. Their smiles and greetings led to a lovely chat about lots of things. I really enjoyed strolling around the gardens on such a beautiful day, I said. All three ladies, World War II wives, nodded in unison, in approval at the fact I’m Canadian.
“Yes, Canadians are great people,” one said.
“Oh yes,” said another. “You helped us during the war.”
“It’s a real shame you have to speak French,” said the third, and they all smiled and nodded towards me sympathetically.

I enjoy greasy breakfasts and coffee at Saints & Scholars, and I can’t get enough of the Sunday roasts at The Metropolitan and The Great Kathmandu is a wicked name for a Nepalese restaurant with a massive neon sign. I love watching crazy Wendy, in her elaborate evening gowns and feather boas, sing Elvis classics at her wonderful Thai restaurant in West Didsbury. I’m sure the King himself would’ve loved her too.

Manchester has the friendliest cabbies in the world. In fact, over the past year I’ve been proposed to by at least three of them. They all really liked my attitude, they told me. “If I were twenty years younger …” they’d say. I felt special.

Apparently, there’s a really groovy ‘Disco Taxi’ — complete with flashing lights, 70s disco tracks, and a cabbie that truly feels the vibe. I heard about it through an old friend but we’re not really friends any more, so I’m not at the liberty to ring and verify. It’s supposed to be a riveting experience, and a must-do for kick-starting a big night out in town. I’ve never even heard of a disco taxi in London.

I remember the first time I ever took the train up to Manchester, from London. A middle aged Mancunian man sat down beside me and offered me a Stella. For the next couple of hours he told me: “It’s important to follow your heart.” He was soon going to sail around the world. He had been waiting to do that his entire life.

I told him I really understood him. “I can relate to you,” I said. I had been waiting for this day that I too would catch a train to Manchester, my entire life.

He smiled, and told me about the ship he would be sailing.

Upon arrival, the chubby teenage cashier at the Sainsbury’s at Picadilly Station, who rang up my bottle of water, supported a tousled Mohawk that fell in all directions over his head. His nametag read: “Jason Lee.” I giggled to myself and asked him if anyone has ever pointed out the fact he shares a name with a moderately famous Hollywood actor.

“Nohh,” shrugged Jason Lee without even raising his head to look at me. “Everyone just calls me Pineapple.”

My Manchester’s beauty is surreal. I remember one romantic and rainy day last winter, walking by the central library and stopping to smile at the bright and ornate strings of colourful fruits (probably plastic) that seemed a hundred feet long, hanging from the high ceiling of the exterior, draping down the walls to create the loveliest of images … It made that beautiful library seem so mystical and dreamlike. Filled with secrets.

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Andy Rourke, bass player of The Smiths, after a DJ’ing gig he did alongside Mani, Bez and Bez’s right hand man Tom, while I was on an assignment in Dubai. I told Andy a story about Juan, a young Mexican guy with a buoyant pompadour that I met in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. This man, who hadn’t yet had the opportunity to leave the United States, was enjoying a pint of Guinness at a popular Hollywood pub called The Cat and The Fiddle. He was wearing a T-shirt that read: “England is mine, it owes me a living.”

Andy threw his head back and laughed, amiably. “No it’s not — and, no, it doesn’t,” he blurted.

We both laughed.

Thank God I didn’t tell Andy about the Northern spirit I wore on my sleeve as a fifteen-year-old in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, thirteen years before I even managed to visit the area.

All people are victims of circumstance, and those were mine. I’m starting to accept that.

Saba Haider is a journalist. She lives in London and once upon a time visited Manchester frequently. Her attentions have shifted towards warmer climates.