Ghost-town.
On coming home, digging up skeletons and learning to lie with them.
My hometown lies smack-dab in the middle of a valley. It’s a soup-bowl filling with more and more people by the year, carved out of the Dark Peak over millennia. There are two winding roads that dip out of each side (the Snake Pass and Woodhead, that veer off towards Manchester and Sheffield respectively) scooping up city folk wanting the ‘best of both worlds’.
It’s also a historical market spot, and in the 1900s the high street boasted glass fronts in looping metalwork with a large dome that crested the bank.
Nowadays, visitors can enjoy the presence of not one, but four major supermarkets dotted throughout — including an M&S, and you know you’ve made it when you get an M&S. There’s also a Wetherspoons, two Costa Coffees and the skeleton of a gutted KFC on the edge of a business park, just a road over from the shell of an empty Toby Carvery.
I learned how to balance on the clutch in those parking spots.
We have a beautiful old theatre, haunted by one of the founding members who reportedly shows up in the shape of a butterfly. There is also a blooming health food shop, a smattering of really very good eating spots (you know they’ve made it because the city newspaper said so) and an OXFAM where I sweated out an…
