Last week I headed out of the city back to the hills from which I begat. I grew up on the edge of a decayed mill town, Oldham, and also on the edge of the green and pleasant valley of Saddleworth.
I come from an area called Austerlands, which lies just below Scouthead. Arriving at Austerlands once involved crossing the border between Lancashire and the West Ridings of Yorkshire. Essentially it is something, or nothing, of a no-man's land on a former trade route through the Pennines.
As a child someone very, very old told me a little bit about the history of the area dating back to the War of the Roses and how it was called Austerlands after the word austere. Nearly all those old timers have died off now.
My visit unintentionally coincided with Whit Friday and the annual Austerlands & Scouthead Band Contest. Such celebration and ceremony isn't widely known about in Greater Manchester; people look at you like you're a weirdo from the Middle Ages if you ever mention that such events are still going on just ten miles out of the city centre.
Years ago I embraced urbanism and fell in love with the city with such single-mindedness that recently I've found myself musing over the place where I grew up with bemusement, as though it is an alien world.
I was born on the borderline between two places, also I was born between two times. A time of Whitsun, Cob-Coaling and Wakes, but also a time when computers first entered the home, when the internet first started to make everything much closer together.
I shall shortly post a few entries on the customs of yesteryear, as experienced by a child version of me.
0 speakeasies:
Post a Comment