Under the bridge

Last Sunday I spent the day in Longsight at their neighbourhood festival. I was there for work. Archives+ took a stall at the festival. We displayed some photographs of Longsight in past times. I have my own memories of Longsight. In the late 1970s I worked and lived there. I did my shopping at the market. I walked all round the area and up and down Dickenson Road, as a travelling English teacher, working for Manchester Council for Community Relations. I took children to school and to join the library as part of my role working with the Asian Community.It was strange to be back,thinking of that personal history. At the same time it was very familiar and comfortable. Friendly people, conversations in Urdu that I tried to follow, Bollywood background music. I used to catch the bus into town from a stop near this bridge.On Sunday I caught the train to Levenshulme and walked underneath it. I realised that as children this had always been known as my dad's bridge. Each Sunday he would drive us from Eccles to Little Hayfield to visit my mother's parents, my grandparents. Our journey took us through Longsight and under this bridge. Studying it, I could see that it had been widened and strengthened . The rail tracks run over it and the road runs underneath. He was a civil engineer, working for a company called Leonard Fairclough at the time . Yes, the name was borrowed for a Coronation St character . It looks like it was modernised in the 1960s, which would fit in with his working life in Manchester. It wasn't long before he was off to work abroad, Nigeria and Malaysia, and then back to Yorkshire until he retired. I must have walked under that bridge when I lived in Longsight, but I'd never been so aware of its place in my life until last Sunday.