Down Town Train

I have started to take a short cut up to Platform 1 at Piccadilly Station. There are more fellow workers and fewer people with wheelie suitcases on this route, following the service road up to the station, past the wonderfully named pic-a-deli sandwich shop which is also a car valeting service. The station concourse isn't quite on a par with St Pancras, but there are plenty of shopping opportunities and a range of cafe choices. Very different from a late night passing through when I was 17 and saw my uncle, my father's identical twin for the last time.They were the exception that proves the rule about the closeness of twins, and he wasn't completely identical because he had lost an arm.A one - armed bandit? Certainly a black sheep. Years later one of my cousins told me it was as a result of a drunken car accident in Kenya, but I don't know if that's true. My daughter found him on Ancestry. He had died some years before my father, he had remarried, and he ended his days in Exeter. I can still see him in my mind's eye. I don't know who was more surprised to see the other. I was with an unsuitable boyfriend and we had just had a run in with the transport police. We had boarded a London train at Cheadle Hulme without tickets, and they were convinced we had sneaked on at Euston.I have my weekly season ticket now, all above board. I'm getting to know regular commuters and have met some other fascinating people on a more random basis.I have seen snow melt and lambs appear, and snowdrops turn to daffodils. The Hope Valley route passes through a stunning landscape for most of the journey. I have watched a child on a little white horse (one of my favourite childhood books), let off the lead rein to canter on her own. I think of my son Charlie working in his Youth Hostel kitchen as the train passes through Hope at 7.45am. We are both early risers nowadays. Prayer flags flutter in a friend's back garden in Hathersage, where there are sadder memories of my brother in law who lost his life there. As well as the chat, there's the chance to read. I choose slim volumes off my bookshelves to read again. Kindles are no fun because you have no idea what people are reading! Last year I was told about an app that identifies people nearby that you might have something in common with. Even the person giving the workshop thought it was a bit like stalking.Forget the app, sit on a train, listen to the conversations, observe the clothes, glance at the books and if you like what you see, smile.It seems to be working so far.

Love goes to building on fire

I feel like a tourist in my old home town. I moved back and forth from Manchester through childhood, teens and twenties, finally leaving in 1987. I continued to shop and socialise in Manchester, and made sure my children, two of whom were born there, knew their way around. Working there is fascinating - not just the work itself but the personal memories and associations that are sparking up because of it. I reckon I could walk a different route from Piccadilly Station to the GMRO every day for the next year, weaving my way through the Northern Quarter with its strange mix of fashionable bars, vintage shops, vinyl exchanges and the rest. Old warehouses, nineteenth century terraced houses, remains of the rag trade heritage, main roads and rat runs. Derelict sites turned into all day parking lots, the skeletons of the old Smithfield markets, alongside fancy flats and apartments. Some stand out buildings like the ones at Piccadilly basin and the chrome and glass of the old Daily Express offices. Band on the Wall is across the road, and there are still lots of pubs that were once part of the market traders and porters daily round. No licensing laws for those who started work at 2am back in their heyday. My dad had tales of Band On the Wall in his youth - the band literally played on platforms that kept them out of trouble and off the dance floor, and at the end of the night you fought on the side of the room where you found yourself standing!I once won an Olivia Newton John look alike competition with Jimmy Hibbert when the film Grease first came out!Tib Street is part of my favourite route - memories of childhood weekend trips there with my dad, my sister and I loved the pet shops, and he went record shopping. Last week one of the buildings on Oldham Street, once Dobkins department store, specialising in coats and raincoats, set on fire, around 6pm in the evening. Part of the road is still shut, and the building is being demolished.Seeing the fire engines and the smoke and flames pouring from the windows was slightly surreal, like watching a film set. Speaking of which, I was told last week that this area of Manchester is sometimes used for New York by film makers, as the architectural mix looks so authentic.It's not just the music then.

We have all been here before

The line from Crosby,Stills, Nash and Young's Deja Vu keeps going round in my head. Maybe not all of us, but I feel I am revisiting some aspect of my past on a daily basis since I started working in the Greater Manchester Record Office two weeks ago. I mentioned last week's connections in my last piece, My Back Pages. This week started with a conversation on the train, as a group of fellow commuters included me in their conversation. ' I'm sure I know you!' said the woman next to me. She recognised my voice and we tracked our past meeting back to my time at On the 8th Day in the late 70s. This isn't the first time this link to 8th Day has happened to me. I am exploring the Documentary Photo Archive daily as part of my new role as archive trainee. I brought some of the material into the archive when I worked at Manchester Studies in the 1980s. My name is on the information sheets, my writing is on the labels for each of the contact prints. What was more surprising is that my new colleague also knew some of my interviewees. We found a letter tucked into one of the files, addressed to me, discussing an exhibition I had helped put on in Wythenshawe in 1983.Flicking through bound copies of the New Manchester Review from 1977 and 78 in the City Library, I came across a photo of one of the artists I met recently at the St Ives Arts Club, Colin Johnson.On Thursday I went for a drink with an old friend after work. We found a bar near where I work, in the Northern Quarter. It was a Kahlua pop up bar, serving a lot of Kahlua. The barman told us it was really The Market restaurant. I realised that many years ago my former husband and I had celebrated moving in together there, and some years later we had battled through January snow to have my birthday meal there the night before we became parents for the first time! Significant occasions. Circles in spirals, wheels within wheels. There's more to come!

My back pages

This has been my first week in my new role as a trainee archivist. I have become a trainee on a train, commuting into city centre Manchester. It's an early start, not least because of the hour change with British Summer time. No school traffic, but lots of dog walkers. It makes me realise that if I had acted on impulse a few months ago and got a dog,I would be up and out just as early! The week has taken me through some of my own back catalogue.I arranged to stay with a friend of a friend in Manchester at the beginning of the week. One of her close friends is the midwife who delivered my daughter at home all those years ago. She showed me her favourite handbag, bought from my former husband when we lived in Didsbury back in the day. The temporary city library is now housed in the building where we got married, and my familiarisation visit to the North West Film Archive reconnected me with one of our witnesses! I found photo albums on the archive shelves, labelled in my handwriting, credited to my maiden name when I worked for Manchester Studies. In the Manchester Collection I found my grandfather and great grandfather at their address on Mulberry St in the Cotton Exchange directories. I found bound copies of the New Manchester Review, though I didn't have time to find my pieces on food politics, written when I worked at On the 8th Day. Quite a week!

Roll away the stones

A friend's recent post on Facebook set off a train of thought about stones. It is thought that the stones that form stone circles can be dowsed to reveal detail of a person's life. They represent the person who has stored that information through them. It's a fairly common explanation for ghost stories too - a building or a place can hold memories and impressions which are sometimes accessed and replayed.For the 2007 Sotheby's sculpture exhibition at Chatsworth Michal Rovner created a piece called "Makom" made up of stones from archaeological sites in Israel. The stones were numbered and reassembled overlooking the house. Within it were projected ghostly images, open to the viewer's interpretation, which could only be observed through narrow apertures in the walls. It was a very powerful piece on many levels, and 'Makom' means sanctuary. Living in Derbyshire I am surrounded by stone circles and ancient burial sites. All these places still inspire and confound in the 21st century. Looking back over the history of art, classical sculptors sought to recreate the human or animal form and even the gods in stone - granite, marble, limestone. By the 20th century artists were recreating the power of landscape - I'm thinking of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and more recently Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. Recent research tells us that birds can see magnetic fields, and geologists and geophysicists can explore what lies beneath the surface with their technologies. So who can say that a stone can't hold a memory.My children and I have all loved collecting stones from beaches and on walks. They spent pocket money on fossils and crystals. Friends have studied and practised crystal healing. Gemstones are revered by all cultures. I have collected pebbles off beaches around the world, wherever I have visited, and many lie around the house and garden. I still feel the loss of a beautiful piece of pink and white marble found on a beach in the Isle of Man as a child. I have a pebble given to me recently by my son in my coat pocket. I have another from Anglesey in my handbag. It's a reminder of the place and time, the mood and the inspiration. In the last few years, when I have visited a beach, I have chosen the stones I am drawn to by their shape, colours and beauty, made a cairn of them, and taken a photo, rather than bringing them back from their true resting place. On a very recent visit to Priest's Cove at Cape Cornwall, Penwith, there were signs reminding visitors not to remove stones as it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for geology.It makes sense. I have been watching the BBC4 series Pagans and Pilgrims and reading the book it is based on, Britain's Holiest Places.I was reminded that at St Hwywyn's Church in Aberdaron, visitors are invited to take a stone and write a name on it, as a form of prayer. These are placed on a cairn in the church, and on the last Sunday in October they are given back to the sea. How lovely. I have only scratched the surface of stone. But if you think some of this is far fetched, consider the roles quartz and silica have had in modern communication.If you can gather information about an individual from their mobile phone or personal computer device, who is to say that a stone can't carry something from the past.

Cat's cradle

This Easter weekend is a time of reflection and new beginnings for many. For me it's the cusp between leaving one job on Maundy Thursday and starting a new challenge on Tuesday. A year as an archive trainee with the National Archives, based in Manchester. I had got my head round the commute - short car journey, long train journey through the Hope Valley, and short walk in Manchester. Then the snow started last weekend. It snowed, and snowed some more, and the wind blew drifts that cut off Buxton completely and Bakewell to some extent for days.I had thought that I would have a good six months of not worrying about the weather, and the blizzard conditions threw me. I realise that I don' t like to feel life is going out of control. I love change but not unpredictability! It's got to be manageable. I think it's because I have spent over 28 years as the responsible adult - a role that kicked in with my birth of my first child. I then remembered the events of my first honeymoon - in truth my only 'honeymoon' in spite of being twice married. We set off for a friend's parents' house in Burton Bradstock, Dorset in late June. The weather was lovely. We had an old Ford Corsair and a very pregnant cat on the back seat. We couldn't leave her behind. She gave birth to her kittens that evening, whilst we were staying in the best man's flat in London. Back in the car with the cat and kittens in a cardboard box, we carried on with our journey to Dorset. We were stopped by a policeman on the motorway. We had to explain that we couldn't open the window to talk to him because of the cat family on the back seat. In Chippenham an essential part of the car fell off. Somehow we found a garage. Somehow we had the phone number of the best man's brother in Bath. We found a phone box and called him.He came and picked us up in an MG Midget.Cat, kittens,cases - how on earth did we do it? The cat and her kittens were fine. The house was lovely, an old mill by a stream. Later that week we headed back to Chippenham by public transport, leaving the cat back at the mill. How did we find the timetables? How did we co-ordinate the journey? On the way home we stayed with friends in a rural cottage in Shropshire.The cat must have been stir crazy and she escaped overnight. Search parties went out.Food was left by the car in the hope that she would return to the only familiar object in the landscape. Our friends began to look for a foster cat for the kittens. She did come back, clawing our friends hand badly when he grabbed her. We got cat and car back home, the kittens thrived and found homes. I don't remember feeling anxiety at any stage of this scenario. It unfolded , we dealt with each aspect of it as it arose, and everyone survived, including the car.Don't worry, be happy!

Studio in the Sand

As I watched the snow fall yesterday afternoon, wondering if my son would make it to Leeds to see one of his favourite bands, Gaslight Anthem, I switched on the radio. The dial was turned to Radio 4, and coincidentally Robin Denselow was presenting Studio in the Sand, his programme about the music of the Sahrawi.I say coincidentally because many years ago, 1980 to 1981, I lived and worked in Morocco. Morocco had claimed the Spanish Sahara in 1975 and the Polisario movement for independence had sprung up as a response. The conflict was kept under wraps in Morocco, but we all paid an extra tax out of our salaries which we knew was going to fund the war. I had Moroccan friends who told me about the Green March, when young Moroccan conscripts had been mobilised into the desert. In pre Internet days it was hard to follow progress of the conflict when I got back to the UK. The Sahrawi had been under Spanish colonial rule in that part of the Sahara before this. I spent Christmas in Tenerife the year I worked in Casablanca, and the plane stopped in Layoun on its way to the Canaries. Whilst there I met Domingo, who wrote to me for a while when I returned to Morocco. He sent me a couple of photos of him as a child in the family villa in the Spanish Sahara. Imagine going from the green lushness of Tenerife to the Sahara for your holidays!So aside from an interest in the music, I knew a little of the political history behind Robin Denselow's inspiring programme. Music and culture is an important part of the Polisario stand for independence. Young people were being taught sound engineering skills, to record and perform their music.Women are important carriers of the cause and the culture, in contrast with what is happening in many Islamic communities. 'The Sahara is not for Sale' is the battle cry song. A half hour programme - 3.30pm on March 23rd, Radio 4 if you want to listen again - only scratches the surface. As I remember it, the conflict was about who had control of valuable phosphate deposits in the Western Sahara, and none of my Moroccan friends approved of the action. Conscription for an unacknowledged war brought its own difficulties. Perhaps the hope was to develop music festivals in the area. Sadly the recent problems in Mali and Algeria have put everything with the studio in the sand on hold. I am glad to be reminded of the successes and resilience of a people I once knew something about.