Before going to Ireland recently, I spent a week or so in my hometown: Bury, Lancashire. Despite Bury being a rather drab place, if you put your mind to it, you can find some rather interesting things to see there.
One such place is the Drill Hall (above and below) where I attended the Beer Festival a few times (Beer Festival is now more often held in the Met/Derby Hall) and where (I've been told that) my grandfather was the caretaker for a short while after he'd finished at TPL (Transparent Paper Mill).
Despite having lived the first 30 years of my life in Bury, and knowing the Drill Hall, I had never noticed the gargoyles before. If I wanted to be unduly unkind here, I would claim that the one below bears an uncanny resemblance to some of the town's inhabitants:
One abiding memory from the Drill Hall is having seen my old friend Bruno (he used to be something of a 'star' in Bury) warming his hands at a small gas fire just inside the building as I was entering for a Beer Festival, and soft snowflakes were more heavily landing outside. Yes, it was a Dickens-type scene (but from the mid-1980s), especially with the Two Tubs (an old pub) and Bury Parish church both being in the hazy distance. Sadly, not sure if Bruno is still alive, last I heard was that he'd slipped into debilitating alcoholism, living in a hostel somewhere in Rochdale.
No comments:
Post a Comment