Today I had a day off as Em wanted to visit the land of her birth, Salford. We left late morning, intending to get brunch at a Kosher cafe that she knew. They shut early on a Friday for the sabbath and we saw that there was a long queue outside, so we travelled on to eat in a double decker bus serving Dutch style burgers and chips. I thought this would be run by Dutch people, but the staff clearly had ancestry from the Indian subcontinent and were playing Indian music.
We both had fishburgers, which were excellent, as were the chips, served with mayonnaise in the European manner. Em was dismayed that so much of the Salford that she knew had been knocked down and replaced with the ugliest of modern buildings. The Victorian chimney of Strangeways prison still stands proud and erect. In the distance the city centre of Manchester has grown upwards like a patch of steel framed mushrooms.
Hunger satisfied, we visited the place where Em spent her childhood in a brick maisonette, since demolished. The site is now occupied by boring modern housing, which also covers the sandhills where she used to play. The prison governors house is still there, apparently now a homeless shelter, but the prison doctors house next door has gone, it's garden derelict and overgrown.
Salford is surprisingly green at this time of year, but much of the greenery is accidental. Self seeded trees and shrubs on long disused land.
The next destination was Short St, where her mother lived as a child. The route that we planned to take was unavailable because of a one way street so we had to take a long detour. This took us close to the Black Friar pub where her dad liked to drink. She said it was a bit of a dive, which was what he liked. We briefly considered visiting, but likely problems parking discouraged us. It seems it's gone upmarket now https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/inside-historic-salford-pub-black-21116643
Our route took us along a busy multi ethnic shopping street which had something of the atmosphere of Diagon Alley. At last we got to Short St, a tiny loop in an area dominated by grey and dismal light industrial units. Amazingly, the Albert pub still stands, though derelict.
