Visiting Carmen in Manchester

The rooftops of Manchester, Valette

When her mother brought Carmen to Manchester in September she packed a suitcase containing everything she might need. However, in contrast to the other girls in residential halls, Carmen didn't bring much. Other mothers piled their cars high with spatulas and teddy bears. 

'Why have you so few things?' Carmen's neighbours asked her when they visited her room.

To make up for this, when I went to Manchester to visit her, I brought Carmen: a ship-to-ship, butane-powered foghorn (and warned her not to use it near a naked flame); a red kitchen timer with a silver dial to help her manage time (softly ticking, and with a short, pleasant ring); a large non-stick kitchen knife with holes punched along its blade and a round tip; 50 blue-ink ball point pens (in five colours); plastic folders. multicoloured Post-it notes; flourescent sticky-backed blazes; a smoke alarm and, finally, glasses to allow her to see who was sneaking up behind. 

She looked at my purchases, said: 'Thank you Dad'; then ignored what I had bought and immediately tried on the white, form-fitting, quilted jacket which her mother had sent. 'Do you like it,' she asked?' Posing, studying herself in the mirror. 

In my haste to fill the sports bag up with useful items, I forgot the matching blue wolly hat, scarf and gloves Teresa had also asked me to take to Carmen. 


'Never mind,' I thought, 'at least she has a foghorn.'

On my way to Manchester on a narrow carriaged Virgin train - the compartment like the cabin of a budget jet - I sat opposite a man in his thirties in a grotty suit and white shirt who coughed. He scribbled in pencil on a large slim black notebook and, provocatively, put his coffee cup right up against the imaginary line that divided his table space from mine.

Following him into Manchester I overheard him on the phone, :

'Yes, well we need to do this across the board in all 11 prisons.'

Outside the station at first it was as I remembered it. Dark.To paraphrase the children's book:

In a dark dark country there’s a dark dark town

In the dark dark town there’s a dark dark street

In the dark dark street there’s a dark dark accomodation block

And in the accomodation block there is a box room.

I hoped Carmen’s room was cheerful. The impression of darkness was momentary; coming out of the station I saw that most of the people who were about were student-all-sorts, Manchester looks like a student town.

The sound track began. Quality music on every corner. Carmen, accepted it naturally, nodded her head saying: 'I like this song.' or 'I hate this song.'

I walked past a sign at a church entrance advertising: 'Mass in Swaheli.' Found my way to a launderette with an Internet service, emailed Carmen my address, travelled in a bus past Curry Mile, past the International Student Association. I got off near Platte Fields Park.

A young student with a large beard bounced along the pavement. I stopped him in mid bounce. He took off his headphones. 'Brighton Grove?' I asked. 'No sorry.' he said. Earphones back on, bouncing away again. In the gloom I had to walk right up to the road sign to read: 'Brighton Grove.' Turned left into a darkening tree lined road, and I find Luther King House.

Carmen, is waiting for me. 'You chose well,' she said, 'I’m only three minutes away.' My room, which was comfortable and clean, was in an annex up a flight of stairs, next to the periodicals section of the theology library. 'The right place for you then,' said Carmen.  


'I love my politics lectures,' she said. But the lecturer has a rule. If anyone's mobile phone rings she must stand up and sing a song from the film Titanic. So the mobile phone of this extremely shy small Chinese girl rang; she was sitting right at the front. She had to stand up and sang in a quavering voice with the politics lecturer conducting:


Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you 
go on

Far across the distance
And spaces Between us
You have come to show you 
go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart and
My heart will go on and on

'She got a big round of applause.'


'Was she traumatised?' I asked. You can get into trouble for doing that sort of thing. 


'I couldn't see her face,' said Carmen, 'I don't know.'

We went to a tapas bar run by latin Americans for diner. Coriander and fresh tomatoes with the papas bravas, tasty, but overcooked, seafood, incessant salsa music - irritating. Then for a coffee at a smart restaurant with fairy lights '..trying to be London,' said Carmen. As we walked in a customer was complaining that he had just swallowed a piece of glass. The manager was apologising.

'The Chef must have banged the pan down too hard and a bit of the glass lid must have chipped off. They have to bang the pan to loosen the pasta you see.'

'A likely story.' I thought.

We watched TV in my warm room and Carmen left reluctantly. We agreed to meet at 9 am. I met up with her at 10 am. In this respect she is a chip off the old block.

'My friends liked your presents.' said Carmen. 'They want to meet you.'

'Forget that.'

'Yes, forget that.' said Carmen.

'And Lucy?'

Carmen texted Lucy. 'She's in the library working on her dissertation. I'm proud of her.' said Carmen. She's been so nice to me. She lives in a nice house down that street. I visit her often.

'I asked her to spy on you,' I said. 'Invite her to lunch.'

It's 11/11/11. I'll tell you the meaning of 11/11/11. I said to Carmen. It has no meaning, of course. It's Armistice day, but otherwise numbers only have intrinsic meaning in the mathematical sense.

Think of it like this. If your grandparents had done nothing with their lives then they too would have been looking back at past generations and lionising the people who went before them. But they kept busy.

When I went to Pretoria to the funeral of one of Dad's cousins I knew almost no one. I went with Eve at the suggestion of Colin Hall, (management Svengali and former CEO and Chairmen of companies). One of Dad's cousins spoke of Arthur Hall, our illustrious, shared, forebear. I mentioned I would be writing about him and the wife of Dad's cousin piqued, said.

'No, Alan - I think it was Alan - will be writing about him. What do you know of him. What's your connection?'

'And I said. "'Don't worry. I don't have that much to say about Arthur. I have a lot more to say about Eve and Tony."'

'You see the Pretoria family just carried on with their lives during Apartheid and so have to look far back for solace.

'But this date, 11/11/11 is the reset button for us. Now you can look forward. What you do, and what your peers and your brother and sister and cousins do will matter even more. What you think matters.'

I ignored Carmen's murmered interruptions.

'You are a bit too much of the teacher, sometimes.'she said.

'But I am becoming more of a feminist as I get older.'

'You are a sexist' said Carmen. 'naturally so. You aren't even aware of it.'

'Oh I am,' I said. 'I do it to please your mother. Mexican women lose their bearings when they aren't dealing with a modicum of sexism.'

'Just don't do it,' said Carmen.

'Look, my friend Rose.' Carmen exclaimed. From the bus I caught sight of a girl in jeans with red hair walking up a flight of steps.

We bought peri peri kebabs in Piccadilly gardens and got a lecture on zoning restrictions from the owner. A whiskered, unkempt man standing to one side watching two young Polish people serve the public.

'My Mum bought me a plant for a pound Carmen said.' Laughing. 'It didn't look like much. It was wilted. Mum said: "Just water it and it will be alright." So I did. It's very green and healthy now.'

In town Carmen lead me from place to place, cafe to cafe, shop to shop and my eyes grew rounder and rounder. Manchester is wonderful. It's so lively and interetsing. We walked into an Indie record shop. I hadn't heard of most of the bands. We went to a vegan cafe and we drank coffee. Then through the centre talking privately of family matters in Spanish. In fact, I am ashamed to say for a while I lectured her on Bauhaus and Garden Cities and our family connection with both.

Many of the dignified buildings seemed to have been converted into shops or pizza parlours. The massive Portico Library, converted into a high class chippy. We took a short cut through a big mall. Carmen took me to the Geiger shoe shop.

'Everyone's talking about this shoe shop.'

Past the football museum shaped like a glass trainer, to the Manchester Art Gallery. And in the museum there was a picture of a family in mourning. The dead wife's big head rested on two plump goose-down pillows. The dead woman's husband, her children all dressed in black velvet, stared out, intensely at us. The family crest was painted at the top.

The man was wearing a pair of Geiger high heeled shoes. His wife's perhaps. Stilletoes made from a black velvet material with a black velvet rose on the instep of each shoe. He leaned back in his chair, occupying most of the painting, his daughter pale, in the bottom right hand corner, his son occupying the space to the left.

There was Lowry of course and Valette.Then there was Grayson Perry: with his supperating penis flowers, gorillas and girls, in different poses and all in a pretty pass, beatifully painted and glazed onto what looked like Ming vases. And Perry's auto icon. 'It's not an auto icon', said Carmen. Jeremy Bentham didn't inspire Perry. Not everything is a copy, not everything is created referring to something else.

Carmen has a cool looking plastic bottle which advertises tap water. She refills it. 'It's a good idea,' she says.

'Yes,' I smell the water. 'It smells a bit of swimming pool.'

'Don't spoil it for me.' said Carmen.

'Would you drink Johnny Depp's swimming pool water? Angelina Jolie's?' Carmen laughed.

When we left the buidling it was getting dark. We reached Albert square. A huge geometric Father Christmas had been built over the entrance to the imposing buildings of the Manchester Metropolitan Council.

'That's disgusting.' said Carmen, looking up at it. 'How could they desecrate a beautiful building like that?'

We went inside. There were interesting stairways. The busts of Manchester's famous men had been placed in a chatty circle in what was now a large cafe, by one of the Windows. The dignified men that built manchester, mocked.

Manchester's self mockery

In the 1980s we took Yosser, in Boys from the Black Stuff seriously, Yosser tipped over a cliff.

'Giss a job. I can do that.' he says, following the linesman along a football pitch with his three small children trailing behind him.

We shared Yosser's mood sometimes. Sitting in the dole queue; hapless.

But then something happened. There are always periods of thermidor. Napoleon disappoints, Louise Philippe makes you despair. Russian revolutionaries committed suicide in exile, after 1905.

And then the world stops. And miraculously it restarts and we stop despairing.

11/11/11. Manchester mocks its working class roots. It mocks its former dignity. It mocks its family values,  manliness and the work ethic, and so it resets the dial.

The symbol of Manchester is not the old Canal, it is the podium set up in front of the famous painting in the Manchester Art Gallery.

In the painting a climber tears at his hair as he looks over the abyss. presumably a comrade has just fallen to his death. The podium invites you to pose and tear at your hair in mockery of the climber and his fallen comrade.

*   *   *  *  *  *

Where are you going? my colleagues asked me before I flew to the UK. 'To see my family and to visit my daughter in Manchester, Carmen.'

I bought her a turquoise pastel rucksack in a shop in the centre and then, after a meal of pie chips and mushy peas (which she didn't finish) she took me to the bus station, waited for the bus to leave, waved me goodbye. I love my daughter.