I came here to bury my uncle. I was very young. I came with my father to attend the funeral of his youngest brother. It was my first time out of the country.
My uncle had come to Manchester to find work. He had been a lorry driver back home and I presume that is what he did over here. I only remember that he smoked a lot of cigarettes and after three or four puffs he would put his thumb to his teeth and let the smoke filter slowly out of his mouth. When I started the fags, I had some similar little eccentricity.
I remember a lot of narrow streets. I thought the houses would have been bigger. I walked to the end of the narrow streets to see if I could see Manchester but all I could see were more narrow streets. Like most children of that time I could have named every footballer who played for Manchester United, especially the Irish players. They were the ones we wanted to become when we grew up. But after three days I was glad to get back home.
I have a friend who was born and bred in Manchester. He now lives beside Trawbreaga Bay, up near Malin Head in Donegal. The view from his windows stretches for miles over the Isle of Doagh and up towards the peaks of Slieve Sneaght. We play a few holes of golf now and again. He tells the story that he was eleven years of age before he knew that he was living in England. Up to then, everyone he knew and everything he did was Irish. His people were in the building trade.
I played a few holes myself here in Manchester during the week. The men I played with were also in the building trade and have been over here for a long time. They have all done well. Spain, Mexico, Italy would be regularly on their itinerary. They come back to Ireland pretty often for holidays, weddings and funerals. I don’t think they would talk about being ‘over home’ as much as they might have years ago. They would be more likely to ask about how things are going ‘over there’.
They were a generation who came over to get work and make a better life for themselves. They would have had uncles and aunts over before them. Some probably came from the north to get away from the Troubles. There’s a lot of building going on over here again. Looking out from the Metro on its way to the city centre I could see new blocks of flats and offices towering over the more humble red brick homes and factories. It looked to me that there were people sitting on verandas thirty or forty stories up looking out onto other thirty story buildings. No Trawbreaga Bays over here.
Manchester is a strange mix of old and new, some lovely buildings interspersed among too many that are outrageously ugly. I don’t think it is going to win any awards for ascetic beauty. Thankfully, the people are warm and welcoming. It’s not like London. Strangers nod and smile and chat.
There’s an enormous building programme going on around the university. Forty thousand students studying there. Made me think of the pathetic four thousand who go to the university in Derry. Some of the young people who come over here are from our part of the world. Pity they couldn’t have stayed at home. Four thousand is far too small but forty thousand is far too big.
I saw my uncle in many of the older men’s faces. Rugged, weather beaten and warmly open. I saw one older man in a church spread his handkerchief on the kneeler before he knelt down; my uncle might have spread his flat cap. The church was pretty packed for the Easter services. Mostly Irish but a lovely smattering of people from ethnic minorities. It was one of the most prayerful and moving liturgies I had experienced in years. It made me think that the model of church that Catholicism so badly needs might yet be found among the ruins and the chaos that the church is experiencing.
Manchester, Manchester, I don’t know if I should love you or hate you but you and I are going to have to come to some kind of understanding. My first grandchild was born over here last Saturday.
