Nothing to lose but our aitches

NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR AITCHES

ANDREW VAUGHAN

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By the same author Pies and Prejudice – The Road to the Premiership (With Martin Tarbuck) Punk Football Bobbin’ Along Faded Lois Dreams

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Andrew Vaughan is a writer, publisher, bohemian layabout, anarchist and scruffy modernist. He is the editor of Loire magazine.

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ANDREW VAUGHAN NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR AITCHES

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VAUGHAN MEDIA PUBLISHING

First published in Great Britain 2014

By Vaughan Media

Copyright ďƒŁ Andrew Vaughan 2014 The right of Andrew Vaughan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any manner without the prior permission in writing of the copyholder.

Cover photos courtesy Marc Taylor www.marctaylor.eu

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WIGAN 2014

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INTRODUCTION

n or around the 19th of February 1936 George Orwell was pottering up and down the LeedsLiverpool canal towpath searching for Wigan Pier.

He couldn’t find the exact spot which was no surprise as the so-called pier had been sold for scrap seven years previously. Seventy-eight years’ later writer and journalist Andrew Vaughan walks past the spot where it allegedly stood several times a week. The pier, of course, never really existed.

The story is that day-trippers passing through Wigan on a Southport bound train one foggy day spotted a rail leading to a jetty that was used to tip coal onto barges on the canal. One of the passengers was alleged to have said, ‘Are we there yet?’ after spotting the jetty to which a railway employee replied, ‘No lad that’s Wigan you can see.’

Whether the story is true or not the music hall performer George Formby Senior – father of the soon to be megastar George junior – picked up on this and it became a staple of his act. The ‘joke’ remains to this day and it is a replica of that jetty that Vaughan and others walk over and past as part of their daily lives.

Since Orwell’s days Wigan has changed in many ways yet in some ways it is no different. This book is about Wigan in February 2014. It isn’t a comparison between Orwell’s time and today, as that has been done many times.

I had an idea to look at what happened in Wigan during the days that Orwell was in town but nothing really happened!

This is just one man’s observations of the town, its people, the country and life in general over a twelve-day period in 2014. And like back in Orwell’s time nothing really happened…

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Wednesday 12 February

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here’s a strange-looking girl sat on the bench in the foyer of Asda eating a pie and reading Heat magazine. No surprise in this to be honest but at 7.05am? I notice the strange-looking girl as a minute earlier I had targeted the bench to place my right boot upon. You know that feeling when you know your boot or shoelace is coming undone and there is nothing whatsoever you can do apart from bend down and tie the blasted thing.

But deep down you really don’t want to bend down and tie it. You can’t bend down and tie it as time has indeed caught up with you. It’s all downhill from now on. So instead of tying the thing immediately you hope it goes away. It never does. It always comes undone. A bit like life itself. Today it – my lace not my life - comes undone sometime between reading the Wigan Evening Post match report of last night’s Wigan Athletic game and perusing the amateur football round-up.

One of the many strange things about the town of Wigan - as well as odd-looking girls eating pies at this time of the morning - is that the evening paper comes out at something like six in the morning. It’s that sort of town and it’s that sort of paper. I normally buy it once a week when I have a football report or something printed in the paper otherwise I read it ‘in-store’ at places like Asda and WH Smith. Well it costs fifty-five pence and fifty-five pence is about fifty-four pence more than I’d pay to read about Kym Marsh from Coronation Street and Dave Whelan from 1980s comedy Brass.

Anyhow I succumb to the loose lace and make my way to the bench and that’s when I see the strange-looking girl not just sat on the bench but spread right out across it.

Pie foil, magazine, bag, handbag all spread out on the

. bench rendering absolutely useless for me to slam my size ten on. For a second or two I just stand there. I’m not sure whether I’m expecting her to move or anything and in fact she doesn’t even look up from her pie. And then just then I think, ‘Bloody hell she doesn’t half look like a girl I used to go out with!’ As I said she’s a strange-looking girl. I make my way outside and find an elevated sort rail to put my foot on meaning that I don’t have to bend down all the way. It’s a small relief. I tie the lace triple tight. The laces are that long I could probably tie the boot and carry on and hang myself high above Asda. Imagine, just imagine, hanging yourself above the front entrance to Asda at 7.10am on a Wednesday morning. My guess is you’d be hauled down sometime after midday. And that would only be because your lace - on your other boot - would have come undone, fallen off your flaccid body and hit a passing Wigan store worker on the head, killing them dead. Thursday’s Wigan Evening Post headline reads. ‘Timberlands on checkout girls head’.

And once I’ve tied my lace and stopped imagining the shame of my old Timberland boots causing the death of a trusted colleague of Asda I decide to potter over to McDonalds for my morning coffee. I also decide that I really need to get a new pair of boots. I’ve had these wonderful old Timberland boots for over twenty years now and every winter I say, ‘I really need to get these boot resoled and heeled’ and of course every year I think how much that will cost me and say, ‘You know what they’ll last me through this winter.’ This winter I’m not sure they will.

The heel has worn down that much it gives the impression that I have a permanent limp. Also the tread has pretty much worn down completely meaning that one bit of frost or wet leaves underfoot means that I’m sliding along the cobbles on the Leeds-Liverpool canal towpath. One

. morning I will slide too far and in to the murky waters by the disgracefully-neglected Wigan Pier area of the canal. I think hanging by a shoelace high above Asda and their stacks of trolleys is a slightly more dignified end than ten feet under the water with all the stacks of discarded Asda trolleys.

I make it the five-hundred or so yards to McDonalds without slipping or sliding just as it starts raining for the fiftieth day in succession. I am quite the regular in this McDonalds. I don’t do anything daft like eat in there but the coffee is decent and costs only £1.19. In fact you get this loyalty card thing with your cup, you peel off a little sticker put it on there and when you’ve collected six stickers you get a free cup. Which makes each 0.4l cup of coffee cost £1.02 which in this day and age is a right bargain. And me being a Wiganer – an ‘Owt for Nowter’ as they call us in Leyland – I’ll go with that. No fancy Starbucks and Caffé Nero prices in there. Not that I’ve anything against Starbucks and Caffé Nero… Well I have actually. Starbucks – in Wigan - is full of kids sat on one milkshake for two hours while Caffé Nero attracts this group of really odd middle-aged, middle-class, middle England rugby league fans. Now I’ve nothing against rugby league, I like it but there’s a real inverted-snobbish element to Wigan Warriors support. They are the ones that hate ‘Soccer’ and absolutely detest rugby union: Or ‘Yawnion’ as they so wittily call it. Yeah Caffé Nero is full of this lot. Odd really why they go in there but they all sit by the window putting the world to rights. Pity really as I like Caffé Nero’s coffee but hey ho I’ll live without it and sit on a £1.02 coffee in Maccy D’s for an hour or so…

Now I’m not sure I could do it after the 10am watershed but before then – and especially the one near Asda – it’s fairly quiet and I can usually get hold of The

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Independent paper there and read that. Well I say it’s quiet and it is in terms of the number of people and type of people in there but the bloody music being belted out this morning is at My Bloody Valentine levels! I’ve got my headphones in but Jessie J piping out all around McDonalds is definitely getting the better of Tom Waits. I put the volume right up until I get that, ‘WARNING: You are about to exceed the recommended volume limit of your Blackberry smartphone. To prevent possible hearing damage…’ message. Oh sod it! I whack it right up but still all I can hear is, ‘Kerching Keching.’ There is only one thing for it and I put on a Glam Rock playlist and take that young Suzi Q-wannabe Jessie here’s The Sweet and Ballroom Blitz and Racey with Some Girls. A score draw in the end, I reckon. I’ve noticed that some days the volume is higher than others and I know the culprit. I’m not sure if Maccy D workers still get those star rewards on a badge placed on their chest anymore but if they do that young manageress isn’t going to get that fourth star regardless of the fact that her chest is worthy of it if she continues to pump up the volume.

I kill an hour or so, half-read the sport in the paper and half-apply for some jobs via the internet on the phone.

Every morning I get various job alerts mailed through to me and every morning I apply for jobs with massive salaries and every morning I hear absolutely nothing. Zilch, nil, fuck all! Of course none of these jobs are in Wigan.

Very few are anywhere near Wigan and very few – if any want fifty-five-year-old blokes that write words for a living.

Anyhow you’ve got to keep trying haven’t you? Sometimes you wonder why as it seems common practice nowadays to ignore job applications. Email is to blame for that. There is no doubt about that. When I had a proper job and used to interview people - and all that - I used to spend days

. sending thanks but no thanks to people that had applied for a job. It was common decency. That decency seems to have gone the same way that standing up for older people and pregnant women on buses has gone. The same common decency that has gone out the window in Maccy D’s when they play bleeding Jessie J at bleeding ear volume.

Anyhow today’s coffee is decent, I peel the sticker off the cup, carefully stick it on my loyalty card and I make it just three more to buy before my freebie: Which will mean – if I go in every day – I get my freemasons on Sunday. That is my aim for the week. Gives me a goal to aim for. Well I have just emailed a job application through that says I have a go-getting attitude that regularly set and meet targets. Which is about as far from the truth as it could possibly get! I also state that I’m sociable, welladapted to office life, love challenges, am an excellent communicator, work well under pressure and can interact with people at all levels of superiority. All great big fucking untruths.

Then just before I leave the McCafé - as McDonalds appear to be rebranding themselves – I reply to a couple of text messages. One’s to my mate Dave who’s been telling me about some Wiganers on the train from Liverpool to Wigan yesterday evening. ‘Three got on: Boyfriend, girlfriend and fat mate of the girl. Argument starts commencing with ‘pricks’ and ‘shits’ before the ‘fucks’ hit in. Boyfriend took the phone off the girl; she climbed over the seats and alighted the train at Prescot followed by the boyfriend.’ Not sure what happened to the fat mate but Dave ended the text with, ‘As I say Wiganers.

Vote Labour? You’re having a laugh mate.’ Not quite sure what the Labour party has to do with all this but… I reply with some informed comment about Wigan being a

. shithole to which he replies, ‘Sadly like most places…

Stoke-on-Trent, Worcester etc.’ As I write this I’m still not sure what the hell he was on about. The MP for Worcester is Robin Walker; Conservative. The MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central is Tristram Hunt. A more Tory-sounding MP you couldn’t find. Apart from the fact that Tristram is a Labour MP. A high-flying one as well. He is in fact the shadow education secretary and on Monday he only crossed a UCU picket line at Queen Mary University of London to deliver a lecture on Marx, Engels and the making of Marxism: A lecturer crossing a picket line of striking lecturers. The coalition government is getting away with grinding the country right down and the opposition shadow education secretary crosses the picket line. You can hear the shovels hit the ground and the dirt being piled up when Hunt said, ‘I’m not a member of UCU.’ Which bit doesn’t he get?

Which lesson at University College School (fees £4580£4960 per term) did he bunk off from?

I leave McDonalds by the side door and almost get knocked down by one of the drive-thru clientele. I’d like to blame the reckless driver of the car more concerned with his impending Egg McMuffin rather than concentrating on the road but it was me that stepped out while all the time I was sorting my headphones out, putting by blue and white knitted bob cap on and trying to get my gloves on. Needless to say it’s pissing down. I turn right and begin the walk into town. I pass a couple of kids in £120 Nike Air 95s. The rest of their gear is bloody awful but then again it’s probably just about the training shoes nowadays. And you’re getting them very wet and muddy lads. Put them away until Spring. Buy a pair of boots. With decent laces and tread on the soles. I join the canal towpath at the Seven Stars Bridge, walk up to the statue by the pier and look across at the mess that is Wigan Pier. For a while Wigan Council

. were a little bit arsed about this historic Wigan Pier area.

However their interest waned (the Queen opened the area in 1986 – the council closed it in 2007) and they went back to what they normally do. Allow planning permission on every bit of green grass that becomes available in the town.

If in trouble and doubt just build some houses. Everybody wins: Some money for the council off the builders, some council tax for the council off the new owners of these new houses and, ‘Good for motorway access’ for these lot in the new houses that work in Manchester or Liverpool. Jobs in Wigan? Don’t be daft that’s not the council’s problem.

Meanwhile – don’t worry - I’ll carry on informing tourists, ‘Yeah that’s the pier down there and that boarded-up building used to be the museum and yes the council are idiots but…’

I come off the canal and cross the road by the pedestrian lights. A few months ago I pressed the button to cross the road. The lights turned to red and I was subject to thirty seconds of abuse from the female driver. Her general gist was that I had pressed the button on purpose. Of course I had as I needed to cross the road. No but I could have crossed without pressing it! She was driving one of those new Mini Coopers. My guess is she worked in recruitment, goes to the gym three times a week and her boyfriend’s called Jason who works in finance in Manchester and they are currently looking to buy a newbuild in Orrell or Standish.

The walk into town is uneventful. It’s always uneventful. Bar the bit where you have to cross the road at Caroline Street by the big Go Outdoors warehouse. There is another crossing here and you must wait until the little man turns green. There are few cars coming past but you are not to know this as the pedestrian crossing has been placed on a blind spot right on the corner. You simply

. cannot see what is coming. So you wait and then cross or you wait until somebody coming from the other side is crossing. You then have to hope they are not feeling a bit down and have decided to step in front of an onrushing articulated lorry. I am neither onrushing or rushing so I wait for the little man to turn green and walk up to the North Western station to pick up a copy of the Metro newspaper. A dreadful paper really but it’s free, I read the cartoon strips and then give it to my mum to do the word game and crossword or whatever. Before I get to my mum’s I pop into the Scope and Salvation Army charity shops.

There’s a nice brand new man’s suit from M&S Man in the Sally Army shop that a) fits me and b) only costs £7.99. I check my money – I’ve got £2.20. On through Wigan, drop in Waterstones, Marksies and the Samaritans and Heart Foundation charity shops: Nothing to speak of so I pick my paper up from the newsagents next to Primark. The fella that runs it is a lovely bloke but he doesn’t half like to talk.

Thankfully as I go in there today he’s on the phone so I pass him my 30p for the i newspaper and leave. Phew!

I go to my mum’s Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Sometimes I go on Tuesday and Thursday as well… I normally sit in the backroom put the radio on and do some work. I find it a lot easier than staying at home and doing it. Oh, plus it’s warmer than mine and the fridge is full which might have some bearing on all this! My mum also has cable television and all that catch-up business that I don’t have. Well I wouldn’t as I don’t have a television. I haven’t had one for about five years and to be fair I don’t miss it. Anything I want to see I can normally get on the BBC i-player, I hope to God that I never want to watch anything on ITV and as for all those shopping channels, Jeremy Kyles and reality shows well I can live with never seeing those. Ditto those dreadful soap operas and don’t

. give me that, ‘Corrie is great’ line that those wannabe hipsters do on twitter. If it ever had any cultural importance to Britain and the north of England in particular – and I’m not sure it did - that influence and relevance ended when Minnie Caldwell had her last milk stout. It’s piss-poor drama and the North Will Rise Again brigade can string me up with Ena Sharples’ hairnet for all I care. Today I do watch some catch-up as I take in Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades programme that was on (on) Monday night. It’s about the 1970s music scene and it is very good in a way that most things that Danny Baker does are very good. The format is him and three guests discussing the decade. One of the guests is Viv Albertine an ex-member of The Slits punk band and as well as being a good lucid contributor she looks absolutely great. I knew this anyhow as I have her most recent album, The Vermilion Border, and she looks great on the cover and sounds even better on the music within the cover. The other two panelists are Peter Hook from Joy Division/New Order and the journalist and broadcaster Loyd Grossman.

They are also excellent contributors but haven’t aged as well as Viv! The show is as you’d expect and as a seventies aficionado it was of great interest. A very enjoyable hour’s television while drinking coffee and eating toast and marmalade.

I adjourn to the backroom to do some work. When I say work I actually have to add three words to a book I have just finished. I’ve cocked up a song title that I refer to and the book may be the best book ever (if only) but one mistake will get you loads of criticism from those that only wish to criticise. And the world is full of those. They never do anything themselves but boy – and it usually is a boy thing – can they criticise. Whether it is football, music or rugby this lot is sat waiting with finger on typepad.

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Somebody once emailed me saying, ‘Your book was okay but my enjoyment was spoiled when you spelt Jonathan Richman’s named incorrectly!’ One mistake in eighty thousands words: I eagerly await his opus; with dictionary and thesaurus in hand.

It takes me a good five minutes to change the three words as I’m receiving text messages from and reply to my mate Andy Greenhalgh. He is at The Angel, Islington in north London and is bemoaning the lack of pubs that haven’t been post-ironicalised. Well I know what he’s on about and suggest The Camden Head and Duke of York as a couple that retain a bit of their old charm. And of course there is always the Wetherspoons pub called The Angel.

You can put a Wetherspoons anywhere in the country and they’ll look like a Wetherspoons and their customers will look like Wetherspoons customers. I quite like them and I definitely quite like The Angel as it attracts some good old Islington folk and the prices are not too ridiculous. Andy is record shopping and later informs me he has picked up Selling England by the Pound by Genesis and a 1999 remaster of The Doors first album. I settle for BBC 6music and Radcliffe and Maconie. Well in fact it’s Maconie on his own today. Well on his own apart from some irritating girl that does the music news. She is truly terrible. She sounds like a giggling schoolgirl, is obviously winging it and worse than that she is from around here. She’ll go far. In fact she has all the characteristics of a young Jo Whiley! She’ll go very far. Stuart Maconie has certainly gone far for a lad from Worsley Mesnes in Wigan and good luck to him. I like Stuart. His books are great, I like his Freak Zone show on 6music and I like him with Mark Radcliffe. However on his own - on this Wednesday afternoon - he doesn’t sound right. He needs Radcliffe to bounce off. Both of them need each other to bounce off. Today’s show sounds weak and

. the music’s not that great either. BBC 6music’s playlist seems to be getting stricter as the days and months go by.

It is now a relief when the daily features The Chain and Teatime Theme Time come on so you can hear something away from the playlist. There is only so much Metronomy, East India Youth and Bombay Bicycle Club that a teenager in the seventies can take. If they are not careful Radcliffe and Maconie will turn into Steve Wright in the afternoon and 6music will become another Radio 2.

Anyhow the three words are amended and the book is now completed. I’ll send it to the editor and designer – the aforementioned Andy Greenhalgh – tomorrow. For the rest of the afternoon I think I’ll watch the wind come in. We’re on red alert by all accounts. First time ever for the region which sounds dead exciting but it appears they only brought these red and amber alerts in three years ago so maybe not. It has not stopped raining all year and there is serious flooding in parts of the country.

The Government appears to have been slow to respond and only a cynic would say that they finally got off their arses when the floods hit the Tory heartlands of Royal Berkshire.

And as a cynic I’ll say it. In Wigan it is getting very dark and if as Tom Waits says in the song Time, ‘The wind is making speeches and the rain sounds like a round of applause’ the wind is currently in Winston Churchill mode and the rain is shouting, ‘Encore encore’! It’s pouring down with rain, trees are bending backwards and television news is lapping it up. ‘Right get down to Blackpool stand by the sea, get wet and shout loud above the wind.’ Great telly?

Maybe? Or maybe they should just decamp in the local café, have a warm mug of tea and tell people what they already know by looking out of their window.

The wind really does get up, the heavens open and then it calms back down a bit and at 8.30pm I walk the two

. miles back to my house. The storm is over. As somebody that lived in London and slept through Great Storm of 1987 that hit southern England this was all a bit Conference Premier League. I get home; the house is still standing and I assume that is that until - according to UKIP - the gays have another debauched morning, noon and night!

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Thursday 13 February

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ew figures from a survey by the Office for National Statistics reveal that Wigan has 10,898 lone parent families. This is the second highest in Greater Manchester; only behind Manchester itself. The only surprise is that we are not top! I’m guessing here but, two of the 10,898 are in McDonalds with me now. I will ’fess up now and say I have never had a McDonalds breakfast in any shape or form and I couldn’t possibly comment on the rights and wrongs of shoving an Egg McMuffin down a four-year-old’s throat at 8am so I won’t. I’ll get on with trying to connect to the bloody Wi-Fi and eventually…

I send the book to Andy G. It’s over. The heartbreak, the sleepless nights, the editing, eternal proofreading, the pouring over the content - it can all be put to bed now. Oh, apart from the PR, marketing and publicity but from the artistic point of view it’s over. No doubt I’ll read it once more – when I receive the book – and that will be that: Time to move on to the next project whatever that might be. It is indeed a strange existence that people that do so-called artistic bits and bobs lead.

You slave for months and usually years over a book, play, painting or piece of music, finish it and then forget about it.

Just the way it is, I suppose.

After coffee, Wi-Fi problems, book-type relief and thoughts of single mums I indulge in a bit of tree-climbing!

It is forty-plus years since I was climbing up a tree and to be fair this is more climbing over one. Yesterday’s big wind has uprooted a biggish tree right by Wigan Pier. I’m no expert on trees, no idea what type it is but it looks old, it’s now horizontal and is lying across the towpath. I clamber over it, consider taking a photo of it to sending to the paper – which is what people do nowadays isn’t it? – but can’t be

. bothered taking my gloves off. I walk along the path and do my good deed for the day by telling a lady walking a dog what lies ahead and walk into town. Disaster: The brand new man’s suit from M&S Man in the Sally Army shop has gone! I’m distraught.

The days of getting excited when going in to clothes shops are (sadly) few and far between for me now. It’s an age thing I’m aware of that but if you add in the fact you can order ‘stuff’ off the internet, everybody is wearing the same jackets, the same shoes and it is safe to say my interest has fallen dramatically.

For sure, I still like my clobber but that frisson of walking into a shop picking up the goods, the smell of leather shoes, the quality workmanship of a jacket just doesn’t happen anymore. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped looking. A trip into the Manchester, Liverpool, the west end of London or (now) the hipper/hipster east end of London is still high on my agenda when I’m in those cities and it’s a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon wherever you are. There is some fantastic stuff around, the prices are reasonable when you compare them to how much the price of a pint of beer has risen. But to use another beer analogy all the menswear shops are a bit Wetherspoons. Same menu, same bevvies. And, and… It’s a young man’s game.

As I say the buzz has gone for me. It’s all a bit too easy. But what do you do when you’ve spent a lifetime rummaging in boutiques and ‘Happening shops’? It was difficult to give up on but I’ve managed it and the reason for that is I’ve found a new passion. I now spend – what seems like - every waking hour of leisure time in charity shops and vintage shops. That’s the buzz. If I’m in a strange town the first thing I do is head for the charity shops. Of course on the outside they all seem the same. Same crockery, same James Cameron paperbacks, same smell!

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But once in them you do not know what you’ll find.

Records, clothes, books, nick-nacks (now there was a good shop but I digress) and general crap. In fact 99% of the shops’ produce is crap but it’s that one per cent that is pure gold. It helps having a good eye so you can get in and out as it is often an arduous task. You can go for weeks without spotting anything and then all of a sudden you’ll spot ten gems in a week. Patience is a virtue. In fact it is one of the golden rules. I won’t list them all because if you are a kindred spirit you’ll know what to do but if I had just two tips to give you they would be: a) Do your homework.

Know your clothes. Know the labels but don’t be blinded by them. Check where the garment was made, check the quality oh… and if it looks like it might be a fake it will be one! b) Never leave something in the shop if you want it. If it’s a quality item then it’ll be gone when you come back!

Bloody point b) ignored and an alright brand new Marksies’ suit has gone. Idiot.

I do the circuit of the other ‘chazza’ shops and as there’s nothing in them I walk up to my mum’s, get my laptop and start working while at the same time watch Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades programme that was on (on) Tuesday night. This time it features the 1980s music scene and again it is very good. For Viv Albertine read Pauline Black from The Selecter. She looks utterly gorgeous. I once had a cup of tea with Pauline in a café in Kilburn in north-west London. When I say I had a cup of tea with her, we were both drinking tea in the same café and she was sat a yard or so from me. At the time she was acting in a play at the nearby Tricycle Theatre and when I was leaving I wished her all the best in it. She thanked me and gave me a great big bloody smile. And it’s that great big bloody smile that brightens up Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades. She also talks plenty of sense as does journalist

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Mark Ellen and comedian/journalist Adam Buxton. It’s another decent show and when it finishes I think. ‘Well I might as well catch-up completely and watch the nineties episode that was on last night. I last until Baker announces that journalist Ales Petridis is on the panel. I’m sorry Oasis, Stone Roses and whoever else was featured but that journalist fella Petridis is absolutely awful. Just to confirm I’m not the only one that thinks so I put his name into the search panel of twitter and see what they are all saying.

Yeah confirmed; the man’s an idiot.

Instead I listen to Maconie sans Radcliffe and it’s a better show than yesterdays. The music news girl giggles and bluffs her way through her slot as per the norm but before that Elaine Constantine is on the show. I ‘know’ Constantine from her photographs in The Face and other magazines. Amongst other things she profiles the northern soul scene and from her love of this genre of music. She has a certain style that is quite identifiable as hers and it is very, very good. There is a lovely book that has recently been published - called Northern Soul: An Illustrated History - which she has produced with Gareth Sweeney.

The book in turn is in conjunction with the film Northern Soul that Constantine has directed and she is on the show to talk about the film. She’s great on the radio and is a natural interviewee. Her Bury accent and natural enthusiasm for northern soul both the music and the film prompts me to apply for tickets for a preview showing of the film at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester in two weeks’ time. I ‘apply’ about five times as each time I get to press the final button the 3G coverage drops and bombs me out. One of the many things wrong with Wigan and certainly the most annoying is the dreadful 3G coverage in and around Wigan Town Centre. I’m not sure whose fault this is but it really is one of the most annoying of many

. annoying things we have to put up with. I’d Google to see whose fault it is but… yes you’ve guessed it.

I’ve got until midnight on Saturday to enter the ballot for tickets so I’ll try again later. Northern soul - the music - is intrinsically linked to Wigan due to the Wigan Casino and it holds a special place in many Wiganers’ hearts. They must have been some nights those down at the Casino because if you listen to all the people that claimed to have been regulars there you have to be looking at 50,000 a night packing in to the old ballroom down Station Road! I occasionally went and it was alright, occasionally it was brilliant. I also went to the rock nights and they were also mostly alright; occasionally they were brilliant. The Casino caught fire and burnt to the ground in 1982. The music, movement, genre continued and more and more Wigan folk have got ‘into it’ as the years have gone by.

There are now some really good nights to be had out and around the region and of course the music is absolutely great. My take on it is: I love a lot of the music, absolutely love it. Yes it has cultural reference; it has had an impact on Wigan as a town, the north of England as a region and can be looked upon fondly both then and now. It is still relevant to many people. Good luck to those people but for me I just like the music. The word is that Constantine’s film is good. I hope so as previous attempts to portray the scene have been patchy.

On the site of the Wigan Casino now stands a café within the Grand Arcade shopping centre in the town centre. The walls around the café are adorned with giant images of the Casino, the dancers and the record labels. It’s been done very tastefully to be fair. In fact the Grand Arcade is quite a tasteful shopping centre. It isn’t for me but if you like shopping centres and High Street stores you’ll like the Grand Arcade. Whether enough people in

. and around Wigan like shopping centres and High Street stores I’m not sure as over its six–year existence the complex has had various owners all of whom appear to be in administration at the time of ownership.

In the evening I catch the 18.20 352 St Helensbound Arriva bus from Wigan bus station. I’m going to Billinge for a football club committee meeting. The journey should take about twenty-five minutes. The first five minutes are fine; the next twenty are torture. Two lads – I’d guess in their early twenties – get on the bus and sit across from me. What follows is incessant grunting interspersed with ‘fucks’. Now I can swear with the best of them. I can swear with the worst of them but I don’t sit on a bus swearing for the sake of it. There is a time and a place. Show some respect. They go on about the word ‘respect’ enough nowadays so show some. Amongst the ‘they’ I am on about and we all know who ‘they’ are manners have gone out of the window some time ago.

It is unusual for the 352 route to be honest. Now the 600 bus route is a different matter. In fact is there a worse bus route in Wigan? There are young and not so young people on that bus for whom grunting is too advanced for them. There are pissheads going to Aqua Bar in Ashton, day-trippers from Leigh and as for the kids going to that Cansfield School well for once can you just behave for ten minutes. Imbeciles.

I have taken buses all over the country and the behaviour of the kids in Wigan is worse than anywhere. I got the bus through the new town of Skelmersdale – known as Skem - for years and the schoolkids there were angels compared with these cretins. Now they probably aren’t angels in Skelmersdale as the place has a certain reputation. But like lots of rough places the kids know that it’s rough, it’s in their bones they don’t have to eff and blind

. and annoy the driver every day. The kids playing up on the 600 are simply doing that: Playing. They wouldn’t last a minute in Skem, Huyton, Moston, Moss Side or Peckham.

Tonight I get off the bus at Billinge with just my hearing taking a battering. Billinge is the next village on from where I was born and brought up – Orrell – and it is a nice part of town. I’m just not quite sure what that town is though. Where Billinge Football Club is situated; it has a Wigan postcode but has St Helens as its council. There are in fact two sections to Billinge. Higher End which adjoins Orrell and has Wigan as its council and Chapel End/Lower End where I am now which has St Helens connections.

Chapel End is nearer to St Helens but the village still appears to be split between Wigan and St Helens and you will see plenty of Wigan Athletic, Wigan Warriors and St Helens rugby shirts being worn. It certainly makes for some lively banter in the pubs and clubs. And there are plenty of those pubs and clubs in this part of the village.

Along and just off the main road that runs for a barely a mile through here there are six pubs and two clubs. It is one of the more affluent parts of either of the towns and leads to quite a vibrant atmosphere. Tonight we are holding our meeting at the football club. I’m not really a committee-type of person but the Billinge committee is made up of some really decent people. To use a committeetype of person phrase, ‘We are all singing from the same hymn sheet.’

I have a few beers, raise a few points and get a lift home from our chairman Steve. I get in, go upstairs, put Radio 2 on the transistor and get into bed. It’s twenty to ten. I’m knackered but I endure the final bit of Jo Whiley’s show before a neat programme called Johnny Walker’s Long Players comes on at ten. I like Walker as a radio DJ and each week this show basically covers two classic

. albums. Tonight it is Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model and Blondie’s Parallel Lines. This pleases me no end as a couple of weeks ago Andy G and myself were discussing what was Costello’s best album. I plumped for This Year’s Model and hearing various tracks from it tonight, a few sound bites and some background to how the record was made I’m glad I made the choice. It sounds absolutely fabulous. Not sure whether Parallel Lines can match it and I don’t have a chance to reassess this ‘classic’ album as – I think - sometime during the first track Walker plays from the album I drift off to awake again at 3.30am with the radio playing quietly in the background.

Oh and today – for the first time in weeks, in months - it didn’t rain.

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Friday 14 February

M

y early morning walk takes me past the DW Sports Fitness Club and I always chuckle to myself when I pass Mr Whelan’s (latest) sweat shop. Now I used to be a regular gym-goer but the gyms that I went to were more the back street affairs where men struggling with their weight struggled to lift weights heavier than themselves. It was proper bicep, chest, legs, back and shoulders stuff. If somebody had suggested bringing a running machine in they would have been – well – run out of the place. The DW Sports Fitness gym is different to ‘that’ sort of gym. Well so I’m guessing as I haven’t passed through those doors and I doubt I ever will.

The sign outside reads: ‘DW SPORTS FITNESS SHOP GYM SWIM RELAX. For this is the place of hair extensions, manicured nails and perma-tans. And that’s just the fellas. It is a car park full of Mini Coopers and BMWs. It’s that type of gym: The type of gym where the members try and park as close to the doors as they can. It’s a place to go before or after work, after picking up the ‘£10 meal for two deal’ at Marks and Sparks.

And today it’s a place to go before they pick up their card and flowers from Asda or Sainsbury’s, Tesco or Marksies. Yes today is Valentine’s Day. St Valentine; the patron saint of card shops. Oh, and florists nowadays. For nowadays and today in particular it is the day when the office girls, smile and holler when flowers are delivered to their office. It’s the Christmas lights scenario where neighbours try to outdo each other by having more and more garish lights hung up all around the outside of their houses. Now it’s just the office desks that are adorned with flowers and cards. Well that is what it was like when I last worked in an office

. several years ago. In fact I left just after the gay fella - that worked there - had flowers and cards delivered to his desk on this oh so romantic of days. The two events weren’t connected, I hasten to add. Me, I once had a single red rose delivered to a girl that I loved. I did work for a courier company at the time so just gave it to one of the bikers to drop it off when he went past but, hey, the thought was there.

After walking past the DW Fitness Club I walk past the DW Stadium and my mind goes to back when I was meeting somebody near there once and the fella had got lost but when he arrived he said, ‘It’s like Baghdad here but instead of statues and edifices to Saddam Hussein they are all to Dave Whelan.’ It was the time of his JJB Empire and indeed – for a while – it seemed everywhere you looked in Wigan you’d see a JJB sign. People that actually worked for him would probably say that the Saddam Hussein comparison was very apt.

The DW Stadium is the home to Wigan Athletic Football Club and Wigan Warriors Rugby league team. It used to be called the JJB Stadium – until Whelan sold JJB and formed DW. One day the stadium will go under a different name – as is the trend with sports stadiums nowadays. It will be when Whelan moves on but then again it wouldn’t surprise me if he booby-trapped it on his way out!

The stadium of course is the football club’s stadium. It is their ground. This isn’t the place to discuss those comments but those that know, know that (that) is the case. The stadium was built for the football club, replacing the old and utterly lovely Springfield Park. I was taken to Springfield Park when I was seven years of age and continued to visit the place until the day it was pulled down. There are a million memories from there stored

. away somewhere. Yet there are plenty of them since. And you know what there will be plenty more: Especially as the place begins to show its age a bit. I quite like the fact that it is beginning to look a bit weary, the brickwork is looking weather-beaten and the paint is flaking just a little. It still doesn’t rest easy with me when I see cars galore outside the stadium as the salesmen and women make their way to the bar areas for the latest conference to be held there. There does in fact seem to be less and less taking place there but that has to be down to the current economic climate. In fact I’ve been told that bookings in the bars and rooms of the DW Stadium are down substantially. As for the ridiculous Sharpy’s restaurant next door; well that really looks to be on its last legs. I’m not quite sure why anybody thought it would be a good idea to build a huge chippy there in the first place. But Dave Whelan and his grandson David Sharpe who ran the gaff seemed to think it would be a good idea. It has been in the news recently as the manager nicked six grand or so from the till. My only surprise is that six grand had gone through the till! Not that any of this seemed to worry young Sharpe as he was normally found tweeting the type of thing rich boys tend to tweet from Barbados while in the company of - the seemingly obnoxious and son of Gary - George Lineker. A mate of mine tells me the restaurant is about to close and be replaced with a hotel or a Nando’s. A bloody Nando’s.

You can just see all the kids getting excited about this if it does indeed happen. A place for footballers, WAGS and wannabes. There have been various campaigns on social media for Wigan to get a Nando’s. Life is not complete without one. I read once that Wigan was the biggest town in the country not to have this trendy eatery Nando’s. It’s that trendy that Leigh have got one!

.

Of course we – as supporters of Wigan Athletic and in fact anybody that wants the town’s economy to grow must hope and wish that the number of conferences and social bookings return to their previous levels – but some of us like to think our football stadiums hold a little bit of edge around the edges. There should be a little bit of excitement when walking past a ground. Even a little bit of fear and certainly a bit of intrigue. Grounds are there to look through the gaps in the fences. They should exude an atmosphere that other buildings simply cannot. And as the DW Stadium or whatever it gets called in the future gets that bit older and wiser then it will radiate even more atmosphere and produce many more memories for thousands of people in Wigan. After walking past the stadium I go into Asda where a fat bloke is buying a card and some flowers to take home to his wife or girlfriend. Or even his boyfriend.

Later on we – and when I see we I mean the Great Britain Winter Olympics team – win a gold medal. The girl’s name is Lizzy Yarwood and she’s won gold in the women’s skeleton. She’s very pleasant and it takes some guts to slide down a tunnel of ice on what appears to be a tea tray so good luck to her. Needless to say she held up a Valentine’s card for her boyfriend or from her boyfriend.

The whole world is at it! That said I can’t get into the whole winter sports competition to be honest. Just doesn’t float my boat whatsoever. None of the disciplines are sports that people from our backgrounds get to do. Now some of those at the DW Fitness Club may go – no make that do go – skiing but it really isn’t that high a priority in our lives.

Then again my mate does keep texting me (and half of Wigan) to tell me to put the curling on as there are some, ‘Gorgeous girls curling’. Whatever curling is!

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As stated one sport I know a little about is football and what I’m hearing from Jose Mourinho this afternoon has inflicted another wound into the once beautiful game.

This time Mourinho has accused Arsene Wenger of being, ‘A specialist in failure’ as he had gone eight years without winning a trophy. It is generally considered that Mourinho has crossed the line with these comments and he has. The man that was a breath of fresh air when he came to England is now becoming a parody of himself and frankly an embarrassment. He’s still an absolutely superb manager and coach so just let that do the talking… Other football news is suggesting that Wayne Rooney is close to signing a new deal at Manchester United that will yield the kid from Crocky £300,000 a week! If only most of us could earn £300,000 in the remainder of our working lives. The game that ate itself - as somebody once said.

I discuss - this amongst other things - with my mate Geoff when he calls me in the evening. Geoff is a northern lad, born in Blackley in north Manchester that lives in London. Like many he left home to go to college and never went back. He’s been in London for thirty-odd years. He normally calls me a couple of times a week to discuss football, music and whatever. It is also apparent when we chat and compare our lives that there is a massive gap in all aspects of life between the north and south. There has always been a gap but it has never been this wide. And when I say the south I mean London in particular. There has been a bit in the news lately about the exodus from other towns and cities to London. Well it’s always been the same. Since Dick Whittington times even. And yes the government is London-centric, arts funding is undoubtedly skewed towards the capital but don’t just sit there and moan about it. When you look at Wigan - what on earth do they do to keep any of the intelligent youngsters in the

. town? Where is the industry? Where is the arts scene?

Where are the music venues in the town? All they are interested in are building houses on every bit of green land in the borough. The intelligent youngsters will leave like they always have done. In the past a few came back but now none of them will and you can’t blame them. It leads to a terrible in-balance to the town’s beating heart. Wigan, the council and the hoi polloi that are involved in administering the town have failed miserably. The same can be said by many towns in Britain but can any town say they have failed as miserably as Wigan. Where is the industry? Where is the arts centre, the museum and the music venue? Where are the events and, yes, they will now hide behind budget cuts but where were all these places and happenings before the budget cuts? The council, the hobnobs, the Mr and Mrs Wigans were too busy bigging up the rugby club. Too busy selling off every bit of green land they owned for houses. Too busy trying to entice shops to the town when nobody had the money to spend in them.

Too busy selling the town’s soul.

For far too long the Unholy Trinity of the Labourrun council, rugby club and the Catholic Church has held sway over the town’s fortunes. In recent years and with the recent success of the football club they’ve jumped on that bandwagon with increasingly embarrassing results. The latest embarrassment is a book they have brought out entitled ‘Believe’. ‘Believe’ they’d like to think is their idea.

Believe in Wigan Council, Believe in the town. Believe in the borough. Anyhow they’ve published a book that celebrates the sporting success of the borough of Wigan in 2013. It is well-produced and looks fine as it celebrates Wigan Athletic’s FA Cup win, Wigan Warriors Challenge Cup and Grand Final win and Leigh Centurions’ Northern Rail Cup success. See Wigan Council may have half-

. heartedly and belatedly jumped aboard Wigan Athetic’s success – the actual timing of this was five minutes after the club secured promotion to the Premiership – but they cannot quite pull themselves free from the rugby club’s apron strings. So instead of celebrating the town’s footballing team’s success in winning the greatest sporting cup competition in the world they have to drag the rugby’s success into this. Now nobody is denying the rugby club’s success in winning the Grand Final and Challenge Cup but it is a minority sport that registers on that level. The town has been held back for so long because of this attitude within the town hall chambers. As the phrase goes; ‘When Warrington was creating industrial estates and encouraging companies to invest in the town Wigan was pissing it up the wall celebrating the rugby league club’s dominance’: A dominance that was gained by being a fulltime club playing against part-time clubs whilst blatantly not paying an awful lot of bills. The club ended up in a complete mess and it’s took a while to recover. The good news is it has now recovered and doing well on a level playing field and the council that was schooled on the fields of St Patrick’s, Scholes will celebrate that with as much gusto as a victory back on 11 May 2013 that shook the world. If you don’t understand all that then you are part of the problem of Wigan. As for this book; it costs a tenner and shows how out-of-touch the council is if they think people will buy a book of photos celebrating such diverse teams and sports. People in Leigh don’t even want to be part of Wigan Council and why should they? They are not going to buy a book that celebrates sporting teams in Wigan - least not Wigan Warriors. Meanwhile the two teams within the town of Wigan’s support are so antagonistic towards each other’s team that is not really seen - to that extent – in other towns and cities. Also the

. two sports are so diverse culturally that it is rumoured that currently less than two-hundred people hold season tickets for both clubs. The sporting profile of the town has changed dramatically over recent years. Whereas the rugby club’s support on paper has held up thanks to some frankly ridiculous attendances being given out the football club – as recent surveys have shown – have one of – if not the highest percent of local support and under-16 support in the country. Sadly Wigan Council cannot or will not see that and that is why they have a) held the town back and b) produced this book. And yes I know any profits will go to the Mayor’s charity but, hey, let’s face it there isn’t going to be much or any at all. As for the ‘Believe’ bit: Well this started when some pissed-up Wigan Athletic fans began singing the Neil Diamond song and Monkees hit I’m a Believer. A few fans picked up on this, started using the word ‘Believe’ to counter what appeared to be the everpresent fight against relegation, a few flags were produced, people got it tattooed on and about their body and then of course there was the wonderful FA Cup run when everybody picked up on it. ‘Believe’ was the cry. The Wigan Athletic fans picked up on it en-masse and then the council picked up on it and started putting posters around town with it on. And to be fair it looked good around town but of course Wigan Council couldn’t stray far from their true love. They felt dirty. They were full of remorse so as the rugby club neared the end of their season the posters were replaced with the same but in cherry and white and with photos of the rugby boys. And now they have produced a book to celebrate the borough’s sporting success. The borough’s success. They ran with the ‘Believe’ campaign after piggybacking on the football club’s success, piggybacking on some fans’ idea. It doesn’t fill me with pride but the saddest thing is in a few years they will have

. nobody to pinch those ideas off. The clever people will have left Wigan and it will have become a bigger commuter town than it already is. Then again that is probably what they want. All told it is a tragic state of affairs.

I speak to Geoff about a new kid around Punk town called Ezra Furman, football and that’s about it. We’re on the phone for over an hour. Thankfully he called me…

Oh and today – on the day that football sunk to another low – Sir Tom Finney died aged 91. He was a gentleman according to my dad who knew him. He fought in the Second World War and worked as a plumber – to a certain extent even while playing football as he supplemented his £14 per week football wages. He played for just one club – his beloved Preston North End that played at the end of the street where he grew up making 433 appearances and scoring 187 goals while he won 76 England caps.

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Saturday 15 February

S

aturday, of course is football day. Well it would be if this rain would stop. At the top table of football with their pitches like billiard baizes the rain – while a bit of a nuisance – normally doesn’t stop play. At step seven of the non-League pyramid – that’s seven leagues off the Football League - pitches tend to be more punting lake than putting green. Billinge – my team – are meant to be at Cheadle. It’s absolutely hammering down: Really, really hammering down. However as normal we have to go through the ritual of a pitch inspection on the morning of the match. You never know it may be on. Highly doubtful of course but it does mean I have to be prepared. And after careful thought and consideration – okay thirty seconds’ worth – I decide I might as well get the bus to St Helens, have a look around there and get the undoubted text around 10.30am to tell me the game is off.

I get my head down and walk up to the 352 bus stop near Asda. Needless to say I’m drenched when I get there, so nip into the store and shove myself and my bob cap under the hand-dryer before nipping into McDonalds for a coffee. I join a lad I know, Jeff Wood, who is having his breakfast before getting the coach to Cardiff from the DW Stadium. Today is FA Cup fifth round day and Wigan have been drawn away against Premier League Cardiff City.

When I speak to Jeff I’m not surprised to hear that he also thinks we’ll beat them. In fact everybody I have spoken to this week feels the same and believe – or ‘Believe’ - that the cup-holders will progress to the last-eight later this afternoon. To be honest I wish I was going. My away trips watching Wigan Athletic are few and far between nowadays but I’ve never been to Cardiff’s new ground, there are plenty going and like I say I and everybody else appears

. confident that we will win. However there is non-League duty to deal with and Linotype Cheadle Heath Nomads Football Club will be my destination if Moses parts the waves or something. Jeff’s son joins him, so I leave the two of them to it then wish them well before nipping to the bus stop. If anything the rain is even heavier than when I walked up earlier. It doesn’t however seem to have deterred two utter idiots that are stood at the stop. For they are wearing shorts! Shorts, adidas hooded-tops, some sort of beach shorts, black socks and what now appears to be ubiquitous Nike Air Max 95 training shoes. Now what possesses somebody to look out of the window, see that it is absolutely hammering down and think you know what I’ll put my shorts on? The two lads are complete dicks. The town is full of them and a great deal of these dicks wear shorts in the middle of winter. It is part of their culture. A culture that is prevalent all around us.

We know that this culture was created by Margaret Thatcher and her party in the eighties. They destroyed the unions and decimated the industry in working-class towns throughout the country while at the same time promoting and developing the ‘loadsofmoney’ culture where possessions are king. Add in the break-up of the traditional family unit and a dumbing-down of society and the underclass was bound to come to the surface. And as it hit the surface it permeated society. The country is now one big live walking and grunting Jeremy Kyle Show. This is the culture that has produced reality television and celebrity culture. The male of the species in their shorts in winter, with their bad tattoos and even worse attitude.

Maccy D’s is part of their culture as is Primark and JD Sports. Cash Converters and Subway. Bugaboo pushchairs, hair extensions and false nails. Fake sun-tans, smartphones and steroids. Taking ‘selfies’, Snapchat and

. facebook are also all part of it. Bad techno music, shit clothes and putting their feet on bus seats whilst incessantly swearing. It’s all a part of the underclass culture that has seemingly taken over towns like Wigan.

What was the saying from last year? In 1973 we had BOWIE in 2013 we have TOWIE. Forty years later and we are spent culturally. We have lived through a time of technical innovation and all it has produced is Olly Murs and idiots in shorts in February in the pissing-down rain.

These two idiots are trying to work out the bus timetable before they realize they are at the wrong stop.

They cross the road to the other bus stop and stand on the metal seat under the shelter! Thankfully the 352 bus arrives, I get on it, pay for my daily ticket and sit on the back seat and read my paper. It’s a pleasant journey or as pleasant as it can be when the rain is hammering against the window but at least there are no dicks on the bus. I get off at the bus station in St Helens. I like St Helens, Which is something that would go down like a lead balloon with some as there is a huge rivalry between the rugby league teams from St Helens and Wigan. It is much smaller than Wigan, there are no grand arcades, the bus station is a quarter of the size of its Wigan counterpart and like Wigan it was built on coal. But unlike Wigan with its cotton mills to supplement the coal industry St Helens developed a glass industry. Johnny Vegas one of its favourite sons tells it better than I could possibly do so I’ll leave it there. I’ll leave it there other than to say St Helens isn’t actually smaller than Wigan. It has a slightly higher population it just appears to be smaller. It acts its age if you like. The town centre has a homelier feel about it than Wigan’s.

There are less kids pissing about. There appears to be a little bit more money about and there appears to be more independent shops. It appears to me that (that) is the case

. but then again I’m only an irregular visitor. I’m sure it suffers the same problems but to me - this infrequent visitor - it has a better feel to the place. It’s certainly a rugby town as is evidenced by the array of club merchandise that is worn around the town and there are many older men and women discussing the coming season in the shops I visit which is fine by me. I still want Wigan to beat them every time they play them and I’m wearing a small Wigan crest on my jacket today just to show my loyalty but I do quite like the town centre. There is no huge Debenhams store like there is in Wigan. In fact there is no Debenhams store but there is the wonderful independent Tyrers department store that has a marvellous menswear department. And for those that like their clobber – like myself – there are two more independent high-class menswear shops in Sidewalk and OD’s which makes it 3-0 to St Helens on that score. There is no Waterstones in Wigan but there is a Wardleworths which is an independent book shop and stands across the road from the great Kaleidoscope record shop which in turn is a couple of doors down from Burchall’s.

Burchall’s is ostensibly a butcher’s shop and people queue out of the door every Saturday morning I visit there and ninety-nine percent of those people are queuing for their pies. They are hot pork pies and are absolutely sensational. It’s an art to eat them without a plate and knife and fork but after a couple of false starts I’ve mastered it.

They are a different class to any pie I have tasted in years and yes they are better – a hell of a lot better – than any in Wigan, Oh and Cottom’s pies and hot pots from St Helens aren’t bad either. St Helens is also home to the marvelous The Citadel Arts Centre: A music venue, gallery, theatre and space that many Wiganers visit. Something that we have to visit as we will never have a comparative venue in

.

Wigan as long as the powers-that-be behave the way they do. And that is my take on St Helens and the comparisons with Wigan from this fleeting visitor.

I get the text at 10.04 to tell me the game is off. I update the Billinge Football Club website with the inevitable and then have a potter about the town. Marks and Spencer, the charity shops, book and record shop and of course as it’s now gone eleven pick up a couple of pies from Burchall’s, take them around the back and eat them for my brunch/lunch. They get better every time I have one!

I take the bus back to Wigan, check the internet and twitter to see if there are any local games that have survived the weather to find that it is a total wipeout. It looks like the pub but before that I have a walk around town. There are a lot of folk about, a lot of kids about but nobody appears to be buying anything. There is nobody laden with shopping bags. Debenhams has a great sale on and some really nice coats but I - and it appears lots of others - can’t afford them even with seventy percent off in some cases. I spend an hour or so before putting my head into The Berkeley to see if my mate Graham is in. He isn’t!

He’s always in on a Saturday but today he can’t be seen. I like The Berkeley. It has a great range of real ales and continental beers, the guvnor and his staff are very friendly and there is sport on every television in the place and there are a lot of televisions. It’s a popular watering hole for football fans going to the game or for those - that for some inexplicable reason - support Manchester United and Liverpool via satellite television. Strange breed that lot. I can appreciate it if you are part of the scouse diaspora that has moved into the town over the last fifty years and your family has supported Everton or Liverpool but why people who were born and bred choose to support Liverpool and

. especially United is beyond me. Then again a good number of Wigan Warriors fans support one of these teams. They never go of course and never will but better to support them than the club from their hometown. Strange town with strange people…

I finish my pint and no sign of Graham. I can’t phone him as he’d texted me yesterday to say he was getting a new phone and was out of action on the old number until Monday. The only option is to potter around our haunts and see if he is indeed around or nip to the internet café for an hour or two. The internet café is Beta Internet café and is situated at the bottom end of King Street. As they say King Street is a street of some repute most of it ill! At the bottom end sits the brutalist building known as Brocul House that for many, many years has been the dole office. Technically it may be called something else but to everybody in Wigan, Brocul House is the dole office. It is without doubt the busiest building in the whole of the Wigan borough and has been for many, many years.

The remainder of the street is occupied by offices and pubs.

There are of course more pubs than offices. They are grim pubs. Many in Wigan never set foot down there after dark yet it still attracts a boozed-up crowd on a Friday and Saturday night: Especially on a Saturday night. The Berkeley sits at the top of King Street but shares little of the street’s characteristics. It is a shabby street. It is shabby at night and even more so during the day. The internet café is the one bright spot along the street. It is the home to Wigan’s alternative set if you like. It is full of Wigan’s freelancers, DJs, artists, comedians, tattooists and general n’e’r-do-wells. It also does some of – if not – the best coffee in town at just fifty pence a mug. It’s a place to search for jobs, print off tickets, work, enter competitions, find a date, email home or just have a general chinwag. The two lads

. that run it on behalf of their mums are real characters and I try and get in once or twice a week. Today on this Saturday afternoon in there are Paul - one of the lads that runs the place, local comedian and celebrity jobseeker Jimmy O and one of the many ‘Daft Daves’ that are around Wigan. This Dave is Physio Dave and he’s searching for, ‘A holiday for him, the missus and kids.’ I didn’t even know he was married. Jimmy is editing his autobiography in between posting Facebook updates and bemoaning the lack of crumpets for sale after Paul had eaten five in front of him earlier. A strange fella with long lank hair and dressed in Bermuda shorts comes in, orders a coffee and talks to nobody in particular. And that is basically it on this wet Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile I send a couple of emails and then listen to the Wigan commentary on Radio 5 Live.

Listen to Wigan beat Cardiff City 2-1 in the fifth round of the FA Cup. It was never in doubt.

After the internet café I potter up to Tesco on the site of the old Central Park. A giant sculpture of a rugby ball is all that is left to tell you the ground used to be there and to be fair you need to be told it’s a sculpture of a rugby ball because it’s the strangest-looking one that I’ve seen.

I’m not a huge fan of Tesco – or supermarkets in general – but I’ve just gone up for a wander and to kill some time before Saturday night radio and bed. I take my headphones out as I walk through the entrance and hear a fella on his phone shouting, ‘Wembley, Wembley we’re going back to Wembley again!’ I’m not sure about that but the fact is - as a Championship team – we’ve had a go and we’re not letting hold of the shiny thing until we have to. Up the escalators and one of three young lads by the ipads and tablets is saying, ‘I told you we should have gone. I knew we’d win.’ Didn’t we all mate and we’re all saying the same thing right now.

.

I go home via Boots on the Robin Park retail estate.

Unfortunately when I get there the store is shut. Saturday isn’t it and it’s a six o’clock closing time rather than the eight o’clock weekday closing! I’m furious with myself as a) I’d been planning in my head my evening meal and b) I now have to double back to Asda. Boots has a small food section mainly consisting of sandwiches, wraps, bowls of pasta and sushi. It’s all excellent fayre. There are plenty of choices and if - like me - you like your food on the slightly exotic side you can get some lovely food. It is however quite expensive but if you hit the store in the last hour they reduce the prices of all the products and you can get a veritable feast for two pounds or two pounds fifty. Basically it is fifty pence maximum per item so – as they say – view the cool shelves and do the math! Tonight however I’m in a packed and boisterous Asda. Saturday night is full of young couples buying pizzas and bottles of wine, gangs of lads and girls buying crates of Stella Artois and pizzas and sad lonely old men looking for a bargain. There are no bargains. The ‘whoopsie’ shelves - bar the usual Greek yoghurts - have been emptied so I plump for a baguette, cheese and salami. Oh and a big bottle of ginger beer. Rock and roll, eh.

.

Sunday 16 February

S

unday morning coming down as the brilliant Kris Kristofferson said in that magnificent hangover song that was beautifully portrayed by Johnny Cash amongst others. Oh those were the days when it was indeed a case of Sunday morning coming down. Today I’m as bright as a button and out of the house before the rest of the street is even stirring. Sunday Morning Coming Down is the best-ever Sunday morning song nudging just ahead of The Velvet Underground and Nico’s Sunday Morning. It is almost the best-ever any morning song but that has to go to The Verve’s Velvet Morning.

Velvet Morning is a song from The Verve’s third album Urban Hymns that was released in the September of 1997. The Verve – or Verve if you were there in the early days - has made the greatest contribution to Wigan – the town’s – heritage. Forget George Formby, Wigan Rugby League and Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls. Richard Ashcroft, Simon Jones, Nick McCabe, Pete Salisbury and Simon Tong the honour belongs to you. Obviously the Unholy Trinity that dictates the mood of Wigan would say otherwise but they are clueless in such matters. Utterly clueless.

Verve/The Verve produced three magnificent albums first time around before returning in 2008 to round things off with their fourth album entitled Forth. But those first three albums that were so different, so psychedelically beautiful and so of their time yet still relevant today. But from 1997 to 1998 they were all that, more and the biggest most relevant band in the country: The greatest band in the world. Wigan should be proud of them and if we must put up statues of Formby and have a communal reach-around and bukkake session every time

. that Wigan Casino is mentioned then the least The Verve deserve is a public acknowledgment from the powers-thatbe. Not that the lads from the band would be bothered. Not that the hundreds of thousands of their fans would be bothered but it would be nice if they would acknowledge them.

Urban Hymns by The Verve is my Kilburn album: Kilburn in London NW6. I was working down there for a couple of years and lived in a lovely small flat minutes from where I worked. Kilburn was (and I’m sure still is) a fantastic place. My flat was a minute off Kilburn High Road and I loved living there. It was vibrant, lively, exciting and still had a slight seediness that the gentrification of the area hadn’t quite taken away. Old Paddy pubs comfortably nestled next to new eateries. The chippy was fantastic, the kebab house was better and Marks and Spencer, a small market and (the then newish) Primark meant that the place was always buzzing. I got to know the area and if you do that then (slowly) the area will get to know you…

Add in the fact I was earning decent money meant that I could buy plenty of clothes and music. Soul, jazz, reggae and hip-hop were the prominent sounds of London NW6 back then. They got quite an airing in my flat in Dunster Gardens as well. But as they say you can take the northerner out of the north and all that and when I saw that The Verve from my hometown of Wigan had some new music out it was down to Our Price to purchase.

I’d seen The Verve (or Verve as they were back then) a good few times at home. I liked them. They had that psychedelic vibe going on. A guitarist that can play the arse out of his instrument and a front man that knew he was going be a star! Or did he? Because by the summer of 1997 The Verve had already released two albums, A Storm in Heaven in 1993 and A Northern Soul in 1995 without

. any great commercial success. Both albums are brilliant but maybe it wasn’t to be. In fact after A Northern Soul the band split for a short while but by the time this new music was released guitar hero Nick McCabe was back on board.

And how good was this new music. It was the single Bitter Sweet Symphony. I picked it up at lunchtime one day, dropped it in the flat and went back to work.

Didn’t think much about it, got back home, played it and wow…

It was brilliant. It still is. Stirring stuff.

Heartbreaking stuff. Fucking magnificent stuff. Great production from Youth and cover art from the genius that is Brian Cannon. The Verve were on top of the world. The best band in the world from Wigan. Then came The Drugs Don't Work and then the album. For that short time I was living in Kilburn The Verve were quite simply irresistible.

The whole album is stunning. Ballads like Sonnet and Space and Time, the groovy Catching the Butterfly and the heavier than Led Come On. And of course Velvet Morning one of my favourite ever songs. The best-ever any morning song’ It’s an ace album - it stands up even now and it still reminds me of Kilburn, London, NW6.

The band imploded. They were always going to with the personalities involved but they left behind three incredible albums. They’ve played since and were still stunning but they really said goodbye at Haigh Hall, Wigan on 24 May 1998. I wasn’t there. I was in the flat below mine - with the girl that lived there. Drinking wine and eating fish and chips while listening to Urban Hymns.

Great times. Great album. Great band! A great band that came out of a very different Wigan. A more cultural Wigan. A more artistic Wigan. A Wigan that produced the brilliantly anarchic and talented Brian

.

Cannon. A Wigan that produced one of the best bands the world has seen.

I put on a Johnny Cash playlist - on my phone and walk off up the road in a dark and of course rainy Sunday morning. I walk up to McDonalds and gamble that they’ll have The Independent on Sunday paper in there.

They do. So it’s £1.19 for a coffee and a read of the paper rather than £2.20 for the paper from the shop. McDonalds is really quiet: Just a few disparate souls, me and Johnny Cash. I like The Independent newspaper on a Sunday, a Saturday and during the week. I very much like its sister paper - the i newspaper. This compact paper – costing just 30p – has made me connect with newspapers again. It has a lovely balance between heavier and lighter stories. The sport is excellent, the arts are equally good and the fashion section is superb. That is all I really look for in a paper. I really can’t be fucked reading about Simon Cowell or Coronation Street and the i suits my tastes. Sadly they don’t produce an edition on a Sunday despite requests from many of its readership so here’s hoping but for this morning it is The Independent on Sunday and first port of call is the sports section; primarily to read the report on Wigan Athletic’s cup victory. It is a decent report which is something we cannot say too often. Now I am aware that every football supporter feels his club gets a raw deal from the press but there are too many occasions when journalists on national papers have been hostile towards Wigan Athletic. The Independent is not one of those papers but the list of papers and journalists is long. Very long. Too long to cherry pick the culprits here. Suffice to say the criticism is usually to do with empty seats. Yesterday at Cardiff, Sunderland and many other grounds there were swathes of empty seats but the silence on this was deafening. Also at Cardiff it is worth noting that while there

. may have been acres of empty seats there were very few in the Wigan section as the support was terrific. There will be no mention of this and it is not worth getting worked up about it anymore.

If Sunday morning is the time for reading the papers then Sunday afternoon is the time to watch football on the television. Now there are million ways that I could try and tell you how much I hate modern football and the fact that the ties involving the last-sixteen clubs left in the FA Cup are split over four days. The fact is very, very simple and that should be that all eight ties should kick-off at 3pm on the Saturday. Nothing else is right and they can dress it up however they like. But that is a fan talking. The clubs are in with the FA and television companies and now moan if their club isn’t on television as they miss out on a substantial wad of cash. So what do I do about it? What can I do about it? Well I could not watch the games but every week I do. I spend Sunday afternoons sat in a chair at my mum’s house watching various football matches from various grounds and in fact various countries via various satellite television companies. Today being FA Cup day or weekend means that ITV has a share of the pie. As the twitter hashtag states: #itvisfuckingshite. It is. Pretty much everything they do is fucking shite. I watch the odd programme on there. They produce the occasional decent programme but like Sky Sports and others the whole station is not only fucking shite it is also one big soap opera. People like me feel disenfranchised by television nowadays in the same way we feel disenfranchised by modern football. Today we have both. Not that I bother too much with the build-up in the studio. In fact I watch some Italian football and switch over just in time to watch the kick-off at the Everton v Swansea City game. It is poor fayre. Swansea despite being just two games away from a

.

Wembley appearance – in the semi-final – have played a weakened team and despite drawing level early on succumb to an Everton team that doesn’t get out of second gear; needn’t get out of second gear. They win 3-1 and Roberto Martinez – who won the cup as manager of Wigan last season – has another chance to do it this season. I’m pleased for him and I’m pleased for Everton and their fans.

As for Swansea City: Well you got all you deserved. Your fans however deserved a hell of a lot more. You explain it to them.

Then again it is easy to explain as it appears that it is simply about staying in the Premier League nowadays.

Swansea’s nearest and dearest rested players against Wigan as they – like Swansea – are at the wrong end of the table. Staying-up is paramount yet ask a Wigan Athletic fan now if they would have sacrificed last season’s historic cup win for survival in the Premier League and I’m sure ninetyfive percent would say no.

The second cup-tie is on BT Sport – the new kids on the block – and is between Arsenal and Liverpool that has got the EPL massive salivating and masturbating in equal measures. I watch Queens Park Rangers versus Reading on Sky Sports. Sky Sports are the big players in sport but they don’t have a slice of the FA Cup pie and their behaviour is hilarious over this. They really are the spoilt kids and during the week in the lead-up to an FA Cup weekend they do everything in their powers not to mention it or if they do they do their best to disparage it. It isn’t just football of course. They are all over Rugby Union when they are screening a match but the Six Nations – which the BBC have rights to? Barely a mention! Ditto the cricket, horse racing, snooker, athletics etc. Today they are all over QPR v Reading. Now I have a soft spot for QPR but they are in a desperate state. If you want to see what modern

. football can do to a football club then have a look at QPR. They are in a parlous situation. A situation that means they have to get promoted this season. Even that may not be enough. Their high-profile manager Harry Redknapp – who doesn’t do bargain bins – looks a broken man. The team looks flat and Reading win 3-1 at Loftus Road. It could have been more and that early season form of QPR’s looks to have deserted them. In these situations Harry’s tactic is to spend but the window is shut and it looks like he will bringing in – on loan - the talented yet troublesome Ravel Morrison: A young man that the gruesome and fearsome Big Sam Allardyce doesn’t seem able to control.

Best of luck Harry but better luck to all of the Rangers fans.

There may not be immediate pressure as they are owned by some very rich men but how long will they take the losses.

Under new fair play rules how long will they be able to take the losses. And that is why those teams in the bottom half of the Premier League play weakened sides as they are so desperate not to be relegated and be like QPR (and others are now) such is the ridiculous nature of football in this country at the moment. Why on earth eighth-placed Southampton picked a weakened team to play - and lose to – eighteenth placed Sunderland – God only knows!

The Arsenal versus Liverpool game isn’t bad and I’m pleased Arsenal win 2-1. Needless to say it ends in Liverpool moaning about decisions that went against them but when aren’t they moaning? Thankfully while the moaning from Liverpool FC will go on and on - as Sky didn’t cover the game – it will mean that Sky’s viewers won’t have to listen to it all week.

Oh and today it was the draw for the last-eight and yes we are still in it and again yes we are last out the bag – or bowl as it is now – and yes we are drawn away at the team we beat last season Manchester City. It’s a different

.

City than last year but sod it. You’ve got to beat the best at some stage if you want to win it and who on earth would play a weakened side at this stage of the greatest cup competition in the world?

.

Monday 17 February

A

nd what was that I was saying about the local paper being fifty-five pence per issue? Well it looks like it has gone up to sixty-pence! More rises than in a Bangkok girlie bar. It is a lot of money for a local daily paper. I understand the reasons, I understand why the paper may be on its arse, I understand that costs for the newspaper may have gone up/will have gone up but sixty pence is a big dent out of your seven pounds a day allowance that Conservative front-bench MP Ian DuncanSmith is saying it is perfectly easy to get by on. As out-oftouch as Wigan Council is on local issues then central government is exactly the same on national issues: If not a hell of a lot worse. The despicable coalition government is currently waist-deep in flood waters. Promising money to the affected and there is no problem with that other than they were nowhere to be seen up in Hull a few months ago.

It was only when Royal Berkshire and the West Country – so beloved of the Tory classes - were hit that the Right Honourable Stingray Cameron burst into action. What a truly horrible man Cameron is. Him, his buddy George Osborne, Theresa May, Nick Clegg and rival Boris to name just a few in the unholy coalition. Yet the truly horrific thing is that the opposition is plain meek. The coalition is getting off lightly. Where is the anger from the Labour Party? Where is the action on the street? Stand up to these bastards. Stand up to them in parliament, sort your policies out and present a radical left-wing manifesto, put it to the British public and fight the bastards.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the price of the local paper has risen to sixty pence. That’s £3.60 for a week’s worth. Add in the £1 for their sister publication then we are looking at close to a fiver to keep up with what is

. happening in Wigan. As I say – as somebody that writes words for a meagre living - I understand the reasons for the price hikes; rising costs, fall in advertising revenue, drop in circulation. The two local papers – Wigan Evening Post and the weekly Wigan Observer – are covered by the Wigan Today website but like nearly all local papers it is not great.

Anyhow rant over just as I finish flicking through the paper in WH Smith’s town centre shop! After reading the local paper I move on to the myriad of magazines that Smith’s stock. I’m no fan of the shop and rarely if ever buy anything from there. WH Smith is for browsing and the independent paper shops are for buying from. If in town I tend to use Hallgate News – down Hallgate surprisingly – and ‘The paper shop by Primark’ as it is known by all. I go to those as the lads that run them are both friendly souls and that will do for me. That is not to knock anybody else running an independent stall or shop in Wigan it is just where I chose to spend my 30p on my i newspaper most days. I’m really not sure why anybody would queue up – and there is always a queue – in WH Smith. Then again most people in WH Smith seem to be buying the Daily Mail. I spend forty minutes or so reading the magazines. All are ridiculouslypriced: most have very little in them. For the record I like Monocle, Intelligent Life, United We Stand, Backpass, Uncut, Prog and The Chap. One day when - like Dell boy and Rodney - I become a millionaire I might buy one of them.

If WH Smith is where middle Wigan buys their Daily Mail then Marks and Spencer is where they shop.

Somebody once told me they were, ‘Nipping to God’s waiting room to pick up some milk.’ They weren’t wrong!

Here is the place where rugby league and mass immigration is discussed. In the middle of the aisle when you are trying to get past them. M&S, Marks or Marksies

. has been a staple of the world of British retail and indeed Wigan retail since 1894.

There is a theory that Marks and Spencer was formed in Wigan in 1894. Michael Marks certainly met Thomas Spencer in this year but according to some reports Marks lived with his brother-in-law in Wigan between 1891 and 1893 and by 1894 was living in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester when he was introduced to Thomas Spencer. What is certain is that Marks himself traded out of Wigan and that should be cherished and celebrated. If in fact M&S was formed in Wigan then… All the better. Maybe a statue or a plaque? Don’t be daft! When the Makinson Arcade was being renovated and spruced up they discovered a lovely old and maybe original Marks and Spencer sign carved into the ground outside what would have been one of their first outlets but instead of cherishing and celebrating this they built over it. A similar – but more important - thing happened when they were building the Grand Arcade shopping centre. This time they discovered a Roman settlement that may just confirm that Wigan was quite an important town that went under the name Coccium. Archeologists were duly excited and a couple of open days were held for the public to look at it before – yes you’ve guessed it – building over it! They kept some of the findings and there is a decent little display at the back entrance to the Grand Arcade. Again I ask which bit do this lot not get? When they knocked down the old market square area to build The Galleries shopping centre in 1985 they knocked down the quite wonderful The Park Hotel public house. You can walk past the exact spot where The Park Hotel stood and ask yourself over and over again why they knocked it down. It could easily have been incorporated into the plans but it had character, atmosphere and class something that The Galleries never

. had and thirty years later there is talk that The Galleries will now be knocked down.

However I have to say I like Marks and Spencer stores. I have liked them for a long time. Of course the one in Wigan cannot lace the brogues of the Manchester Bolton or Liverpool stores but it still has some nice clothes in there. I like clothes. Through my teenage years I loved fashion. But from twenty onwards I loved clothes. I still do.

They have been part of my life from the day I tried on that Ben Sherman red and white gingham check shirt from Slater’s Menswear shop in Wigan’s Makinson Arcade.

There are plenty of us in the town that feel the same. I would hazard a guess there is a bigger percentage of men – young and not so young – than any other town or city in the country. Yet the powers that be, the council, the captains of local history, the press, the management of the Grand Arcade and the inhabitants of Caffé Nero - to name just a few - have no idea we exist. We are the boys that were influenced by music and football. The ones that use the terrace as their catwalk; the ones that sometimes spend a small fortune on a coat and other times spend twenty quid in Marksies. We are the ones that don’t shop in the Grand Arcade. It is a rich culture that has been documented in many books and magazines. I’ve had a go at talking about the London side of things in a book but here in Wigan it has its own story and part of that story is Marks and Spencer. It is a complex story that may get told or be attempted to be told sometime but yes Marks is part of that story. It may be down to a Lambswool sweater, a Tattersall check shirt or an anorak from a certain season. C&A was part of it. Singers Army Stores was part of it, Millets was part of it and Run-Inn was part of it. As was Racquet Sports, Zen, Tessutti, and Gallery. Wigan Market was part of it. In its early incarnation Scott’s was part of it. In its

. early incarnation Next was part of it as was JJB Sports and Oliver Somers. Some of those – but not many are still with us. Those that are still with us are not really part of it anymore. Apart from Marks and maybe, just maybe Scott’s.

All those shops in the Grand Arcade have nothing to do with it. All those Wigan men that are ‘into their clothes’ have no interest in the jewel in Wigan’s shopping crown.

Most people that will read the bit above about ‘it’ will not have a clue what I am on about. Others will nod sagely…

Yet Wigan Council has recently been talking up a new retail development in place of the now-almost-empty Marketgate and Galleries shopping centre. A developer is touting around £60m projects so they are bound to sit up and take notice and sure the place is sat there and empty but who is to blame for that? I don’t know. But I do know that certain people never wanted to move out of there but huge rents and rates increases gave them no option. I know people that have tried to rent units out of there and have never had a call back. I know people that are currently based in there who when they went looking at these super new plans found that their shop unit was no more and no alternative space had been allotted to them. When people asked who these major stores that wanted to move in were they couldn’t answer. They couldn’t give names. Of course they couldn’t as there are none. The same plans outline moving the Market Hall traders into this new development.

None of them want to move. These are businesses that have been established for many years: Businesses that are just developing, businesses that are struggling along but trying their hardest to get by. Yet the council buoyed by the £ signs they can see from rents, taxes and a new building project seem to want to build a Printworks/Arndale centrelite. The Printworks in Manchester is a dreadful retail/leisure space. Why anybody thinks that it will work

. in Wigan is beyond me. As my mate Andy G always says Wigan thinks it’s bigger than it is and he is right. It’s all bombast with the top table of Wigan. The same way that they build rugby league up to be a worldwide sport - that goes with the punchline, ‘The greatest game in the world’ – they see Wigan as a Manchester or a Liverpool. You are not that. We are not that. You are/we are a small town with small town problems and small town mentalities. Let’s accept that and work with it. I’d sooner see ten independent shops than one bloody Topshop. I’d sooner have one The Anvil pub than ten Lloyds No 1 bars. The plans for this new shopping complex will be passed. Shops will move, some will close and the likes of Boots will undoubtedly be moving again as red ribbons are cut on this shiny new centre while another bit of Wigan quietly closes, empties and dies.

One of those stores that has long gone is C&A and if any young lads that are into their clothes are reading this and saying what has C&A got to do with it all then I’ll give you just three examples: Canda ski jackets, suede hooded jackets and suede mittens. Ask your dad! They were different days, different days but they did better clothes than Primark do who occupy the old C&A building. That is not a flippant comment as occasionally you’ll find old C&A clothes in the charity shops and while the clothes are often of their time and you would/could never wear now the quality of the garments are far superior to most you will find in the high street today. Also C&A are still trading as was evidenced when Wigan Athletic and their fans went to Bruges last year. As for Primark; well it does its job and while it’s not for me I have no major argument against the place. I’ve even bought socks from there. I’ve gone in to buy them again but I can never be bothered queuing! Also – as I have stated - when I lived in Kilburn there was a Primark

. down Kilburn High Road. I was told it was the first one in mainland Britain what with Primark originally being an Irish company and Kilburn having a large Irish population it may be true. It did however look and feel completely different to the Primark of today. Today’s Primark or the one in Wigan anyhow looks and feels like a mid-seventies disco but with worse clothes. It’s like Tiffany’s of Wigan a couple of doors down. Now known as Maximes or WN1 – I’m not sure and soon to be known as something else ….

Tiffany’s was a happening club in Wigan during the seventies. A friend of mine – Tony Topping - wrote a lovely article on it for the influential Sabotage Times website and I suggest you track it down to get a flavor of the place. Me. I hated the place. The Bier Keller and Bluto’s were my haunts, our haunts but that was then and this is now. I believe Maximes was a happening place for a few weeks many years ago but now it looks like the rest of Wigan’s nightclubs and pleasure palaces. Rundown, shabby, cold, wet and dated. Life has moved on. Nightlife has moved on but Wigan has stopped dancing. There is more life in Topshop and Primark than in the clubs of King Street and that is very worrying. Meanwhile at the ‘Top of Wigan’ it is now a sea of banks and bookies, pie shops and pubs. Is that all Wiganers are interested in? Drawing their money out of the bank and passing it to the pubs, pie shops and bookmakers? Sadly, I think it is.

Oh and today, the day that I noticed that the Wigan Evening Post had gone up to sixty pence, it is my duty to report that the paper that is known as the Wigan Rugby Post by the footballing sides of town is full of rugby.

The rugby club is over in Australia to take on Sydney Roosters in the World Club Challenge. Nobody other than the rugby league community is remotely aware this is

. happening nor do they care. Meanwhile Geoff from London called me. He was on just the fifty-four minutes tonight‌

.

Tuesday 18 February

A

ll this talk of shopping centres past, present and future reminds me to either stay out of town or get out of town before the kids descend on the place. It is half-term holidays so every Tom, Dick and Harry or should that be Josh, Oliver and Oscar will be in town.

Along with Madonna, Chelsea and Rihanna! Now I’m not going to begrudge the kids coming into town and let’s face it ninety-five percent of them are good kids but I can do without them fucking about in WH Smith when I’m perusing the magazines and papers. A mate of mine that works in the town centre says that the kids don’t come out until midday but when they arrive you can hear the noise go up. It resonates around the market for three hours until they go home around 3pm. However during those hours, the high season, the rush hours when the screamometer goes up ten notches or so it is bedlam but I’m sure they help the till tick over at the Pound Bakery and Starbucks.

One good thing that has come out of Wigan in recent years has been the building of the Wigan Youth Zone. Like many I was cynical about it but having visited it twice I can say it is a fantastic facility: So well done local businessmen Bill Ainscough and Dave Whelan; Firstly they had the vision to develop the youth zone and secondly had the resources, connections and influence to allow it to be built. I’d encourage all to visit and have a look around and now I just hope that plenty of the youth are using it rather than pissing about in the Grand Arcade. Somehow I doubt it…

Today is a big day in the football world as giants Barcelona are in Manchester to take on Manchester City.

There is talk of a City victory. Commentators are predicting such things. Never a better time and all that and I guess the

. multitude of betting shops in Wigan are taking a few bets on them winning. I’m not so sure… Manchester City as a football club is where they are now due to the influx of money from Sheikh Mansour. Good luck to their true fans and with the construction of a new £50m training ground and academy that is using Barcelona’s youth system as their blueprint they appear to be doing things the right way. At the moment they are the posh boys, the rich kids that are okay to like. This will change. This is changing and I’m sure in a couple of seasons the towns around the country will fill up with people wearing Manchester City sky-blue rather than Manchester United red. But for the moment most non-Manchester fans still want City to beat United. I still want them to beat United. In fact I want Liverpool to beat United and I can’t stand Liverpool but that’s my generation. But is that all alright? Is it really alright for myself or any other sports’ fan to say that City are the rich kids that it is alright to like? Sheikh Mansour is a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates – a federated Gulf state of which Abu Dhabi is the largest Emirate. This is the United Arab Emirates whose record on human rights is utterly appalling. But never mind that people are routinely executed, trade unions are banned, workers are repressed, homosexuality is illegal and is punishable by death and as for women’s rights well…

A very different image to what the Gulf States wish to project with their investment in the British game. Never mind as long as your team is winning, eh?

Modern football is not really for us. Wayne Rooney and his 300k a week, his hair transplants and his tantrums.

The diving and cheating. The ‘smashing Nando’s’ culture.

Ticket prices out of control and foreign owners seemingly doing what they please. And those are just some of the

. better facets of the modern game. But beneath it all – if you have been brought up on football – it is still in your blood.

And that is why when – last May – Wigan Athletic beat Manchester City in the FA Cup final it was magnificent.

Not only for Wigan Athletic fans but also for anybody that loves the romance of football. Of course three days later Wigan Athletic were relegated from the Premier League and this season is all about getting back up. Oh and retaining the cup… Promotion opens up all sorts of emotions for while many of us are not at ease with modern football the aim has to be for the team to be playing as high as it can. For owners like Dave Whelan it is essential that Wigan Athletic get back to the Premier League. And at this moment it looks like we may have a chance this season and a very good chance next season. I dread to think of the consequences if the club does not get promoted at the end of next season. They would probably be okay as the club appears to have managed its finances following relegation very well and here is indeed hoping they go up this or next season. Also as much as many of us are ill at ease with the modern game you cannot deny that some of the football in the Premier League is exhilarating. Also we have less to moan about than many clubs in that prices are relatively cheap, tickets are available and the club still has many of the characteristics of the club we grew up with at the old Springfield Park ground. Then again on a purely selfish point of view as I am involved with a non-League club on a Saturday being in the top division means lots of games on a Sunday and Monday that I can get to see! And the way it is going under new manager Uwe Rösler I may get to see plenty of Sunday and Monday games next season.

After the cup win and relegation manager Roberto Martinez moved on to Everton – where to date, he is doing superbly – to be replaced by Owen Coyle: Coyle was an

. unmitigated disaster. Anybody that knows anything about football could have told you that he would have been so. It isn’t hindsight saying that. Compared to Martinez he is a football dinosaur. He had previously managed (and relegated) local rivals Bolton Wanderers leaving them in a right financial mess as well and was just the wrong man.

Eventually Whelan and Wigan Athletic chief executive Jonathan Jackson realised this and got rid of him: Paying him 500k compensation, mind. Nice work if you can get it and speaking of which he (Coyle) appears to have never been off BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC television since. He can certainly blag.

Coyle’s tenure was a very tardy period in the life of Wigan Athletic: An utter bewildering appointment that resulted in six months of misery. He was completely out of his depth, those that supported him and pleaded for others to, ‘Give him more time’ - and they were loud and aggressive in asking this on various social media sites need to take a long look at themselves while Dave Whelan and Jonathan Jackson seriously need to give their heads a wobble for appointing the charlatan. The latter two – and Jonny Jackson is a top lad - at least had the vision to act quickly. It is now ‘start-again-time’ and for the good people of Wigan Athletic that questioned the appointment of the Raggle-Taggle Gypsy Boy from day one they can hold their heads high. The ‘give him more time’ mob (Coyle’s Top Boys) that said: ‘It’s not who he is but who he isn’t’ need to take a long look at themselves.

As for Herr Rösler: A real leftfield move that appears to have absolutely nothing about Whelan written in it. When Martinez left all that I and others asked for was a modern manager with modern views on a changing game. Just two things for Uwe to bear in mind: 1) Don’t mention the youth system/training ground/academy and

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2) remember there is only room for one Kaiser at DW Towers.

On this matter just a couple of points on this academy conundrum: There was an interesting comment

by Jonathan Jackson: When talking about the new academy and the appointment of Gregor Rioch as academy manager – saying that the new academy was to be located at Charnock Richard. Now I thought the academy was staying at Christopher Park and the first team were moving to Charnock Richard. Hmmm I await the planning details for new housing in Standish Lower Ground with interest.

The most important factor in Wigan Athletic’s future and still they are fucking about with it. You can have as many, ‘We might make the play-offs’ thoughts/comments as you like but if the club doesn’t sort out its youth academy then they are on a downwards path which would be a huge pity as I am led to believe there are a set of lads coming through in the next few years that are as good if not better than the club has ever had. Add in Rioch’s excellent reputation garnered at Coventry City then it would be a massive owngoal if the club lets its academy status drop to the lowest possible level.

Rösler has indeed started his own tenure at Wigan Athletic very, very well. He had to get the players fit after Coyle’s training ground programme that mainly involved playing Ping-Pong and since then has had a good look at the players. There is a very good squad there and he appears to be using it well. I like the way he conducts himself, whispers coming from behind the scenes suggest he is highly-professional and most importantly – as the fans sing - he doesn’t wear shorts. His recently-published biography paints an intriguing picture of the man and it is a great read: From his early days in East Germany, his football playing and managerial career and his battle and

. victory over cancer. And of course he is adored by the Manchester City fans from his time playing for them. This adds some real romance and spice to the upcoming FA Cup quarter-final fixture between City and Wigan. Rösler played for City when they were crap and he must be pleased to see them playing European giants Barca in the Champions League tonight. He won’t be there - and neither will I - as there is a far more important game this evening at the DW Stadium as Wigan take on Barnsley in the Championship. After Saturday’s excellent Cup victory over Cardiff - this is one of Athletic’s games-in-hand. Win it and the club climbs into seventh place one above Brighton and Hove Albion - their opponents on Saturday – and just one place outside the play-off places. The job that Rösler has done since taking over from Coyle is quite incredible.

Here’s hoping he continues in this vein. Where we end up?

‘Que Sera Sera’ as they say… Well hopefully.

In other football news Ravel Morrison does indeed move to Queens Park Rangers. He joins the west London club on a 93-day emergency loan! The emergency appears to be that Rangers lie in fourth place in the Championship rather than top. The 93-day period is to ensure he is eligible for the play-off matches; if they get there I guess…

Oh and tonight, Wigan win 2-0 and do indeed move up into seventh place. Two of our own loan signings Nicky Maynard and Martyn Waghorn score the goals. As for Manchester City? They lost 2-0 against Barcelona; it could have been a lot more by all accounts…

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Wednesday 19 February

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his - the nineteenth of February - may have been the day in 1936 when George Orwell was searching for the exact location of Wigan Pier. He’d struggle to find it today, seventy-eight years later, as it is obscured by the incessant rain and the huge fallen tree that’s still sat across the towpath. I scramble more than climb over it and get my hands filthy in the process. It could be worse as I slip when jumping off the tree but in true gymnastic style I land on two feet. I may have lost a couple of points for style but I’m upright: A big thank you to the Walsh trainers that I am wearing: These shoes that are designed for running vertically up fells and down dales in all weathers are perfectly suited to a wet Wednesday in Wigan. In fact Walsh training shoes are perfectly suited to the north west of England. They are by us and for us.

Norman Walsh and his PB trainer has been a bit of an institution in this bit of south-west Lancashire. The trainers, those beautiful blue and yellow trainers were popular on the terraces for a few months in the eighties.

Teamed with a cagoule by another athletic legend from Bolton, Ron Hill they were smart, they were different.

Things moved on as they did back then.

My first exposure to Walsh was in the early seventies when my dad bought me a pair of their wonderful hand- made rugby boots. They did Low and High. Low for the backs and High for the forwards - and all that rucking us rugger types would do back then. They were simply the bees’ knees. But the story of Walsh Sports is more than just rugby boots and a terrace fashion fad. It’s about one man Norman Walsh and how he developed this iconic company.

Norman was born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1931. He started work for Foster Brothers Shoes in his hometown in

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1945 and whilst working as an apprentice shoemaker, he was asked to make sprinting shoes for the 1948 Olympic Games in London. During the late 1950’s, Norman worked closely with the Foster Brothers’ grandsons, Jeff and Joe. These two branched away from the family business and formed the aforementioned Reebok. In 1961, Norman decided to start his own business and took over a small corner of his father’s shoe repair shop and called the company Norman Walsh Shoes.

During the seventies he moved away from the luxury leather rugby boots and became interested in manufacturing shoes for the runners that traversed the local fells. It is a sport that is as arduous and gruesome as it gets and that needs a shoe to cover all terrains. During this time he linked up with the legendary Lake District fell runner Pete Bland and over the next five years they created the shoe that took the sport of fell-running by storm – the Walsh Trainer. It’s where the football stepped in. It’s where I stepped in.

Its colour was, and still is, blue with yellow flashes.

It had all the requirements for becoming a classic running shoe: there’s no bulk, they’re as light as a feather and have a great lacing system that gave a tight fit at the toe crease.

The sole is thin for minimum shock absorption, good heel cushioning for navigating those descents, and made from a quick-drying fabric. Norman added a little rubber cushioning to the front area in the mid-1980s and this design became known the PB Trainer, which is the most popular fell-running shoe of all time. When you put them on they feel completely different to any other shoe. You immediately try a larger size before realising that this is how it should feel. Made for navigating hill and dale, valley and streams. And equally importantly they look great with jeans when you’re propping the bar up.

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But of course I knew little of these things when I bounced about the terraces as a young whippersnapper. It was the turn of the century when I got back ‘into’ Walsh shoes that I began to learn and understand the provenance.

By then Norman had sold-up (in 1996) to the Crompton brothers, Dennis and Jon with the company now known as Walsh Sports Limited, continuing with the same ethics, streamlining the company and increasing production for both the home and export market. Other trainers in the range include the PB X’treme which is a more robust shoe with a (gorgeous) yellow background and the Raid which is an off-road shoe suitable for walking - another fine-looking shoe.

By now I was hooked. I’d check the outdoor shops rather than the high street stores for anything by Walsh.

The specialist running shops and of course visit the factory shop - I embraced the brand. A small range of trainers, extremely comfortable, all easy on the eye and importantly for those that worry about the sweatshop labour issues they also made in Britain as shown by the discreet tabs stating: WALSH, BOLTON, ENGLAND. I wasn’t the only one but I was in a small minority. But the brand is now recognised amongst the trainer cognoscenti throughout Europe and the Far East. They have had huge success in Italy and Japan and both countries are fine connoisseurs of taste.

Meanwhile over the last couple of years or so a good number of people in this country have woken up to the sheer quality of the Walsh product. These are not the mass-produced reissued adidas that can now be found on the feet of every Tom, Dick and Rudolph. They are a unique shoe that looks great, performs great and shouts out loud that it is proud to be British. And over those last couple of years a bit of a buzz has built up and the Walsh Casual range has been seen on the feet on the feet of those that

. know about these things. I love them. Their upcoming range for S/S2014 looks amazing and hopefully I’ll be able to cobble a few quid together to get a few pairs. Today, however, it is a pair of black and white PBs that gets me over the felled tree and onwards towards Wigan town centre.

As I walk up Wallgate I take a little time to look around. The traffic is heavy. Going to work? Going to the shops? Some of them yes, others on the way to Bolton, the motorways, into Wigan and out of Wigan. Some people definitely going out of Wigan are those people at Wigan North Western railway station. I nip in to use the toilet and pick up a Metro newspaper and every time I go there I get a massive urge to join them on the London-bound train. I haven’t been since May last year and I miss the place like fuck. I miss travelling on the train to London like fuck.

Nowadays it takes just two hours which when you compare with the four-plus hours it used to take us thirty-odd years ago it is incredible. There are still occasional delays – like recently with the bad weather – but nowadays it is almost luxury travel: Sockets for the laptops and phone-chargers, decent coffee and ice-cold beer. A magnificent service all told when I compare it with all those years ago. And while the train journey is all part of going to London it is being in London that appealed to me when I was a young man and it is being in London that still appeals to me.

When I used to travel to London you’d know you were almost there when the train went past Wembley and Willesden Junction. Then as it slows down you see the backs of buildings, houses, flats, factories and warehouses as it goes through north and north-west London. Full of graffiti, you’d think to yourself that it looks rough around here but soon you realised some of these houses cost half a million pounds or so. For London is like that. There is

. grittiness to the beauty and like I say I miss it. I especially miss it when I see some of the bright young things of our town going to London on the train. I was one of those bright young things but now no longer young or bright I put my paper into my bag and look out from the station doors: Straight across at Cash Converters! The council spent a considerable amount of money renewing the pavements along Wallgate. Their idea was to create some sort of café culture/Parisian walkway type affair. What were they thinking of? You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. Plus a number of the paving stones are beginning to crack as I find out when I step on one and soak my jeans below the knee. The walk from the Wigan stations on new pavements or not is horrendous: Old buildings, shut-down buildings, falling down buildings.

The big old Victoria Hotel that masqueraded under a number of names in recent years and ran as a hotel/pub is now closed and up for auction. It was a den of inequity. As is Harry’s Bar, Lime Bar and Last Orders - or Last Rites as it is known. Three pubs that serve cheap beer open at nine in the morning and attract all sorts of waifs, strays, alcoholics, down-and-outs and ne’er-do-wells. All along the three-hundred yard climb to the town centre. Add in kebab shops, boarded-up shops, bookies and charity shops then that it what welcomes visitors to Wigan. Have a long hard look Wigan Council. Have a long hard look at yourself Wigan Council. Then have a look into the reasons why all those bright young things of Wigan town are getting on the train to London, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and all points north, east, west and south.

Last night’s Wigan Athletic match wasn’t the greatest game you would ever see and even if it had have been it would still have not been celebrated as Ben Watson – the FA Cup final goalscoring hero was carried off with a

. serious injury. You could tell at the time it was serious and now it is confirmed that he has suffered a double leg break and will miss the rest of the season. He has broken both his tibia and fibula and everybody is gutted for the lad, He broke his leg – in a different place – in 2011 - and came back from that so there is nothing to suggest he won’t do the same this time. It’s just a nightmare for the lad. On Saturday he scored a thirty-yard screamer – his second in this term’s FA Cup – and of course he will go down in Wigan folklore as the man that scored the winner for Latics and brought the most famous cup in the world back to Wigan. He is also – I believe – a great bloke: A real professional and a wonderful ambassador for the club. He is the man that after scoring the headed-goal at Wembley simply took his wife to Paris for a few days to get away from the madness that surrounded the win. He is that type of person and as I say everybody is gutted for the guy. Uwe Rösler told the BBC: ‘(Ben) is a terrific professional, a fighter, and I am sure he will return from this latest setback.’ Here’s hoping the lads, ‘Do it for Ben’ and we (somehow) beat City in the next round and also get promoted back to the Premier League.

In the evening twitter is commenting on the Brits Awards show. It’s all negative stuff; it’s all people trying to be witty. It’s just twitter. The place is full of wannabes: politicians, lads, football managers, music critics, comedians etc. It’s very popular. I’m not over keen on the interactions of all these wannabes but it is excellent for breaking news; especially sports news and especially results and updates from matches that ten years ago would take you until Monday morning to gather the information.

There will be something else along at some stage but for the moment twitter is king. As for The Brits – what do people expect? The programme is on ITV for God’s sake. As

. for the results: Well Ellie Goulding and One Direction won categories. David Bowie won best male vocal but not best album. Most of what I liked last year was nowhere near the nominations. Apart from Bowie that is. Of course – on the music front - there have been some fine albums and songs knocking about and my favourites last year have been Nev Cottee’s wonderful Oslo track, Bowie’s comeback album The Next Day, Nick Cave’s Push the Sky Away, Bill Callahan’s Dream River and The Wave Pictures City Forgiveness. All superb works of art but they are just personal choices. Where’s the buzz? Where’s the underground movement? Well there isn’t one for as soon as anything begins to bubble up somebody videos it and whacks it on social media on the internet… Same reason all the kids are wearing dreadful clothes and why mainstream television is at its lowest ebb. This is worse than it was in 1976: A lot worse.

If you are in any doubt about all this take a look at the top ten albums of the first week of this year; the week ending 4 January 2014: 1. Swings Both Ways – Robbie Williams 2. Since I Saw You Last – Gary Barlow 3. Midnight Memories – One Direction 4. Beyoncé – Beyoncé 5. Right Place Right Time – Olly Murs 6. Halcyon – Ellie Goulding 7. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 – Eminem 8. Christmas – Michael Buble 9. To be Loved – Michael Buble 10. Direct Hits – Killers All to be played just after Miranda finishes on the telly!

Back in 1976 the weather got hot. Pub rock was getting a foothold in a progressive/regressive music world; The Ramones played the Roundhouse while Jazz Funk cut

. across the dance floors of the capital. Notting Hill rioted, Liverpool 8 burned, trousers got narrower, the fascists got a kicking and it all exploded.

Summer 2014: Go on gives us a thrill. I’m not holding my breath.

God knows what the Brits show was like as I was over on the BBC Red Button with the Radio 2 folk awards.

Now that was a superb event. Over on ITV it was all about Ellie Goulding. Is that really how bad mainstream music is nowadays?

Oh and tonight, Arsenal lost at home to Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Like Manchester City they lost 2-0, like Manchester City they finished with ten men and like Manchester City they are probably going out of the Champions League. ‘Best league in the world,’ is how the likes of Sky TV talk about the Premier League well I’m not sure about that but I still want us to get back into it…

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Thursday 20 February

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hite is the new black. We are talking cars here by the way. I have noticed the last few years that gleaming white appears to be the preferred colour over jet black and matt black. I assume it started with the footballers but has now permeated down to the masses via the drug dealers I assume. There is two of the latter fraternity in McDonalds this morning. They’ve parked the gleaming white Audi sports car right across the pavement, pulled the hoods of their hoodies up and swaggered into Maccy D’s for breakfast. Most people quietly walk into McDonalds at this time in the morning.

Most choose a quiet seat in the corner and read the paper or look at their phone or laptop. These two bundle in making as much noise as they possibly can, order almost everything on the breakfast menu and sit right in the middle of the restaurant. I turn my headphones up to maximum volume to cut the clowns out of my life.

What is it about this lot? And I don’t just mean bottom of the chain drug dealers like these two but ‘their kind’. I was once walking past JD Sports on the Robin Park Retail Park when a huge 4x4 vehicle pulled up. Four of them bowled out – in their jogging bottoms, hoodies and crap trainers - and just left the car where it was: Blocking everybody else that wanted to get past them. They are the ones that use the disabled bay parking spots in supermarkets. The ones that carry the 62-inch televisions back to their cars in the disabled bays. But they really love JD and JD loves them. Thankfully the two in McDonald’s don’t stay long before buying more food and swaggering back to the car. They must have spent thirty pounds and there I am with my £1.02 cup of coffee. Sure McDonalds would sooner have their custom. Sad reflection maybe

. but… I can now drop the volume on my phone a bit. And then put it up a bit as Lorde is blasting out her crap through the restaurant’s speakers. Time to go…

Up the canal and yes they’ve moved the tree! So on the same day three-quarters and a bit of a century that Orwell was searching for Wigan Pier amongst the busy waterway British Waterways have removed the large fallen tree from across the path. It took a week which I reckon – in this day and age – is okay: Probably a bit of action for the workers there. My mind boggles at how they removed it. Was it by barge or was it via the road – Pottery Road – that runs at the back of the canal? However, it is gone and my – and other people’s walk is a little more straightforward. Then again they are meant to be knocking the Wigan Pier nightclub down. Or they were meant to be knocking it down a few weeks ago. There was talk of a marina being built there but this now appears to have been downgraded to a small community garden area. A small community garden area where you can look at the boardedup museum and shop.

The club was popular during the 1990s house and rave era and men and women of a certain age speak very fondly of it. It was never my scene but it was important. In later years it was responsible for donk music whatever that was/is: That and scouse house and bouncy house and all sorts of other dross. It attracted a steroid-fuelled out of town clientele. Most of who bought their clothes at JD Sports! Knocking down the dilapidated club is part of the council’s wider project to transform the whole area. The council’s deputy leader, David Molyneux, told the BBC that the pier is failing to reach its potential as a visitor attraction. Well considering the two main attractions the museum and visitor centre closed in 2007 then it’s no surprise. Oh, and I wonder who closed that? It was going to

. become a cultural quarter that turned out to be just blocks and blocks of flats. The Trencherfield Mill building was turned into luxury flats – and very nice they are whilst in all the land around there; new blocks of flats were built. It resembles communist-era Eastern Europe! I’ll be amazed if the marina is built but as ever we’ll see.

But let’s not knock all of Wigan’s facilities. The new Life Centre that includes the baths and library is excellent.

They are decent(ish) buildings that both improve and compliment the area. Then again when you’re faced with the horrific brutalist - and now closed - civic centre it would be hard not to improve the area. The Museum of Wigan Life at the bottom of Library Street is a favourite of mine. In fact it is my favourite building in Wigan. The old library and now what is really a research library.

Downstairs is an exhibition area and a small shop area whilst upstairs are all the books, computers and microfiche machines you need to study the local history or your own family history. Admittedly the genealogy researchers are extremely odd folk but the building has a nice feel to it.

There is a lovely atmosphere in there and it is – of course – essential to all us lot that like to read the old papers for whatever reason.

Mesnes Park is quite glorious and the recent improvements have enriched the park even further. It is a nice walk through the plantations up to Haigh Hall while the stately building is a little un-stately and – I believe – a constant drain on council resources. I’m sure if they could get rid of it they would. The Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust-run building is in contrast to the modern sports facilities at Robin Park which are excellent. Around the outskirts we have some wonderful spaces and walks but in the town centre? I’m struggling and while it is no way unique for a town it appears that most visitors head to the

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DW Stadium for the football and to a lesser extent the rugby. As I have said the council were late to the football – or soccer as they undoubtedly call it – party but even they must now realise the extra revenue that came into the town during the football club’s Premier League years. You only have to ask the publicans in the town centre how their earnings have fallen this season; ask the pie shops if their tills are ticking over as quickly. This may read as knocking the rugby club. Other comments I have made may look like I am. I am not. I go watching them and enjoy the game.

However my eyes are not closed. I am wise enough to know the huge disparity of incomes and prestige between the two sports. I am wise enough to know the huge disparity of incomes and prestige between rugby league and rugby union. Sadly as I have said there is a terrible inverted snobbery around the town concerning sports other than rugby league. That myopic view has held the town back for years and unless people change will hold it back for years to come.

There are plenty of rugby fans that go to the same barbers as I do – and that is where I’m heading now - but then again it is an ageing clientele that goes there. It’s strictly appointments only and half of those are that old they forget when they are due in. I must forget one in three appointments! The two lads that run Snips barbers have worked together for years and years and they are winding down a little now, both doing a couple of days a week and (usually) Saturday’s together. Both are great characters have excellent stories to tell and – like all good barbers – love a good gossip. It’s the place to find out what’s happening in Wigan. It’s like a white Desmond’s – the late and great Channel 4 sitcom. Blokes have been going there for scores of years and I’ve been a twice-a-month man since coming back from London twenty-five years ago.

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There was a couple of years sabbatical when I was down in Kilburn working and whilst there I sought out Andy the Greek’s in Queen’s Park that was another great barber’s shop. I once made the mistake of going there in my dinner hour that became a dinner two-hours and a half as Andy could talk a bit! After that I’d go in after work and after making the five-minute walk home I’d get in just before Newsnight! Today, at Snips, I’m in at 9am and it’s just me and Ian the barber. The normal, zero on the clippers and bring the beard down, and it’s done for another two weeks.

Oh, the glory of being bald. I really have no idea why the likes of Wayne Rooney have to spend a fortune (or in his case a day’s wages) on having a transplant or weave or whatever they are called. And in fact whatever they are or whatever they are called they always look like a bad wig.

Whether it’s football referee Mark Clattenburg, Rooney, David Beckham or a myriad of film stars and two-bit z-list celebrities they all look a total mess. Just shave off the bloody bits that are left. Nobody gives a toss. Apart from the folks that sell the wigs, treatments, gels, pills et al. And in the case of Rooney I’ll again refer you to that old saying: ‘You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig!’ I daren’t think where he is going to spend his extra pocket money now he’s getting a big pay rise.

In other football news concerning the biggest game in the biggest cup competition in the world the FA and television companies finally decide – four days after it was drawn - that Wigan Athletic’s FA Cup quarter-final tie against Manchester City will take place on Sunday 9 March with a 4pm kick-off. The game will be covered by BT Sport.

Moving the game to the Sunday appears to have upset a certain faction of Manchester City fans as they play Barcelona in the second-leg of their Champions League match on the following Wednesday. Athletic’s home game

. against Sheffield Wednesday has been put back to this day from the previously scheduled Tuesday night. I like many others didn’t realize City were due to visit the Catalan capital a few days after the cup tie. Do we see rested players, weakened team scenarios occurring? Here’s hoping but let’s face it if I was them I’d probably give up the Champions League and concentrate on the FA Cup. Then again it doesn’t work like that nowadays. We will undoubtedly find out and yes even City’s second-string should beat Wigan but… But if only we could just do something then it would mean a semi-final place and another trip to Wembley. That would be the ninth occasion that Wigan Athletic would be playing at Wembley. Not bad for a ‘Smashing little club in the backyard of rugby league’.

Of course tonight could have been Wigan Athletic versus Sevilla in the Europa League but well… Owen Coyle saw to that. So it’s Swansea City versus Napoli on television or the first half that is before I make my way home, open and close the door then listen to the second-half on the radio. It’s all a bit dull. Life’s a bit dull. Life in Wigan’s even duller. Then again it is probably the same in Swansea but at least tonight they were playing the world famous Napoli.

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Friday 21 February

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he local paper is all over this World Club Challenge business. They’ve sent their man – Phil Wilkinson – over there and have unimaginatively photo-shopped a hat with corks upon his by-picture. Is anybody really arsed about any of this? A few hundred home and away Wigan Warriors fans and that’s about it. Apparently 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 fans have travelled over there. The amount depends on who has been asked while nobody else believes a word that they say. Don’t get me wrong a trip to Australia would be superb and I’d love to have had the money to have gone. Well done to all those that did go but why exaggerate about everything to do with the game.

Meanwhile Down Under an article has appeared in the Australian and New Zealand press by a certain Steve Kilgallon that states that the town of Wigan has survived an incursion of football, remains a rugby town and is the northern soul of rugby league in Britain. Kilgallon’s connection with Wigan is that he was once the sports editor of the Wigan Observer. I think that he took up this position at the age of twenty-two in late April/early May 2001 and was there until around and about the end of 2001. I say ‘think’ as the Wigan Evening Post can’t tell me and while Kilgallon has returned my email he didn’t say when he was at the Observer. He does say that from what he can remember three Wigan Athletic managers were sacked during his time on the paper. If those dates are correct then three managers were not sacked during that time. What I can ascertain is that Kilgallon was a bright young thing from Leeds that went to Oxford where he played rugby league and later wrote a book about rugby league at Oxford and Cambridge universities.

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The article in question is absolutely horrendous and could only have been written by an outsider. Albeit an outsider that is full of inverted snobbery concerning rugby league and hasn’t been in the town for over a decade. He claims that unless the football club had done something dramatic like sacking another manager, then rugby was always the lead story. Now that maybe true as the paper that is still known as the Wigan Rugby Post by many was back then nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the rugby club but it is interesting to note that – if he did take over the sports editorship in April/May 2001 his two first leads would have been the football club appearing in the Division One play-off semi-finals and – ooops – the rugby club sacking their coach Frank Endacott. A truly appalling piece of writing that takes no account of how the sporting profile of the town has changed over the last twenty years or so. He doesn’t even mention that Wigan Athletic won the FA Cup in 2013 yet concludes his article saying that Wigan is a rugby town.

Back then in the eighties and nineties the chairman of Wigan Rugby League Club Maurice Lindsay along with the help of the council and local press metaphorically waged war against the football club. The evidence is everywhere and – will only rake a visit to the Museum of Wigan Life to confirm; and the Wigan Observer and Wigan Evening Post were complicit in this. Things have changed now but still that huge amount of doubt remains in the minds of the football and rugby union fans and anybody else that can read between the lines that the papers are still biased. The editor of the Wigan Observer and Wigan Evening Post is Janet Wilson who is married to the journalist Paul Wilson. He is the football correspondent for The Observer; the sister paper of The Guardian not the Wigan version. He is a rugby league man that supports

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Everton at football and has a litany of anti-Wigan Athletic comments and articles against his résumé. I am not sure where Mrs Wilson’s allegiances lie but her twitter account would suggest she veers towards the oval ball. The current sports editor is Phil Wilkinson who is both excellent to deal with and while he is a rugby man you just hope that along with Latics men Paul Kendrick and Greg Farrimond on board that the tide is changing concerning the reporting of two senior sporting teams. Leaving these two clubs aside the coverage of local amateur sport is excellent. As always they can only publish what is sent in but the coverage for amateur rugby (both codes), football, cricket and other sports is very good. Here’s hoping it continues. Even given the 60p and £1 cover charges!

Will the council change? Well I’m not so sure. They are just in too deep. David Molyneux and Chris Ready are both big hitters with the council and both big Latics fans but the whole institution is too closely related to rugby league and all the rugby league clubs within the borough.

To use that old phrase, ‘They know where the bodies are buried’.

But hey, sod ’em; there are things to do and places to see. Well there isn’t really. Just me, my arthritic fingers, a laptop and Rod Stewart on my MP3 player: That’s after I negotiate the great unwashed of Wigan as they make the most of their last day of half-term. Good luck to them.

They’ve enough worries ahead of them so why not piss about on the Grand Arcade escalators while I’m trying to a) get to the bogs and b) have a potter around TK Maxx. The Wigan TK Maxx is pretty dreadful but I always nip in thinking that there may just be something in there that I like. Then again I’ve no money to buy anything. It’s just a habit, all this pottering around shops looking at clothes and books. It used to also be a record shop as HMV was in the

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Grand Arcade but that’s gone. At least down Hallgate in Wigan is Static Records which is just great. It’s a vinyl lover’s dream and I hope it is doing well. Seems the same blokes and girls popping in there but that is bound to be the case in a town of this side. Hallgate promised to be a decent little street a few years ago but it appears to have settled into being just another street in Wigan town centre.

The vintage shop in Jaxon’s Court is gone and with it that hint that it could be a nice little indie part of town. Don’t get me wrong it is for the independent shops, there’s a lovely little veggie café at the bottom of the street, a couple of women’s clothes shops and the excellent gift shop at the top of the street. Halfway down is the old Bricklayers pub.

Long closed but a pub that has gone down in Wigan folklore. It was a rough pub at the best of times and an even rougher pub at the worst of times but it had plenty of character. It gained bags and bags of notoriety when it was the home of the Wigan Goon Squad; Wigan’s hooligan element back in the eighties and nineties. It was also a regular haunt of current and ex-rugby players, petty criminals, bohemian dropouts, two-bit prostitutes, drug dealers and normal Wigan folk. It was absolutely great.

After it closed down it was done-up and re-opened as a drop-in for the homeless. The irony was lost on nobody.

Known as ‘The Brick’ charity after I assume ‘The Brick’ pub it has since moved to a bigger premises. It still looks like a pub and I’m sure there isn’t a single ex-visitor to The Brick pub that doesn’t think, ‘Why don’t they re-open it as a pub’ every time they walk past the building. At the top of the street sits the boarded-up and empty Crofter’s Arms: The pub where Wigan Athletic Football Club was formed and another frightening pub in its day. It was like The Brick but without the charm.

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I don’t think anybody said that you can tell a town by its pubs but you can certainly tell how a town has changed by the change in its pubs. The pubs of yesteryear were great but everything has changed in recent years.

Back then – and for the sake of this tale – let’s go back to the late seventies and eighties there was more employment in the town and town centre in particular and people were out and about. People – shock horror – actually used to go out and have a pint or three at lunchtime. Society has changed and so with it have the pubs. Drinking at lunchtime in work is practically a hanging offence nowadays, the price of beer keeps going up and up while nightlife has moved on from all the youngsters meeting in their local pubs on a Friday night before hitting the town.

Back then when pubs closed at 3pm before opening again at 5.30pm or 7pm before closing again at 10.30pm or 11pm if it was Friday or Saturday. Now pubs are open all day and all night in some cases yet few have any real atmosphere.

Few have any real character. Youngsters don’t go out until midnight while the old men of town drink in The Anvil and The Berkeley. As I’ve stated I love both of these pubs. I also like the John Bull Chop House and The Tudor; Wigan’s two alternative pubs, if you like. I especially like The Tudor but that’s my scene. Punky, music, a touch of bohemia and glorious-looking girls - that don’t look like they’ve just got off a sunbed or walked out of a nail salon. But after that…

There just isn’t anything around worth shouting about.

Then again the young people are probably saying the same and everybody’s getting the train to Manchester and Liverpool. Two big cities with little Wigan banged in the middle of them. Both are decent places, both are decent drinking places and both are full of Wiganers at the weekend. In thirty years Wigan has gone from being an industrial town in its own right to a commuter town for two

. big cities. Spurred on by the council giving planning permission for all those new houses near the motorway we have become a place for young couples that can’t afford Didsbury. Meanwhile thousands of Wiganers cram on to trains to Manchester for the daily nine-to-five grind. I did it for many years; it nearly killed me. If I was to do it now it would kill me. People have to do it as there are no jobs in the town. But don’t worry as the town will win the world cup or something tomorrow morning‌

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Saturday 22 February

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he big day is here as down under Wigan Warriors take on Sydney Roosters in the most important sporting event in the history of mankind. The Independent paper dedicates half a column to it but 6,000 or maybe even 7,000 have travelled to Oz and everybody’s up for breakfast and rugby league in Wigan. Apart from they’re not. Of course they are not and of course 6,000 or 7,000 people haven’t travelled it’s just the myth that is being perpetuated by those to whom it suits. I’m informed by a mate of mine that 118 have actually gone on the club’s official trip! There will be a lot at the game supporting Wigan and I would guess there are a lot of Wiganers that live over there who will be at the game. Wiganers love Oz! It’s there sort of place. Wigan is not a New York-loving place. It is not a place to go mad for Madrid or Mallorca no, Oz is their dream. Full of uncouth, loud-mouthed, uncultured people that love rugby league. It is practically twinned with Wigan. The only place in the world apart from the M62 corridor that likes the game, that actually gives two shits about the game. For many Wiganers of that persuasion moving to Oz or going out to visit Oz is what they live for. Fair enough. I’d like to go at some stage but its way down the list. Down the ‘bucket list’ I believe is the phrase to use. Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane can wait. One day, maybe but not right now.

As it is I’m in McDonalds at the Saddle junction, near Asda drinking coffee and waiting for a bus to St Helens. Drinking coffee when there is a kerfuffle of a noise behind me. I look up from my paper, take out my headphones just in time to see a young lad being dragged away kicking and shouting by the police. A normal Saturday morning in Wigan WN5. Nobody stirs. I finish the

. coffee and get the bus to St Helens. Going to St Helens when the rugby is on the telly. I’ve a reason to go, I need to go. It’s all about timings and seeing people and picking up something but I get there just in time to nip into Coco’s pub to see that Wigan are losing 18-0. I buy a pint – of pop – and watch them rally in the second-half but ultimately get stuffed. It’s over and all the hyperbole was just that. It’ll start again next year and in fact it may be worse as the talk is of a six-team tournament with three from GB and three from OZ. Anyhow back to Wakefield Wildcats for Wigan and later today London Broncos lose at home 18-44 to newly-moneyed Salford Red Devils in front of 1,246 people! As I’ve said I like the game, I follow the game and go often. I just happen to have a realistic view of it; especially in the context of Wigan town.

I potter around St Helens drop in the usual haunts – excepting WH Smith which has closed due to rent and rate increases – before I bump into a fellow writer and journalist. We chew the fat about the way of the world, book publishing, rock magazine and the antics of steroidfuelled rugby league players before I make my way for the bus – via Burchall’s pie shop naturally – to Billinge.

At last I have some non-League football to watch.

The first team game at Styal has been called-off due to a waterlogged pitch but our reserve team at Barrows Farm is ‘on’: The first non-League game for something like five weeks. It’s sod’s law that the first team game is off. After a relatively much better week weather-wise we are down to play on the worst pitch in the league!

Over the years I have come to love non-League football. I love it in the way I used to love League football.

Or the way I used love non-League football when Wigan Athletic were a Northern Premier League. In recent years Wigan have dined at the top table of English football and

. that is absolutely magnificent but like many other people in the town I take an interest in our junior clubs. And by doing so it definitely gives you a better knowledge of football. It gives you an insight into how a football is run; or how it isn’t run. It brings you closer to the players, the match officials and fellow spectators. It takes you closer to the heart of football. It is a mirror of what happens at the top level. For the management, boardrooms and dressing rooms are the same at step seven of the non-League pyramid as they are in the Premier League. It’s just all a lot bigger at the top: Big money, bigger idiots in the boardroom and bigger cars in the players’ car park. Bills have to be paid, money has to be generated and players are players wherever they are playing.

There is a lot of bollocks written about football; the game, its clubs and its fans. It’s mainly negative and of course there are a myriad of problems within the game but – in my experience the pluses far outweigh the pluses.

However that is a tale for another day but while I’m looking at Wigan in 2014 it would be pertinent to look at how the game is represented in Wigan. Still the myth permeates ‘Wigan Society’ that it is a ‘rugby town’. It isn’t. It hasn’t been for a very long while so stop pretending it is. Stop bullshitting. Taking dignitaries from the Town Hall to the Grand Arcade via the rugby club’s shop/gangway/hall of fame walkway does not make it a ‘rugby town’. Instead show them the number of football – or if you must insist on calling it by its derogatory term ‘soccer’ – matches being played each weekend: Saturday and Sundays. Juniors and mini-football. In the borough two clubs are playing at Step Five of the non-League pyramid – three if you count St Helens Town groundsharing at Ashton Athletic – while three are competing at Step Six. Billinge and Garswood United complete the semi-professional/senior amateur

. ranks competing at Step Seven. Add in four divisions in the Saturday Wigan Amateur League and five in the Sunday South Lancashire League and you can already see that participation of football is big in the borough. Then add in all those that watch Wigan Athletic; the club that have the highest percentage of local fans and highest percentage of under-16 season ticket holders in the English League structure you can see that football is very much the premier sport in the town. This isn’t even taking into account the swathes of Wigan Borough that is of Liverpool heritage and chose to watch Everton or Liverpool. The overspill of Manchester United supporters that jumped aboard that typical ship in 1968 and has been clambering onboard ever since and maybe, just maybe, ‘Wigan Society’ would open their eyes they would see it was a ‘football town’.

Of course Ince Rose Bridge, Wigan St Patrick’s and St Jude’s will have a place in Wigan’s sporting scene - as will Ashton Bears, Orrell St James’ and others - and long may that continue. But - again I’m saying this – let’s put things in perspective. Also let us not forget Orrell and Wigan rugby union clubs. Orrell were – before professionalism crushed them – the north of England’s premier rugby union club: A magnificent institution that was destroyed by the advent of professionalism and the arrival of David Whelan and Maurice Lindsay. Again tales for another day and the club is now rebuilding for the future whilst down in Leyland Mill Lane, Wigan RUFC, continue to advance on and off the field.

Today in the Cheshire League Reserve Division Billinge Reserves beat the previously unbeaten Whaley Bridge Reserves 1-0. A really entertaining game and played in a great spirit. Down on the south coast Wigan Athletic beat Brighton 2-1 and edge towards a play-off position. It’s all going quite well for the club at the moment.

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Meanwhile in the council chambers as cuts bite into their budgets more football pitches are sold off or rented on long-term leases to various clubs. The pitches at Little Lane in Goose Green are now used solely by Winstanley Warriors Football Club. Over at Laithwaite Park rumours abound that this huge complex has been passed over to Cherrybrook FC. Those two actions by the council – of leasing these prime pitches to those two clubs are connected and as ever if rumours are to be believed the council really need to take a long look at themselves and somebody needs to ask some serious questions. Meanwhile where the clubs that play on Laithwaite Park are going to start next season will prove to be interesting‌

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Sunday 23 February

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azy Sunday afternoon and morning for that matter.

Why not there is nothing else to do. Wigan is shut on Sundays. Bus services sort of shuffle into action late morning, people potter to the paper shop and church, frequent the pub or have a ride out somewhere. A few shops are open in the town centre, stragglers from the night make Maccy D’s on Standishgate resemble a drunk tank while people get the train out of town. If the rugby or football aren’t playing does anything ever happen in Wigan on a Sunday?

Now it doesn’t bother me. I’m quite content to watch overpaid footballers in wigs kick a ball about but many have no interest in that. Where can anybody take the kids? Where can people go for a walkabout. Where are the council events? There is nothing. That’s why Wigan is on its backside. On its backside on a Sunday. Sure some of the shops are open but how much money are they taking? How long before Debenhams say enough is enough? How long before Waterstones goes the way of HMV? How long before everybody goes to the Trafford Centre rather than the Grand Arcade. That day is getting closer and closer. There is only so much money in Wigan and only a few hold that money. Most of that crowd goes to the Trafford Centre.

They are the ones that have dinner parties and shop solely at supermarkets. They are the ones that don’t go the local shops or pubs. They are the ones with the gleaming white 4x4s and Mini Coopers. They are the ones that are helping fuck up the town. Whether they know it or not? Of course you can throw in all the others that are contributing to the tedium of the place. The single mums and the steroid bums. The scrotes and the scumbags, smackheads and alkies. The great and the good, the council and the church.

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And all the decent people that have given up. Oh and cynical lonely old men like myself. A bit like every other small town in Great Britain‌

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Monday 24 February

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he Wigan Evening Post pretty much gives itself over to news from the World Club Championship match from Saturday morning in Sydney. The front page headline: END OF THE WORLD. I despair‌

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