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Sunday, I woke up really early again, probably because I was frustrated with the noise from the street and I had a two really weird
weird dreams that previous night: one, my hotel room was on fire and two, people I knew from the Apollo concert were drunk outside my window and singing
"Edelweiss" from the Sound of Music. Maybe I was drunk on Morrissey, who knows?
I puttered around a bit and took a picture of the Manchester Opera House on Quay Street, where I'd be seeing Morrissey gigging that night. I also took a picture of this post box. If you've ever seen the Beatles' film Help, you will recognize that post box looking similar to the one where Ringo's hand gets caught while trying to post a letter, but it's a fake post box and whoever's in it waddles off down the street when he can't get the ring off Ringo's finger. |
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Sunday morning around 10, I was slated to meet Paul in the lobby of my hotel and he would take me around to Salford Lads Club, Morrissey's house on Kings Road, the iron bridge from "Still Ill," and Southern Cemetery, one of Morrissey and Linder Sterling's favorite haunts (no pun intended). All of these places are outside of Manchester proper and require either a taxi, bus, or Metrolink ride. Paul was incredibly organized and had printouts of all the bus routes we were taking, so with an all-day bus pass, we got around pretty easily. The only issue was that because it was Sunday, the buses weren't running that often every hour. At one point, we had to hoof it across a divided motorway to catch a bus to leave Salford, or else we would have been stuck at Salford Lads for another hour. I have to give props to Paul though, he ran like lightning and managed to stop the bus driver so I could catch the bus!
 | First stop, Southern Cemetery. And these are the "cemetry gates." It was not a dreaded sunny day (it rained later). I felt funny taking pictures of any of the gravestones in the cemetery - it felt disrespectful. So instead I've got a picture of cherry blossoms (that's right D.C. folks, there are cherry blossoms elsewhere in the world besides ours ;) and a picture outside the Manchester Crematorium. |  |
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Now, onward to the iron bridge. From the Smiths' "Still Ill":
under the iron bridge we kissed...
and although I ended up with sore lips...
it just wasn't like the old days anymore...
no, it wasn't like those days...
am I still ill?
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Views from atop the iron bridge. You have to wonder
how many times did Morrissey peer over the bridge, surveying the area...and how many were gloomy, rainy, Manchester days? By the way, those are Metrolink tracks above. |
The stairs up to the top of the iron bridge, and the Sharpie scribblings of a couple on New Year's Day.
You can't read the writing very well from this picture but it reads, "There are brighter
things to life and I should know because I've seen them and not very often - Jennifer and Jason 01 January 2006." It was the clearest
bit of Smiths-related graffiti that we saw on the bridge.
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Under the iron bridge, where presumably Morrissey and his lover proceeded to get sore lips (hmmm!) Presumably, it's locked up now to keep the Smiths riff-raff out. |
posted 06/06/06
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