However, listening to the lyrics it did seem to make sense. Wigan was where my dad worked, where we’d get the train to Scotland, where they played rugby, where Uncle Wilf lived. Wigan? Bands don’t come from Wigan, or at least in my head they didn’t. The Railway Children were from Wigan, Chris informed me. The first album sounded more, well, industrial than I had expected, with very bold, stark and metallic sounding bass, drums and guitar. On the plus side, the daily trips back and forth along the A6 between home and hospital gave me time to really get to know The Railway Children’s first two albums, as my mate Chris had taped them for me. I was discovering my socio-political leanings the company my dad worked for was being run into the ground and my sister was inconveniently popping into the Children’s Hospital for major surgery to insert a steel rod into her spine. I’d surpassed my own expectations and got decent enough GCSEs to continue into the sixth form whilst avoiding the worst of the acne plaguing my friends now though I was faced with impending adulthood with the continued inability to form coherent sentences before girls I fell for. If I carried on doing what I was doing – whatever that was – and everyone else did the same, things would work out. If I whisper your name will you hum mine” and I believed him sincerely. Amongst the many excellent tracks on the tape, The Railway Children’s entry had just the right balance between comfort and hope “Don’t you worry,” sang Newby, “cos we’ve got time. Maybe Louise had got it wrong after all, I was by now thoroughly enjoying Sunflower Room, the band’s contribution to the much-celebrated Manchester, North Of England compilation tape. We talked about The Railway Children, James, Inspiral Carpets and other music from Manchester and I learned that, actually, The Railway Children weren’t from Manchester. Louise seemed to know quite a bit about The Railway Children and her enthusiasm drew me out of my shell a bit. It had lyrics about leading secret lives, and a shiny plain blue cover with white writing upon it bearing the band’s name. It was a very catchy pop song with a harmonica hook that popped in and out in equal measure much more poppy than the other alternative music I had been voraciously discovering. I’d just bought Over & Over, having had a couple of spare pounds burning a hole in my pocket. I was possibly the only one paying any attention. She told tales of eagerly chasing The Railway Children’s singer and songwriter Gary Newby down the street and into the band’s tour van. They didn’t bite, we knew that, but still … Louise came from Chorley, had just joined the Girls School for the sixth form and had more confidence than the trio of boys put together. More often than not we would be allowed in where I would put 50p in the video jukebox to watch The Darling Buds, make half a pint of gassy Greenall Whitley bitter last a whole hour, and wonder all the things that a sixteen year old wonders on a Monday night.īefore our small band of would-be entrepreneurs had fully assembled and talk could focus upon the task in hand (compiling stationery sets to sell to the unsuspecting folk of Bolton) we three boys from the Boys School would chat awkwardly whilst casting nervous glances in the direction of the three girls from the Girls School and the two girls from one of the other schools in Bolton. We never walked that way out though, always taking the longer, dingier route down towards Great Moor Street where we would turn right, walk a hundred yards and try and convince the bouncers on the door of the otherwise empty bar that we were over 18, just as we had been the previous week, and the week before that. The building whose basement we used as the headquarters of our Young Enterprise business was more easily accessible via the cut through that led past HMV from the town hall square end of Newport Street, or Nelson Square. The back street that ran neatly between Bradshawgate and the pedestrianised half of Newport Street was always as damp as it was dark in those autumnal Monday evenings in 1988.
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