From The Banks Of The River Irwell...

Goosander on the Irwell - Manchester / Salford border, originally uploaded by mithering.

To the shores of Sicily
We will fight, fight, fight for United
Til we win The Football League
To Hell with Liverpool
To Hell with Man City
We will fight, fight, fight for United
Til we win The Football League.

Last week's beauty contest winner - a male goosander on The Irwell, just behind that Light Shop opposite the 'stage door' entrance of The MEN Arena, next to the biggest puddle in the north west (check it out!). He'd brought along 'the kids', a pair of chicks, hugging the Salford side of the bank, singing the above lyric. This morning a gaggle of Canada Geese fussed about their young, who were singing 'Bertie Mee said to Matt Busby' while pretending to be knocked off their perches.

Up Against The Wall III

The Singing Raving Tree., originally uploaded by mithering.

Which way is the ACID? That a way... When in Rome, I suppose. Or in this case, when in Heaton Park, Prestwich, simulate LSD usage graffiti style by painting the word ACID sideways on a tree. Works for me.

Up Against The Wall II

W.A.R.R.E.N. F.O.X., originally uploaded by mithering.

More graffiti. And more graffiti from Salford. From behind Maxwell House, Salford University, to be precise. Why was Warren Fox the answer in a game of Hangman played out on one of the many walls of Salford University? Was it a good thing for Warren or a bad thing? And isn't it nice that some of The Youth of Salford (I'm betting it's them rather than students) still play word-guessing games with a pen rather than beating one another to death with Nintendo Wiis?

James King(fisher) and The Lone Wolves - Fly Away - UKTV 1985.

I saw something resembling a miracle today. I saw more evidence of the regeneration of what I was told as a kid was 'the most polluted river in Europe'. A river that was constantly dyed some sort of dayglo nightmare colour. A river that, on his first day at work, in, weirdly, coincidentally the same place I witnessed my tiny miracle, my friend Geoff saw a corpse floating upriver. Towards the confluence wiith the Mersey. In dayglo pink water.

Today, I leaned over Victoria Bridge, looking up towards The Lowry Hotel, searching the water and the banks for life, at a spot where I've seen the Peregrines, young and old, a few times when zoooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmm!!! an intense blue streak appeared ahead of me. Straight line. Fast. It disappeared under the bridge.

I've half-spotted them twice before. The first time from the pedestrian bridge designed to take Inland Revenue staff from Salford to Manchester. The second time when I was crossing the bizzarely-desolate bridge over the Irwell at the bottom end of the Museum of Science and Industry.

I came home, glowing, and took up my usual bird guide. Inside it says:
"Exotic, jewel-like bird, most often seen as a flash of bright blue as it dashes upstream....declining resident, becoming decidedly scarce."

Now playing in post-industrial, post-pollution, post-punk Manchester...

The Kingfisher