Location: The Three Arrows Inn, Middleton Road, Middleton

‘I’ll see you later’

Mike slammed the front door behind him and stepped out into the sharp night air. He smiled to himself in anticipation of his Sunday night trip to the Three Arrows to meet the lads. It was a chance to escape the pressures of family life for a couple of hours and enjoy some male company.

And just being in that pub made him feel better. It was the pub he had first drunk in, over 25 years ago, and it was the pub where he had first met his wife. The Three Arrows was the one constant in an ever-changing world, sat there at the end of Middleton Road, perched on the edge of the northern boundary of the city, the protective wall of Heaton Park at the back of it.

The pub was busy when he got there. Mike found his friends in a corner by the bar. He was met with the usual coarse greetings and Mickey-taking but he took it all in good part before getting his round in.

One member of the group was missing: Jimmy. Mike loved Jimmy, as they all did. He was their resident comedian – a hail fellow well met type who was popular with everyone.

They met Jimmy one night while discussing the possibility of getting the landlord to find them a set of darts, so they could have a game of 501 on the dartboard that hung in the area of the bar that nominally passed as the vault. The darts game had been a regular feature of their nights in the Three Arrows, before the new manager had decided he wanted to make the place a watered-down gastropub.

The manager had politely told them that they didn’t have a set of darts behind the bar any more.

‘Imagine that, a pub called the Three Arrows and it doesn’t have any darts!’

That remark had been Jimmy’s introduction to the group. He’d been a regular since then, though no-one saw him outside of the pub or on any other night than a Sunday.

Mike particularly loved Jimmy’s stories about his exploits with women. Jimmy was a salesman of some kind, though no-one was quite sure what he sold and no=one much cared. What mattered were that his tales of meeting women were always amusing, sometimes downright hilarious, as these sometimes naïve and always frustrated housewives fell for Jimmy’s feeble chat-up lines every time.

The boys carried on chatting in their usual way but there was a sense that the night wouldn’t really start until Jimmy arrived. Paul, who like Mike was a great fan of Jimmy’s, texted him to see where he was.

‘Apparently, he’s with one of his girlfriends now,’ Paul reported with some glee.

‘That’s Jimmy,’ Mike said, raising his glass in toast to his hero.

The conversation returned to the usual topics of day-to-day frustrations with their wives and children, or with their bosses at work. Mike made his own contribution, telling everyone about his failure to lure his wife, Christine, into a night of passion after they’d watched a raunchy late-night movie on TV.

‘You should get her to have a word with me.’

Jimmy was here. The boys cheered in a sarcastic manner.

‘We thought you’d never get here,’ said Paul.

‘Nearly didn’t,’ Jimmy replied. ‘This one was all over me.’

‘How come you’re seeing her on a Sunday night?’

‘Her husband goes out and she was so desperate to get more of me, I had to fit her in, so to speak.’ The lads all laughed. This was Jimmy in fine form.

‘So while some poor mug is out there getting bladdered, you’re sorting out his old lady?’ Mike asked.

‘Too right. He’s busy with his mates, I’m busy with her. Lovely house they’ve got too, on Heaton Park Road, big semi. He must have to work his you-know-whats off to afford that place.’

‘What’s her name?’ Paul asked.

‘Chris, short for Christine.’

‘Crazy Christine!’ Paul said, all the boys laughing with him.

‘Yeah, Crazy Christine,’ Jimmy laughed.

Sunday night out with his mates? A semi on Heaton Park Road? Christine? Mike thought to himself.

Jimmy was still laughing when Mike’s right fist landed on his mouth.

Turns out Jimmy wasn’t that funny anymore.

John Hargan was born in Blackley in 1966, and now lives in Didsbury. He is possessed of an unhealthy fascination with Manchester City.

Location: Moss Lane East, Rusholme

time and tide wait for no man
although there were times i was tied to it
tied to rough faces
and mice running out of clothes
we had outgrown
or ground down into silence

thread-bare
-ing our souls to anyone who would listen
or at least anyone willing to raise the stakes
through our hearts

HGVs shake through kitchens
and mugs rattle in unsteady hands

the walls came down
but it brought us closer together
six in a bed on christmas day
it makes life easier

to only need one bucket

one mop
for all the tears
in bedsheets, lining
faces

itching into unknown pillows
with suspense or suspenders
because that’s what waiting feels like
or it feels like another can of beer

a floor made of recesses and
beached bodies
wailing
without the elegance
required of catalogue poses

which pile up by the door
bearing the names of ex-tenants
and a new kind of evolution
for £238pppm
all inclusive

Lydia Unsworth says: ‘Biog: 27. Girl. Born in Salford. 1982. June in the evening. Studied art. Study maths. Moving to Poland for a while.’ http://gettingoverthemoon.blogspot.com

Location: Bus Stop, Stretford Road, Old Trafford

A disturbance in the distance,
The traffic lights twinkle – late
As usual, so casual,
In tell-tale attire,
The tired white coat
And dash of pink.

Lazy, she loiters,
Lumbers towards me,
With a clunk,
And a…
Clink.
She’s a noisy beggar.

This is Yesterday,
Today
…
And Tomorrow

Sean Gibson is a 17 year-old A-level student at Xaverian College, studying ancient history, maths and Spanish. He enjoys singing, reading, playing the guitar and playing and watching football. He enjoys writing creatively in any form but his preference is poetry. He hopes to go to university next year, to study ancient history. After that, who knows?

Location: Drive-through car wash, Molesworth Street, Rochdale, OL16 1TS

I’m waiting in the queue for the car wash again. I come here almost every week. There are four car wash options on offer. There’s the one-seventy, which amounts to a sharp blast of jet water on your wheels and a fat manky brush across your windscreens before the main wash, the two-sixty, which is roughly the same as the one-seventy, and the other two, which I never use, because at four quid and five twenty they are a bit pricey for me. Besides, all they seem to include above the other two cheaper options are more suds and more pre-wash elbow from the young lads who work the car wash. And they are almost always supervised by the sharp lingering hint of cheap spliff smoke.

As far as I know, this drive-through has been here for about ten years and owned by the world’s biggest car wash company. When it was new, the shiny glint off the eye-catching fascia boards and the assorted border planting delivered me to another time.

On the road side of the car wash, about midway down its length is an obelisk-shaped stone that juts up from the ground about three and a half feet. The mounted legend records this as the site where the wartime singer and actress Gracie Fields once lived.

The first time I ever went through a car wash was with my stepdad in his gold-coloured Vauxhall Viva. I remember the soft nudge of the thick chain loop as it lugged in behind the front tyre. With the handbrake off, gear in neutral – and the engine killed at the key – the deliberate ride began; filling me with all the anticipation of the fairground (with the windows wound all the way up of course). Waiting, watching, as the soft brushes surrounded the car, scuffing and buffing the enclosed Viva back to cleanliness, back to shininess, back as far as when it was almost new.

He loved that cigarette-smelling car. As a family, we drove everywhere in it, conquered steep hills in Devon and figured through mist in Scotland. But the car, the age, the man are all gone now, and I am left here in my own car, with the CD player on, at the mercy of the tug of the chain as it draws me inexorably on, through the first smudge of suds as the brushes whip up into their preset positions, and I pass through the parlour of Dame Gracie Fields, again.

Steve Garside is a self-taught visual artist, poet and writer, who has performed his poetry many times and has recently read his work on BBC Radio Manchester. http://stevegarside.co.uk

Location: Fog Lane Park, Burnage

He always did what Jamie Oliver told him to because Jamie Oliver was cool. Jamie told him to freeze blackcurrants because they were delicious when they were frozen and it was quicker than making a sorbet.

‘Sorbet,’ he repeated. ‘Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’

He liked the sound of the word sorbet.

On the hottest day of the year he went out to Fog Lane Park and made his fingers purple picking a bagful of blackcurrants. He slammed them in the freezer and washed his hands. ‘Sorbet! Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’

He pushed the sofa into the front garden, opened a beer and waited for the blackcurrants to freeze.’Sorbet! Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’

He went inside for another beer and then he forgot about the sorbet. He went to bed and he slept and he forgot about the sofa.

It rained a lot in Burnage and by morning the sofa was soaked through. It was too wet to bring indoors, so he left it out to dry. He left it through August and September. He left it through autumn and all the way into December.

Christmas Day came and on Christmas Day he always did what Jamie Oliver told him to because Jamie Oliver was cool. ‘Sorbet!’ he cried. ‘Sorbet, sorbet, sorbet!’

He remembered the blackcurrants and took them out of the freezer. He opened a beer and went outside and sat down on the frozen sofa. He ate the frozen blackcurrants and he reckoned Jamie was right, they were tasty and it was far quicker than fussing around but it was a bit bloody cold, too bloody cold for sorbet. ‘Jamie bloody Oliver,’ he said shivering. ‘I’ll give him a bloody sorbet.’

Ian D Smith was born and raised in Stockport, and now lives in Wiltshire. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmith’s University of London, and has published many stories. http://www.iandsmith.com

Location: Exchange Square, Manchester

Three a.m., the far corner; she fumbles around
while the taxi’s engine hacks and coughs:
A standstill beneath the Co-operative Bank.
Her fingers hunt the deer-hide purse
and part the supple skin at the fold.

A slurred explanation mumbled to her chest
and she’s out of the cab that sits on the curb,
tilted to one side and eyes glazed over.
A man asleep against the hole-in-the-wall,
his hand still open, palm to the clouds.

She prods in her pin, drops her make-up,
the man’s eyes open, off-white as his paper cup.
But he’s used to this kind and disturbance.
The heels drown him out as they clatter home,
he sees the cab driver mouth his thoughts.
‘Sorry love, all I’ve got is change.’

Nick Hancill is a young poet, based in Manchester but originally from the North East. He’s currently studying creative writing on the University of Manchester’s MA programme.

Location: Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester

I meet you
at the statue
on the hour
and think of
the drowning grip
I have on your face.
Your onion seed
eyes are ablaze.
I sigh, watch
the feathered clouds

disconnect above us.
You give a tug
on my sleeve,
“We’re a clumsy version
of a good idea,
like pterodactyls.”
I freeze-frame,
see you entwined
in bringing defeat,
deaf to my melancholy.

I stare at the chip
in your front tooth.

John says: ‘28 years old. I am literature co-ordinator of the NXNW Festival. Editor of The Mental Virus Arts Magazine. Been writing for seven years. Published here and there.’

Location: BBC Manchester, Oxford Road

You noticed her first when her hair was wet, how it glued over her mouth like a moustache. The next time you saw her was on the same bus journey as the first encounter, you’d stepped on her foot as you made your way off the bus, and you’d heard her yell ‘ouch’ and call you an arsehole under her breath, just loud enough for you to hear, but definitely deliberately audible – and you thought she was cool for that.

You smiled at her; a cheap man’s sorry locked in a pearl grin, and she knew it was the best she’d get. You with your Wainwright-style coat and a lugging bag full of chemistry books maybe, physics books definitely, that swung over your shoulder like a threat to all the people you were yet to storm past. She held her breath for them.

You and the moustached girl were both students from smaller towns, both hauling around on the busiest bus route in Europe, trying to make lectures on time, but failing mostly, failing to care too much to change. On these bus journeys you had to expect to get battered around, your feet trodden on from time to time: these events were character building – they were feats of strength, but you didn’t have to like them.

The soundtrack to the Manchester bus journey is the sound of dystopia communicating its presence from a mobile phone. Misery such as this is neatly packaged on a Manchester bus: it is that pressed-up thigh against your leg that you daren’t discover the owner of, it is the entrapment of Primark bags surrounding you (a brown bag dam), and it is also the perishable Megarider that you hope is there in your back pocket and not lost to your fret. The Manchester bus journey, quite like the January sales, is a script of endurance.

To you, her face was a beacon of safety: oval and pale, almost washed out like a mint, and dripping wetly from the spells of rain she’d been caught in. She was someone you thought that you had a better chance of getting on with than most. This impression taken in mental notes of: her glittered shoes, and the way she didn’t mind making that shrieking noise with her nose to stop it from dripping in the full glory of her second cold this winter. She was an inoffensive and beautiful sweetheart that you wanted to provide with a tissue.

Location: St Mary’s Church, Moston

Last night I pissed
Where Cromwell’s feet
Once stood

As he prepared to mount
His mare
Or stud

T’was St Mary’s Church
On St Mary’s Road
Near Nuthurst Park
Off Lightbowne Road

You know the one
With the blue neon cross?
Like the one with the red one
At Brent Cross?

I walked through
The churchyard
Down Memory Lane
On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep
And back again

And remembered the time
When we fell in love..

It was just a song on Radio 1
Played by DJ Alan ‘Fluff’
Freeman
Like the free man
Who pissed on the stair
Where Oliver Cromwell
Mounted his mare
And polished the brass plate
On which it state

Here stood the man
Only four foot eight.

Steve Hunt is North Mancunian born and bred. Sometimes writes, sometimes reads, sometimes makes pictures.

Location: The Hilton Hotel, Deansgate

The bridge is encased in a kind of tunnel, this cylindrical fibreglass covering the whole thing. It’s dark brown, the kind of murky colour that everyone in the Seventies thought was fashionable. I can’t see out of the sides, except the odd clear patch where kids have scratched the paint off with keys. I peer through one, and get my first glimpse of the city outside, dark and wet, cars shooting past underneath me.

In my pocket, scrawled handwritten instructions that have got me this far, from the station, to the tunnel, then over the tram track to the hotel. Midway up, red light, and in big capital letters – HARD TO MISS. The note’s been in my pocket for almost a month. Keep asking myself: was it just because I was too poor, couldn’t afford to come here? Or was it something else.

Big capital letters – HARD TO SAY.

I can feel the cold, pushing its way down the tunnel past me, and I pull my coat close to me. Wrinkles on the note from Mondays spent worrying, Thursdays in hope, weekends scrunched up in the bottom of my purse. And in small print at the bottom, written with a pen that didn’t quite work, ‘see you soon’.

Coming out of the tunnel and the wind hits me, the cold air ploughing through my coat, making it billow out. When I breathe in it has that stale bitterness to it and I can see my breath in front of me. It dissipates and rises, and I follow up and up, and that’s when I see it. In front of me, towering over everything in my sight, the hotel, and the mid-section, this red line against the darkness. The outline of the building bleeds into the night sky so effortlessly that it looks as though that red middle floor is on its own, just floating above the city. I make my way over the tram tracks and head towards it.

The girl at the reception desk hasn’t heard of him, ‘I’m new though,’ she says, ‘Don’t think I’ve met everyone, I’ll go fetch someone who might know who he is,’ and off she trots into the bustling restaurant. I look out of the window and all I can see are lights, from streets, cars, flats, shops, restaurants. In the distance a Ferris wheel turns, and beyond that more lights, houses, suburbs.

The girl comes back, this time she’s got a guy with her, in his thirties.

‘So you must be Grace?’

‘That’s me.’ I shake his hand.

‘You know, Steve told me so much about you, feel like I know you already. Look, I got five minutes, you want to get a drink somewhere?’

‘Steve’s not working?’

‘No, not really.’