Life in Northern Towns

Wakefield isn’t really an automatic choice to spend your 43 rd birthday.  In my defence it was probably the only time of year I could persuade Neil to go to a sculpture gallery with me – The Hepworth Gallery to be precise. Getting to Wakefield from Manchester is easy enough – M60, M62, M1, exit junction 41 and the A650 into town.  Word of warning – don’t travel back to Manchester after 3pm on a Friday unless you want to spend time in a traffic jam.  As we were going to the Hepworth Gallery we parked at the gallery’s car park and it cost £5.  If I was going to Wakefield again I probably park at the edge of town on the nearby retail parks, which would undoubtedly be cheaper or free. The Hepworth Gallery is a relatively new feature to Wakefield, built in 2011 to house the works of Barbara Hepworth and host temporary art exhibitions.  The building itself is a very stark, grey, concrete building in the brutalist style.  It’s definitely not going to ap...

I’d never thought of going to Hyde as it’s one of those places in Greater Manchester that normally falls under the radar – except when it has had serial killers operating in the area (three actually – Shipman and the Moors Murderers).  Anyway, apart from the whole serial killer business, it’s an unassuming town on the side of the Pennines and one of the last outposts before you hit Yorkshire. I’d been through Hyde as a kid to visit my Uncle in nearby Hattersley.  He lived in a tower block and it was the first time I’d been introduced to the high rise etiquette of showing the visitors the amazing view of Manchester on their first visit.  I don’t have any particular memories of Hyde, but typically my Dad mentioned we had visited the market at some point.  I swear I've visited every market in Greater Manchester in the 1970s and 1980s, but seem to have blocked out my memories of most of them – possibly out of trauma, but probably out of boredom. Getting to Hyde ...