Reprise

Last July two of us were responsible for taking a narrowboat up the Rochdale Canal in Manchester from Castlefield to Ducie Street Basin. I was driving and as Jürgen was working the locks I was alone on the boat. Above us were streets I know but I was in an unfamiliar bit of underground Manchester. The Piccadilly tunnel, with its warning notices about prosecutions for lewd behaviour and activities of a sexual nature, its human forms in the shadows where the waterlogged towpath suddenly turns, its flotsam washing up against the brick walls, its noise as the crash of water spilling over the leaky locks drowns out all other sounds, was fascinating and alarming at the same time. Today I went back to walk the route so I could concentrate on what was there, not on getting several tons of metal through the water.

I think I was quite safe laying a ghost or two but I was glad not be be there alone.

The barrels are from a back alley near the more salubrious end of the canal, by the Deansgate Hilton Hotel.