It must be Summer 1982, my memory's not great for dates, but I can place it by looking up the facts on Wiki, plus she's wearing summer clothes. It must have been a hot day and unusually sunny in the rainy city.
She's walzing along what might have been Medlock Street. It's certainly coming from the right direction. Anyway, there she is, walzing, as her mother would have described it. Full of the joys of summer in her red gypsy skirt with it's flounces and garish yellow and black flowers. She broke her bank a couple of years ago buying it at a Laura Ashley sale and she's worn it nearly to its death, she loves it so. Recently, she shortened the hem up to the middle of her knees so it looks a bit less old fashioned.
Her top's a white broderie anglaise short cap sleeved acquisition from her favourite second hand shop on Oxford Road. Her hair's growing out from a recent crop and she's swinging her arms and swishing her skirt feeling groovy as she makes her way down to the Hacienda where a friend has got her a job recently.
She's totally and utterly unqualified for this job in every way imaginable. She's not informed or in any way interested in contemporary music or any of the hip things going on in this very hip city she's landed in. Although a poor art student, she's not desperate for work because she's found part-time work easy to come by in this thriving metropolis and has worked in several interesting places, but her friend seems to want her to work at this new venue she's got involved with and so far it's been a bizarre and alienating experience, but then, this city has afforded her many of those, and so, until this day, she's not really phased by that.
So looking on from the outside, she's a happy-go-lucky young woman, enjoying the walk in the sunshine down a busy street in Manchester.
She's taken to going bra-less recently. Hardly aware of it, she's slim and small breasted, so it doesn't seem to matter. Nature girl her mother used to call her. Poppy, the nature girl, her nickname. Not really as affectionate as it may sound since her daughter's refusal to ' make the most of herself ' has driven her mother mad over the years. Seeing her shorn head last year was the final straw and brought her to actual tears. But anyway, here she is, Poppy, the nature girl, who's been allocated her own personal life drawing model in her final year of a fine art degree at the Poly is feeling absolutely fine and free about not wearing a bra. Until;
" SLUT !!!! "
She doesn't stop, and if she slows at all, it's imperceptible, but her gait does change. From walz to march. She marches quickly towards the Hacienda, doesn't look back to see where the voice came from or if the insult was intended for her, just thinks back to where she's come from, a some kind of home, making herself smile with the memory of how once again that morning her boyfriend had cried out with pain as he went through his daily ritual of going for a pee and getting an electric shock from the toilet's handle as he flushes it. They've only just that day worked out why this has been happening to him and not her and only in the morning and it's a funny scary reason that'll make them wear wellies round the flat until the council fix the faulty electric cable that's been pierced by a huge nail holding one of the floorboards in place in the bathroom. They have only a scattering of rugs in the upstairs of their generously sized flat that she'll get a taxi back to later and beg the driver to drop her as close to the entry as possible so she only has to run as fast as she can up three flights of stairs past the bin chutes that very successful breeding ground of huge cockroaches everyone shares these flats with and lifts which never work and which you wouldn't use anyway incase they broke because no-one would ever rescue you these are the halcyon days before mobile phones might bail you out if anyone could be arsed to care.
Not that she'd ever say arsed or swear at all. Those kinds of words had never nor ever will be in her lexicon. She doesn't know why exactly because she doesn't really disapprove and usually laughs when her lover says Jesus or fuck but only starts to use the word bollocks many years after when she's tired, so tired of it all.
For now, on this day, this fine sunny day in Manchester not yet Madchester, she's not tired, she's scared again, in the way she's been scared for most of the twenty one years of her life. she comes to wonder later on if it is the way she looks or walks or smiles or something and not the fault of those who seethe so visibly, speak so peevishly, kick and slap so vehemently they make themselves seem like the normal ones.
So she marches with a gait she's perfected over the years; assertive, purposeful, I know where I'm going, I'm going to get there and nothing and no-one's gonna stop me kind of gait, towards the Hacienda and in through the front door because they know her, right into the office, ignoring the rolling eyes and impatient sighs of the smart, sassy, fashionable young women who can't understand what she's supposed to be doing there she's just so incompetent and badly dressed, one of whom will try her best to get her sacked when she overhears her talking to Ian McCulloch on the phone about him getting free tickets for a gig and then asking the supervisor if that's ok because you know, duh, just say yes you stupid pillock. But Ian was absolutely fine, laughed a bit, but then, he's a scouser, probably got off the phone and joked a bit about some posh bitch saying she'd just have to check if he could, maybe even mimicked her charming, polite telephone manner to his mates who may well then, Poppy imagined, have ribbed him about acting the entitled genius musician and he would probably have laughed and said he'd get his secretary to ring next time. And his girlfriend might even have taken a playful swipe at him. Who knows.
For now, she's marching towards this place where she does not feel at home, though she'll take out and read some of the sweet and sometimes moving letters from people all over the world who say they're coming to Manchester especially to visit the Hacienda, sometimes describing what the name and concept means to them personally until she feels she's working somewhere that will become a place of pilgrimage for all the lost young people seeking to dwell alongside like minded souls, if only for a few nights and she'll feel slightly safer, slightly more at home.
She does not look back to where she's come from, the cockroach infested flat with its damp penetrating the wooden panels beneath the windows, once the altruistic vision of a modernist architect, part of a socialist council plan to provide decent homes and spaces for communities to grow just on the edge of the inner city, ring side seat for the riots the previous summer. She does not look back, even when she hears the second call;
" HEY SLAPPER ! "
She does not know why they were rioting, or rather, she does not question it because, well, everything's shit isn't it. It's been shit since she was born and from what her family told her, even worse before. She does not question why she was born, why she was wanted, Poppy just walks, eyes forward, towards her shift at the Hacienda, girl in a bubble, not understanding anyone or anything, not really wanting to, especially who it is that may or not be slagging her off in a busy street in Manchester soon to be Madchester.
And maybe she reached her destination before that person thought of another rude word for a woman, she certainly can't remember any more being hurled at her out loud that day, though some of her work mates might have uttered some different ones under their breath or to each other during her shift later and even more during the few ensuing months she worked there until she and her boyfriend upped sticks to Heald Green to escape the inner city violence that called once too often at their door.
Some time later sees them on a train out through the most surprisingly beautiful hills and valleys towards a place where they saw a sign on a door saying 'welcome to paradise' which made them smile and nod to each other without any trace of irony and where they would eventually build a nest on the side of a valley they would want to call home.
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