Pav’s Patch; A walk on de wildside of town...

OVER Christmas I had a little more leisure time on my hands than I’ve been used to, which meant I found myself in places like the centre of Ashton or Stalybridge at times when I would normally be in front of a computer.

And don’t you get to see some sights? For a start, I hadn’t realised Ashton could be such a violent place in the middle of the day.

I’ve seen all sort of people squaring up to each other, including a middle-aged man and a lad who, although clearly a native of the town, kept speaking in a sort of Caribbean patois.

“I tell mi mama she wrong to mix wi’you,” he hissed while throwing rather badly aimed punches at the older man.

It was all rather surreal as I couldn’t work out why the lad had ditched his Ashton accent.

Another day, in Stalybridge, I encountered some of the worst coughing I have ever heard.
It sounded like the last gasps of a Dickensian consumptive.

I looked across the road to see a young lad pushing a pram. And what was he using to cover his mouth? No, not a handkerchief but a packet of 20 fags.

When he eventually stopped, he used his teeth to rip the polythene off the cigarettes, spat it on to the pavement, and lit up.

Amazing. It reminded me of a friend I had at university — Rick from West Ham — who admitted that he could never understand why, when he was having his first cigarette of the day, he would cough his guts up and then gasp: “Oh I needed that.”

The most unnerving experience was back in Ashton.

Having spent several minutes in the post office queue next to a couple of families who seemed unable to a say a single sentence without a four-letter word, I came across a couple outside a shop.

Without any warning the man suddenly told the woman she was a chuffin prat or something very similar and hurled two shopping bags on to the pavement.

His partner was left on her knees, sobbing among the frozen pizzas, and pleading for him to help.

I felt for her — I really did — and considered helping. I then considered the fact that the psycho partner might come back and have a go at me for getting involved.

I hate to admit it, but I swiftly crossed over, found something very interesting to look at in the window of a shop selling artificial limbs or whatever, and swiftly passed by on the other side.

What a wonderful country.