Don't It Always Seem To Go..You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone
I had occasion to visit Manchester centre on Saturday. A trip to the Gent's outfitters being the order of the day and, naturally, Dearest tagged along to make sure I didn't return with garish jewjaws masquerading as apparell. No purple satin flares for me this time then....but my time will come. I've worn them before and I'll wear them again. But anyway, I digress.As we shuffled from car to store we passed a good old-fashioned Mancunian pub that has graced Great Ancoats Street as long as I can remember, and I can remember this one longer than any other because it was the first pub name I actively took an interest in. It was called the "Land 'O' Cakes".
As a kid I naturally assumed that the place would be awash with Battenburg, swiss roll and angel cake. It took a lot of persuading to disabuse me of this dream. But still, it's a great name for a pub. How many pubs go by such a moniker the length and breadth of the British Isles? Not a lot - if any I would've thought. Not a boring Royal Oak, King's Arms, Gardener's Rest, Church Inn and the like, but the Land O Cakes. Certainly not a manufactured Bag O Shite name like The Fox and Firkin, Slug and Lettuce, Rat and Drainpipe or the ubiquitious Waxy McFergal's Auld Irish Muldoon's Picnic bar.
The Land O Cakes. Unique and instantly recognisable to anyone of Mancunian origin.
'Cept it's not called the Land O Cakes now. Where the words "Land O Cakes" were embossed into the very fabric of the building, some arsehole of a "developer" has attempted to apply whitewash and rewrite history. The pub has rebranded itself "Lord Atterburys" or something, certainly something without an apostrophe anyway, and has "Business Opportunity for Let" boards festooned from each vantage point.
Arf!
The gentrification of central Manchester has, post bomb, rippled to the outskirts of what we would term the City centre. The Northern Quarter north of Picadilly was the last area to be engulfed - as it were - by new money. Ancoats is currently undergoing the Urban Splash treatment. Apartments reclaimed from long derelict mills and places of worship, regeneration of council housing and local businesses. A sense of bridging the past with the present. Ancoats - the world's first industrialised, urban 'village' - bequeathing its original bricks and mortar to the future.
In the middle of all this - betwixt the Northern Quarter and Ancoats, lies the
I'll guarantee you this. Whoever reopens this place will ditch the Lord Atterburys bollocks and revert back to the Land O Cakes - a name that has graced a pub on this site since at least the 1750s. And no doubt the ad-exec who comes up with this innovative rebranding will be hailed as a cutting edge genius and people will talk of meeting in the Land O Cakes again instead of Lord Atterburys (like they ever did!)
I've still not heard whether I will be allowed to leave my place of employ with a semi-decent buttie. The Ivory towers are chock full of middle and upper mangement attempting to figure out how to leverage us lesser beings across more accounts for less money. It's not easy at the top - honest. For a start off you've got to understand what fuckin' "leverage" means in relation to human beings. Today I was working away at a new account I have recently been leveraged onto, when I get a phone call from some management lickspittle requesting my presence at another account I had recently been leveraged to. "No can do" quoth I, "I'm in the process of "delighting" a customer here" (a good 20 miles away on the other side of Manchester). Cue much gnashing of teeth on the other end of the phone and questions like "can't you do something remotely?" Well, possibly, but given the fact that I an employed to sort the stuff out that requires a deskside visit, aka "the stuff that can't be done remotely", I'd guess the answer to that question would be no.
So I end up listening to a resigned voice on the other end of the phone accepting what I have said but also letting me know that it was all somehow my fault that I couldn't be in two places at once.
Well cheers mate. You'll go far because you certainly motivated me today.
*rubs temples with forefinger and thumb, closes eyes, purses lips and mutters "prick"*
Sunny Greece in two and a half weeks. Can't wait. Question is 'should I take my WiFi enabled laptop' in the hope that there is a rogue WiFi network either in the hotel or nearby?
Decisions, decisions.
******ADDENDUM****** Congrats to Liverpool and, especially, to Mr Alfred the OK. I don't know what Benitez said at half-time but, bugger me......
2 comments:
I fully sympathise with the fate of Manchester. We went for a suit fitting a few weeks ago and thence for a few scoops of God's own tackle. I was appalled...there are no real boozers left anywhere. Even Wigan, that bastion of Northern working class taverns, is now chock full of chav-magnet shiny, well-lit, neon non-events.
And you're right to point out it all happened post-bomb. The signs were there before (Nickleby's?) but the rebuild opened the eyes of the neo-educated chavs and all was lost.
When you get back from your Grecian experience, I cordially invite you to come and have a pint in what I regard as the last of the proper pubs, a mere 1/2 mile from where I sit...the Oddfellows Arms. Food is a permutation of {chips, eggs, sausage, bread} and is served on a Saturday lunchtime only. Otherwise, it's crisps, nuts or pork-scratchings. We could get Alfie to come along too.
Keep taking the pills. And do take your laptop to Greece...you'll regret it if you don't.
I've passed the Land o' Cakes hundreds of times and always wondered where the name originated. According to this link, it could be a Scottish connection.
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