The weekend’s tour of non-glamorous Northern towns continues. Actually Accrington is a more pleasant place than you might imagine, with signs of civilisation…. Not in the market today, though, not on a Sunday. Day of rest and all that. Did you know that bricks made in Accrington were used in the foundations of the Empire State Building? Now you do.
I pick this one today because I think it’s a nice portrait, though I don’t know these gentlemen and so can’t be sure it captures some kind of essential quality about them. But I see a lot of football these days — the game mentioned in the post title was my 80th of the season and I intend to do a few more yet before it’s over — and I see a lot of people like these, as we’re all in it together.
Good Friday, hence a day off work, and plenty of football around so it seemed the logical thing to do, particularly as Clare was paying — the destination being Accrington Stanley v Morecambe in League Two. Which, insofar as anything does in Accrington, attracted quite a crowd.
Getting the train from Hebden Bridge to points further north-west involves passing through — or rather (on a viaduct), over — the town of Accrington. I once got involved in a conversation on social media as to which was England’s most ‘Northern’ town, meaning, not geographically, but culturally, stereotypically. This place won, and each time I cross the viaduct and see its seemingly endless ranks of terraced, back-to-back housing, I remember why. This is just a small part of the whole. LS Lowry could paint Accrington as it looks today, and few would doubt the authenticity.
Being 42 