A Good Night's Sleep

          Almost a year has passed since we moved from Manchester city centre, where we had lived for twenty-five years. One of the drivers, for me, was to get away from the city’s night life – the drink and drug-fuelled frenzy (from which I had been retired for years before we even lived there). The scene just seemed to be getting noisier and messier – or else it was me getting older. Whichever. Just before bedtime, my level of anxiety would rise as I chose whether to keep the window open and plug my ears or close it and sweat it out. I used to hope for biblical overnight downpours to wash the revellers from the streets. It rarely happened, despite the city’s rainy reputation.

          We now live in Plymouth, in a flat on the first floor of a low-rise block just outside the centre. The river is in front of us, the communal garden behind and the access road is a cul-de-sac, all of which adds up to quiet nights. Quiet as a grave, I think sometimes when I wake and imagine I am prematurely embalmed. But I was back in Manchester last week, re-living the other nightmare.

          Before I caught the train, I attended the clinic for the annual old-person ‘flu jab session. It’s funny how one doesn’t think of oneself as old until one finds oneself in a queue of one’s contemporaries. I stood as erect as possible so as not to be mistaken for a crock. Still, when my turn came I was offered a pneumonia jab as well (in the other arm). “What?” I said, unaware there was such a thing. “Yes,” said the nurse, “We offer it to everyone over a certain age.” Thus was my ego punctured, along with my arms.

          The train arrived at Manchester Piccadilly just as Saturday evening was gearing up. The station was swarming with football fans and people arriving for a night on the town. It was warm, and the girls were dressed as if for a beach party. The streets were full of the new term’s students, gaggles of freshers marked by their wide-eyed, eager excitement and ill-matched outfits. I saw two of them pouring vodka into a fruit juice carton outside a Spar shop. I walked past a block of flats and caught the eye of two girls sitting at an open window on the second floor. They waved and called out, “It’s Saturday night!” I did my best to look pleased for them.

          I was staying in a flat we own and rent out. The long-term tenants had moved out and I was there to fix the place up and organise a new let. I was there for a week. I went to bed early that night, overcome by a delayed feverish reaction to the vaccination(s) I’d had in the morning. When I woke, it was midnight and there was dance music leaking through the walls and the clamour of drunken disorderliness coming through the open window. I was feeling better, however, so I got up and pottered around for a while, making to-do lists and checking the inventory. Back in bed, I succeeded in nodding off by reading a boring novel. The last time I looked at the clock it was 05.00.

          I am back at home now and, having had an unbroken night’s sleep, feeling just a little younger. I enjoyed being in Manchester. It was good to see old friends again, to feel at home in the streets and to get great coffee in half a dozen favourite places. I might still be living there, but for the nightlife. But then it wouldn’t be Manchester, would it?