I seem to have mentioned my friend the historian and blogger Andrew Simpson several times recently – not Andrew the famous Olympic yachtsman, who tragically died in a yacht race several years ago, nor Andrew the Irish actor, but the Manchester and Chorlton-cum-Hardy historian and blogger.
His stories are always fascinating, and a recent tale of a Manchester Road which disappeared, really caught my imagination. Well, it caught my interest and then my imagination.
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/princess-road-chorlton-cum-hardy-two.html
It is about some research he was doing on a particular place, and when he compared different material he found that a street seemed to disappear, then reappeared. Of course it didn’t, the street with all the houses and the families living in them were there for many years, it was just through a name change and other administrative details it seemed to vanish.
I messaged Andrew: Just read your two mystery blog, and ever it’s set me off in another story about the street that’s sometimes there, but sometimes isn’t, and when it isn’t – where is it??!! Of course in reality it’s just had a name change, but in my world the name doesn’t change, the street just disappears!
As a fiction writer (although not into the fantasy genre) I found it not only fascinating, but as usual, it sent my fiction writer’s mind racing off to explore the street that’s only sometimes there, and when it isn’t – where is it? I pondered – when it’s not there, where does it go, and if you wander down it and it changes to being not there, are you also there, or still not there? And if you’re not there, where are you??? Can you come back – will you come back next time it’s there, and will it be the same day that you went off to explore it?? So many questions! Are there any answers? Will I have to find them if you don’t?
Andrew replied: Ha ha … I am your Ernie Wise to your Eric Morcambe, butter to your bread, tonic to your gin!
I couldn’t rerist answering: Lol!! Or Walrus to your Carpenter!!
