In fairness, it was what the Irish call a "soft day". An extremely soft day. A "Merde Il Pleut" day.
I was in Rochdale to visit a friend whom I'd not seen for a while, and cast extreme value over and above the effort it would take on a very wet Mancunian day to visit him.
First impressions, I was surprised. The bus station (I'm a public transport user) was clean and unusually, didn't have that "Eau de Urine" smell we have now come to expect and enjoy from bus stations. Add in despite it being a Saturday, there were staff on duty. Any very helpful staff they were too, able to give me a quick direction that didn't involve a reverse finger version of the "V" sign made famous by neighbouring town Oldham's one-time MP Sir Winston Churchill.
One exits the bus station and is greeted by a quite futuristic and European-style tram stop, again, clean and well maintained. And a little on the impressive side, if I may say.
And that's it. The town where the British Co-op movement started, where there was once a thriving, world-class quality cotton industry. The town that brought Gracie Fields to the stage; former Chancellor Sajid Javid, Anna Friel and Bill Oddie were born there, while Lisa Standsfield and Don Estelle lived there. And of course, the oversized and infamous Sir Cyril Smith.
It has a wonderful shiny library and council offices, and a truly magnificent town hall. But the heart seems to have stopped beating. Even the sole busker on the main pedestrian thoroughfare was standing there with his hands in his pockets looking around as if to say "why did I refuse that audition for the appalling X-Factor".
In defence of the town, a few locals I spoke to said Rochdale simply didn't recover from the Covid pandemic. Although I didn't think Covid lead to such cardiac arrest. To see so few shoppers around at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon seven weeks prior to Christmas in a nation noted for its ridiculously early Christmas shopping, was so sad.
Yes, we're are at the start of what is claimed to be one of the deepest recessions of modern times ahead. But Rochdale seems to be taking this far too seriously. Such a choice of tables in the town's Costa at 2pm in the afternoon is simply not normal.
The former Marks and Spencer, once the staple of any large town, is now a charity cooperative, where not only is reading encouraged where visitors can take up to three books of their choice for free, but there is an Aladdin's cave of used furniture that would have the average furnished, but-to-let landlord wetting themselves. You just cannot buy an Oak Furnitureland table and six chairs in almost unused condition for £200, or an upright piano for £100 anywhere!
However, that having been said, this shop, and the other half a dozen charity shops in the town were devoid of customers, apart from the one that was offering "everything a £1". I bought Jeremy Clarkson's farming book there which ensured no one sat beside me on the bus home as a result of my consistent tittering and what much have been a most ridiculous grin on my face as I read it. A great way to avoid the bus lunatic who is otherwise always attracted to me. "Do I know you?". No, you don't mate.
The shopping "mall" is, like many others in provincial towns, underoccupied, manly thanks, I suspect, to greedy landlords and unaffordable business rates. Many of the usual suspects are there, so your usual stationery, reading, greeting card, beauty, phone repair, vaping, chocolate and bargain buys are adequately catered for. There is a large Emmaus homeless charity shop, which is so large I suspect is in what was a former chain anchor-tenant-store, premises. I spied a rather nice painting by a completely unknown artist for £10, but it being very public-transport unfriendly, I declined, placed a £5 note in the collection box and exited stage left. A great, hard-working charity, but in the centre of a shopping mall? Very much a sad sign of the times.
Rochdale should be proud of its cleanliness. Sadly, this cleanliness could be very much related to the lack of footfall.
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