My Home Town

[poliphilo]

Oldham doesn't know what it's for- and hasn't since the mills closed-  but it's never stopped trying to find out. In the Hilton Arcade (where I think I'm right in saying not a single shop remains open) there are pictures showing how beautiful the town is going to look after the next in a series of reinventions. There'll be an Asian market (quite different, you understand, from the existing market in which most of the stall-owners are Asian), some sort of glorious erection outside the Town Hall and a "speakers corner" for people with soap boxes. You've got to admire the striving, . Even though the shops and nite spots are mostly shuttered the place feels alive and I don't think it's just the wind and rain gusting round the hilltop. 25 years ago most of the faces on the streets were pasty white, now the pasty whites are in a minority. New population, new dreams- new reasons to stick it to the bastards. Or that's how it seems to me.