Press
Look Twice
Castlefield Arena
23rd October 1987

While I’m sort of doing the newspapery cuttings thing; Lads from down round my way. Actually I do recall this day down at Castlefield. It was a fine day and really the first time I think that the Castlefield area was shown to it’s full future potential; instead of the derelict wasteland it had long been. I used to walk sometimes down along the canal from near the Westward Ho up to Deansgate and though it had a sort of post-industrial urban beauty to it, it was a bit forlorn with an air of what should have been and had been; driving the wheels of the Great British Empire, like The Peterloo Massacre had counted for nothing at all. But pretty much anything looks/feels good on an English Summer’s day.... The occasional bloke fishing for what, I don’t know; perhaps the mythical and elusive Lesser Rusted shopping trolley; and under arches , old mechanic’s workshops that could well have been there since the dawn of the Horseless Carriage.
So Castlefield was looking good on the day; fun for all the family sort of a thing. Victor Brox also played and I’d seen “Look Twice”, perhaps alongside Dougie James Soul Train. Obviously when the photo was taken the lad at the back had been seriously distracted and the photographer, having committed the cardinal sin of his chosen path and snapped just the one shot, had to put this one to press....For shame! I also know for a fact that one of these talented young chaps had a bong ingeniously fashioned from a garden gnome, although looking at the photo I think you would be hard pressed to pick which one...they all look equally capable; clue, it wasn’t “The Dooley”....
And wasn’t that Mick Middles a sexy looking beast...?Wonder where I can get some glasses like that from; The Eighties being back in with a vengeance I hear....