Redressing The Balance

Image by Ben Sutherland via Flickr

I wouldn’t say yesterday’s post was unfair to Stockport because I told me no lies, but I think it’s time to tell you about what’s good here.

We have the country’s only hat museum, based in our famous Hat Works Museum.

We have a much-admired Victorian viaduct.

 

When the railway station was built, the foresighted land owner who sold his land to the railway people had a clause inserted that all trains to and from London & Manchester must stop at Stockport Station.  It means we have one of the best services in the country – a train every ten minutes to Manchester, and every half-an-hour to London.  Or it was the best service, until the last couple of years when the powers-that-be decided to ignore a legally binding contract because it had become cost-ineffective.  Sometimes now we have to wait forty minutes for a London train.

We are part of Cheshire, but also part of Greater Manchester (when it suits us).  Think of us as a geographical Venn diagram, having a share in Manchester Airport but a much-coveted Cheshire postcode – much-coveted by Mancunians, that is, who pay more with M postcodes for home and motor insurance, presumably because everyone in Manchester is a scally and everyone in Stockport is a Premier League footballer (no class, but loads of dosh).

We get a lot of wet weather but not much severe weather.  That’s something, I suppose.

We have our own pyramid. 

 

If you look carefully at the photograph, you can’t see my house: it’s just out of sight on the left of the road at top right.  Another centimetre and you’d have me.

Six pyramids were planned but the developer battled to sell this one, so one it is. 

If you watch Life On Mars, when Sam is on the roof of the Police Station – which was filmed at Stopford House, a council building – you can make out the pyramid in the distance.  A tiny error only we Stopfordians we know: it wasn’t built in 1973.

We have the oldest school in the country, Stockport Grammar, founded in 1487.  My American readers might be interested to know that the NBA basketball star John Amaechi went there.  So does Spud, who’ll be lucky if he grows tall enough to wash John’s knees.

I’m sure we’ve got other good stuff, but I can’t think of anything else, so I’ll stop on a high. 

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There’s a new post in my other blog, http://sapoems.wordpress.com if you care to take a look.