Talking Nettles

The Crescent Pub, Salford, a boozer in which Marx himself would take a drink in his day, was our usual starting point for a gig at the St Philip’s Church or the Islington Mill. We are skint though, so after a pint on Bexley Square we head to the offy to get some cans and plant ourselves elsewhere. We end up on a patch of grass next to the main road outside Salford University, just down from its Museum and Art Gallery. We pick a spot and sit looking over the trees that line the sheer embankments towering over the Adelphi Weir on the Irwell. A few cans and the banter is flowing as quickly as the booze, it’s a nice sunny evening early summer, and the last of the commute snakes away with the smoke of the Amber Leaf. My youthful bladder benefits me for some five or six cans before I need to infiltrate the bushes for a pee. Upon so doing I manage to fight my way through the dense thicket into a small secluded clearing beneath the tree canopies. Shafts of light stream through the shifting breaks in the foliage above, pouring on to a carpet of flowering nettles standing straight and tall, heavy and regimented, ordered like a battalion on parade, evenly spaced, squared and true at the flanks. The tips of their heads all bow slightly towards me. I could not but speak to them, I introduce myself and explain what I'm about to do, they begin to move from side to side in complete unison, I speak again, they move forwards and backwards in response, not a breath of air is breaching the clearing, not a single other leaf is moving. I turn and take my wee against the brambles instead.

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