It wasn’t pretty, but it sort of happened. Woke at 6am and prevaricated for an hour before getting up and out onto the damp streets of Huddersfield.
I switched hotel last week, but am now back at the George, no longer believing this to be such a sleaze-hole. Last week’s grim experience at the low end of town, with its throbbing discos and pissed-up, door-banging neighbours and three-in-the-morning fire alarms was instructive. The George may be frayed at the edges but I can normally get an undisturbed night’s sleep here. It’s actually quite a famous hotel, its name being whispered with reverence in rugby league circles all over the world, apparently. It was here, in 1895, at a rowdy meeting in the downstairs bar, that the governing body of rugby split apart. The sniffy southern union was to remain amateur for another century or so, but professional rugby league was born that evening, and has remained a northern game ever since.
The hotel has seen better days. Trotting down the carpeted stairs at 7 this morning, it was slightly sad to see that ice buckets bearing such legendary names as Krug, Taittinger and Bollinger are now being used for nothing better than catching the rainwater that seeps through the ceiling.
I trotted around the streets for just a couple of miles, barely breaking into a sweat. Up Hillhouse Lane again, past Great Northern Street and the timber yard. Which reminded me that I got my info wrong recently, when I mentioned Peter Sutcliffe leaving the body of Helen Rytka under the railway bridge here. In fact, she was dumped in the wood yard on the corner. I’d got my serial-killer victims mixed up, as you do. I was thinking about this as I passed under the bridge, where I noticed a couple of prostitutes loitering. The idea of plying for trade at 7:15 on a rainy Wednesday morning in Huddersfield seemed depressing enough, but there was also the knowledge that this was the precise spot where Sutcliffe’s wretched victim was picked up. I wondered if these women knew about all this. They certainly weren’t alive in 1978, when it happened. But the spot has clearly retained its popularity as the town’s modest little red-light district.
As I trudged up Willow Lane, I wondered how it was that I have lived on page 62 of every mapbook I’ve ever owned. Then round the corner, and the lovely surprise of St John’s church. It shouldn’t be a surprise — I’ve seen it a thousand times — but somehow it always is. A beautiful building, occupying an unlikely place.
That was it. I half considered turning right and finding a murderous hill on which to dissolve what was left of my spirit, but the often conflicting voices of my inner parliament this time were unanimous in their opposition to the motion. Without even waiting for the votes to be counted, I turned instead and headed for home.
