Burnley was always cold in December – it was in April and September, too. Still, we hadn’t expected snow. The precipitation had been of the wet kind as we crossed Manchester from Piccadilly to Victoria, and the switch in landscape from murky to brilliant white happened very suddenly as we neared Manchester Road station.
‘It’s a Christmas miracle!’ cried Madge Dudley’s brother Trevor, wide-eyed. It was a pose he’d been striking all day. He’d been cast as a rather preachy robin in Red Cross Street School’s Christmas play, and had apparently immersed himself in the role. He’d predicted happy endings for numerous urchins, soaks and down-at-heel housewives on the walk up North Street to the High Level Station, and when I’d taken him up the platform to see if he could mount the footplate, he’d told the fireman he would have “just as much coal, and just as good coal” in his chimney on Christmas Day (knowing Reg Cooper this was absolutely true, but the only thing miraculous about it was how he’d got away with such brazen pilfering for thirty years). Trevor’s ability to see the future didn’t extend to the more mundane anticipation of time, and he’d asked me at least fifteen times how long it was until the Twenty-Fifth. Madge and Jack were at a funeral. At one point I came close to wishing it was mine.
Trevor hardly gave me a chance to open the carriage door before launching himself onto the platform. He disappeared into the white fluff, and then bounced up in another place with a puzzled look on his red face. Something wasn’t right.
I realized what it was as soon as I stepped onto the platform, but amused myself for a minute or two watching Trevor attempt to make a snowman, the pious little robin-face screwing with the effort of contradicting his own senses. He battled on in ever greater frustration, until tears began to well in his eyes.
‘It ay stickin’!’
And then, once the spell had been broken, and his mind opened up to the terrible truth: ‘It ay wet neither!’ He rolled an angry snowball and threw it at me, but it disintegrated and swirled around his head in the breeze.
‘It ay snow,’ I said.
‘What is it, then?’
‘Cotton.’
‘Like bunnies’ tails?’
I considered this. ‘Ar, like bunnies’ tails.’
‘Do they kill the bunnies to get the cotton?’
‘Bunnies are born with long, thin tails.’
‘No, Trevor. On the contrary. Bunnies are born with long, thin tails. They catch the bunnies…,’
‘Who does?’
‘The men.’
He seemed to consider this a moment. ‘What men?’
‘The bunnymen.’
‘Where do they come from?’
‘You get them all over. But especially round here.’
‘Burnley?’
‘All the milltowns,’ I said, ‘Especially Colne. That’s why they call them colneys.’
‘Who do?’
‘Men. The bunnymen catch them when they’re little and send them here to the coney mills, where they tie their long tails up in a ball and sew a lump of cotton onto them. That’s how you get cottontails.’
‘Why do they do it?’
‘Nobody knows,’ I said, as we arrived at the Old Red Lion, ‘It’s a Christmas miracle. Now you wait here.’
The public bar was packed and thick with the smoke of Senior Service. Cornelius Bacon had led Gentleman Jack’s Jolly Ramblers across the Pennines, and they would have drunk the Calder dry had beer not been invented. Coming down from the hills, they had seen the source of the strange precipitation: a roof had blown off a warehouse near the canal. Details of this, along with anecdotes from their hike, predictions regarding the game, reviews of the previous week’s draw at Villa Park, and the wetting of Norbert Hustings’ baby’s head were punctuated every so often by rousing renditions of the Ramblers’ Anthem, ‘These Boots’:
These boots, these boots They’ve walked from Blakenhall so I could see you. These boots, these boots, Would walk to Aberdeen if they needed to…. For the Wanderers put meaning in my feet, They make me want to wander further than the corner of my street. One day it’s Blackburn, the next it’s Stoke Because these Jolly Ramblers are not ordinary folk… And we hate Stafford Road! And we hate Stafford Road! And we hate Stafford Road! And we hate Stafford Road!
Eventually I bid my leave, hoping to catch up with Natty Johns, whom I owed five cigarettes, at the Wellington near the ground. On leaving the pub, however, I was confronted by a surprising sight. All the rats of Burnley had converged in the streets, harvesting the unspun cotton for their grubby urban nests. Trevor had one of them in his hand, and was attempting to fit a cotton tail to it, with little success. I watched him persevere, offering words of encouragement, for five or ten minutes before he began asking why their ears were so short and we headed off through the white streets towards the next pub and thence Turf Moor.
The little run we’d been putting together ended there, with Wolves crashing to a 4-2 defeat, despite a sterling display from Hill Griffiths at wing-half. It was a story that we knew quite well by now; throughout the season, patches of good form had come to an end just as we looked to be finding our rhythm (things would decline considerably come the new year). The swirling wind didn’t help, but it did largely clear the streets in time for the final whistle, easing our passage through the town. I let Trevor have another go at pinning a cotton tail on his rat while enjoying a quick one at the Bull and Butcher with the Veterans of Kirbekan, before throwing the rodent safely onto the tracks at Manchester Road and boarding the Third Class carriage for Victoria.