Burnley was always cold in December \u2013 it was in April and September, too. Still, we hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It\u2019s a Christmas miracle!\u2019 cried Madge Dudley\u2019s brother Trevor, wide-eyed. It was a pose he\u2019d been striking all day. He\u2019d been cast as a rather preachy robin in Red Cross Street School\u2019s Christmas play, and had apparently immersed himself in the role. He\u2019d 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\u2019d taken him up the platform to see if he could mount the footplate, he\u2019d told the fireman he would have \u201cjust as much coal, and just as good coal\u201d in his chimney on Christmas Day (knowing Reg Cooper this was absolutely true, but the only thing miraculous about it was how he\u2019d got away with such brazen pilfering for thirty years). Trevor\u2019s ability to see the future didn\u2019t extend to the more mundane anticipation of time, and he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It ay stickin\u2019!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then, once the spell had been broken, and his mind opened up to the terrible truth: \u2018It ay wet neither!\u2019 He rolled an angry snowball and threw it at me, but it disintegrated and swirled around his head in the breeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It ay snow,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What is it, then?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Cotton.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Like bunnies\u2019 tails?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I considered this. \u2018Ar, like bunnies\u2019 tails.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Do they kill the bunnies to get the cotton?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Bunnies are born with long, thin tails.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018No, Trevor. On the contrary. Bunnies are born with long, thin tails. They catch the bunnies\u2026,\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Who does?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The men.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He seemed to consider this a moment. \u2018What men?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The bunnymen.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Where do they come from?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You get them all over. But especially round here.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Burnley?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018All the milltowns,\u2019 I said, \u2018Especially Colne. That\u2019s why they call them colneys.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Who do?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Men. The bunnymen catch them when they\u2019re 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\u2019s how you get cottontails.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Why do they do it?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Nobody knows,\u2019 I said, as we arrived at the Old Red Lion, \u2018It\u2019s a Christmas miracle. Now you wait here.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The public bar was packed and thick with the smoke of Senior Service. Cornelius Bacon had led Gentleman Jack\u2019s 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\u2019s draw at Villa Park, and the wetting of Norbert Hustings\u2019 baby\u2019s head were punctuated every so often by rousing renditions of the Ramblers\u2019 Anthem, \u2018These Boots\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These boots, these boots\nThey\u2019ve walked from Blakenhall so I could see you.\nThese boots, these boots,\nWould walk to Aberdeen if they needed to\u2026.\n\nFor the Wanderers put meaning in my feet,\nThey make me want to wander further than the corner of my street.\nOne day it\u2019s Blackburn, the next it\u2019s Stoke\nBecause these Jolly Ramblers are not ordinary folk\u2026\n\nAnd we hate Stafford Road!\nAnd we hate Stafford Road!\nAnd we hate Stafford Road!\nAnd we hate Stafford Road!<\/pre>\n\n\n\nEventually 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The little run we\u2019d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Warm snow, manufactured rabbits and a 4-2 defeat away from home. It’s a true Christmas miracle! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29,41,60,88,91,108],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-burnley","tag-cotton","tag-jolly-ramblers","tag-rabbits","tag-rats","tag-trevor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}