Welcome to StepAway Magazine‘s twenty-fifth issue.

Publishing twenty-five issues is a landmark for us. In particular, it makes me reflect on all of the writers we have published since rolling out our first issue in 2011. In terms of diversity, issue one took me by surprise. Our featured writers ranged from Sarah Schulman, an award-winning New York novelist and lesbian rights activist, to Changming Yuan, a poet who grew up in a remote village in China, to Tom Sheehan an author who served with the American 31st Infantry Regiment during the Korean War. Our writer’s varying range of backgrounds continues to delight and fascinate me.

Despite being a magazine based in England, StepAway receives considerably fewer submissions from U.K. based writers than it does from other English-speaking countries. America leads the way, but we also receive a surprisingly large number of submissions from writers living in the Republic of Ireland. Submissions from Australia are, however, rather rare. It was therefore a pleasure to publish Martin Christmas’s “No Through Road”, a wander through Adelaide as part of our twenty-fifth issue. Martin, a poet, photographer, and theatre director also kindly provides the cover art for this issue – a glaringly evocative examination of the nocturnal Australian city.

Over the course of twenty-five issues, StepAway has also made many valuable ongoing connections with writers. Joachim Frank is one such writer. We have published his work on five prior occasions – his keen sense of urban observation and crisply concise approach make his writing a perfect fit for StepAway. On this occasion, however, we are delighted to publish his work as a Nobel Prize winner. Along with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson, Joachim won The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 for “for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution”. On behalf of everyone at StepAway, I’d like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to Joachim, and thank him for his continuing support of the magazine.

Issue twenty-five is brimming with talent. We also have some excellent urban exploration from: Órla Fay, Tinka Harvard, Gill James, Jack Little, Theresa Ryder, Margarita Serafimova, Sue Spiers, Marc Swan and Lynn White.

So, without further ado, delve into the issue and allow yourself to be transported.

Enjoy our Autumn Issue!

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

You’d think it would be a story easily lost on an eleven-year-old on the other side of the world in 1970s Brooklyn, but the film had me at “Hello Rick.”

I wondered where they were. I asked, “Where is Morocco?” It was all strange in the most unfamiliar and intriguing way. Fez hats, hookahs, gambling, folks in love, and an airplane waiting to whisk Bogey and Bergman off is the stuff of Hollywood. However, the idea of escape to faraway lands caught my attention. The idea of skipping town and going somewhere touched me after that movie.

This Brooklyn girl never learned the fine art of driving. Having wheels in New York City is not only unnecessary, it is a burden, so I walk once I get unpacked in a new city or town. Feeling the ground beneath my feet centers and orients me. It helps me to find my way.

I’m attracted to the French idea of la flâneur; one who wanderers in a beautiful, poetic, and philosophical manner.

Walking can be a contemplative, spiritual, and aesthetic experience. The importance of a long journey is part pilgrimage, allowing the mind to clear. In that clearance, a peace arises. Inspired ideas have the space to come forward in answer to our deepest concerns.

What good is the drifter, the dharma bum? Does the monk or the poet have any value? What have writers and philosophers made of their walking, of their wandering?

The Poet Robert Frost was often asked while out walking if he was relaxing, having a break from writing? He’d say the walking part was the work. It was at those moments that his ideas came to him. He simply had to write down what was given to him while walking when he put pen to page.

Movement is a kind of salve for me. When I get lonely and afraid I ask myself, Why can’t I have a normal life? Normal being a life with a family full of children. I adore children. Why can’t I start a family and make a home instead of living a gypsy-like nomadic existence?

I have had many thoughts about what goes into having a family. I think of the immense effort of caring for and raising one’s children. The house cleaning and food preparations, the education and guidance, the faithful need to be attentive and available are some of the things I would aspire to if I were to have a family.

While out walking one day I began to understand that though I miss not having children, I choose and prefer the freedom of movement, of flight, without worry. I am moved to wander. So spookily so, I wonder if I am called to wander. I enjoy immensely quiet and solitude, travel and writing. These passions have profound drawbacks—for example, missing out on raising children or other paths not taken.

I have a romantic taste for walking. I walk to enjoy the beauty of this world. I walk to get in tune with the divine, with nature. I walk to be still and to know. I walk for the sheer joy of it.

As a wanderer, I witness the way the pleasures in life present themselves in every step. Sometimes—oftentimes—it is a quiet, unassuming mysterious welling up of beauty that surprises me, and getting lost while wandering is a part of it all as well.

I am beginning to wonder if it is me who has chosen the life of the wanderer, la flâneur. Or is it that the path of the wanderer has chosen me? I ponder these questions simply because when I drift through the winding, dusty, unfamiliar roads of Morocco, I feel more at home than ever. I encountered a sense of home long ago simply sitting beside my aunt watching Casablanca one Brooklyn evening. I haven’t been the same since.

Tinka Harvard

CBD, Adelaide.

T shirt scribbles
by the score.
Go Round – wobbly breasts.
Oakley – tall and skinny guy.
88 – school boy in casuals.

Stilettos, sandals,
thongs, joggers,
formal blacks and sockless.
Suits and suits,
and frocks and frocks.

Phones.
Ear plugs.
Fixed stares everywhere.
Crunch of brakes.
Tough, focused, heading
somewhere.
Not a No Through Road
but home.

A homeless man
sitting on a bench
in Gilbert Place.
No home to go to
but a No Through Road.

Martin Christmas

What I see at any moment is the vastness of the street; its expansion beyond reason; its lack of clear direction.  The street with its incidentals invites me to stray off the linear path and enjoy the moment: the glove someone has dropped, with its middle finger permanently poised at cursing; the flattened milk carton with tire marks still showing; the ubiquitous cigarette butt; the Blue Moon bottle cap.

In this haphazard zigzag from one short-lived sensation to another, the path gains fractal dimensions; its length becomes undefined at best, infinite at worst.  Cultural references on street names and bill-boards are lost but others are gained; as far as a dog is concerned, there has never been a Thelonius Monk or a Frederick Douglas.  Instead there are asphalt bumps with roots bursting through, fire hydrants, dandelion shoots, and little fences protecting dogs from trees.  There are no sculptures of accomplished squirrels, doves, or dogs, though—the unfortunate  result of millennia of anthropocentric preferences.

I don’t profess to know what goes on in a dog’s mind – could it be the glim idea of seeing the world through our eyes in reverse, periscopically, on a much-elevated plane? The plane where the grand scheme of the Manhattan grid at once becomes conceivable? Where buildings attain a scale that is commensurate with the human architect’s vision?  If that were true, they would tip-toe through the newly-found space, read street names with historical finesse, and acknowledge the grand visions of their masters.

Joachim Frank

Sue Spiers

Órla Fay

Theresa Ryder

Walking purposefully
or aimlessly
footfalling
on the spotless tiles,
still damp
from their overnight
mechanical
wash and brush up.
Texting or talking
into phones
clamped to ears.

So much space.

No narrow streets
of tenements and courts
and terraces
with washing hanging
and children playing
or sitting on steps.
With women gossiping
to each other.
Human sounds and smells,
and animal too,
but working or wild,
not petted.

Carts on cobbles,
the sounds
and smells of industry.
Workshops, docks and factories
spewing noise
and dirt and dust
and fumes
to be mixed in
with the living
space.

A different place
for sure,
but,
in the same space.
So,
scratch the shiny surface,
lift the cheap veneer,
dig a little deeper.
Take up a tile
and scratch up
the dirt.
Sniff.
Look behind
the facades
of the people
and you will find
another place
and its people
living
in this space.

Lynn White

Margarita Serafimova

See, though, we’ve got a lot to be proud of in Salford. First town to have a public park, first place to have a public library and first place to have gas lights. We’ve even got a university. I’m not quite sure what one of those does but it’s big enough and sits like a great big boil in the middle of everything and divides the Ship Canal bit from the shopping bit form the bit where there used to be the law courts and the hospital and where there still is a cathedral. They keep going on about it and saying how proud we should be of it.

That place, though: the Lowry. That great big posh theatre. It was named after that man that made those funny paintings of the match-thin people. They look like a kid could have done them. Only when I tried it wasn’t so easy.  Well, there’s loads of his pictures in that place named after him. Something else for us to be pleased about, I reckon.

Up and coming. That’s what Salford is.

My Grandma says we should be hopeful. Granddad’s always telling me how grim it used to be when it was the Ship Canal proper here. Men would be fighting over jobs. What the fuck? Fighting for a chance to do some hard work and wear yourself out? It was either that, though, or starve. He says it was all so different then.

He laughs and you can see his gums. He’s got false teeth but he refuses to wear them. They irritate him, he says. But he doesn’t half get a twinkle in his eye when he talks about when his dad worked as a docker.

“He had to be quick,” he says. “First come, first served. Only it wasn’t a matter of gentility. If you didn’t get picked the kids and the missus would starve. So Dad was pretty nimble. Got his hooks ready double quick. ”

“Your granddad’s right,” says Grandma. “It wasn’t no picnic for my dad neither.” She rubs Granddad’s arm. “Do you remember that little house you ma and pa lived in?”

Granddad nods his head. He grins. “I remember the whores and all,” he says. “And the VD they gave me dad.”

“Andrew!” says Grandma and blushes. She recovers and turns to me. “They knocked the little houses down and built the high-rise. Then they got rid of that and put up what we’ve got now.”

“It still ain’t changed that much,” says Granddad.

“Oh I don’t know,” says Grandma. “There’s the allotment and the garden, the café and the bus.”

She’s right. Before the university and the BBC got all important you had to go into Manchester and back out again. Now’s there’s the number 50 and all those posh folk with their cards and free passes.

My granddad and his mates act like vigilantes on the estate. They soon put anybody right who gets out of line. But you know, it makes it a better place to live in. Man, they’re queuing up to get houses here now. Mum says we’re the lucky ones.

“Anyway,” Granma continues, “there might be some jobs going for our Glenda and our Phil.”

We hope so. My Auntie Glenda and my Uncle Phil haven’t worked for four years.

They finish the new buildings at last. The BBC moves in. The University moves in. All sorts of posh dudes move into some flats that look just like the high-rises that they’d pulled down a few years back. A little bit smarter, just about. Most of the time the people there look as if they’re pretending they don’t know us. I suppose they can’t help it.

“Take no notice,” says the lady from the community centre. “This is your city. The place belongs to you.”

“City?” I ask.

“Yes, city,” she says. “You live in a city. We have a cathedral.”

She’s right. Our cathedral is almost on the boundary. Manchester’s own is only a few hundred yards away.

We love our city. We cruise through the estate. We break dance on the plaza. We sing in the foyer of the Lowry. We unlock the Quays and we light the legend, over and over. We take what is ours. We are Salford lads and lasses through and through.

Until one day it goes wrong.

The Peel Holdings security guy chases us off the plaza. Joey has been dancing in front of the Blue Peter Garden. He’s attracted quite a crowd.  He’s pretty good at break-dancing.

Now we have to run, though. Anyway, we rush towards the Lowry. Before we can really work out what is happening, the Sunlight gang have turned up. We’ve never found out exactly who they are but some people say they’re something to do with old Port Sunlight and that they come here all the way from Liverpool. Some people even think they come up on the Ship Canal.

Anyhow, however they came here, they got here. And now they let off a firework inside the Lowry. The fire alarms go off. People panic. We’re chased out of there as well.

“You’re banned,” says their security bloke.

We have to go home.

Granddad and his cronies are standing on the doorsteps, like they do, with their arms folded across their chests.

“What you been up to lads?” says Granddad.

We tell him.

“Plonkers,” he says. Only we don’t know whether he means us or the Sunlight crew.

We try going back one day only one of the posh women who sells the programmes spots us. “You’ve been banned from here,” she says. “Get out of it.”

So much for the city belonging to us. It’s more like how we’d always thought. Posh dudes who don’t what anything to do with the likes of us.

That was all a while ago now. I’ve kept away from the place ever since. I think I get a bit better why they were so cross now. We must have seemed a bit too bubbly I guess. Life has gone on. I know all about that now.

Granddad died six months ago and my dad’s now the granddad and I’m the dad. I’ve got a little nipper. Sharon and I weren’t too careful. Mind you, he’s a sharp one, is our Frankie. Best thing that ever happened to me, and Sharon’s not so bad either. We’re married now. Her folks insisted. It’s done me good being a dad. Made me more responsible.

But I’d never take him down the Quays. Place makes me shudder now.

Except the other day we went round to the allotments. There’s this old geyser who looks after Granddad’s plot. He says he’ll keep an eye on it until somebody else takes it on. Now Frankie likes to go to the allotments. He’s such a good kid. He likes his vegetables and sometimes we can get something real good value for money. Or we might go for a bite to eat in the café. Sometimes there are bees or butterflies hovering around the plants. He loves all of that, does our Frankie.

He’s there, anyway, the old bloke. Roger, I think his name is.

“Well, young man,” he says to Frankie. “What can I show you today?”

Frankie points at something behind Roger.  Roger turns his head to look and I spot it at the same time. A great big heron is perched on the fence and he’s eying up the pond.

“Oh him,” says Roger. “Yes, that’s why I’m sitting here.  We play this game. Me and him. See whose nerve will crack first.” Roger titters. “I usually win,” he whispers.

The heron flies off.

“There. Won again.”

Frankie looks as if he’s going to cry.

“Hey, hey, hey,” says Roger. “There are plenty more interesting birds about.”  He winks at me and titters at his own joke. Then he nods. “Post-industrial landscape, mate. You’ll see them all there. Geese, swans, herons and lots more. Especially the days they sweep the debris through. They all find plenty to feed on then.” He pats Frankie on the head. “You get your daddy to take you to have a look.” Roger looks at me again. “It’s a bit of a miracle,” he whispers. “The day after tomorrow should be good.”

There is no arguing with him the following Thursday. He’s adamant he’s going to go down to the Quays.

“I want see the big birds,” he says. “Like Roger said.  “What was it? Post…indy…?”

“Post-industrial.” Gosh, he’s getting grown-up with his words.  And that Roger’s got a lot to answer for. Putting ideas like that in his head.

So here I am again. For the first time in years. The place has matured. The flats still look posh but what small gardens there are have grown.  Including the Blue Peter one. It all looks a bit more lived in now.

“Look!” calls Frankie. He’s pointing at a couple of swans. He jumps up and down and claps his hands. “Birds!”

He’s right. Lots of birds everywhere. There’s what looks like bits of wood floating on top of the Ship Canal. They’re all pecking away at it. So Roger was right. It is post-industrial. It’s more beautiful than it ever was even before they built it, if you get what I mean. There’s more wildlife here now that there was before the industry came.

A woman is bending over a railing, smoking a cigarette. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” she says.

I recognise her as well. Oh, I so do. I laugh. “You chased me out of the Lowry once. For setting off a firework in there. Only it wasn’t us. It was the Sunlighters.”

“Oh yes. Don’t remind me. We were scared of you lot. People are like that. Scared of youngsters. Especially if they come from the estate.”

I want to shout at her or slap her. Can’t she think what it must be like, if people look at you that way all the time?

Frankie doesn’t give me a chance though.  He grabs my hand and starts jumping up and down again. “Post-industrial. Post-industrial. Post-industrial,” he chants.

“He’s bright for his age. How old is he?

“Six.”

“Goodness.”

“Look at that!” Frankie wobbles my arm as a heron lands on the debris.

The woman stubs out her cigarette on the box attached to the lamppost. “It’s beautiful here now, isn’t it? Who’d have thought it? ”

I nod.

Frankie wobbles my arm again. “Can we come again tomorrow?”

“Well, there might not be as many birds.”

“We’ve got a family day on at the Lowry on Saturday,” the woman says.  “There’ll be lots to do and see. Bring him.”

“Please, Daddy.”  His bright little eyes look into mine.

“Go on,” says the woman and touches my arm gently. “Please forgive us -”

Frankie’s squawk drowns out the rest of her words. The heron is flying into the sky and he becomes a silhouette against the setting sun. His wings glisten silver. The three of us watch without saying a word.

Salford is beautiful after all and it belongs to us.

Gill James