Only a few people would know that to have a Wrights pie for lunch means that I am spending the first of three nights away from home in Stoke-on-Trent.
I am staying at what was called the Grand Hotel in Hanley before it was renamed the Quality Hotel. I often complain when football commentators say "the team lacks quality" that they are are getting it wrong - every team has some quality or other, its just that some of them have better qualities than others.
Certainly if they called this hotel the High Quality Hotel (second photo) they would get a slating. But I have one of the "posh" rooms and its pretty good apart from the lack of water in the washbasin. But it least its ensuite.
The house that I suffered for my first four weeks in the Potteries as a student in 1975 didn't even have an inside toilet. My landlord was an alcoholic and the house (which I walked past today - top photo) was in a dreadful state. If I had known that it was going to take four weeks to get something better I would not have been able to stay. I mastered the art of making sandwiches from sliced bread and slices of processed cheese and ate at the Polytechnic the rest of the time. I also took showers there or visited the public baths in Newcastle on a Saturday morning (and I mean baths not just the swimming pool - local authorities used to provide public baths for people who didn't have them at home.
I walked about 12 miles this afternoon taking photos and clocked up about 14 today altogether - and some mild blisters.
Most of the pubs I remember seem to have closed but I have got to have a pint of Marstons or Banks before I move on tomorrow.
The second of my two homes in the Potteries was with a landlord and landlady in a council house in Newcastle-under-Lyme (above). It was luxury compared to my first home which looks a lot better now than it did then.
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