Retro town

The last really important thing to happen in Barrow was when the local Rugby League team won the Challenge Cup at Wembley in 1957. Sometimes it feels as though the place is desperately trying to cling on to those glory days - it's certainly been little affected by the social changes of the 1980s and 1990s, except for the terminal decline of the shipyard, that is. My granddad's cranescape has gone along with the heavy engineering jobs, but the town has a distinctly retro feel that feels shabby at first sight but definitely grows on you.

All this hasn't done Barrow any harm in reinventing itself as a film set. They were filming today in front of that most priapic of Victorian town halls - a war drama (there were people in WRVS and ARP uniforms milling about) with Victoria Wood, who was busily chatting with the admiring crowds. All this was great fun, but what really touched me was the old dark blue Barrow buses that had been dug out from somewhere. Now that really took me back to my childhood! I wanted a picture of one with its colour-coded destination blinds (no route numbers in Barrow in those days) - White on green for Biggar Bank, white on orange for Harrel Lane, and so on. Even better would have been one bound for Rainey Park - a great joke for me and my sister in the days when it rained stairrods here for days on end (we could so with some of that now.) Alas, they'd set the blinds to boring white-on-black destinations. Still, it brought a smile to my lips!