Here I am outside Holy Name
Church which has been immortalised in the song Vicar in a Tutu by The Smiths. The lyric goes: "I was minding my business lifting some lead off the roof of
The Holy Name church." You would need to be wearing a jet pack to strip lead
off the roof as this Grade-1 listed Gothic-revival church is terribly
tall. It's so capacious the nave can
accommodate 800 worshippers at one time.
The church doors were locked. I walked by the
place going to and from central Manchester but I couldn't get inside. It sits
near thousands of student bedsits and every third person I passed seemed to be
Chinese. It's near Manchester Museum which I like to bob into (to look at the
creepy Egyptian dummies) but there was a Covid0-inspired queue when I passed. Aptly
I passed a bin with "Meat Is Murder" painted on one side - the name
of The Smiths's second studio album.
That day Oxford Street was closed due to roadways
and strangely quiet. I passed a hen party all wearing Donald Trump masks. I had
one last look at the church. Morrissey's parents were Irish Catholics so
perhaps he'd attended a service here and a seed plopped into his mind. Who
knows. After the actress Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street) died her funeral service was held here. I'd
poked around at the back of this church before when trying to find the exact murder
location of a Yorkshire Ripper victim. Behind it sits the sprawling Manchester
Royal Infirmary and in the seventies the Ripper picked up a prostitute, parked
in the car park and hammered her death. I did a salute and left.