Under Construction @ Keele 2018 Vol. IV (II) | Page 26

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Fig. 2 Life is Prison Without Walls (Photograph by Stephen Seabridge, 2018) 15
I linger, staring at that for a long time.
On that cloudy day in 2010, a Saturday, I was 16 years old and had boarded the 18
bus to Hanley. This was a normal outing then, to get on the 18 at Sneyd Green just after 11,
meet the swelling group of spotty, temperamental Emo’s, Greebo’s, Goths and Scene Kids at
the dingy bus station, and spend the day begging twos and badgering for alcohol while we
wandered the rubble, the wasteland 16 , at the bottom of town. I did as I normally would and
stared into space as the bus weaved away from Sneyd Green to Birches Head, past Hanley
Forest Park and towards the Potteries Shopping Centre.
I emerged from the 18 to find a bus station packed with pensioners, shoppers, children,
all more so impatient to escape than usual. In the distance there was a dull booming sound
that I took, in the first instance, for the spooling of double-deckers about to spew their engines
worth of diesel out into the Stoke-on-Trent troposphere. But, soon enough, I realised it was
not engines when people started to look back to the exit of the bus station. Now, it sounded
more like the banging of a bass drum, like those banged constantly at passing out parades.
As a typically curious 16 year old boy, I forgot my plans, my friends, and started towards the
source.
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Stephen Seabridge, Life is a Prison Without Walls, 2018, figure 2.
Now the site of Tesco Hanley.