Page 28 - Real Rochdale Issue 18 Summer 2023

“We’re a town built on hot tea
& limp toast.”
Tom McNeeney’s love letter to San Remo.
When I wanted to start this feature about
things in Rochdale we maybe take for granted,
my little love letters to this town, I did what I
always do when I need to get my head together.
I wandered up Drake Street and through some
familiar red doors, asked Tony for a coffee and
sat myself down. Because there’s something
about San Remo that has always made me feel,
well, at home.
So for a while I sat there with my brew and
watched the world go by. Casually writing
down ideas of where to start, what are the
small, everyday things around us that make
here feel like nowhere else? While I’m sitting
there listening to the rain bouncing off the
window - over the steam coming out of that
coffee maker that’s made more brews than
REAL ROCHDALE - SUMMER 2023
Northerners can and they’ll reel off the times
they spent here, but then, it seems most of us
have, because you don’t become an institution
by accident.
Getting a second brew, there’s some small talk
at the till, two lads behind me are having a very
serious chat about plate pies over Hollands pies
that I don’t feel qualified to get involved in.
While he’s handing me my change, I thought
about asking Alfonso just how long they’ve
been there on Drake Street watching the
town change around them, you know, be a real
journalist, get the facts, total coverage. The
moment passes. I wonder what stopped me Photos: Instagram @remmyleigh
asking to myself, then sitting back down a while
watching him and his dad talking in the world’s the full scope of this town walk through the
smallest kitchen, it dawns on me that that’s doors of this café and never once seen a soul
not what I’m here for, this isn’t about how old be treated better or worse than anyone else,
somewhere is, or how many staff they have, maybe that’s the real beauty of the place - that
that isn’t what makes it feel like this. and the gravy.
There’s so more to history than age: it’s the In a world that’s getting faster and less
memories on the walls, those checked tables I personal, where everywhere wants something,
could recognise anywhere, it’s the fact that you San Remo asks you for nothing, not a single
know you have to ask for pepper because some thing. No reviews, hashtags, no Facebook check
idiot keeps nicking it and it’s the people round ins, it exists just as it always has and I hope
you. When it comes to mixed bags, this place is always will.
like the one you keep under the sink; these guys
are a bag for life that’s holding us all in, no It is a moment in time, a little piece of us all -
matter where we’ve come from. I’ve seen and long may it continue.
I’ll see in a lifetime and hearing person after
person coming in and letting on to the staff by
name - it hits me. This is it; this is the place.
We’re a town built on hot tea and limp toast
and for forty, fifty, years there’s been one place
and one family who’s been keeping that dream
alive. In these walls I’ve watched breakups
over breakfasts and flirting over formica; it’s a
constant soap opera years in the making and
one almost all of us have been in at one point or
another.
I remember my mum talking about Sunday
mornings here back in the day, sore heads all
round and never a lesson learnt. Mention San
Remo to people round this end and they’ll go
glassy-eyed over chips and gravy in a way only
28 29 REAL ROCHDALE - SUMMER 2023
Photo: www.paulmoorephotography.co.uk