I .

Panoramic Lounge Bar

It's 2007 and raining in Manchester.
A portly man wearing a cummerbund and a waiter's beard
levers himself out a taxi
and ascends the seven steps to a hotel lobby.
Through steamed glasses
he reads the brass plaque on a buff metal stand,
nods, takes the elevator to the top floor
and cleans his specs as the cold steel doors
open on the panoramic lounge bar
of the Lowry Hotel, Salford.
Looking out on the dirty Irwell,
the glass walls of legal assistants' apartments,
the nub end of Oxford Road
and there, in red-brick Bishopsgate,
the serviced offices and reserved parking
of the Professional Footballers Association:
the man breathed it all in. Here again.