Cider Ken, Stockport

The Macclesfield canal is a hinterland betweeen the urban environment and the pastoral pennine hills. Many people choose to live there on boats, as I did back in the mid nineties. One of the more eccentric boat dwellers was Cider Ken. He was a pisshead who was barred from most of the locals except the conservative club (strangely!)Like with all pissheads you expect a bit of lairiness but this guy was extreme. After a night on the sauce you could see him making his way back, screaming and shouting, rolling in mud and shite. Often we would find him lying on some rutted farmtrack, or on the towpath, flat out. one time i found him sat upright against a dry stone wall, with a look of intense yet pissed concentration: "I'm studying something" he told me. Slowly I began to realise he was no ordinary pisshead, and this was confirmed when I was startled from my bed one night by Cider Ken, stood in a field shouting: "Blue, blue, it's still f**king blue!"