Wham Lane

A couple of years ago I purchased a new wastepaper bin for my home office. It wasn’t anything special. Just a grey plastic thing. Didn’t look much, but it did the job it needed to do. Namely be a receptacle for waste paper.

When I got it home I noticed the manufacturer’s name. Wham Plastics.

Wham Plastics is a brand name of ‘What More UK Ltd’. They make lot of plastic stuff. According to their website they are the “UK’s largest supplier and brand leader of plastic housewares”. I’m sure having a catchy brand name helps with that. A brand name familiar to most of the UK population thanks to a certain 1980s pop band.

It was an amusing diversion for a few minutes. But earlier this year I was walking the GM Ringway, and found myself on the edge of the village of Denshaw walking down Wham Lane.

Later I realised I shouldn’t have been on Wham Lane. I’d taken a wrong turning. But I didn’t know that at the time. And instead I spent several minutes pondering that word. Wham. It’s now so synonymous with pop music (and perhaps plastic wastepaper bins) that it’s easy to forget the word’s been around a lot longer. That it even is a word, and not merely a name.

Wham. A loud noise, or a forceable impact according to the dictionary definition in front of me. How that ended up the name of a road in Denshaw, is a fascinating question. And one I pondered for several more minutes. Until the point I slipped and fell on my backside whilst walking down on an incredibly icy lane. As I fell there was a noise. Perhaps even a wham.

Sadly through, that didn’t happen on Wham Lane.