A TALE OF TWO CITIES: MANCHESTER AND SALFORD
12th September 2017
Yesterday – when my troubles seemed so far away – I took the train into Manchester, with no agenda other than to explore a city I already know well. Stepping out of Piccadilly station, I always find it exciting; walking down the meandering station approach I can feel the frisson of a vibrant city centre where things happen.
I love the curving glass Gateway House that adjoins the station, built in the late ‘Sixties, it’s just groovy, baby. A modernist office block, currently being converted into a hotel at an estimated cost of £20 million. I enjoy looking at the various styles of architecture on offer in Manchester, largely Georgian, Victorian and modern. In a century’s time will we still be gazing fondly at buildings like the Arndale, I wonder? That’s rhetorical – I already know the answer.
I took the free bus – because it’s free – and it’s a great way to ride around the city looking at the sites as the little green bus trundles through the back streets. Two street cleaners in hi-viz uniforms, complete with litter-picking devices, sat behind me. They began talking about office politics. Their supervisor had been checking up on them and wanted to know whether they’d emptied a bin on Ducie Street. They were on the look-out for his van and were convinced he was tailing them. It all sounded very complicated in the cut-throat world of street cleansing.
The bus briefly crossed over the River Irwell into the neighbouring city of Salford. Like Manchester, Salford was a textile town and at one time more commercially successful. Thanks to the engineering feat that was the Manchester Ship Canal, Salford became home to a successful inland port. During the 20th Century the rot set in and Salford slipped into decline; it reportedly boasted the worst slums in the country. The city was famously covered with acres of terrace rows, which provided inspiration for local artist, L.S. Lowry, who painted matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs. As well as matchstick factories.
It gets worse for Salford; throughout the 1980s and 1990s the area experienced poverty and unemployment and gang crime, drugs, guns and robberies. In 2005, a survey by Channel 4 kindly rated the city as the 9th worst place to live in the UK.
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Salford eventually got lucky when the BBC and later ITV moved some of their operations to the newly created Media City, next to the Lowry. It is now becoming festooned with yuppie apartment buildings and is an attractive place to live.
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The bus crossed back over the Irwell, once a stinking channel of effluent; today however the river is a haven for wildlife and serves as the boundary between two cities.
Manchester is the UK’s second “most populous urban area”, which is a complicated way of saying that after London, Manchester is IT: the second city. The township grew up around the Roman fort of Mamucium in modern-day Castlefield. It was known as Cottonopolis because of its history of textile production and was granted city status in 1853 by Queen Victoria. Today, Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK, after London and Edinburgh. Despite its reputation, Manchester’s rainfall is slightly below the national average.
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Manchester has a shed-load of “firsts” under its belt and a number of records: the world's first industrialised city; the world's first railway station (Liverpool Road Station – now part of the Museum of Science and Industry); the first UK city to acquire a modern light rail tram system, (the Metrolink is the largest tram system in the UK); Manchester Airport is the busiest airport in the UK outside London; the world’s longest running soap opera – Coronation Street; one of the most famous and popular football teams is Manchester United, currently the world's most valuable football club.
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Manchester has a long association with music, some of the most influential being The Smiths, Joy Division/New Order, the Buzzcocks, Elbow, Take That and the "Madchester" scene. And of course, Oasis, from down the road in Burnage.
I could go on – it’s a long list of Manchester’s greatness, but I’ll stop there.
The bus continued along Deansgate, where I alighted opposite the imposing John Rylands Library, a neo-Gothic building with more than a hint of the ecclesiastical about it. Rylands was a Victorian textile magnate, philanthropist and Manchester's first multi-millionaire. He died in 1888 and his now-wealthy widow (his third wife) had this eye-catching library built as a monument to him. It is like a cathedral inside, with arches and stained-glass windows. Whispered voices and the scraping of feet on sandstone flags echo from high vaulted ceilings. There is a feeling of reverence, which is fitting as it is essentially a shrine.
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The old toilets in the John Rylands Library are famous. They are a work of art; copper piping, full-length urinals, overhead cisterns and brass fittings. I was standing admiring the lavatorial architecture when an attractive young, blonde woman came bursting in. She glanced at the urinals then stared at me. She spoke in an exotic voice, full of mystery and femme fatalism; a tone that carried sensuality and a hint of danger…
“What… Oh… Is shared toilet, no?” She was probably quite accepting of unisex toilets, as she was European. But then, weren’t we all. European, not accepting of unisex toilets, because we Brits generally aren’t.
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I directed her to the women’s toilets and my mystery-blonde hurried off, mumbling in her strange foreign dialect. She may have been a barmaid in a mountain taverna, a tulip-seller or a Polish cleaner. I like to think she had purposely followed me and had ulterior motives… but then I like to think so many things that are ludicrous.
Back out in the streets… and the real world… buses and taxis queued up on Deansgate and the suited workforce hurried lunchwards.
This diverse city has a northern quarter and a China town, a gay village and spinning fields, a market street and strange ways.
I sat in Piccadilly Square eating a wrap from Go Falafel, which was gorgeous. It was sunny and mild, after heavy rain in the night and morning. I’m not going to comment on the “Berlin Wall” and say what an eyesore it is, because today is all about the greater Manchester.