Manchester revisited

Town Hall: Gothic splendour

Abraham Lincoln's statue in memory of the abolition of  slavery

 Arndale Centre but could be any city

I made a long overdue visit to Manchester on my way to Sheffield for a training event. My grandmother and father had been born here and it was the only city that I regularly visited as a boy. My great-grandmother's terraced house in Ardwick had been destroyed during the Second World War a few days before Christmas 1940. My father, only 18 at the time, travelled 35 miles to rescue his grandmother and mother's sister. He found them in a street of rubble, they had taken refuge under the kitchen table. Manchester seemed a grey dour place in the 1950's although this may have been the journey through Salford and the depressing digs where my great aunt lived. She compensated for this by having an optimistic and positive outlook on life that rubbed off on everyone and she further endeared herself to everyone by knitting jumpers for all the family. 

I was offered a place at Manchester University, which considered itself the best of the red bricks (Birmingham,  Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield) but I went to Sheffield instead. It seemed less austere, more vibrant and was further away from home. I did live in Manchester, staying with a friend for a few weeks during the four-week Easter break before finals but it seemed perpetually dull and wet. 

The vibrancy of the city only shone through as I visited its football grounds by virtue of having flatmates who supported Manchester City and Manchester United. I watched most of the Manchester United games as they progressed to the  European Cup Final in 1968 and saw them defeated 6-3 at the Hawthorns just a few weeks before the European victory. Despite all the eulogising of Best, Law and Charlton, I thought that the outstanding player of the era was Colin Bell of Manchester City. He had the complete set of skills and the energy and professionalism to display them in every game. On other occasions on travels to and from Sheffield, I used to stop off at Old Trafford to watch County Cricket with my friend Phil Ellitson whose father was on the Board and got us in to watch the wonderful team when Lancashire had Clive Lloyd in his pomp.  Even seeing Clive fielding with his panther-like speed and ability to hit the wickets with laser-like precision was to appreciate a wonderful skill that scared the hell out of batsmen.

It is over twenty years since I spent any time in Manchester when speaking at a conference on regeneration at a time (1988)when Manchester was down on its heels and Glasgow's regeneration was seen as a template. Since then it has blossomed and the numerous new developments along the canals near Salford where the BBC has relocated seem to bear this out. Whatever happened to the Salford of Don Whillans?

I got off the train at Deansgate so that I could walk across the city.  Deansgate is the sort of shopping street I like and is a rarity: specialised shops with well-represented outdoor shops and a smattering of old-style shops like newsagents and tobacconists. I happened upon a splendid statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square, commissioned as a result of the support of Lancashire cotton workers for the abolition of slavery in the United States. I walked through the lanes between Deansgate and Albert Square, the setting for the magnificent Gothic Town Hall. The Manchester of the Victorian era produced some splendid buildings that gave the city centre civic dignity and the feel of a big city. This and the arrival of the BBC are playing well as other contenders for the second city such as Birmingham seem to have lost impetus as the UK economy continues to decline and city budgets are slashed. 

And then into the modern shopping centre which was flush with shoppers even on a day when Manchester was under a canopy of dark grey, nothing had changed there. Piccadilly Gardens and the Arndale Centre were a bit naff after Deansgate and the Town Hall so I continued to Piccadilly station. It is not one of Manchester's finest walks and the station is a hotchpotch of different styles without any of the magnificence of terminus city stations. Manchester had disappointed me although I had only observed a cross-section of the city centre. As a venue for events, Manchester has much to offer, but is it as much fun as it was in the days of going to the fairground, the zoo or watching stock car racing at Belle Vue?

When I arrived in Sheffield, the water features, Andrew Motion's poem on the high-rise building in Sheaf Square and the welcoming Millennium Museum did more to lift my spirits in an hour than Manchester had managed in over three hours. I spent 20 minutes at the John Ruskin exhibition which had a fine display of paintings of Venice and American birds as well as more recent additions in the eclectic Ruskin Collection which was established for the education and to nurture the creative juices of the Sheffield metal workers. I treated myself to an hour in a bookshop, something that eludes me nowadays with the Kindle by passing the tactile temptation of books.

From Piccadilly

Belle Vue Dodgems - Ena and Minnie