ANGEL MEADOW 7.37AM It wasn’t the Shortest Day after all. Never assume. I’d always thought that it fell on a fixed date, like Christmas, and didn’t think to check this basic fact. However, as I stood in Angel Meadow, I still believed that it was the Shortest Day. The unfinished moon lingering in the crisp, clear sky should have caused me to pause and wonder, but I’d decided that it was the Winter Solstice, and so therefore it was. Angel […]
SADLER’S YARD 7.20AM When my kids were little I used to love building them sandcastles. Hours would be spent constructing walls, towers and moats. I even used to dig channels to aid the sea in its inevitable destruction of something I’d been proud to have built. And then tomorrow, the beach would again be the same, but changed, as new fathers elbowed their children out of the way during their quest to achieve as much as they could before the […]
WHITTLE’S CROFT 6.17AM The rain was bouncing off my hood, the tippy-tap noise being my only company in this small side street tucked away behind Ducie House. I saw no-one and no-one saw me. If I’d been more of an animal than my modern, city self I’d have gone to shelter on higher ground. The lemming leaves lay dead on the ground, except for two which remained like young lovers looking into the sunset on the last night of their […]
NEWTON STREET & THE ACCIDENTAL TRICOLOUR 6.35AM Following the awful events in Paris a few days previously, the world had become cloaked in the Tricolour. It was before my eyes wherever I turned. At the previous night’s concert, or in Blackpool at the weekend, and my social media timelines appeared to be entirely decorated in red, white and blue. I seemed to notice it even when it wasn’t there. I was gazing at the sandwich shop across from me, wondering […]
DANTZIC STREET 6.48AM It’s funny what things you notice in adverts, that lodge in your brain and then are played back to you in coincidental, real life moments. I’d seen that the Milk Tray Man was being resurrected, which is an odd idea when you think about it. A stranger, a loner, breaks into the house of a single woman, and leaves some cheap chocolates for her, signifying that she’s not only being watched, but that her home is also […]
CHEETHAM HILL ROAD 6.06AM I was house sitting for a friend in the south of the city, and he’d kindly lent me his car to use whilst he was away. It’s a lovely car. Big, white as an American’s teeth and full of fancy features that somewhat confuse me. I felt like a pimp as I parked it down a side road just off Cheetham Hill Road. I’d seen the picture I wanted to take a few days beforehand. It […]
JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS, 6.07AM Is the sense of change greater with Autumn than with Spring? As the year ends, the dramatic death of the leaves and the darkened days are perhaps linked more to a fear of the unknown than the hope and anticipation that arrives with May blossom and longer evenings. I set up my camera at the top end of Jersey Street. The city centre was beyond view here, although it’s almost close enough to walk, and I […]
TIB STREET, NORTHERN QUARTER, MANCHESTER 7.27AM When I tweeted an iPhone picture after this shoot I wrote “I didn’t end up where I thought I would”. Sometimes I set off with a clear idea in my head of where I want to be, perhaps having already been there previously, but sometimes things don’t appear as I think they will. Streets and views that look inviting in the day can simply not be as I want them to be in the […]
GUN STREET, ANCOATS 6.32AM Today the clocks were turned back. Rain lingered like a truculent teenager, smearing the cobbled streets of Ancoats with a Brylcreem sheen. The area is a work in progress. Old buildings, like patients screened off in a hospital ward, are surrounded by scaffolding, as the heart of the world’s first industrial city is given a new life by Manchester’s pacemakers. Original brickwork and Victorian grandeur have been retained where possible, causing streets which until recently were […]
SHERBOURNE STREET, CHEETHAM HILL 7.22AM I was a still a boy when I first saw Strangeways prison. My mother drove past it, and the strange tower, rising up from amongst the dense walls, haunted me during that night’s sleep. Was this the future of men? Since then it’s inescapable presence, poking into the Manchester sky, has fascinated me. I’ve decided that Strangeways and Empire Street should form one of the boundaries for my project, and that the best place to […]