FARADAY STREET, MANCHESTER, 6.09AM
I was looking at this scene a few days back, when I bumped into some old friends who invited me to join them in the Pie and Ale Beer Hall. They had pies for big eyes on their menu and I was sorry it was closed when I returned to take the picture. The sleek glass of the pie bar and the barbed wire on the gate at the end of the street were clear, but I needed the morning light to fill in the shadows of the crumbling walls on Spear Street, and so I peered into the windows of the nearby offices whilst I waited.
This brought a security man in his late fifties, maybe 2 or 3 stones overweight, lumbering to the door.
“Can I ask what you’re doing?” he asked formally, in his best Mancunian telephone voice.
“I’m photographing the pie shop” I replied.
We both looked at the pie shop and probably had the same hungry thought.
“Well we have some odd people doing some odd things around here, so I was just checking” he continued.
“How do you know I’m not odd?” I asked.
He offered his hand to be shaken.
“My name’s Carl. I used to be in the fire service on London Road, so I know odd when I see it”
He took one last look towards the pie shop and went back to his night desk. He didn’t look like a fireman now, but I felt safe.
SEE MANCHESTER AT DAWN WITHOUT HAVING TO GET UP…
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