REDBANK, TOWARDS THE GREEN QUARTER, MANCHESTER 5.50AM

I’ve always been an owl, enjoying late bedtimes. In fact I’d do without sleep if I could, and so it’s becoming quite the challenge to get to bed early enough to cope with the very early starts that come with the approach of Spring and Summer.

I’d managed midnight, and knew that I’d only have just under 5 hours before the alarm would sound at 4.45AM. The fear of oversleeping must have settled into my sub-conscious and I had a series of panic dreams in which I kept missing the dawn, and kept waking up. In the last one Russell Brand took a liking to my project and decided to join me on the darkened streets. I have no idea why I dreamt of Russell Brand. I had to keep explaining to him why we had to move quickly, and that vital time was being lost, and this made me panic. I was, though, grateful to him as he intervened when a gang tried to smash my car with wooden sticks.

The area we were exploring didn’t actually exist, but it did have the feel of the streets around the top of Redbank and so I decided, when I woke up, to photograph there. From the top of Redbank you can see, in the distance, the modern blocks of the Green Quarter that have grown above the old, tatty railway arches. This new residential area is one of a sequence of visions that the council has had for the city. As I photographed a Royal Mail van slowed beside me, and the driver leaned out and said, “Just checking you weren’t a trap.”