EDWARD STREET INDUSTRIAL ESTATE, 2.31AM During the summer, when first light occurs during the early hours of a new day, I’m often alone. And this solitude allows my mind to wander, to imagine the city as it might have been before humans began to change and shape it, when there was nothing but grass, woodland and rock. I like to look down to the tarmac, and consider what lies beneath, before boundaries and territories were enforced on land that once […]

MIDDLEWOOD LOCKS, WASTELAND 5.26AM I’m content to confess that I’ve spent much of the last decade, maybe longer, hoping to find a portal to pass through. In my head, the city is full of them, and I simply need to turn around the correct corner and I will be gone, into another dimension, an alternative version of Manchester and Salford, of shadow lives and other outcomes. Given the unlikely nature of this happening, I’ve accepted a compromise, where I travel […]

HYDRA CLOSE, 5.18am There is an estate in Lower Broughton of social housing, with streets named after constellations. Auriga, Cygnus, Lacerata, names to transport you deep into other worlds. But when I looked up on this morning the stars were covered with drifting cloud, and the world below felt encased in darkness, separated from the distant universe above. I was on Hydra Close, a short cul-de-sac. A single blackbird began to sing loudly from the upper branches of a tall […]