BROUGHTON STREET, CHEETHAM HILL, 7.41AM I was driving home and Joni Mitchell came on the radio. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” I sang along, of course, and then, when I’d got back and made a mug of strong tea, I was stirred to look revisit the folder of pictures from Not Quite Light that have had no work done on them, that are forgotten and perhaps destined to be […]
ANGEL MEADOW, IRK TOWN 7.29AM It’s been nearly a year since I started this incarnation of Not Quite Light. I was led to the idea by walking the unfamiliar streets around Irk Town, thinking of the lives buried under the turf of Angel Meadow which rests under the constant heat lamp glow of the CIS building. I’ve grown 12 months older now. Exploring my city in detail has brought me knew knowledge and a love and understanding of Manchester’s history […]
OLDHAM STREET 7.35AM The previous night I’d begun to read The Manchester Man, written by Mrs Linnaeus Banks and published in 1876. It details the life of Jabez Clegg, who was rescued in his cradle from the flooding River Irk, and adopted by the kind and hard working Simon Clegg, and Bess, his saintly daughter. This act of absolute altruism is set against the conditions of work and life that Mancunians had to exist in during the early 19th Century. […]
THE FISHMARKET, NORTHERN QUARTER 7.19AM On New Year’s Eve in 2014 I hadn’t even thought of Not Quite Light, I still had some vague notion of starting a personal project. Like most people I had little idea what the following twelve months would contain, and I’m wise enough to distill my sense of the new year into a simple, manageable equation of hope and fear. It felt symbolically important to me to get up for the last dawn of 2015 […]
ROCHDALE ROAD 7.17AM I’d been out the night before in The Millstone pub, one of my favourite places in Manchester. I was watching the delicious chaos unfold before me when I noticed a woman that I’d had a drink with a few months earlier. Her name was Michelle, a born and bred Mancunian, who was drunk and sad. Her long, sequined dress wasn’t comfortable on her, and she had to walk with care in her high heels. We ended up […]