Last week (Friday 25th June 2021) I visited Manchester for the first time since the pandemic began - so that is well over a year now. I live on the edges of the rural beginnings outside of the city sprawl, but in an area which is all too quickly being engulfed by it. The break has given me an opportunity to consider what it really is about city life that I value. I had come to the conclusion that it was the museum, the libraries, and the art galleries. It was an odd atmosphere that Friday - the delta variant of the coronavirus is running rife and there is a big effort to suppress that. It was raining, though nothing unusual there. It seemed eerily quiet in places, not the city I remembered at all. This is when I took these photographs. On the next day though, a Saturday, I came back through the centre. Today the sun was shining, it was gloriously warm and the streets were rammed, full of the city’s youth enjoying the sun and their lives. I make no judgement here about the situation r
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