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Is there a word for experiencing nostalgia before something is over?  Manchester has never before seemed so exciting and edgy or homely and safe.  I don’t think I’ve ever before now fully appreciated the skyline, which I’ve always thought of as somewhat uninspiring; a flat cityscape, the sore thumb of the Beetham Tower sticking out of it.  The other day I found myself walking to the bus station after my German class and gazing at the higgledy-piggledy mess of buildings around me.  The sun was low in the sky, people were lounging on the yellowing patch of grass that is Piccadilly Gardens, the fountains in full plume.  I was suddenly struck by the beauty of so many different architectural styles jostling for position.  It ceased to be an ill-thought-out pile of glass, concrete, bricks, metal and tarmac, with an enormous Arndale shopping centre plonked in the middle of it like something landed from outer space.

Stand among the lounging people in Piccadilly Gardens.  Take your shoes and socks off and put your toes in the fountains.  See the art deco grace of the Rylands Building, now housing Debenhams.  The building with Starbucks squatting on the ground floor, all red brick and cream, dwarfed by everything around it.  Behind, just out of sight, the Victorian warehouses of the Northern Quarter, with The Light building towering modern above.  On another side of the square, the art deco monster that houses Primark looks over at straight lines and attitude, a mix of 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s office blocks, all concrete, metal and glass.  Slanted roofs, harsh corners, ugly greys and browns.  Beneath them, busy busses ferry people to all corners of Greater Manchester and beyond.  Trams slide between pedestrians along grey roads.  People hurry over grey, chewing gum spattered pavements.

It’s the least attractive part of the city centre and yet suddenly I saw the beauty of it.  Why only now?

It took me about four years of living in Manchester before I truly learned to love it.  West Didsbury, where I lived to begin with and near which I still live; yes.  That one’s easy to love.  Leafy suburb, café culture, good pubs and bars, friends on my doorstep.  Parks, trees, elegant Victorian terraces.  Independent clothes shops, second hand book shops, bistros, tea rooms.  Manchester city centre?  It made no sense.  A mess of buildings, a mess of styles, mostly grey and unalluring.  It sprawls.  There’s nothing neat about it.  Manchester is a city whose back streets you have to walk through to appreciate the greater picture.  A city you have to drink your way through.  For me, it’s not about the shops (of which there are plenty) or even the culture (which the city has in spades) and it’s definitely not about the stark office blocks.  It’s about the layers of history that ooze out of the bricks.

Step away from the commercial nightmare of Market Street.  Walk up Tib Street into the Northern Quarter and beyond and you won’t even need to search that history out.  Suddenly you are surrounded by red-brick warehouses exuding warmth and the faint reminder of the cotton and woven textiles that were once stored there.  They’ve been converted now; into bars, restaurants, galleries, independent shops, cafes and flats, but there’s no getting away from their merchant roots.  There’s a village feel to the Northern Quarter, a feeling of community intermingled with a slight edge.  Beautiful murals shine from the sides of buildings where there were once blank expanses of red brick wall.  People spill out of bars and pubs onto the pavements.  There’s always something going on, bands to see, friends to meet.

Explore only a little further on and you’ll find Ancoats, which seems to have been paused midway through redevelopment ever since I discovered it.  Old mills and warehouses sit between empty expanses of cleared land that are becoming scrubby with weeds.  Some are derelict, some have been turned into smart city pads.  There are still a few streets of houses that once were home to those working in the cotton mills, one family to a room, although most of these were cleared as slums years ago.  The remaining ones are smart and trim.  Highly desirable.  It always feels empty and wide and peaceful there, especially around the church and the old dispensary.

Of course, everyone knows about Manchester’s place at the heart of the industrial revolution in Britain (at least they do if they’re interested in the industrial revolution or have read some of the English classics).  People were given work and new hope in mills with towering chimneys that choked the skies with black soot.  People were exploited by mill owners, working in harsh conditions for long hours.  Many paid with their lives.   The mills gave and took in equal measure, although they gave more to some and took more from others.

Over the other side of town, not far from the site of the legendary Hacienda, the canal basin of Castlefield is snug amongst bridges carrying trains and trams.  Once, this would have been a major cargo transit site, wares heaved to and from barges in the basin and to and from trains at what is now Manchester Central over the way; rails and water the lifeblood of this mercantile city overflowing with cotton goods.

There is a maze of tunnels that run beneath the city.  A disused canal runs through some, right under the nearby Great Northern building, which used to be the LNER Goods Depot.  Here, trains would have unloaded their goods to be lowered straight down to the canal complex under the streets onto barges, and vice versa.  In the war, the tunnels served as bomb shelters.  You can still see the toilets in one part.

Take a bus and sit on it for 15 minutes, say the 111 south, and you’ll pass rows and rows of tight-packed, red-brick, terraced houses, their front doors sitting right on the pavement and small yards behind giving onto cobbled back passages.  Workers’ houses then and workers’ houses now – and homes to students, office workers, shop owners, the lot.  Some smart and cheerful, some run-down and sad looking.  Home to all human life.  Hop off the bus by Whitworth park near the Curry Mile, walk up Oxford Road a little and you’ll be surrounded by sari shops, shops overflowing with gold jewellery, vast Asian supermarkets.  Shops selling hookah pipes and incense.  Too many curry houses to count.  Sheesha bars.  Asian sweet shops.  That street makes your mouth water.

Manchester is a city of culture, uprisings and political turmoil, the birthplace of Emmeline Pankhurst and the site of the Peterloo Massacre.

It has always been a city of fighters.

Manchester is a city of rebellion and music, home to Factory Records and the stage for the second summer of love; it gave life to The Stone Roses, Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, James, The Smiths, Elbow and Oasis to name but a few.

Manchester is a mess of higgledy-piggledy buildings.  They don’t make sense to the newcomer’s eye.  They are higgledy-piggledy because of Manchester’s immense and riotous history.  Manchester is higgledy-piggledy because it grew up around its people; enterprising and industrious people.  If Manchester were clean lined, straight of street and uniform of building, it would be just another city.  Why only now that I finally see all its beauty, even in the parts where it’s not so obvious?  Because I’m leaving.  It’s the same thing that makes the cherry blossom so beautiful in spring:  There’s so little time to enjoy it.  It’s fleeting.