Have you ever met up with a friend you haven't seen in a while, and they've had a complete makeover in the meantime? It's a slightly jarring experience. The new look throws you for a while until you adjust to it. The familiar and old clash with the sparky and new. Then you remember why you were friends with this person in the first place, and can start to relax. Well that's now I felt about visiting Manchester this week.
I spent a lot of time in the mid nineties in Manchester, and the place always had a swagger about it. Stuart Maconie in last years best travel book, Pies and Prejudice, goes into an entertaining rant about how it's the British city that fancies itself the most, and I agree. And my experience of the city was before the mother of all makeovers that followed the IRA bombing of the Arndale centre. That terrible event at the fag end of 'the troubles' gave the city it's biggest reason to change itself. I haven't visited the city in years and a trip to Lancaster gave me the obvious excuse to break the journey and spend a few hours getting to know the city again.
Entering the city at Piccadilly station the changes are obvious and instant. Instead of a grubby slope down onto London Road, new station shops open on onto gleaming office blocks with men dangling on ropes inspecting the miles of glass. At the start of Piccadilly the Malmaison hotel chain has it's Manchester branch. The idea of anyone wanting to sleep at this end of the city ten years ago was laughable, now it's 255 pounds a night for a suite.
Heading up Piccadilly you enter the gardens. A grand staging post the city's buses and trams, sorry, Metrolink, the square has been spruced up and new buildings flank two of it's sides. Heroin addicts from Withenshaw used to call this place home, now it's young guys in bright jackets giving away copies of the local paper. It's not just London that gets the joy of recycled press releases and celebrity 'gossip' thrust at them on their way to and from work then..
Dodging the trams I cut through the Arndale centre. It was comforting to find that this bastion to cheap shopping hasn't changed. It now boasts an Aldi. That's all I'm going to say.
Corporation Street has changed completely. A new M&S and Selfridges sit next to each other in a great big glass box. Next door another London department store, Harvey Nicols opens it's doors to the footballers' wives set. In front of all this gleaming consumerism, is the Manchester Wheel. It's like a cut down version of the London Eye.
The further you wander around this area of the city, the more development you see. The old corn exchange is now called 'The Triangle'. The tatty but endearing little stalls have long gone and instead is a Triffids-like pod boasting a Cafe Nero. Further down Deansgate cranes stretch into the air, slowly pirouetting as they transform the skyline.
All this modernity was increasing hard to take in on a short stop over, so I headed to the Northern Quarter. Thankfully this area hasn't (yet) been bulldozed over to make flats for marketing executives, and still retains it's charm. Many good bars have now sprung up here, along side independent clothes and jewellery shops. This is the Manchester that I loved in the 90's so it was a relief to still find that vibe alive and well. Even the temple of studentdom, Affleck's Palace is still trading. Although signs in the maze of shops signify that it's only hanging on my it's fingernails.
Oldham Street still boasts it's fine vinyl and cd shops, with Piccadilly, Vinyl Exchange and Eastern Bloc doing good trade. I spent far too much time in these places as a student, so it was a pleasure to grab a copy of the new We Are Scientists cd, before ambling back to the station.
I sat bewildered on the train as it pulled away from city. So much has changed in a comparative short space of time. What to make of it all? Manchester still has it's swagger about it, just recently it's been able to do so in designer clothes.
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