Earlier this week, I was strolling through Piccadilly Gardens, at roughly 5:15pm, with Manchester Evening News photographer Sean Hansford.
"Manchester at this time of day is like Greece in September," he said, admiring the newly-laid turf and array of colours in clouds painted by the setting sun. "Sean," I replied, "what on Earth do you mean?"
"It's tired, but it's just got so much more to give," he said back, expecting my follow-up. And the more I think about it, Sean's dead right.
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Manchester is many things, but it's not a 24-hour-city in the way New York, or even London, is. It has an ebb and flow throughout the day.
If you've ever been in St Peter's Square at 6am, there's a quiet hum of road sweeper, first trams, and the early-birds starting their days. By the time it gets to 10am, New Cathedral Street gets its first influx of shoppers.
St Ann's Square at lunchtime can feel like the centre of the universe, with a mish-mash of office workers, construction teams, and day-trippers sitting on the concrete benches to get some lunch. Deansgate at 4pm is when things really hot up - commutes home from work begin, but so do boozy after-hours socials.
So, come 5.15pm, in early spring, Piccadilly Gardens is tired, as is most of town. But Sean is dead right - there's oh-so-much-more to come.
Seven o'clock on Stevenson Square, especially in summer, feels like a festival. There's chatter in the air, pints in plastic cups, perched on various pieces of electrical wiring infrastructure.
Get yourself down to Chinatown for 10pm and you'll have a sensory treat. The smells from kitchens, warbles from karaoke bars, and a thousand glistening neon lights to feast on.
After that, night owls will tell you the best spots. There are speakeasies hidden away, like Arcane. Greasy late-night takeaways across the city can be thronged, and the thud-thud-thud of nightclubs can permeate the pavement.
So, while Manchester doesn't have the weather, beaches, or cuisine of Greece - it does have one thing: When it's tired, it bounces back, and has so much more to give.
With that in mind, whether you've woken up at 6am to go for a morning canal-side stroll, or breakfast will be after noon because you've seen the city in the wee hours, the M.E.N. has something for everyone.
Welcome to the weekends, folks. You've got so much left to give...
'It's hard to tell you where the real Manchester is - it's changed so much'
One man who has seen the city at all hours is Neil Clarke. He’s owned the Clampdown Record shop, just off Piccadilly, for the last 16 years.
In his time, he’s also brushed shoulders with A-listers, like Jared Leto and Olly Alexander. That’s because his shop has been used for some of the biggest film and TV productions in the last decade, including It’s A Sin and Peaky Blinders.
Neil is this week’s guest on I work in town, a weekly feature which I write. Sorry for going all ‘Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs’ on you by including my own work in unwind.
Anyway, his is one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in my time at the MEN, because he can’t pinpoint the ‘real side’ of the city. “It’s changed so much in the years I’ve been here. It’s hard to do that now, I don’t think you can find the real city now, compared to the way I could in my younger days,” he told me.
“I grew up in Swinton, but when I think back to the 90s when not many people lived in the city, you’d go to Sankey’s Soap in Ancoats, then you’d hot-foot over Great Ancoats Street because it was edgy.
“All the clubs if they finished at 2am or 3am, it’d be a ghost town. The real city now, it’s hard for me to come up with an answer now — it changes all the time.”
You can read more on his thoughts about Manchester, and where his favourite lunch in town is, plus a top walking spot and up-and-coming Greater Manchester town.
Read the full chat here.
'Out on a limb'
It’s easy to forget just how big Greater Manchester is. At 492 square miles, it has pockets which take more than an hour to reach from the city centre.
One of those is Partington, in Trafford, which is ‘out on a limb’, reports Damon Wilkinson. Partington only has a small shop, a library, and road access to Manchester city centre. It doesn’t have a train station, and buses take an hour to get to town.
Despite this, there’s a wave of new homes being built there, Debra Green told our Damo. Debra is the founder of Redeeming Our Communities, a charity that works with grassroots groups to improve local communities — which is vital in Partington, she explained, because the last community centre closed down in 2013, only 18 months after it opened.”
Partington is a bit out on a limb," said Debra. "It's OK if you've got a car, but a lot of people here don't and the public transport can be quite challenging.
"There's no train station, it's takes about a hour on the bus to get to Manchester city centre. If you want to go to the theatre or the cinema the nearest places are in Altrincham, but people tell us they can't get back on the bus late at night.
"But that's all changing. They are building so many houses here, but what's the infrastructure like? There's a library, a small Tesco, but there's not even any pubs any more.”
You can read all about Debra’s fight to get Partington on the map here.
'Freefalling 100 feet through a trapdoor wasn't exactly on my to-do list'
As big as Greater Manchester is, sometimes you need to get away from it all. Sometimes you need fresh air, and something new. Sometimes, you just need a change of pace.
Well, parents and family editor Emma Gill has had exactly that this week — a literal change of pace. Emma braved a 100ft trapdoor descent — all so she could prove to her daughter she wasn’t ‘a wimp’.
The trapdoor is in Conwy, North Wales, and it’s a hell of a day out, by the sounds of it. Here’s what Emma, who’s made a full recovery, said of her experience: “You can have a countdown if you like, or they can just surprise you and open it when you're not expecting it.
“I'm not sure if it made it better or worse not having one, but I screamed my heart out as we fell to the floor mid conversation. I screamed just watching the first member of our group fall through the door and I didn't even know him, so there was little chance of me falling silently and gracefully through the air.
“After almost deafening my daughter, who dealt with it in a calmer manner, I was just relieved to have made it to the ground in one piece.”
Read the full story here, plus other adventures Emma and her daughter got up to.
Read more of today's top stories here
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