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Here is today's Mancunian Way:
Hello,
It was extraordinary to see an empty Manchester city centre as the world watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
Market Street, usually the bustling heart of the city, was deserted. A few hundred metres down the road, people sat and watched the service on big screens in Exchange Square and Manchester Cathedral.
Whatever your thoughts on the Royal Family, and of the pomp and ceremony of the event, it was certainly very moving.
"She was the greatest Queen you could have ever had," said John Henshaw as he watched from The Dell Care Home, in Gorton.
While Sue McGranaghan - who travelled from Salford to sleep overnight on The Mall - said it was 'an honour' to be there.
Sue told Dianne Bourne it was a pilgrimage she had to make.
"It's hard to put into words, but listening to the bands play felt very solemn and sad but at the same time just incredible to see. When the Navy came pulling the Queen's coffin I felt honoured to be able to witness it and see her family walking behind her. It's something I will never forget to have been part of history."
Something new
For the first time in a century, Manchester city centre is getting a new public park. The gates to Mayfield Park - an impressive 6.5 acre space - will be thrown open for the first time this Thursday, as Ethan Davies reports.
Council leader Bev Craig, who will do the honours, tweeted today: “Excited to be opening Manchester’s first public park in the city centre for 100 years this week. Manchester has over 140 parks and green spaces, but this is a game changer for the city centre."
Ten years on
It’s been ten years since PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes were brutally murdered in the line of duty. PC Hughes, 23, and PC Bone, 32, were shot dead by fugitive Dale Cregan in September 2012.
They were lured to an address in Mottram-in-Longdendale with a bogus report of a burglary before Cregan shot them and threw a grenade on their bodies.
Over the weekend, colleagues, friends and families gathered for a memorial service outside Hyde Police Station. Among them was Nicola’s dad, Bryn who has done much in his daughter's name over the last decade.
He has created the Nicola Hughes Memorial Fund to help families left devastated by murder; is campaigning for a posthumous Elizabeth Medal for all emergency service workers who are killed on duty; and has raised more than £500,000 by running marathons, including one in the North Pole.
Crime reporter John Scheerhout has gotten to know Bryn over the years and has been speaking to him about the anniversary. “He is brutally and painfully honest about how things have turned out for him and his family," John writes.
"But he's determined to keep the memory of his daughter alive, and promote the work of the charity he set up in his daughter's name. And that means talking to journalists like me even though, he admits, it can leave him upset and exhausted.
"His has been a daily battle with grief - at his lowest ebb he seriously thought about taking his own life. But he has kept moving, literally kept running, in his daughter's name. The result is quite a legacy.”
Cregan’s crimes - which changed how policing is done in Britain - are some of the worst the country has ever seen. And the murders of the two officers were preceeded by a truly shocking summer of violence in Greater Manchester.
John has been looking back at that awful period in a report that contains distressing details.
Weather, etc.
- Wednesday: Cloudy changing to sunny intervals by late morning. 19C.
- Roads closed: A57 Eccles New Road westbound from Stott Lane to Gilda Brook Road until September 26.
That's all for today
Thanks for joining me. If you have stories you would like us to look into, email: beth.abbit@menmedia.co.uk.
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