On the penultimate day of this year’s Christmas markets, the sub zero temperatures have lifted, and there are clear, ice-blue skies above St Ann’s Square. This time last year, things were a little different.
Just when we thought that there was light at the end of the tunnel following the emotionally exhausting Coronavirus lockdowns, the emerging Omicron variant threatened to plunge us back into another bleak Christmas.
Micki Kristi, a decade-long Christmas Market veteran who runs the offshoot stall of The Manchester Shop in Afflecks Palace, remembers it well. “Last year was really weird. Everyone had just come out of lockdown, and they thought they might be going back into it,” she tells the Manchester Evening News.
