Guest Blog: Hannah Claydon’s Diary of a Forever Manchester Student

Hannah Claydon is the guest blogger this week and guess what?  She’s Forever Manchester!   

“Manchester changed the world’s politics: from vegetarianism to feminism to trade unionism to communism, every upstart notion that ever got ideas above its station, every snotty street-fighter of a radical philosophy, was fostered brawling in Manchester’s streets, mills, pubs, churches and debating halls.” – Stuart Maconie

So, what made me decide to go to University in Manchester as a Mancunian who could have gone anywhere in the U.K.? Well, that’s easy! Whether it’s having a taster of the V.I.P. treatment at Sankeys, mingling with Liam Fray; frontman of Manchester band The Courteeners in 42nd Street, settling down for an acoustic set at Abode in Chorlton or simply having a long lunch and a gossip over tea and biscuits in Mr. Scruff inspired café ‘Cup’ in the Northern Quarter with the girls, there is no better place for me!

University of Manchester

Not to mention the fact that Karl Marx and Fredreich Engels resided on the spot where Whitworth Park Halls of Residence now stand, or the fact that The University of Manchester is now third place nationally, behind only Cambridge and Oxford. What a proud position to be in as someone who is Mancunian born and bred.

During the past few weeks, I have been to see The Maccabees at the Student Union, a gig which eventually descended into chaos, at which point lead singer Orlando Weeks had to step in during his rendition of my personal favourite ‘Precious Time’ to calm things down. This was followed days later by a trip to the Apollo to see Newcastle band Maximo Park. As always, lead singer Paul Smith got the crowd going with energetic performances of ‘Books from Boxes’, ‘Our Velocity’ and ‘Acrobat’ to name but a few, accompanied by his now infamous high jumps and hip-wiggles.

 Yes, having the beautiful John Rylands Library as a place to study admittedly makes revision and research times more bearable, as does much deserved afternoon trips to vintage stores in the Northern Quarter! Although I have to confess, the removal of the Morrissey montage on the side of Afflecks Palace is a little upsetting.

At the moment, I am studying Victorian Britain and to think that the industrial gem of the North was such a successful town for trade just shows why and how Manchester has reason to celebrate its reputation as a place in which business and creativity can coexist so easily; all these years after Manchester was established as the city which epitomised Victorian values of industry and merchantry.

One of my favourite things about being a student and growing up in Manchester is its diversity; from Oriental cuisine in China Town to authentic curries in Rusholme, Manchester has something for everyone. I have to tell you all that I’ve recently discovered Fruli, a continental beer on offer in many quirkier bars such as Odder and many in the Northern Quarter, as well as Trof in Fallowfield and The Deaf Institute; just off Oxford Road. It’s delicious!

During the summer, as always, I travelled to Leeds Festival. Of course, acts like Kings of Leon, Radiohead, Placebo and The Arctic Monkeys delivered great sets. But, for me, it was Stone Roses frontman and Mancunian legend Ian Brown who delivered the ultimate showstopper. He began his set exclaiming “right, let’s have some fun…Are you all gonna have a bop?” This was followed by his infamous swagger which accompanied classics such as F.E.A.R. and Fools Gold.

 So, I think it’s easy to see why I chose to go to University in Manchester, despite the fact I grew up in this fantastic city. I just love everything it stands for. Essentially, I am Forever Manchester!

Hannah

Blimey Hannah, when do you get chance to study?  Anyway, keep living the dream. 

Hannah has also contributed a poem that you can read on the Forever Manchester website: http://forevermanchester.com/supporters

More ramblings from me to follow soon, in the meantime here is a pearl of wisdom from the bottom of Soap Street near the excellent This & That Cafe (which is also Forever Manchester) in the Northern Quarter.

Chris

 

On the Shoulders of Giants

On Sunday 1st November I will be leading a guided walk with a difference as part of Manchester Science Festival. The walk will be brought to life by actors playing the parts of the luminaries of the past, Ernest Rutherford and Alan Turing.

One of the great things about being a tour guide in Manchester is that our history is so often world history.

"Lord Rutherford, I presume" Ernest Rutherford debunking the plum pudding theory of the nature of the atom.

Ernest Rutherford is the father of nuclear physics. His pioneering work in Manchester, between 1907 and 1919 led to the modern interpretation of the nature of the atom. Rutherford will be demonstrating this himself on Sunday with the aid of a plum pudding and a golf driver!

Alan Turing is the father of modern computing. He did not build the first electronic stored-memory program computer, but it would not have happened without him. The computer was built in Manchester and first operated successfully in 1948.

Turing came to Manchester soon afterwards and worked on theories such as the computerised brain / artificial intelligence. He developed a test to see if we could distinguish between a machine and a human being. Take the test with Alan Turing this Sunday.

What: On the Shoulders of Giants – a guided walk with a difference
When: Sunday 1st November at 11.00 a.m. (duration one hour)
Where: Manchester Museum, Coupland Street entrance (off Oxford Rd)
Cost: £5 for working adults, £2 for young people, children and other concessions
Suitable for: Anybody, but especially teenagers and adults

Of course, Rutherford and Turing have both been in the news recently for different reasons.

Rutherford was being blamed for conducting experiments that led to high levels of cancer-causing radiation in one of the university buildings – now called the Rutherford Building. A recent report gives the building a clean bill of health, but on the walk we will stay outside – just to be on the safe side. Ironically, Hans Geiger (who gave his name to the Geiger counter) also used to work with Rutherford in the building.

Turing has received an official apology from Gordon Brown for the way that he was treated in the early 1950s for being gay. Homosexuality was considered a crime and Turing was forced to take oestrogen, in an experimental form of chemical castration, by the courts. The man behind the breaking of the WWII German Enigma code also had his security privileges removed, meaning he could not continue to work for the UK Government on leading edge research. He committed suicide at his home in Wilmslow in 1954.

My intention in devising the walk was to outline what the University of Manchester’s giants of the past have contributed but also to discover what the pioneers of today are doing to shape the world we live in. Hence the title for the walk “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”.

I intend to help Rutherford find out about the amazing experiments that are being developed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN by particle physicists from Manchester’s High Energy Physics group (not to be confused with the Hi-NRG Physics group).

Alan Turing meets Prof. Steve Furber in front of the Alan Turing Building at the University of Manchester. Steve Furber is showing Alan Turing an example of what today passes for a "baby" computer. In Alan Turing's day the computer called BABY weighed one ton and filled a whole room.

I will also update Turing on the mind-boggling work that is being done at the School of Computer Science to see how far technology can go in creating a computerised brain. I will also show him the new university mathematics building that bears his name.

You don’t need to be a scientist or technologist to join the walk. The walk is suitable for generalists and anyone interested in the pioneering achievements that have taken place in the city.   There is no need to book, just turn-up and go.  See you there.

Chris

Actors supplied by the organisers of the 24:7 theatre festival with the support of Corridor Manchester

Photographs by Chris Foster Photography with the support of Manchester Science Festival

 

How We Used to Live [In Squalor]

You can experience a bit of Manchester’s past this weekend, by visiting the archaeological excavations on the former car park on Dantzic Street, north of Miller Street.

This will be the site of the new headquarters building for The Co-operative. However, for the last nine weeks, in advance of building work commencing, a team of archaeologists have been exploring the history of the site.

The dig is coming to an end and there will be an open day on the site this Saturday, 10th October between 10.00 am – 4.00 pm to show the public what they have found. Oxford Archaeology has been doing the digging and will presumably be on hand to talk about their excavation and its finds.

Angels with Manky Faces

What the archaeologists have uncovered in the dig are small back-to-back houses where the workers and their families would have lived, notably in tiny houses with single leaf brick walls.

You can read more about the excavations on the Urbis blog and there have been articles in The Guardian and on the BBC website too, as work has progressed.

To add a bit of colour to your visit, you could refer to my favourite Manchester guide book; The Condition of the Working Class in England, by Friedrich Engels written in 1844.

Engels came to Manchester in 1842 to work as a textile merchant. He visited the working class districts where he was horrified at the living conditions of ordinary people and indignant that their fellow human beings (those with the money) could tolerate allowing such suffering to continue.  I wonder what the mid-1840s David Cameron equivalent would have made of it? 

“In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of a covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement.”

When I do my guided tours I ask visitors to picture the opening sequence of Slumdog Millionaire, when the boys are at the latrines in Mumbai. I then tell them that that is what it was like here in Manchester 150 years ago which, judging by Engels’ descriptions, is not an exaggeration.

King of the Slums

Specifically about the area where on Saturday you can witness the archaeological dig Engels noted that landlords rented the houses to the working people and the land around the houses to “pork-raisers”.

The people lived side-by-side with the pigs. “The atmosphere is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable substances… [with] … “a piggery repeated at every 20 paces.”

One of the other factors that he noted for this area was the cramped conditions with one family, and sometimes more than one family to each room, including the cellar.

“If anyone wishes to see how little space a human being can move on, how little air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilization he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.”

There are lots of other gems in Engels’ book – the description of the area where Spinningfields now stands, for example.

Engels’ observations on the conditions of the working class in Manchester, and the factors affecting them, led to the development of the political theory espoused in The Communist Manifesto, written with Karl Marx.  Some of the research for this book was undertaken in the Reading Room at Chetham’s Library – where you can sit at the same table used by Engels and Marx today.

Engels subsequently spent another 20 years living and working in Manchester. 

Chris

 

Manchester’s Music … in Pictures

The Kevin Cummins photography exhibition in the Northern Quarter is brilliant.  If you like Manchester music or even if you just like photography, check it out at the Richard Goodall Gallery on High Street before it closes on 26th September.

The exhibition is called MANCHESTER: Looking for the Light Through the Pouring Rain.  It features Cummins’ photographs of Manchester’s music scene taken over a period of more than 30 years.   It coincides with the release of his book of the same name. 

I was an avid reader of the NME in the 1980’s and Cummins’ band photography was one of the standout features of the music paper.   In fact, my first post for the Forever Manchester blog featured his brilliant front cover of the Stone Roses drenched in paint.

That picture (taken at a studio in Stockport, I think) is one of the 50 on display in the gallery.  Others feature Joy Division, The Fall, Buzzcocks, The Smiths, Happy Mondays and Oasis. 

Of these, the pictures of The Buzzcocks are probably the best.  Those of the Happy Mondays probably the weakest – not much material to work with there, let’s face it.  The cover shot of the book is an early snap of Morrissey, but it doesn’t grab me.  

Occasionally, an out-of-town act gets a look-in too, and the picture of a young Madonna at the Hacienda is wonderful, as is the one of The Clash playing at Belle Vue – yes, The Clash really played at Belle Vue. 

I’m probably drawn to these shots because of the crowd appearing as a backdrop and helping to date and place the picture in context.  If I recall correctly, the crowd visible behind Madonna are all static blokes with bad 80’s haircuts.  The Clash in the late 70’s obviously inspired a more dynamic response.

The Electric Circus, Collyhurst (not one of Kevin's shots!)

The pictures outside the Electric Circus in Collyhurst are also brilliant.  It is 1977 and the crowd on their way to see The Ramones have long hair and a complete lack of punk-rock regalia – yes, The Ramones really played in Collyhurst.  The shot includes a Hillman Imp and two lads offering a V-sign to the would-be David Bailey – perfection!

 

For my favourite shot though it is back to the Stone Roses – although they are not actually in it.  Cummins has taken a sensational shot of the crowd at Spike Island.  He has captured so much movement that the picture gives the impression that the crowd are dancing/girating at an incredible speed.  It reminds me of a C17 painting of the souls of humanity consigned to hell on judgement day and trying to escape from the burning pit.  But then, thinking about it, Spike Island really was that good!

Nice one Kevin.

Chris

A great accompaniment to Kevin Cummins’ book is John Robb’s The North Will Rise Again, published earlier this year.  John Robb relates the experiences of those that lived and breathed the Manchester music scene from 1976 based upon interviews with them.  One of the contributors is Kevin Cummins who is quoted as saying; ”In Manchester we weren’t dressed up like London punks.  At the time we were wearing old school shirts, cutting the tie shorter and writing slogans in biro on the shirts”.

.

 

Another Chance to See “Angels with Manky Faces”

Congratulations to North Manchester’s MaD Theatre Company, for the massive success of Angels with Manky Faces at the Library Theatre, in August. The play, inspired by the book, Gangs of Manchester by Andrew Davies, sold out all seven performances from 17-22 August.

Fortunately, if you missed it, there is another opportunity to catch the play in November. Angels With Manky Faces will be performed at the Dancehouse Theatre, Oxford Road, on Friday, 6th November at 8pm and Sunday, 8th November at 3pm and 7pm. Ticket details are available here.

MaD Theatre Company is not just any theatre company. It is a not-for-profit company aiming to inspire, educate and entertain by providing “Innovative Mancunian Theatre”. They have certainly achieved that with Angels with Manky Faces which is not a conventional theatre production, but is aimed at a wide audience; “for people who might like to go to the match as much as the theatre”.

Angels with Manky Faces is wonderfully played by predominantly teenage Mancunians and is set in the streets and gin shops of Ancoats in 1894. It is a story of the Bengal Tigers (from Bengal Street), the most notorious of the territorial teenage gangs, known as the scuttlers, in Victorian Manchester.

The play deals with the issues of gang violence and brings us up to date in terms of the tragedy that this can bring. Moving in parts, it is also highly entertaining and there are plenty of lighter touches and moments of comedy. The youngest players getting the funniest lines.

The performance combines live action with pre-recorded scenes shown on a big-screen backdrop. This works well and allows for cameo appearances from famous Mancunian faces, from Terry Christian to Jon Henshaw, and famous Mancunian places, such as the Marble Arch.

The filmed scenes are also where the music aspect of the show comes to life. Twisted Wheel, Bye Bye Johnny and The Naughtys all get to play, but the best musical performance, for me, is Clint Boon’s rendition of This is How It Feels with Kathryn Edwards.

If you didn’t catch it in August, then get your tickets for November now.

Chris

My fellow blogger Carolyn Hughes, at Manchester is Ace, has also done a great review of Angels with Manky Faces.

If you are interested in drama, MaD Theatre Company is currently facilitating youth theatre workshops in Moston, Middleton and Bury. Email MaD via their contact page for details.

 

What to Read on the Manchester Beach

We love our history on the Forever Manchester Island and are always on the lookout for new titles. Luckily there is no shortage of books about Manchester in 2009 – on a wide range of subjects.  So far this year these include music (John Robb’s The North Will Rise Again), crime (Alan Hayhurst’s Greater Manchester Murders), the changing urban landscape (Jonathan Schofield’s Manchester – Then and Now) and the colours chosen for our old buses (Michael Eyre’s The Colours of Greater Manchester). So many, in fact, that I have yet to read all of them…

Something that I have read is From Manchester to Spain written by Bernard Barry and published, this month, by the Working Class Movement Library. To my mind this booklet gets under the skin of what moves and motivates Mancunians more than anything else that I have read in a while.  It tells how in the 1930s, at a time of deep recession and unemployment, men and women across Greater Manchester supported the Spanish people in their fight against fascism. The author draws on the Library’s extensive archive and uses original accounts, correspondence and photos to tell the stories of some of the volunteers.

 

He also deals with the Spanish Aid committees which sprang up in many districts across Greater Manchester to raise money. Apparently, there was a Manchester Foodship for Spain Shop at 40 Deansgate – Pizzeria Italia today.  Three foodships were sent from Manchester.

The booklet deals predominantly with the experiences of Communist Party members and those that volunteered to join the International Brigade. Of 200 volunteers from Greater Manchester, 44 gave their lives and many more were seriously wounded.

One of the notable figures from the Manchester Communist Party to fight in Spain was Sam Wild who was born in Ardwick in 1908 but later lived in Rusholme. One of Manchester’s most curiously located heritage plaques at 57 Birch Hall Lane commemorates Sam Wild, who had been Commander of the British battalion in the International Brigade.

Working Class Movement Library

From Manchester to Spain is available from the Working Class Movement Library where you will also find a lot more information about the themes that it introduces.  The Library is located on The Crescent, Salford and is open to everyone. 

The staff and volunteers are extremely helpful in finding relevant material from collections that cover 200 years of labour movement history in the British Isles. You can drop-in or contact the Library in advance to arrange a tour.

Chris

You can learn more about Sam Wild from an interview with his daughter on the new Manchester’s Radical History website, which promises to be a great online resource.

 

Let Them Entertain You

It may be heresy to say so, but I still haven’t completely got my head around the Manchester International Festival, which starts this weekend. I know that it is billed as “the world’s first international festival of original, new work and special events”, but I don’t know what that means.

What it appears to be is a variety of things that, to my mind, do not necessarily add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts – which means that it is hard to get “festival fever”. There are some claims that the festival is “uniquely Mancunian” or an “original modern” festival but I don’t get that either.

Not that it matters, I suppose. If you like ballet and you like Carlos Acosta then the fact that we have the Manchester International Festival means that you have your chance to see him. If you like music and you like Kraftwerk (ahem!) then you could go and see them too.

I am going to Procession which sounds good, where I am particularly looking forward to the music and “the largest ever gathering of local sporting mascots”. The event itself will be followed by a gallery display at The Cornerhouse in the coming weeks.

I am also going to see De La Soul which is presumably classed as a “special event” because there is nothing “original” or “new” about the celebration of the 20th anniversary of their classic hip-hop album, Three Feet High and Rising. As I said above, not that it matters – I am just glad to get to see them.

The Not Part Of Festival is something else entirely. Running alongside the International Festival it aspires to make full use of Manchester’s cultural landscape, “a celebration of Manchester’s creative community”. The idea is that it is a fresh and edgy festival fringe.

What I like about the programme is that they are putting artistic offerings in unusual places. I am looking forward to seeing a play in a bar such as Taurus on Canal Street, for example. This is not necessarily new, but there is so much of it in the programme that I think that I could “buy-into-it” in a way that doesn’t seem possible with the Festival proper.

I also like the idea of the Manchester Art Crawl on 9th July. You follow a map that directs you to visual art displays or performances across the City Centre – many using disused shops that are empty due to the recession.

Not Part Of looks good and more information is available via the internet brochure or from the box office that is hidden inside the Great Northern Warehouse (opposite where you buy cinema tickets). Another great thing is that for many events you can just turn up, rather than book in advance.

Finally, I wonder what a combination of Manchester International Festival and Not Part Of might have come up with? Perhaps rather than Procession we may have had Demonstration and rather than De La Soul we might have had the Ruthless Rap Assassins (North Hulme’s finest) supported, of course, by Kid British (who are also Forever Manchester). Maybe, that is something to think about for 2011.

Phew! I got to the end of this piece on Manchester International Festival and managed to totally avoid the use of the word “pretentious”. Doh!
 

Chris

 

Greater Manchester’s Grumpy Old Men … of Punk

“I am from Manchester…, where to be negative is to be real.” (John Cooper-Clarke) 

In the next three months you will have a chance to see three giants of the Greater Manchester punk/post-punk scene, and three grumpy old men to boot.

Mark E Smith (Prestwich) and The Fall are playing Manchester Academy on Saturday 18th July, John Cooper Clarke (Salford, originally) is at The Lowry on Saturday 1st August and Frank Sidebottom (forever Timperley) will be performing at The Frog & Bucket on Tuesday 29th September.

The Fall have been going (and have kept going) long enough for me to have fallen in and out of love with them on a number of occasions. Mark E Smith is what Mrs Bradshaw (Billy’s Mum) would call a “cantankerosity” and she would be right. A relationship with Mark is hard work, even if it only amounts to thinking about whether or not to buy his records. I have stopped buying them, but I will probably check out the gig.

John Cooper-Clarke’s manic-Manc performance poetry is mesmerising. You listen to it again and think, why don’t I have this on all the time, but then forget about it for another year. His poetry and wit remain as biting today as they were 30 years ago, as part of the punk scene – when his Snap, Crackle and Bop LP was an absolute classic.

The Lowry is more post-modernist, than post-punk and I am not sure what John Cooper-Clarke would make of his home-city, rebuilt in glass and shiny tin. Actually, I have a good idea what he might think and I would like to be there to hear it!  

I found an interview with John Cooper-Clarke in which he said, “I’d hate to be one of those people who’s famous for being famous. Besides, it’s important for a poet to have an ordinary life ….to know what a pint of milk costs.”

"I'm also an excellent ventriloquist, actually"

I assume that Frank Sidebottom knows how much a pint of milk costs because he is often complaining about having to do the shopping for his Mum. If John Cooper-Clarke is the bard of Salford, then Frank is the bard of Timperley – the centre of the showbiz world (according to Frank).

Frank made an early claim to punk roots with the release of “Anarchy in Timperley”, which is still one of his best songs. He also claims to often be mistaken in the street for Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks…?

In an earlier guise (as the man behind the mask) he was also responsible for the wonderful “I’m In Love With a Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk” (The Freshies), and set-up the Razz record label..

I know that some people just don’t get what all the fuss is about with Frank and his big fibre glass head and his nasal drawl. Response was mixed, for example, to the Channel M testcard. For me, I like the fact that he is there, giving a different take on the Manchester “scene” and biggin’ it up for his beloved Timperley and Altrincham FC.

Frank has become a solid supporter of Forever Manchester and the Community Foundation.  All the proceeds from Frank’s one-night-only show will go to the Forever Manchester campaign, helping to make Greater Manchester a better place. What more incentive do you need to go and see Frank in the flesh? Ahem! 

“I Thank You.” (Frank Sidebottom)

Chris

Tickets for Frank Sidebottom’s Frog & Bucket gig in September are available via the Forever Manchester website.

 

Can He Kick It…? Yes He Can

A bit of fashion advice this week. This season’s must-have fashion item has to be the Eric Cantona T-shirt. It sports a picture of Eric together with the quote from the film, In Search of Eric, “I am not a man, I am Cantona”.  It must be good to be the King!

ALSO AVAILABLE IN RED

I have been thinking about Cantona a bit recently. There is the Ken Loach film, of course, and the media coverage that goes with it. 

I also finally got round to visiting The Portico Library, Mosley Street, Manchester. This impressive literary institution founded in 1806 boasted Dr. Peter Mark Roget as its first secretary.  The same man that wrote the first thesaurus. 

Roget was Swiss but in more recent times everyone’s favourite Frenchman was a member of the library. Eric was a magician on the football field but also a thinker and, some might say, a philosopher. 

Eric knew when to think but he also knew when to act. His famous Kung-Fu kick of a racially abusive football hooligan in January 1995 still sticks in the memory. It was no surprise to learn that the person that incited Eric’s wrath had been a supporter of the fascist National Front. Eric was villified at the time but perhaps he was just ahead of his time.  Afterall, the FA who banned him subsequently campaigned to kick racism out of football … it’s a theory!

So the election of the fascist British National Party in the North West has also made me think about Eric. Going back to the Ken Loach film, the other main character, Eric Bishop, relies on Cantona as a sort of mentor, ’Eric would know what to do’.

Yes, I think that he would too…  

“I am not a man, I am Cantona” T-shirts are available from the FC United website.

 

Stop That Pigeon Now! Scraa!

For some reason I have started to take a lot more notice of our feathered friends on the Manchester Island in recent years.  I am no Twitcher, but I do get a buzz out of seeing the Cormorants in Salford Quays, the Great Crested Grebe at Heaton Park Boating Lake, the Grey Herons in many of the country parks and the occasional Kestrel above the wooded uplands of Whitefield.    

These are great sights but nothing had prepared me for my encounter with a Peregrine Falcon in the City Centre.  It was two months ago and I had arrived early on a Saturday morning.  Making my way through Cathedral Gardens I was stopped by a “scraa, scraa, scraa”.  Within 10 metres a fight seemed to be going on between two birds, but on closer inspection a blackbird was being battered by a much bigger bird.  A bird that I later realised, having consulted the RSPB Handbook of British Birds (no, owning a copy of that book does not make me a Twitcher) was a Peregrine Falcon. 

I had heard of the Peregrines in Manchester and even met people who had seen one take out a pigeon in flight.  Mind you it was quite a shock to the system to witness a kill in progress and I didn’t know what to do.  I like blackbirds.  I wanted to help, but then it was gone, struggling skywards at first, even coming back to ground for a moment, before picking up speed and heading off behind Chetham’s.  Damn!       

Peregrine Falcon Chick

My knowledge of the Peregrines was increased massively today when I met Adam and Anna from the RSPB.  As part of the RSPB’s “A Date with Nature” event series they are monitoring the progress of a pair of Peregrines that are nesting in the City Centre. Apparently, this is the fourth year that the Peregrines have nested in the city and this year they have had four chicks that are just leaving their nest and learning to fly. 

Apparently the Peregrines fair better in the city than in some rural areas where the birds can be shot or poisoned by game-keepers or have their eggs stolen by collectors (isn’t that the most bizarre hobby).  It is great that the Peregrines feel at home amongst the “rocky crags” and “cliff faces” of the Town Hall, Arndale Tower, Renaissance Hotel and Highland House. 

Pigeons are their favourite food and there is a fantastic picture of one of the Peregrines with a pigeon in its claws on the BBC Manchester website credited to Adrian Darcy. In fact, their love of pigeon was one of the reasons that Peregrines became endangered in the UK. In WWII they were killed to stop them eating homing pigeons which were considered an important part of the war effort.   

The RSPB’s Adam reckons that there are buzzards, sparrow hawks and kestrels to be seen as well as the Falcons in the City Centre.  In the next week or so the fledging chicks will be learning to hunt which could be entertaining too.  When they hit full speed the Peregrines are the fastest moving birds in the world which is pretty amazing.  As long as they don’t pick on the blackbirds.  I like blackbirds. 

Visit the RSPB stall and find out more about what goes on in the skies above us.  RSPB staff will be on hand at Exchange Square until 5^th July on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 11.00 a.m. and 6.00 p.m.  At certain times live images will be beamed onto the big screen.  For more info visit: www.rspb.org.uk/datewithnature