Joy Division.
Good music is of its place. A morning spent wandering streets and lanes that walk the line between gritty urban and gentrified bohemian. Still honest enough to leave a whiff of rough origin, but far enough down the path to a new inner-city identity that an antipodean interloper can explore without angst.
A destination, like so many of the most satisfying, found without intent or forethought... and one that, with great surprise, offers an insight into the best potential of a 'British' future.
A city rich with genuine remnants of an industrial revolution that not only embraced industry, but relished it. Great, stern steel and brick bridges and viaducts that criss-cross the town, not only massive and inspiring monuments to industry, but made to be beautiful churches of progress and achievement.
Everywhere grand victorian and georgian buildings retained, or sensitively adapted and re-imagined alongside inventive modernity.
Walkable streets and lanes, and beyond these an intricate tangle of canals and walkways that have still yet to grow into the fascinating playground of modern urban humanity to which they are so beautifully suited.
Everywhere is rich, honest beauty balanced with unlimited potential on a rare path to realisation.
Not only an amazing city in Britain, but a fascinating place full stop.
Fuck London, get to Manchester.
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