Hope we can finally clear up the confusion...

angel meadows

So as I mentioned yesterday i'm digging in the Angel Meadows area of Manchester. a place full of thieves, fighters, alcoholics and drug takers. and it was pretty bad back in the 1830's as well.

this morning on my walk to work i passed by the back of the Printworks at about 8.01am. perhaps 1 minute before the sirens came wailing around the corner to deal with the guy that was laying barechested in the doorway of an apartment block, bleeding from the stab wound he had just received up in one of the apartments. you might have seen it on the news today.

This was all about 100 metres from the place i saw a guy last week collapsed in shudehill bus station receiving cpr and mouth to mouth. and not far from piccadilly station where i attempted last week to stop a shop lifter in boots (only with clever words mind you, which didn't really work)

this is all before i actually get to work. this morning we found a fence panel torn down and expected to find lots more new discarded syringes in our trenches ( we've found about 50 so far not including the ones that appeared and then disappeared). eventually we worked out that someone had been in to cut all the lead pipes out of our bulidings and had taken their pick of finds from the site.

so actually the area probably hasn't changed that much. instead of gangs of scuttlers there are gangs of young guys getting arested for violent conduct after the stabbing, instead of people out of it on Gin it's homeless guys drinking strong lager, we have modern beer bottles mixed with 100 year old beer bottles and the only difference with the drug abuse is that the heroin and cocaine were all legal back then.

a grim post but some grim sights. i haven't quite got the sight of that poor guy fighting for his life in that doorway this morning.

Binge drinking c.1909

In am attempt to satisfy the few remaining blog followers out there i have decided to use the lonely and long 11pm feed to share some thoughts. The length depends on how much my phone will allow. 
There are of course not the selection of bottles finn and evan get to choose from of a night. Rather the remains of a 100 year stash from the cellar of a victorian mancunian slum dwelling. One of many that i have the pleasure of uncovering on the site where the coop will be placing their new glassy hq.
Quite the shift from just a few months ago when i was trying to explain what there cholera ridden houses would have been like to a bunch of year 8's. I'd take the rubbish heaps any day of the year. Even the rainy ones but especially there sunny days.