I came here for a boy and the convenient lure of an MSc scholarship. That was 13 years ago. The boy is long gone and my student days are but a fusty memory of Blast-Aways, pot noodles and wrinkle free skin. Yet I am still here, despite my itchy feet and stubbornly Yorkshire soul. I didn't expect it to capture me and I didn't expect to stay.
And, yes: it's not the most beautiful of cities (thanks, Chloe Sevigny), lacking the grandeur and majesty of its northern neighbours, Leeds and Liverpool. Though unlike them, Manchester is a city built on fairness, reform and emancipation.
It's often rainy, sometimes seedy and always honest. It's charm doesn't lie in its architectural gems (obscured by the endless drizzle and tucked behind never ending, homogenised development), but the soft philanthropic heart that thumps stoically beneath its sturdy, industrial grim.
In a time where our politicians seek to isolate the already marginalised and when we are constantly told that society is dead, it is comforting that Manchester's foundations - firmly built on compassion - are not crumbling. Manchester's still giving.
This week Thirty One flittered past my twitter feed and then thudded through my letterbox. Thirty One is a collection of Manchester-made music, curated by DJ and writer Dave Haslam and including tracks from Elbow, I am Kloot, Mr Scruff, Delphic and Noel Gallagher. All proceeds go to CALM a charity formed in 2006, with the help of Tony Wilson, to combat the high suicide rates of young men in the UK.
Go here for more of my Manchester gushings, written last year for the Manchester Literature Festival...
