Mancs.
We’ve got a reputation. I’m swiftly developing a reputation of my own, but that’s another story. I began this journey for the craic, but the doing it makes you different. Capturing the city and it’s dwellers on film makes you a historian whether you’re partial to long yarns about Norman conquests or not. The city’s smashed together mish-mash architecture asks questions of anyone with a pulse and a curious mind. Longsight Library’s Local History Archives becomes a place to interrogate the past, so here I am trawling through old sketches of Hanging Ditch - back when they really did hang people! - and daguerrotypes of a Victorian city in a by-gone age.
We are Mancunians, but who is a Mancunian? Waves and waves of immigrants whose back-breaking labour built this practical, post-industrial city. The Italians in 19th Century Ancoats; Levenshulme’s Irish community, Longsight’s post-war African influx, followed by the Pakistanis, whose once-ubiquitous corner shops have now made way for the Polski Sklep. The Romany Gypsys too, are having their shake of the stick.
Who are we, why do we do the things we do? Mancs are known for a great many things of course, none of which I will repeat here. We are creative, and I lovingly capture our citizenry in that spirit. The Naughty Index is my attempt to capture the “Big Society”, preferably at 36DD and above. Sterilised, anti-skeptic [sick!] “No Win, No Fee” culture seems an oxymoron in a place like this, our wonderfully broken and remade marvel of a metropolis Mancunia.
