Revisiting an old story, four years old, ..... because I can.
I wonder if any of the staff and students have been back to Didsbury College since the move to Birley.
I was there in the summer at the farewell do on the lawn and wandered through the admin block, looked in at the old library and stood just inside the Assembly Hall where in 1972 I signed up to the NUT as I started a post grad course which set me off on a career in teaching which lasted 35 years.
So my memories of Didsbury College span a full 42 years and a bit and this week I was back again.
We were down visiting that archaeological dig in the car park and looked in at those now empty buildings.
I had expected to see nothing, but instead there was a whole range of abandoned stuff which no one had wanted or could see how it would fit in the new building down at Birley.
Amongst the discarded tables and chairs were piles of books and papers, the last big posters advertising the campus and a mix of smaller material from the campaign posters for student elections, to art work and what had once been a set of statues.
You had that over riding sense that the move had been interrupted and that the last of these things would be packed up moved out and found new homes in Hulme.
But I think not. They will stay put slowly gathering dust and waiting to be shovelled off into skips and land fill.
Now I could of course slide into a flight of historical fancy and bring forth images of Pompeii or the Mary Celeste but that would be to get silly, and yet I did feel that we were looking at a scene which remained unfinished.
And one that seemed a tad sad, because these were the bits that no one wanted despite having once been cared for and each of which had a story to tell.
Like that piece of art work with its title "You can leave your hat on" or the piles of books and journals which once had so much significance to the teaching of students.
And finally that set of election posters seen through the window of the old library advertising the candidates in the elections for the Student Union.
I did wonder if I should go looking to see if Mr Palmer and Ms Adamson had been successful, and briefly abandoned the idea as somehow spoiling what was a story of ghosts but in the end curiosity won out.
Mr Palrmer was elected as President with 62% of the total vote, and Jen Adamsom was reelected for a second term as VP-Education Officer. "In total more than 4,200 students voted in the 2014 elections - a similar figure to 2013 but significantly higher than in previous years."
So a little of what we found down there goes on and makes me wonder if I should go looking for other bits of my academic career from the old Students Union in the Till Kennedy building to the Aytoun site which was the College of Commerce and where I spent three years in what was Manchester Polytechnic and is now the MMU, the very organisation which left Didsbury in the summer. And sadly the Aytoun Building is now no more, and is in the process of being transformed into apartments.
But then perhaps some ghosts are best left alone.
Pictures; Didsbury College, 2015 eight months on, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*Big turn out in student elections,Man Met Life, http://www.staff.mmu.ac.uk/manmetlife/news/view/big-turn-out-in-student-elections
I was there in the summer at the farewell do on the lawn and wandered through the admin block, looked in at the old library and stood just inside the Assembly Hall where in 1972 I signed up to the NUT as I started a post grad course which set me off on a career in teaching which lasted 35 years.
So my memories of Didsbury College span a full 42 years and a bit and this week I was back again.
We were down visiting that archaeological dig in the car park and looked in at those now empty buildings.
I had expected to see nothing, but instead there was a whole range of abandoned stuff which no one had wanted or could see how it would fit in the new building down at Birley.
Amongst the discarded tables and chairs were piles of books and papers, the last big posters advertising the campus and a mix of smaller material from the campaign posters for student elections, to art work and what had once been a set of statues.
Now I could of course slide into a flight of historical fancy and bring forth images of Pompeii or the Mary Celeste but that would be to get silly, and yet I did feel that we were looking at a scene which remained unfinished.
And one that seemed a tad sad, because these were the bits that no one wanted despite having once been cared for and each of which had a story to tell.
Like that piece of art work with its title "You can leave your hat on" or the piles of books and journals which once had so much significance to the teaching of students.
And finally that set of election posters seen through the window of the old library advertising the candidates in the elections for the Student Union.
I did wonder if I should go looking to see if Mr Palmer and Ms Adamson had been successful, and briefly abandoned the idea as somehow spoiling what was a story of ghosts but in the end curiosity won out.
So a little of what we found down there goes on and makes me wonder if I should go looking for other bits of my academic career from the old Students Union in the Till Kennedy building to the Aytoun site which was the College of Commerce and where I spent three years in what was Manchester Polytechnic and is now the MMU, the very organisation which left Didsbury in the summer. And sadly the Aytoun Building is now no more, and is in the process of being transformed into apartments.
But then perhaps some ghosts are best left alone.
Pictures; Didsbury College, 2015 eight months on, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*Big turn out in student elections,Man Met Life, http://www.staff.mmu.ac.uk/manmetlife/news/view/big-turn-out-in-student-elections
This item has now been taken down but it was there once, and has gone like the forgotten bits left behind in the move.
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