Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive …..But to be in Manchester was very heaven*

Now the thing about history is that often no one can agree on just what constitutes history.

So one of my teachers at school was contemptuous of any event that was not at least 50 years in the past, and as if to underline that, the O level exam I sat in 1966, stopped a full 27 years earlier, leaving out a World War, the Cold War, the creation of the Welfare State and Elvis Presley.

While my friends who went to prestigious universities could be confident that the latest date they had to remember was 1789.

But the blog knows no such boundaries and so we have settled for 2002, and the wonderful event which was the Commonwealth Games, staged here in the city.

London, Sheffield and Manchester had vied to win the games, and after Sheffield dropped out, Manchester was the firm favourite amongst the 24 members of the Commonwealth Games Council of England.

And the rest as they say is history, and that story you can find very well documented so I won’t try.

Other than to say they were recognized as a great success, set a bench mark for how other international games should be done, and left a positive legacy in the city.

So much so that while officially they were the XVII  Commonwealth Games, they became known simply as Manchester 2002.

All of which is an introduction to a selection of photographs from the local image collection.

There is nothing over clever about the choice, other than to say they capture the fun, the pride and the achievements of those games which are now eighteen years ago.

Location Manchester

Pictures; Manchester 2002, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Apologies to William Wordsworth …… "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven", The Prelude, 1789

**Manchester 2002, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Commonwealth_Games