No one would have believed in the opening decades of the 21st century that the world of academic debate would have been engulfed by a disagreement about a single simple post box, a full 25 years after a bomb wrecked part of a great northern city.
And while historians poured over their sources to uncover fresh evidence on matters as wide apart as the assassination of President Kennedy, the origins of the Great War, and the significance of the Black Death on the economies of Europe, battle positions would be adopted between those that followed a reinterpretation of the events following the Manchester IRA bomb on June 15th 1996, and those who held to the conventional explanation of events.
Few outside the debate gave any thought to the ramifications of whether the post box was the same one that had stood there before the explosion, or if for reasons as yet unrehearsed it had been replaced by another identical in all its forms and features.
And if the box was indeed a replica, there would be some who wondered why this should be, and no doubt intime this would lead to a plethora of theories which might yet capture the imagination of those who believed that aliens had abducted Lord Lucan, had spirited away the baggage train carrying King John’s treasure, and cunningly had taken control of all domestic washing machines, ensuring that random socks were lost.
But of course such musings are best left to those who are in command of the full story.
Location; Manchester
Picture; a Christmas postman from the late 19th century, courtesy of David Harrop
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