Thirteen buses….. a collection of shoppers ….. and a day in June 1978

I say a day in June 1978, but I can’t be sure.

That said it will have been in “my snap period” when armed with my first camera I wandered the city getting to know how to take pictures.

The camera was a modest one and the snaps were really colour slides which have sat in the cellar for four decades before coming out into the light again.

And the pictures confirm that simple observation that nothing dates more than pictures from the recent past.

The images are familiar but also so distant from what we know today, like looking through a dirty window..... you can make out something you recognise but the rest is indistinct.

All of which makes them a neat piece of history, even if their quality is a bit iffy.

Location; Piccadilly Bus Station, and Market Street

Pictures;Piccadilly Bus Station, and Market Street, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

My Manchester ..... Piccadilly Gardens and beyond

 Pretty much all life passes through Piccadilly Bus station.

And I know it's a claim that can be made for any big transport hub, be it a bus station, railway termininus or city centre tram stop.

But on that December grey morning with the Christmas markets waiting for customers, I was on the edge of the gardens looking across at City Towers and remembering just how busy it has been during all the years I have been here.

And that amounts to 55 years.

And that is it.

Location; looking out from Piccadilly Gardens

Picture; Busy at City Tower, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson