The Toilet Roll Archives (9) - 🐝💕
As per, I digress.
It’s been a gloriously sunny few days across the country. I’ve been chilling out on the green outside the flat most evenings, face timing friends and family in the sunshine. And tomorrow, Friday 22nd, is meant to be just as beautiful – perfect weather for kicking off the bank holiday weekend.
Been thinking about Corona and the idea of ‘community’ again a lot these past few days. How people are coming together in solidarity. How we’re getting shopping for elderly neighbours. How we’re speaking to each other more than ever (albeit virtually) just to ‘check in.’ Corona’s been shit for us all but it seems to be making the people around me a whole lot more tolerant and, dare I say it, nicer? Silver linings, I suppose. Got to find ‘em somewhere.
It seems odd to think about ‘community’ and the idea of people being bound together by the pandemic when the most loving thing to do is to stay away from the people we love the most. I’ve gone into that whole thing before. I doubt I need to go into it again.
But, for the past three years, the 22nd May has been a day where we have all stood together, side by side, united in bravery and comfort and remembrance. At least, we do where I’m from.
Tomorrow (or today if this post goes up as planned) might seem like another sunny day, like the start of any other bank holiday weekend. But the 22nd May will never just be a regular old day for any Mancunian.
It’s been three years since I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my phone falling to the floor of my student halls’ bedroom because it was vibrating so hard with different messages, voice notes and texts flooding in, one after the other after the other. Three years since I sat awake in my bed, the whole entire night, waiting for people to confirm they were “ok” – whatever that means. Three years since I jumped on a train and went straight back home to my community in solidarity and support.
Community means many different things to many different people. It’s one of those – what I like to call – “weighty words” (yes, pals, I see you rolling your eyes and I don’t care 😊). It is very much an abstract ideal. You can find ‘community’ in all sorts of things. Even in this medical, political, economic crisis, we have tried to pull together like a group of fumbling idiots, the blind leading the blind to try and navigate our way out of this whole mess.
However, ‘community’ is ultimately underpinned by a common denominator in which a group of people find peace, identity, and likeness – I mean, it does feature the word ‘unity’ in there soooo nice one Kezza, intelligent.
But ‘community’ where I’m from is something precious. It’s completely unique and so stereotypically Manchester that I smile just thinking about it because there’s nothing like the spirit of my home anywhere else in the entire world. I can’t imagine any other place coming together in the way that home did. I mean, I say ‘hi’ to a bus driver down here and people look at me like I need shock therapy.
In a moment of crisis, panic and confusion, in Manchester, ‘community’ became less of an abstract ideal. ‘Community’ was extended in the most warm, real and welcoming of ways. If you were there, you were one of us. If you were there to help, even better. Citizen of Manchester. A busy bee. In the darkness, right then, being a human was simply enough.
It was as brave as it was sad, and it was fucking beautiful to see.
There is a resilience to the community I am so proud to claim as my own, no matter where I find myself. The idea of a Northern Powerhouse extends beyond economic potential in the city with a honey-like charm and a powerful sting-like spirit. We were the worker “busy bees” of the Industrial Revolution, a community united in poverty and lack of parliamentary representation. And, today, we’re still just as busy, buzzing together in a hive built of bricks, steam, banging tunes and an indomitable defiance in our gaze away from the capital, determined to do things our way.
Mancs are tested on a regular basis, yet we always come through. Always. We stand together in the darkest of times. Those rainy winter days where we see next to no sunlight? We put up with it with a big grin on our face. Coat on a night out? U ok hun? And umbrellas are designated only for your Nana and for bridal parties in between photos. Nothing phases us up there; it’s all part of that Northern charm. Our bravery is unbreakable.
I’ll never forget seeing the memorial in St. Anne’s Square for the first time. It was a blisteringly hot Saturday evening (by home standards, anyways) and you could barely move down the street what with all the flowers and trinkets and toys laid in remembrance of the 22 people who lost their lives that night. We all talked to one another, drank with another, sang together. In that moment, we were all one beehive. I can’t imagine doing that down here.
Even now, when I talk to friends about their experiences that night, I feel like I’m grieving for people I didn’t know – which, on one level, I know is sort of weird because the people I love got out physically unscathed. I’m fortunate in that sense. But I know it isn’t just me. The 22nd May will never be the same for any Mancunian. The city still mourns. Every person I know back at home has been touched by that night in one way or another.
In the days after, we hovered to tattoo parlours and jewellery shops. We volunteered in hospitals with the buzz of community spirt: a sweet, honey-like desire to help in whatever way we could; a sharp, brave sting in the face of tragedy.
It’s the spirit we’ve always carried. It’s the spirit we’ll continue to honour. We “don’t look back in anger,” in Manchester. We never have. Instead, we swarm our beehives with the need to stick by one another, to support each other, to move forward together. Togetherness is at the heart of our community. It has been since Peterborough. It was that night three years ago. It was that Saturday afternoon in St. Anne’s Square. It is today, right in the midst of this pandemic.
Manny is a city united. Sorry to disappoint – lol – but it’s 100% red and 100% blue. And every one of us holds hands in memory of the twenty two. We’re the Gallaghers and we’re Pankhurst and we’re Turing and Morrissey and every other name you can think of under the very rare Mancunian sun because, where I’m from, ever one of us are bound by a sweet northern nectar that unites us in commonality. We’re a community of bees. And we’re proud.
Miss u home. Xoxo
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