River of Life

Sadly, another name has been added to the War Memorial this year.

After the service at the War Memorial the parade set off up Bridge Street to the Town Hall. In Bridge Street the Old Comrades were standing to attention to take the salute.

In Bridge Street is the River of Life Memorial by the artist Stephen Broadbent which stands as a memorial to the victims of the 1993 terrorist bombs which claimed the lives of two young lads, Tim Parry and Johnathon Ball, and injured 54 other people.

Earlier this year a small plaque that makes up part of the memorial was stolen as scrap. It probably had a value of no more than £30.

[/iThe First Two Minute Silence in London (11 November 1919) was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919:
The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.