The Friends Meeting House

I found myself at the Friends Meeting House this afternoon, being scrutinised. It wasn't too painful !

The Friends House - home of the Quakers in Manchester - is used for meetings when there is no room available at Manchester Town Hall. Last year I was shown an old map when I visited the Working Class movement library. It had been used at the judicial inquiry following the Peterloo massacre. Nothing in the centre of the city was very familiar except for the Friends House. It precedes the building of the Town Hall by some way, and since it was built everything around it has changed.

Leaving the meeting I headed back to Salford. A small informal choir was singing carols - fantastic harmonies, these youngsters must have been RNCM students. Less harmonically, a group of lads who had clearly drunk a few were singing the Noddy Holder's Christmas song. And there were plenty of people on their works Christmas do's enjoying themselves. All surveyed by a crane driver in his cabin helping to build one of the new glossy office blocks.

And still two weeks to go till Christmas - thank goodness. We have a lot to do.

Which is why we are now 180 miles from the location of this photograph.