Going going gone

We really pounded the pavements today from the shiny glass-and-concrete bergs (centre) of central Manchester to the crumbling facades of downtown Salford. We admired the interactive facilities of the main public library where realms of local history can be accessed at a click and then we wandered into the John Rylands library to be staggered by the richness of its 19th C. high Gothic decoration in wood, stone, glass, plaster and metalwork - and that's before you even take a look at the ranks of leather-bound tomes in their temperature controlled  glass-fronted cabinets. (The attendant told us to be sure to check out the Victorian toilet facilities to really step back in time. We did.)  

As ever my eye was most caught by that which has gone such as  Smithfield market, now an underused residential complex with its  orphaned gateways still depicting  stone-carved scenes from the fishing industry as was.

In Salford an old cinema that was formerly a church and the weed-encrusted Black Horse hotel (1875), fester on the development  agenda while   community initiatives fight a losing battle to reverse the blight with renewal schemes and planting/ painting/ poetry projccts
 The words accompanying the mural, bottom right, were by Simone de Beauvoir: 
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the lives of others.


After more, much more exploration  we ended the day, footsore,  on Curry Mile for an Afghani meal and a tub of kulfi.

Many thanks for recent comments and stars. I hope I will be able to respond  in kind when I get home - although I may not, in which case apologies, once again.