Travel: Manchester

Street art and war may sound like an odd combination, but it was exactly this combination of exploration that I had in Manchester recently. The Northern quarter has street art galore, but I was struck by the number of bee images around the city. I later learnt that the bee was once used as a symbol of hard work in the days of the Industrial Revolution, with the mills said to represent “hives of activity”. Following the terrorist attack at Ariana Grande’s M E N concert in May 2017, there was a resurgence in the popularity of the bee symbol, with it being used as a representation of unity and defiance in the face of hatred. Manchester has long been thought of as a vibrant, diverse city and now, it can proudly add resilient to its attributes. A whistle stop tour of the Wave and the Imperial War Museum left me unsettled and melancholic. I’d spent most of my time exploring the main exhibition space, which covers the First World War to the present day. Two exhibits hit me right in the gut: a German Luger pistol and the tatty jacket of a Jewish prisoner of war uniform. A real person used the first item to inflict harm on another real person, the wearer of the second item, but I struggled to understand why. Whilst this hovered at the back of my mind for the remainder of the day, I saw painted, carved and etched bees everywhere and took comfort in the fact that the while the Luger is dead and gone, bees, despite their current precarious existence, are alive and kicking.