We had a self guided tour round Manchester and despite living around here for too many years, there were a few things that I didn’t know. Such as the the Royal Exchange Theater is the largest “in round” theater in the UK, and “in round” is where the audience surrounds the stage.

Towards the end of the your we found this statue of Gandhi, we were actually looking for Hanging Bridge and I think that’s it behind, but the tour seemed to have a deceiving image on it, as it soon became clear that the bridge (the oldest structure in Manchester) had been replaced and then the Cathedral built upon most of it.

Anyway back to Gandhi, I had no idea why he’s here. Did he visit? Was he born in Cheetham Hill? Nope, it was to share the multi-cultural and multi-faith(ness) of Manchester after the Arena bombing, which is odd when you consider that if we were a mono-culture then the bombing wouldn’t have happened. Not that that is possible. Needless to say that there’s always someone to complain and someone decided that Gandhi was a racist. It’s surprising that we have any statues in the UK nowadays.