I Love Manchester

22nd May 2017: At approximately 22:30 an explosion hits the Manchester Arena, a large concert venue. The timing of the bomb was designed to hit the mainly young, mainly female audience as they left the performance of the artist Ariana Grande.

The terrorist responsible committed suicide, blowing himself up, as the audience was leaving and heading in his direction. His intent was purely to inflict the maximum number of casualties in the most innocent and unsuspecting of victims you can imagine. Young girls. The youngest fatality that has been announced at time of writing was just eight-years old. How monstrous the act was is unspeakable and, of course, entirely the purpose of the terrorist.

I'm no expert in terrorism. I know as much as anyone else who pays attention to the news.

I'm no expert in ISIS, the motivation and radicalisation that drives these young men to extreme measures for their religious fundamentalist cause.

The only reason I write about this here, now, is because this attack took place in Manchester. That's the city I call home. I live in a town within Manchester. I work at a place perhaps less than 100 metres from the Arena where the terrorist attack took place. I grew up here. This one felt close.

I was at the Arena in Janary, watching a Marvel Superhero show. I took my wife and young son. It wasn't the first time I had been there. I've been to the Arena stacks of times. There's something chilling about the discovery of an attack in a place that you have frequented. That little notion of concern that informs you: it could have just as easily been me.

I didn't know if I was going to be allowed to get into work the morning after the attack. The option to work from home was available to me, but once I realised I could get to work - that there was enough of a functioning train and tram network accessible to me - I knew I had to go. It sounds stupid. I'm just one guy. Me showing up or not showing up, what difference did that make? But there was a part of me that wanted to get out there into the commute, out onto the streets of this city I have walked in all my life, just as a kind of private statement that I was not going to be cowed into sheltering at home.

Bizarrely this wasn't even the first City centre terrorist bomb attack that has occurred in my lifetime. The last time Manchester was attacked in this manner was in 1996, by the IRA. I was much younger then, but I still had a job in the city centre - a part-time job in a shoe shop. The 1996 attack happened on a Saturday. The 'decent' thing about the IRA was that they, at least, warned in advance of their intentions. I received a phone call before I was due to start work that day stating that there had been a bomb threat warning and that I had to wait for further instructions.

At some point later the bomb went off.

I received a phone call from my supervisor a little later telling me I didn't need to bother coming into work; the bomb had gone off! But a few days later I got to go and see the devastation that had been wreaked for myself. It beggared belief. The scale of the destruction.

But, like I said, at least the IRA didn't have the intention of taking as many lives as possible. Not like the events at the Manchester Arena. This is a different enemy, with a different motivation.

After the IRA bomb Manchester rebuilt itself. The city has never looked better. From the rubble came opportunity to rebuild with improvement, and so we received (eventually!) a more modern, aesthetically-pleasing city centre that flourished. And today, following the tragedy, I felt somewhat in tune with the city and the people; we would not be cowed.

The thing I can't really get my head around is how this plays out to the rest of the world. I recall the Paris attacks and understanding how big a deal it was, because I could see how much of an impact the atrocities there were rolling out across the news here and elsewhere. But seeing my hometown city on the news just felt strange. I got off the tram on my way to work and looked at the police tape cordoning off the area around the Arena and wondered, Is this the same level of big deal as the Paris attack was?

It may sound dumb, but it just feels different when you're in it. It doesn't feel as big. Like, during the day, I was in work and the news came out that something had happened in the shopping centre close to where I worked and the place had been evacuated. There were rumours of gunshots. Rumours of arrests. And meanwhile I was in work, able to look out of the window at where reporters were setting up, straightening their ties before delivering their piece to camera, and it felt curiously understated.

Weird.

My six-year-old son is aware enough of the world to hear about the events that had happened today, and something this close to home was bound to catch his attention. How do you explain such a thing? I told it to him as simply as I could. The terrorist, he was just one bad man. And what was important to notice was how everyone rallied together to help after what had happened. Because the good people outweigh the bad. That's the truth this City holds to, and it's the only truth that stands in the face of terrorism and says: You will not win.

I'm proud of how my City has responded after this attack. I loved Manchester yesterday. Today I love it just a little bit more.