By Emma J Lannie
Location: Sunbury Drive, Newton Heath
The newts are good at acrobatics. If you hold them in your hand, their tails cling round your finger and they dangle themselves all circus-like. We are in the shed. I am not allowed to play in the house. My dad doesn’t like having other people around. [...]

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By Neil Campbell
Location: Ashton Old Road and Audenshaw
I’d swept the walkway clear of fag dimps and gray sands of ash but dust was left in shapes of the brush.
‘I thought I’d told you to sweep up?’ said Alan, the foreman. ‘Do it again and show some heart.’
I pushed the shopping trolley with the bin stuck [...]

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By Anne Beswick
Location: Ripon Street, Moss Side
They gave us the bulbs free at school. With the soil and a bowl as well. All free, for nothing. ‘Are you sure?’ said Mammy, obviously worried about what it might cost if I’d got it wrong - but it was alright because I could say that the [...]

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By Ailsa Cox
Location: Oxford Road
I don’t know where the hell we’re going. I was meant to give directions. Nick’s car blunders through the back streets in the hinterland between Rusholme and Fallowfield, one blind corner rounding into another. I’ll be late for my class. Late and screwed up. Screwed up and late.
Silence between us. [...]

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By Jenn Ashworth
Bus stop outside Piccadilly Train Station
12.35am.
9 bottles of Carlsberg
1 pint Heineken
1 Vodka and Red Bull
1 SFC dinner
6 codeine
0 fags
£8.10 train fare
£5.00 taxi
I don’t even live here, and I don’t want to live here either. But not living here means getting the train in, and, after midnight, the bus home. There’s a cloud of [...]

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