Thursday 22 December 2016

#tbt: An Urban Legend about the Manchester IRA Bomb


Back in 2006 when I was doing agency work getting nowhere with my life, I was working in a postal room in the old CIS tower in Manchester doing a very tedious job for minimum wage. I remember a conversation surfacing about the Manchester IRA bomb on Corporation St, which had happened a decade beforehand. It was probably the tenth anniversary, and the radio news would have been discussing it retrospectively.

One of the people working in the post room- some guy, he may have been young or old, I dunno- he claimed he knew one of the ambulance workers who'd been called to the scene. The ambulance worker had entered the Marks and Spencer, its glass panels smashed by the explosion. The detonation had ruptured the sewage works under the building, and this had led to rats scurrying out of the split drainpipes, some of them as large as small cats, grown obese on the city's waste.

After evacuating the building, the ambulance worker then emptied the shop's tills and walked out with fourteen grand stuffed into the pockets of his overalls. And fourteen grand in 1996 would have got you a fair bit more than it would today.

Talk about perks of the job.

Is this a bullshit rumour, or is there some truth to it? Drop me a comment if you know. I'd love to hear from you.

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