Ollie Renshaw and Roy Johnson have been meeting on a bench in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, most mornings for the past 25 years. They remember when the concrete square with patches of grass was actually a garden. “You could hardly call it that now,” Ollie says. “But it used to be beautiful.”
Both in their 50s, the pair are on incapacity benefit and haven’t been in work for the past few years. The area is equidistant from their homes – Roy lives in Gorton, Ollie near Altrincham – so they use it as a meeting point before moving on somewhere else. What do they talk about? “Football and women,” Roy says. “The facts of life.”
Today is no exception: the previous night’s local derby, when Manchester United beat Manchester City 1-0, is today’s topic. They are both City supporters (“We wouldn’t be friends otherwise,” Roy says) and are gutted by the result. “They didn’t put their full side out,” Ollie says. “Guardiola doesn’t even know what a Manchester derby is. He’s not realised how important it is.”
My social media feeds this morning tell me that my friends and people I follow on Twitter are preoccupied with the US election, Jeremy Corbyn and their pets. But a day spent interrupting strangers’ face-to-face conversations reveals a far more diverse range of concerns, from Brexit, family feuds and dating to food, football and Syria.
Romana Atcha and her friend Aysha Patel, 19 and 18 respectively, are sitting a few metres away from Ollie and Roy. They are unfazed by being interrupted and asked to share their conversation. At the moment I butt in, they are talking about Game Of Thrones and Instagram, but they tell me their conversations are just as likely to concern food, makeup (“good mascaras”) and television. “Boys also pop up occasionally,” Romana adds.
The duo, who say they are like sisters, are waiting for a Thai restaurant to open at 10.30am, having skipped breakfast in order to have lunch – something they refuse to admit is odd. From Bolton, they both recently started university in Manchester: Romana is studying psychology, and Aysha nursing. “It’s hard, because she’s at the University of Manchester and I’m at Manchester Metropolitan. We’re a 10-minute walk from each other, but our timetables are really out of sync,” Romana says. “We woke up at 7am just to see each other and catch up.”
Neil Baker, 41, has just met his partner Shenelle Thomas, 31, off the train from London. She is seven months pregnant and they’re up in Manchester to see Neil’s family. They are devouring sausage with black pudding, mash and gravy, just bought from a market stall, when I interrupt them. “Good northern fare,” Neil says. They are having a “little debrief before we dive into the family”.
He is a Manchester United supporter and came up a day early to watch the football.
“It wasn’t that great a game,” Shenelle says.
“She fell asleep watching it on TV,” Neil retorts.
“Well, unless you’re actually having a couple of goals,” she says, “then I don’t think it’s that great.”
They both think couples need to talk more. “To be a model to their kids, really,” Shenelle says.
“As long as it’s a two-way street,” Neil adds.
“Yeah, as long as it’s talking and not shouting,” Shenelle says. “That’s a culture that we’re losing. You see couples who are sitting right next to each other, texting each other.”
“We don’t do that,” Neil says. “We do other things.” He points at his partner’s stomach.
Up the road, in the city’s Northern Quarter, Rosey Purkiss-McEndoo, 23, her brother Ben, 20, and friend Kate Channer, 22, are braving the cold, drinking tea and eating cake outside a hipster cafe called North Tea Power. Rosey says they are going over the details of the drunken night before.
“We’ve tried to remember everything,” says Kate, an art history student at Manchester School of Art.
“It’s a nice way to record it, because sometimes I forget what the hell happened,” says Rosey, who graduated last year and works in a bar close by.
“We were talking about how we’ve recently been trying not to drink to excess and be more mindful and healthy, because we’ve reached a turning point in our lives,” Kate says.
“We want to be more conscious,” Rosey adds.
That doesn’t seem to be going well, I say.
“It actually did go quite well, because it was a different type of drinking than is the case in Manchester sometimes, where everyone just gets drunk on horrible cheap drinks,” Rosey explains.
“Yeah, if you’re enjoying yourself, then it’s fine to take it slow,” Kate says. “I was drinking halves. Tiny little halves.”
“I feel really sensible when I order a half, but I just order twice as much,” says Ben, who recently dropped out of university and is applying for jobs.
Rosey and Kate have been trying to reduce their dependence on their mobile phones and commit themselves to having better conversation. “I smashed my iPhone recently and got this,” Rosey says, pointing to an older-model mobile covered in stickers. “It means it’s difficult to text people and I don’t have the internet on it – it’s saved my life. Nobody’s really experiencing the moment they’re in any more, because they’re already thinking about how people will see that moment online.”
“I’ve deleted most of the apps on my phone,” Kate says. “I just think time goes way too quickly when you’re on your phone too much. You should give someone your full attention.”
Around the corner on Stevenson Square, Peter Dushko, 62, and Chris Millington, 46, are drinking coffee outside the Eastern Bloc cafe. They’ve been friends for 20 years. Chris, who is in Manchester on business, now lives on the outskirts of London. Peter imports prosecco, and business is not going too well since the vote for Brexit. “I’m using him as a sounding board and having a moan,” Peter says. “It’s a bit of an unload session; sometimes that’s what you need. Business is shocking. Brexit has killed it. The exchange rate has collapsed.”
Chris, who is the UK and Ireland managing director of a telecoms company, agrees. “I think we’ve probably had it too easy for too long when it comes to the currency, but it’s a shock that society is going to have to deal with. As of January, there will be significant price rises on any imported goods. You can’t hide from it any more.”
Conversation, they both say, is vital for conducting business. “When I was in recruitment, people would say, ‘Oh, I’ve emailed them’ and I’d think, well, that’s not good enough. You’ve sent something, but engage, talk to them,” Peter says.
“Ultimately, that’s how business happens,” Chris says. “If you’re not prepared to get out there and talk, you won’t be successful.” He adds: “You’ll notice neither of us has a phone on the table.”
Across the street at the Corner Barber Shop, barber Ako Adam and Nader Masri have just started talking about the situation in the Middle East. Ako is an Iraqi Kurd and came to the UK as an asylum seeker 12 years ago. Nader, from Lebanon, is finishing his PhD in microbiology.
“I asked if he was Spanish and he said he was Lebanese,” Ako says. “I am from this part of the world as well. I said the Middle East is all kinds of” – he lowers his voice – “fucked up, to be honest.”
Nader says he was on holiday in his home city of Beirut two days earlier. “Obviously there’s spill-over from surrounding countries like Syria, but it wasn’t too bad,” he says.
“I’ve been working here for 10 years and you see the same faces every four weeks, and you know everything about their life,” Ako says. “It’s kind of like being a psychiatrist. That’s the beauty of the job: having a conversation, listening and talking.”
A little later, as the sky is darkening, I find tram drivers Carl Stevenson, John Devonport and Ross McEwan at the BrewDog bar on Peter Street. They are talking about work, and although all three say they enjoy their jobs, they complain that they are vilified by the local press. “A lot of people think that [when trams are running late] they’re inconvenienced and the drivers aren’t,” Carl says.
“It sounds a cliche, but drivers want to get people to where they want to be on time,” John adds, “because it benefits us. We want to have our meal breaks on time, and get home to see our families.
“We tend not to start off talking about work,” he continues, “but we always go back to it eventually. By that stage we’ve usually had a couple of beers. It does help release some of the stresses of the day.”
Cousins Jemma Woolfenden and Sara Wilkinson, in their 30s and from Rochdale, are sitting outside Manchester Art Gallery, laughing hysterically, when I interrupt them. They are enjoying a rare day off without the kids, and about to go and see a production of Ghost at the Palace theatre.
When the pair meet up, the rule is “no men, no children”, just conversation. Their discussions are had “over a glass of wine, or a bottle of vodka”, Sara jokes, and talk usually turns to Jemma’s love life. “I just got into a new relationship after having a bad one,” says Jemma, a full-time carer. “I’m staying away from bad boys now. Bad boys are no good.”
Sara, a district nurse, says she knows almost everything about her cousin’s love life. “You need to talk to someone who really knows and understands you,” she says. “You couldn’t just tell anybody the things you tell me. They’d think you were crackers and lock you up.”
“Nobody is ever on their own,” Jemma says. “There is always someone to talk to. You’ve just got to reach out and ask. Often, the problem isn’t as big as you think it is – once you’ve talked it through.”
