12 June

I wonder what they are up to. All the rubble seems to have been shifted to the right, while on the left you can see they have begun digging into the soil.
Do you think they could be starting the ground works for our car park?
Who knows?

10 June - Stop Press

And suddenly, the kitchen is gone. For no apparent reason.

10 June

So after ten days of inactivity, suddenly they have started shifting the rubble from one end of the site to the other.
The kitchen from the end house is still there though!

27 May

So, basically no progress at all this week. They seem to be working clearing other blocks which have also been demolished.
Anyway, we'll take the camera down for a few days and post again when there is something to show.

25 May

24 May

22 May

Oops - someone kicked the tripod!

21 May

So, can anyone explain why they have left the kitchen of the end house standing? Just one 2m square room out of a whole terrace? Doesn't make sense to me.

20 May

It seems like weeks since it rained. The dust hangs heavy on the atmosphere and I just can't shake off that tickling cough. Our front door was painted last week and is already coated in a thick layer of grime.

19 May

Just the kitchen of the end house is still standing (bottom left of the picture). Then a few days clearing up the rubble and the block immediately behind us will be gone. We'll keep taking pictures for a while though. The rows behind are scheduled to go as well.

18 April

I went in to Beth's bedroom to take this photo in my dressing gown - at 7.30am - and found the lads working on the site waving at me through the window.

We will need to get used to the fact that people can see into our house from the back now!

SILENCE!!! Or as close to it as we ever get in Openshaw. The smoke detector has finally been destroyed or run out of power.
It being Saturday, we can actually hang some washing out as there is no sign of work today.

One slightly ominous sign. If you look through the window in the centre of the picture, you may be able to make out what appears to be a mountain of topsoil. So, it looks as though the demolition site will be covered with soil and put to grass. Clearly, there is no intention to rebuild anything in the forseeable future.

Whilst it will be nice to look out on a green field, this does raise all kinds of questions about the future of the regeneration. Will the new homes ever be built? Or will we, as happened in Beswick and Lower Openshaw, have to wait another twenty years before we see anyone new moving into the community?

13 May again

Can't resist a second view tonight as the change is so dramatic!

13 May

It's all happening now. The alarm is still going off - throughout the night too! But even on the main picture you can see that the houses are coming down from the right. And get some idea of how much brighter our yard is going to be.

12 May

The smoke detector in one of the houses is now going off big time. Every two minutes or so we get a ten second blast of beeping at full volume.

11 May

10th May

So far I've tried to keep the pictures as similar as possible, but today I notice that they are actually chewing away at the row from the end. The last house has actually almost gone, so I rotate the camera a bit for this second image

9th May

7 May

I notice the quality of the pictures in deteriorating. I think the window needs cleaning!

5 May

Significant progress today - the first bricks have gone. Whole walls removed. Yet the smoke detector is still beeping away.

Jericho's Backyard?

If Joshua really did circle the walls of Jericho seven times before they fell down, then in Openshaw it feels as though every circuit must have taken about two years. We have been talking about regeneration for at least fourteen years.

But on 14 April this year, 2010, we noticed the scaffolding going up on the houses behind ours.
Beth kindly volunteered to have the church camera mounted on a tripod in her bedroom and this photo-blog is the result.

The idea is that we take a picture every day so that you can see what it is like living, literally, in the middle of a building site.

4 May

3 May

29 April

Have to take a couple of days off as I'm off to Baptist Assembly and the girls are going to Sheffield for the weekend. But nothing much is happening at the moment and it's Bank Holiday weekend.

28 April

27 April

26 April

25 April

Just after Beth took yesterday's picture - on a Saturday morning - they started pulling the roofs off the two end houses. Plaster dust everywhere - and the eerie beep from someone's smoke detector.

24 April

Still no visible signs of progress. Is this six days now? I'm sure there are good reasons for the delay, but they don't appreciate what it is like living through all of this.

23 April

22 April

21 April

20 April

After all the excitement yesterday, a bit disappointing to see no visible change at all today.

19 April - again

This is my favourite picture so far. If you look carefully, you can see the window frame in mid-air on the left. Today the workers removed all the windows.
This picture was taken at 7:58 in the morning. You can imagine the racket!