It shouldn’t be like this. People walking fast, half hidden under umbrellas, only few stoically facing the rain with just a hoodie, or bareheaded. Big ponds of water gathering on the sides of Oxford Road, creating a potential menace to all the passing-byers, who risk to be splashed by some careless car.

It shouldn’t be like this. It’s the end of May, it’s supposed to be almost summer.That promise of warmth is gone already, it’s cold again, and grey, and wet. Only the trees, shiny in their coats of new leaves, remind me that this is not autumn but just another Mancunian spring.

No, it shouldn’t be like this. The students should be revising outside, lying on the grass or sitting in the cool shades of an old library, the windows open to let in the perfumes of spring and the chirp of birds… Seeing so many young people crammed inside…