I was standing on the street next to mine, photographing this, when a woman approached me and asked me what it was that I was taking a picture of.

“Old Cheetham Hill police station,” I said. Cheetham Hill is this area of Manchester.

The woman was pleasantly surprised and told me she was interested in local old buildings and had been trying to find out for years what this gateway was part of. There was no information on it anywhere.

I told her the truth, that I found it only thanks to Pokemon Go.

In fact, I never even noticed the gateway before, even though I have passed by it regularly for at least a decade. It was when I was catching Pokemon in the summer that I looked at it for the first time–it was a Pokestop. So we chatted a bit, I explained to her how the game worked and then we parted.

I haven’t been able to find out almost anything on the net about this old police station and now I really have to give it to those folks at Nintendo.

This obviously refers to “local” as in where I live, not where I’m from. My home town (if that is the right word, as in the place I was born and bred) is Bratislava. But this makes me think, what is local?

Some Tory politician or other (I’m not making the effort into looking up her name) said at a recent party conference, that firms should be hiring British people instead of immigrants. Because immigrants… well, immigrants. You know, immigrants. I’ve seen a comment on Facebook post that linked to that news article, which agreed with this politician and that it yes, the firms should be recruiting local people in the first place. What is “local people”?

I have been living in Manchester for 13 years, in the same area for  almost 12, have been renting from the same estate agency for 11 years and been living in the same flat for 6. But immigrants.

It will take me a very long time to get over being bitter about Brexit.

 

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