FREE MANCHESTER’S MONSTERS!

There haven’t always been towns and cities, full of people hurrying to and fro to school or work.

Where shops, factories and offices now stand were once streams, woods and hillsides.

And every one of those places, even the loneliest tree by itself on the moors, had a monster to guard it.

The place belonged to the monster, and the monster belonged to the place.

So when towns and cities were built, the monsters had to stay, trapped under the tall buildings made of brick and stone and concrete.

And there they remained, for nearly 200 years.

Until now.

Because in Manchester the monsters have got very grumpy.

They are fed up of people walking on top of them, and they are really fed up of people squashing them under big, heavy cars.

So they want to come back up and live on the city streets in the places that belong to them, the places where they used to live, a long time ago.

Some of them are here already, like SKRIKER, a big shaggy black dog with giant paws and red saucer eyes who pads along next to people walking home by themselves late at night.

SKRIKER lives on Gun Street.

Or the BOGGART on Milk Street who crawls into your bed at night and puts his clammy hand on your face or pulls the bed sheets off.

Or DJIK on Quay St.

She lurks at the busy crossroads on hot days, climbs through open car windows and turns bad music up really loud.

There are lots more monsters waiting to be set free, and they need your help.

FREE MANCHESTER’S MONSTERS!

To free a monster, all you have to do is give it a name and write down its character or habits.

Write the name first, like SKRIKER, then the habits of your monster, but use no more than 150 characters in total including spaces and punctuation.

After that, put your monsters in the comments here, or email them to monsters [at] ablogs [dot] org

That way, people in Manchester can look out for your monster and will tell you where it has appeared.

Then anyone who lives in Manchester or visits the city will be able to find your monster using their mobile phone, like this.

Or did you think that because monsters are very old, they are also old fashioned?

Monsters from foreign lands will be most welcome guests, written in their own language, or English, or both.

And of course, if you have helped to free Manchester’s monsters, you will never be troubled by SKRIKER or BOGGART or DJIK or any other monsters, for the rest of your days.