{"id":13272,"date":"2026-08-28T16:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13272"},"modified":"2026-08-28T16:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:54:12","slug":"tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13272","title":{"rendered":"Tourism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Image: \u00a9 Charles Eastwood<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For thirty American dollars you gain entrance to the art museum. You walk through a metal detector and fear it will beep. You imagine if it did beep, how everyone would look at you, with full attention, in tension, and how your skin would vibrate. You would reach into your handbag with purpose, look around, and give these art pigs a good old scare. It doesn\u2019t beep, anyway. You are unmetaled.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You round the round white entry wall, conscious of your round and awkward body. Ahead of you is an unkempt blond in a black hoodie that says We\u2019re So Fucked in ivory script. You are delighted because the hoodie says everything that could be said, possibly, by anyone, about what\u2019s happening now. No one who sees it will fail to relate. His face, as he turns to look behind him, not at you but past you, is milk-lipped and green-eyed and you want to eat him. He\u2019s twenty years too young. It\u2019s embarrassing and you feel filthy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Up along the museum\u2019s near-highest curve, an intern invites you to lock your phone in a pouch and enter a dark room. You like the dark room but don\u2019t know about locking your phone in a pouch.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You say you\u2019ll keep going and come back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You keep going and come back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, you lock your phone in the pouch and make yourself small and squeeze through velour curtains and enter an alcove coloured by TV static and sit down in front of a wall-size triptych real-time surveillance display of the entire museum\u2019s interior, complete with red boxes which track imperfectly the moving targets labeled \u2018human\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Two art pigs outside protest locking their phones in pouches. You hear the shame in their steps as they trot away. You realise the installation is designed so you\u2019ll hear this echo of your own weakness, as you lounge and spy, and you try not to laugh out loud, and you admire it down past your bones.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The onscreen figures perambulate, oblivious to the red boxes that house them. You consider the space between the figures and their boxes\u2014the slight delay, the slight imperfection of the surveillance mechanism\u2014and wonder if, maybe, it means we\u2019ll be alright.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But no. The artist probably made it faulty on purpose. Of course we won\u2019t be alright. Your hope, followed by your resignation, is choreographed. Every emotion and realisation by you, the viewer, is part of the show.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You recall the hoodie, We\u2019re So Fucked, and imagine fucking the so-fucked hoodie boy right here on this artistic leather couch under the eye of the triptych of future annihilation, and then you leave and collect your phone from the intern and smile because you\u2019re both in on your mutual oppressor\u2019s secret, you\u2019ve got their number alright, haha, thirty dollars well spent, back out onto the hot February street of rain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has rained every day of your holiday. You\u2019ve come from your new home, a capital of rain, to your old home, where it rains rarely but hard. The rain followed you, as they say. You didn\u2019t realise the capital of rain was your home, and this town wasn\u2019t, until you had the thought, just now, every day of your holiday, that tourist thought, every day of your tourism, that thought, the rain followed. And you loiter on the corner of the avenue across from the park, bareheaded, where you never used to loiter when you lived here, only on the grandest of occasions would you loiter on the avenue, and you smell your sweat under the grandness of the buildings and you smell the park\u2019s verdure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You light a rollie (not a done thing here anymore, or ever, only proper big industrial cowboy-corp cigarettes in the US of A, and these days only vapes and conical joints of marijuana, official, for the emergency anaesthetisation of citizens) and you stand, assailed by the treeline of the park and its jungle quality.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An early dark settles on the wet leaves, lengthening them. Just within the park you see an opaque pond rounded by concrete.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then you\u2019re beside the pond.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is without ripple.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The rain has stopped.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You squat down, rippling your tight pants. You place your palms on the concrete for balance. You look in but see no reflection.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The pond eats the rollie with a sizzle. You imagine how a bulbous goldfish, innocent and unblinking, will suck up the filter and choke.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You bend further and your lips touch the water. They feel huge, like fish lips.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lips in water, tip of nose, then chin. And eyes, unblinking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Impossible, the cold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But you need to see what\u2019s underneath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Your whole face under.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing to see.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No fish, alive or dying. Nothing to save. Only the persistence of static and furious cold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The rain is back. Your smoke is out. Your eyes are wet with more than rain and you taste salt and walk, city-fast, four blocks to the metro. You throw the dead rollie into the street because they don\u2019t have ashtrays on public bins here, at least not on the avenue. Maybe you\u2019ll stop smoking. You take a full breath all the way down to the bottom of your belly and further, you feel it all the way down to your ass insides, the root chakra they call it, diaphragmatic breathing they call it, and you hold it for a ten count in which you recall the milky mouth of the We\u2019re So Fucked hoodie boy, on the artistic couch, and feel filthy again and embarrassed again, and it\u2019s good to feel that way, the way you ought to feel, here, in your former home. You breathe out all at once and, satisfied that you can breathe a full breath and don\u2019t need to quit smoking quite just yet, you descend the black drip of steps to the train on which you will enjoy the sensation of being seen and, simultaneously, unrecognisable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Marianne lives in Howth, north of Dublin, where she works as a family carer and writes. She has a postgraduate degree in theology, with a special interest in mysticism, and also practices photography. Her work, ranging from fiction to poetry to creative nonfiction, has appeared or is forthcoming in Channel Magazine, The Belfast Review, Ragaire, and Strange Pilgrims, among other journals. Her story about identity loss in Arctic Norway was shortlisted for the Allingham flash fiction prize in 2025. She is working on several projects about the natural world. Find her at mdaigh.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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