It's horrible out here but we want to be together on Christmas Day

HOMELESS WAKE UP ON CITY CENTRE STREETS

- RAMAZANI MWAMBA

IT'S Christmas morning and Manchester city centre is uncharacteristically quiet.

Usually teeming with people and chock-full of traffic with the sound of screeching trams, only a few walk the streets.

Among those are the homeless. Rough sleepers, who, instead of waking up in a warm house to presents under a tree, woke up to a cold pavement for a pillow and a sleeping bag for a duvet.

Over the last few years, M.E.N. has spent Christmas morning speaking to those rough sleepers waking up on the streets of Manchester.

Sharing one large pink sleeping and sat at the entrance of a shop on Market Street were Claire Barber, 35, Benjamin Butler, 40, and their friend Ash, 37, who asked to not be photographed.