the ditherer - part 2

the easter bank holiday can conspire to create ditherers and procrastinators of the most diligent of diarists, and no more so than when living on the inner edge of the city...

by maundy thursday everything has quietly ground to a halt; offices close for the long weekend, motorways prepare for the inevitable pile-up, the rail network gears up for the huge increase in public travel by shutting down operations altogether and indulging in 'essential track repairs', and national parks and heritage sites stock up on kendal mint cake.

in the city this results in a temporary suspension of 'business as usual', much more so than christmas. office types are conspicious by their absence, businesses are closed for the holidays, tescos shelves are even more useless than ever, emptied by the frenzied stock piling that always accompanies a bank holiday, students have nipped home to the counties to visit mummy and daddy.

only the city dweller and flaneur remains. the pavements have welcome gaps, the roads are easier to cross, and its possible to grab and keep that coveted sofa in cornerhouse or the cosy battered armchair in oklahoma. city life takes on a dreamy, lazy quality. the streets feel ones own again. its peculiarly relaxing to stroll through town and look upwards and around...

consequently i have done very little this weekend apart from idle about, enjoying the nooks and crannies of the city. my favourite activity (barring heavy rain or flurry of hail stones) at times like this is to find a suitable vantage point in town with a take away coffee and croissant and watch the world go about its business. favourite spots include the little square in brazenose street, the second step of st anne's squares church, the bench to the left hand side of the city library in st peter's square, the patch of grass next to the water feature of urbis gardens (summer only), the lovely little gardens behind kendals (lunch time and weekends only to avoid the unwanted attention of the city's undead)...

to salve my conscience i have also conducted extensive researches deep in the undergrowth of the world wide web and can recommend the following sites for the amusement of bluestockings, boffins, and flaneurs of all persuasions at the next available public holiday...enjoy!

http://www.theflaneur.co.uk/opium.html - a round up of arcane and intriguing nonsense from the admittedly somewhat male oriented The Flâneur, official website of La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières (Liverpool chapter)....gentlemen should not miss the marvellous sections on self defence with a walking stick or top hat, or the useful flaneur's lexicon. the flaneur is also a mine of information on all things liverpool...

http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.html - or the arcades project project, a benjaminian site, heavy on the scholarliness for the academic amongst you.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120029 - meanwhile our old friend joe moran writes on the return of the shopping mall, that favourite non-place of auge, in our city centre...essential reading as always...

the ditherer - a tale of prevarication

lots to report from rainy city this week and indeed over the past few weeks, but as usual my feeble mind takes some revving up - after all i am 146 and not as quick as i was as a girl!

as usual whilst researching and compiling some thoughts about these cultural wanderings across the metropolis, i got sidetracked by all sorts of interesting titbits out in blogland and deep in facebook groupworld...as a consequence i have added a couple of new (to me) blogs which celebrate and continue the tradition of bluestockings, but with a modern twist.

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/elizabeth_fay/archive2.html - this virtual 'salon' is a veritable treasure trove of bluestocking history, somewhat academic but hey when has that troubled our fertile minds?? then there's the self confessed misanthropist and dilettante clio bluestocking, http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/. finally for a modern idiosyncratic take, there is the intriguing bad girl blog, http://mybadgirlblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/isabelle-eberhardt-heroic-muslim-male.html...

last week i joined the throngs piling into bodyworlds at the museum of science and industry and have mixed thoughts about the whole project of the suitably dastardly looking von hagen and his plastination and display of cadavers in everyday poses....http://www.mosi.org.uk/about-us/news/body-worlds-4

on friday i joined some young artist chums on the first leg of their habitual weekly art crawls...it seems there is nearly always an art show preview on friday night somewhere in the city. last friday it was alchemy at the manchester museum, one of my favourite haunts, plus the fine cube, home to exhibitions and research on all things urban, architectural and the built environment generally, truly an inspiring insitution - with a fabulous riba bookshop on site too! http://www.cube.org.uk/exhibitions/detail.asp?id=175

apartment is busy preparing for its next show this thursday 20 march, clown crash, a performance and exhibition by dirty honky, the pig nosed clown; http://apartmentmanchester.blogspot.com/2008/03/clown-crash-dirty-honky.html, which promises to be unmissable...

brilliant women - the 18th century bluestocking

fashion my dear readers is a fickle mistress...one minute one is de rigeur or a la mode then just as swiftly a laughing stock, old fashioned, irrelevant.

as a proud and self proclaimed bluestocking, i have often straddled the gulf, nay abyss, between these two continents, and lately amidst the dismaying and all too common cry by young women that they are most certainly not a feminist, plus the dubious rise of the footballers wife as a suitable role model for girls, i have secretly wondered whether learning, freedom, curiosity and the spirit of independant adventure as desirable aspirations for women have gone for good. certainly the very term bluestocking has for a long time been used primarily as a prejorative, not a celebration.

but the tide appears to have suddenly turned. this weekend saw a full page article on the original bluestocking circle and this morning radio 4 interviewed two marvellous women dedicated to the repositioning and re-evaluing of the role and influence of those educational pioneers in 'breaking the boundaries of what women could be expected to undertake or achieve.'

as the exhibition curators eger and peltz eloquently explain, initially associated with the informal and intimate groupings of the fashionable bluestocking circle revolving primarily around the london homes of the fashionable hostesses Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and Frances Boscawen from the 1750s, the term 'bluestocking' came to apply to learned women more generally, testament to the high profile these women achieved in an age when women had few rights and little chance of independence. the circle, which welcomed men, including famously the blue stockinged mr stillingfleet, nurtured a sense of intellectual community and potential. guests included the leading literary, political and cultural figures of the day, including the scholar and classical translator Elizabeth Carter, the critic and writer Samuel Johnson, the novelist Fanny Burney, and the artists Frances Reynolds and her brother Sir Joshua.

moreover, despite beginning as a high society, fashionable drawing room club, the bluestockings developed into a broader social and literary network in which friendship, charity and female education were celebrated as the key components of modern civilized society, both in london and the provinces.

but sadly, as our champions of the movement go on to explain, this desirable state of affairs came to an abrupt end with the dawning of the regency era and the changing social and political situation in the aftermath of the french revolution. the ideas and radicalism of outspoken women such as republican historian Catharine Macaulay and the early 'feminist' Mary Wollstonecraft, were increasinlgy viewed by the establishment with suspicion and hostility. both held radical beliefs, greeted the french revolution with enthusiasm and spoke out for women's rights. their rejection of traditional female behaviour, especially in their liberal attitudes, publicly-voiced political opinions and unconventional sexual lives scandalised society. in a changing moral climate which saw new limits placed on self-expression, the traditionally demarcated roles of the sexes was emphasized once again.

increasingly women themselves such as christian social reformer Hannah More, who did not believe in women's rights, promoted instead the traditional female duties of charity, piety and child-rearing as the foundation of a new model of female activism which was to dominate the victorian age. the bluestocking sadly became a byword for monstrous, unnatural women, meddling in affairs that should not concern them, and the very idea of a studious, academically inclined female still carries a risidual stigma of a peculiar spinster, somewhat unkempt of appearance, condemned to a life without love of a good man and doomed to childlessness.

margaret rutherford as miss marple - an inspiration!

the scholarly man or boffin has similarly had something of an image problem, sexiness-wise, but whilst geeks have recently entered the popular vernacular as actually rather desirable despite themselves, female scholarliness has not fared so well, and the attribute 'inventor' or 'genius' is synonymous with the male mind. i dont recall albert enstein, despite his dishevelled appearance, experiencing much mockery or ridicule, and it certainly didnt put marilyn monroe off...

brilliant women is an exhibition, conference and publication opening on thursday 13 march at the national portrait gallery. do have a little look at their website for details and an overview: http://www.npg.org.uk/live/wobrilliantwomen.asp

meanwhile i shall bask in my rush of fashionability whilst it lasts.

brunswick - manchester's moated inner city

angkor wat - traditional moated settlement

brunswick, manchester's very own camelot (mysterious shimmering 'island', diligently defended and enclosed, guarded by mists and dragons, home of the brave and the good) headquarters to my band of bluestockings and brave urban refusniks, never fails to amaze and amuse me. gateway and cul-de-sac, it is at once completely neglected and fastidiously maintained, indicative of its perpetual schizophrenia as coveted m1 postcode and prime real estate, forgotten council estate, AND arterial lifeblood of the city's commuterbelt.

this weekend we brunswickians marked the passing of the seasons in our unique and time honoured fashion: a deathly hush...

not for us the usual spring time merry making - crazy medieval rugger scrums, morris dancing, dyke pole vaulting or easter egg rolling - so beloved of the guardian weekend supplement or jeremy dyer's folk archive. no, the seasons for us are marked by an eerie silence as the mancunian way, our very own modernist moat, is closed for maintenance. evidently yet bizarrely a source of much civic pride, the flyover is completely closed off about 4 times per year for the re-laying of lanes as well as a good old clean and repaint by a small army of contractors who work day and night on cherry picker type machines buffing, polishing and generally giving the a57(m) a well deserved luxury spa weekend. starting on friday and ending on sunday evening the flyover is overhauled, pampered and given a clean bill of health til the next time...

whilst this seasonal 'makeover' is undoubtedly crucial for road safety reasons and prevents all kinds of traffic carnage, it has another unforeseen and rarely acknowledged benefit. the constant roar, congestion, pollution, blare and glare of cars, trucks, juggernauts and emergency services that is the thunderous soundtrack to brunswick life 24/7, obscuring the view, drowning out radio and tv transmitters and obliterating everyday conversations, momentarily ceases and forgotten sounds seep back into our mutual consciousness. songbirds tweet, dogs bark, cats purr and caterwaul, children cry, couples argue and can answer back, and most importantly everyone luxuriates in their bed without that infernal motorway in the room!


manchester's modernist moat - mancunian way

waking up to the kind of peace and quiet that the rest of you take for granted is a shock to the system. we invariably oversleep, unaccustomed to a good nights rest, and rush to the window in shock and awe, wondering if the world has come to an untimely end. then reassured that all's well and its just the repairing of our mighty moat, simultaneously keeper and protector, we wander out to enjoy the quiet and inspect the belly of the beast. sometimes we take a little walk along our perimeter wall/fence/prison and admire the handiwork. we stand on our balconies and 'streets in the sky' walkways and chat to our neighbours, wallowing in the simple pleasantries of this insular isolated phenomenon.

then all too soon its all over and life resumes its peculiar urban rhythm. the birds quieten, the sounds retreat and its back to the roar of the city and the glare of the juggernaut headlights invading the bedroom blinds. brunswick fades into the background and becomes camelot once more, shrouded in the mists and smog of modernity, hidden from view by the onslaught of traffic forever whirring round and round our forgotten kingdom...