manchester's magnificent South Bank

for many modernists, the South Bank is the epitome of Londons iconic skyline, and seen largely undisturbed in an entirety that we rarely get elsewhere, it's truly a feast for the soul. a trip to the capital for me wouldnt be complete without a stroll along its banks to enjoy its many splendours, a happy marriage of riverside life, inspirational architecture and the best of modern art. this short stretch has something for everyone, punctuated as it is with the legacy and progressive ambitions of the 1951 festival of britain - the royal festival hall, the national film theatre, the heyward gallery - with the brooding bankside to relish at the other end, an extraordinary building sensitively restored and imaginatively reused.

and once back home, its all too easy to feel peeved after a saunter through such obvious treasures, impoverished at the lack of similar grandeur on our own doorstep. its harder being a flaneur in your own city, more difficult to appreciate what we still have to enjoy or uncover. yet we are privileged to have a secret south bank of our own, hidden away on the salford/manchester border. no, we’re not talking about the Thames & the Tate but the Irwell and the Peoples History Museum. this is where the manchester modernist society's latest project, the mappa modernista comes into play, with its exhortation to don those metaphorical x-ray specs and revisit the half forgotten landscapes of the 20th century city, lurking shyly down some side street or behind an unfortunate respray or gaudy recladding.

so next time you're feeling a little jaded with the relentless change and fashions of the city, why not rediscover your very own modernist haven, complete with magnificent museum on its left bank! here's a suggested route to start your ongoing adventures along the riverbank....

.....begin your mini modernist trail on deansgate opposite the cathedral, turning down chapel street to take in the space age splendour of Highland House and the unexpected pleasure of the service aspects of the brooding hulk of the often maligned Fairburn House, currently the Ramada hotel. seen from the riverside its intricate levels of stairwells, podiums and swirling car park ramps are crisp, intricate, positively delicate, if a little careworn. a short walk over blackfriars bridge rewards with a hidden descent to the river under the east is east restaurant.

from there you can saunter towards the graceful calatrava (trinity) bridge usually accompanied only by the resident cormorant and a cheeky gaggle of marauding seagulls. contemplate the marvels of its elegant engineering ensconced in the sweeping amphitheatre seating below, before turning to take in the sophistication of albert bridge house and its classic tripartite composition, a view only possible from this very spot. ahead lies perhaps leach rhodes walkers finest hour, the irrepressible aldine house, now Riverside, with its trademark concrete ribbing and saucy porthole windows.

a swift hanger right leaving the river allows you to join the path round the side of the complex rounding back up on to bridge street and the newly revamped pump house with its lovely cafe and mighty selection of cakes. here, weather permitting, take your afternoon tea on the terrace for a riverside seat and a peek at the swans and new cygnets that tend to hang out by the mark addy kitchens.

oh & dont forget to visit the reinvigorated museum, always well worth the trip, and reacquaint yourself with the history of the people who made the industrial revolution & the 20th century city happen; the likes of you and me. for this is not the story of captains of industry, bigwigs and famous leaders, but of the mill girls, the dockers, the suffragettes, the unionists, the clarionettes and weavers - the millions of 'ordinary' people who lived in, recorded and created such extraordinary times. the story of us...

key buildings encountered:

Albert Bridge House - EH Banks, 1958-9, ministry of works, for the tax office, hence perhaps its classical elegance. 18 storeys of reinforced concrete, it is clad in portland stone despite austerity era restrictions. sunlight glinting against its blue glass windows gives a jewelled luxury to the simplicity of the front elevation. from the riverside however, the tripartite composition really comes into play and reveals why Ian Nairn called it 'easily one of the best modern buildings in manchester.'

Aldine House - Leach rhodes walker, 1967. phased development for the land commission and home to the MEN for a while (hence the typeface-named baskerville house) the complex was designed around a peaceful court to provide a sense of community, suitably dressed with sculptures, water features & peaceful nooks, sadly now closed off. distinctive vertical cladding and porthole windows add a nautical flavour. the miesian aldine house itself was added by the firm in 1975 as their own hq, clad in polished black granite, and best viewed from bridge st.

Fairburn House - designed by Cruikshank & Seward, 1965 as offices, and later converted to a hotel, this is something of a grubby brute from the deansgate elevation, saving its unexpected delicacy for the riverside...

Highland House - leach rhodes walker, 1966. a glorious 23 storeys of towering elegance, punctuated with its funnel holed windows of stove enamelled steel, its dignity somewhat diminished by a gaudy purply respray over the original black and white patent finish.

Trinity Bridge - designed by santiago calatrave in 1996, this flagship footbridge between the 2 cities is a sculptural tour de force. a single strut supports the y shaped bridge and ramp by tension cables, resembling the mast of a simple fishing boat, listing salford-wards.

ps. note for fellow edwardians - the pump house is itself a significant building - the only surviving Edwardian hydraulic pumping station in the city, it used to supply power to the warehouses, wound the Town Hall clock and even raised the curtain at the Opera House!

mappa modernista manchester

the manchester modernist society recently introduced an interactive online map of 20th century manchester’s architectural landmarks as part of MADF2010, a collaboration with the graphics and cartography departments of taylor young architects. i've been involved in some of the research, planning, many walkabouts and endless conversations about this rather massive task, so forgive me for indulging a little in this journal about the current state of play and some of the ideas behind this ongoing project, the first stage in a comprehensive archive of the twentieth century city.

our modernist map is not a regular A to Z street plan - it does not direct you through the brand new city of today. in fact it’s already out of date. instead it is a map of the imagination, a treasure trove of memories, achievements of cultural and civic aspiration. it is a palimpsest, an overlay or acetate, an excavation and a record of the Bold, Beautiful, Brutal and Beleaguered vernacular twentieth century city, already fading into oblivion - a city inhabiting the spaces between the glories of the Victorians and the pastiche and bombast of the post millennium redevelopments. we have attempted to document it all, the great and the small, the successful, the experimental and the less successful.

collaborating with the Taylor Young team allowed the mms to explore these notions of mapmaking and create something digital and sophisticated, an elegant interactive archaeology of the city that delves into the stratigraphy of the 20th century, combining the skills of the cartographer, the artistry of the graphic designer, and inspired by the endless methodologies of navigating the human experience – of transport maps, star charts and even the microscopic maps of our own genetics.
the result is an artefact and resource, an artwork and a database, the beginnings of a renewed relationship with the rich patina of our multilayered city, a living interactive experiment or laboratory that straddles the strangeness and literalness of the medieval mappa mundi, pays homage to the graphics of the 1950’s & 60’s and draws on the excitement and optimism of the post war vision of a modern utopia.

most of all, it is a map of the imagination, permitting us to relate not merely to individual, isolated buildings, as if they stand alone in cities entirely independent of the public realm they inhabit, but to the city as a series of coherent interconnected landscapes, where structures and the spaces in between relate and depend upon each other and the people who bring them to life with their day to day experiences and stories.

delve into the map as you wish, but here to start you off are four suggested voyages into the twentieth century city -

BOLD - this baker’s dozen amply illustrates the sheer inventiveness of a bold modernist landscape that still dazzles today. Relish Manchester’s exuberant and most audacious landmarks: the CIS tower, Express Building, Gateway House, Kendal Milne, Lee House, the Hollings Toastrack, Granada House, Pall Mall Court on King St, Oxford Rd Station and the whole of UMIST a complete Corbusian wonderland!

more classically inclined or a penchant for the elegantly glamorous? try our BEAUTIFUL list: spanning the entire breadth of the modernist era from the deco glamour of Sunlight House, the classic elegance of Central Library, or the mournful elegy of the Lutychens Cenotaph, the undiminished beauty of the twentieth century city sparkles all around us, worthy contenders for any stage. take this little saunter through the splendours of Albert Bridge House, Appleby Lodge, Cenotaph, Central Reference Library, Crown Courts of Justice, Midland Bank/HSBC, Peter House, Redfern House, CWS, Roscoe Building, Manchester University, Ship Canal House, St Augustine’s RC Church, Sunlight House. a twentieth century city that can still fascinate and inspire well into the 21st....

each month we dedicate one of our 3 features to those buildings that have left these earthly shores and departed to the shades of lethe, so in their honour, lest we forget is our BELEAGUERED list – revisit the fading landscape of the modernist city in our guide to treasures long gone or already earmarked for the bulldozer. take a hanky – this mournful homage is not for the fainthearted:
Bernard House, Cumberland Square, Northcliffe House, the Gaumont Cinema/Rotters on Oxford St, the Maths Tower on Oxford Rd, Mobberley Tower and the beautiful Dalwood Frieze, Loxford Tower, the controversial Hulme Crescents (given the Park Hill Urban Splash treatment they might have become the Barbican of Manchester!); and hanging on by a thread the UBO Offices on Aytoun St, Manchester House and the Old Odeon on Oxford St.

last but not least is a landscape that remains much maligned and misunderstood, an attempt to create architecture with an honesty and simplicity that celebrated the new materials and experimental nature of the modernist movement. possibly taken from Corbusier's ‘breton bruts’, translated into English it became something harder and ragingly controversial to this day...

BRUTAL - a dozen brutalist beauties, totemic monuments and landmarks of the Manchester skyline, love ‘em or loath ‘em, they embody the uncompromising spirit of their age. so consider anew our own shortlist – re-imagined as everybody’s favourite antiheroes, the city becomes alive with a veritable league of brooding Mr Darcys or moody but magnificent Heathcliffes! make a dangerous liaison with Aldine House/Riverside, Fairburn House/Renaissance Ramada Deansgate, the Arndale Centre, Bank of England Charlotte St, Lowry House & Post office Tower Spring Gardens, Piccadilly Plaza, Holloway Wall UMIST, RNCM Oxford Rd, the Kantoravitch University Campus. be careful you might fall dangerously in love...

these examples arent exhaustive, just a starting point of course.

but wherever it takes you here’s hoping the mappa modernista enriches our relationship to the city, treasure its faded careworn edifices a little more, and let it inspire a 21st century landscape to be proud of.

the manchester kiosks - a note on Gilbert Scott.

Giles Gilbert Scott(1880 –1960) was last in a distinguished line of architects. his grandfather was Sir George Gilbert Scott, who built the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras station and the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, whilst his father after a promising start was to languish in asylums and family hideaways for much of his adulthood.

our Scott is famous for his blending of gothic tradition with modernism. he was to become a towering figure in 20th century architecture, creating iconic buildings wherever he went. he was RIBA president for its centenary year 1933, completed battersea power station in 1933, the new bodleian library in 1937-40, rebuilt the commons chamber at westminster palace after the 1941 bombing had destroyed it, and designed bankside power station now the magnificent Tate Modern.

yet he is perhaps best-known for his work on Liverpool Cathedral. when the competition for a 'Design for a twentieth century cathedral' was announced in 1902, he was a junior employee at his firm and an inexperienced 21 year old - he had previously only successfully designed a small pipe rack! nevertheless he was one of the five architects selected for the second round of the competition (his employer's designs were rejected) and subsequently went on to win in 1903. it was to become his life’s work which he worked on until his death in 1960; the cathedral was finished in 1978.

he is now buried with his wife outside the main entrance to Liverpool Cathedral where a K6 can also be found installed in his honour.

K8 - new estates, modernist railway stations, remote windswept spots, 1965 - 1985

the young pretender -

designed by Bruce Martin, the funky K8 was the first serious challenger to K6. it was used primarily for new sites, around 11000 were installed, replacing earlier models only when they needed relocating or had been damaged beyond repair. the K8 retained a red colour scheme, but in a slightly brighter 'Poppy Red', which went on to be the standard colour across all kiosks. it was sassy, sleek and groovy in a tomorrows world, pans people sort of way, with its full glass panes and streamlined edges. less heritage and altogether more with it, more pop! spot one even today, and it looks modernistic, exciting and futuristic.

yet ironically, its relative success was partly due to its K6 inheritance. it took on some aspects of the failed experiment of the K7 (ie. a modern door handle, and full panes of toughened glass on three sides) but remained constructed of cast-iron, greatly adding to its resistance to the UK climate, and with some exceptions the all-over red livery was considered too important to be dispensed with - some K8's in Liverpool and Manchester were painted a distinctive 'Telecom Yellow', as opposed to 'Post Office Red'.and it never completely replaced the old war horse; K6 and K8 survived together into the 1980's, when the death knell for both were sounded with the arrival of the KX100 series.

this marks the real end of our story. the sad story of the red phone booth - they lost their domed roofs. then their red uniforms, and finally even their doors. they were on their way to becoming little more than posts with phones attached when a conservation movement in the 1990s persuaded BT to renovate, and even re-install, some of the old K6s. but this was all too late for the poor K8, now so rare as to be of special interest to the twentieth century society and a focus for one of their at risk campaigns.

at the last count only a handful of K8 remain. estimates vary from 12 to 20. if you see one, give us a ring and let us know!

K6, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, one on every corner, everywhere, 1935 – 1965

designed once again by Sir Giles Gilbert-Scott in 1935 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V, this was the first truly national or nationwide kiosk, often referred to as the "London" or "English" phone box. it’s the one tourists the world over have their photos taken inside and still evokes the UK landscape whether bustling city or windswept countryside.

that essential tweaking of the K2 can also be spied throughout - the windows give greater visibility with the central panel of each horizontal band being wider that the others, whilst for night use there was an interior light (on a timer). the K6 also featured a writing shelf and, according to the GPO, "combined a smaller exterior with a roomier interior."

about 70, 000 k6’s were installed across the length and breadth of the country from 1936-1965 including four major design changes. boxes from the original 1936 Jubilee Kiosk programme of 8000 boxes have the entry and exit holes for the cable runs on opposite sides of the rear base of the box. from 1939, improved security measures called for a redesign that saw window frames rivetted rather than screwed, improved coin box fixings and the cable runs now brought together on one side of the box. also until 1952 all kiosks bore the Tudor Crown, until the present Queen introduced the St Edward’s crown, the one used for all coronations. this change happened in 1955 affecting all public telephones across the Empire, a useful dating clue for those obsessed by typological ordering.
although we think of the K6 as the red phone booth, there are some notable exceptions - kiosks installed in Hull were not fitted with a crown at all as they were installed by the Hull Corporation & were painted cream. they are also distinguishable by the complete absence of the crown, tudor or otherwise!

meanwhile there were battles fought across the land about the strident red colour, which wasn’t immediately well received and exceptions were made to appease their roll out - boxes for use in areas of outstanding natural beauty, could be painted Dark Battleship Grey with PO red window bars.

such teething problems ironed out, the K6 was to dominate the landscape for the next 30 years until the break-up of the gpo and the introduction of the new generation telecom boxes. in reality people increasingly had a phone in their own home, then came the mobile phone, the home computer and wifi, changing the way we communicate yet again, and making the need for these miniature buildings almost entirely obsolete. decommission was inevitable by the late 1980’s. yet the redundant k6 had an army of devotees, and a series of public campaigns led to some protection for some of the stragglers, with around 3000 becoming listed.

nowadays any surviving K6 can be designated a Grade II listed structure. the 4 survivors in city centre Manchester (two in st peters square, one on the corner of deansgate and Liverpool rd, and one on the top of st johns street) fall into this lucky category. they are in a pitiful state despite residing in prominent conservqtion areas of our 'original, modern city'.

pity that marketeers tag doesnt extend to the truly original & modernistic K6.....

K2, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, London 1925 – 1935

the londoner -
our story really begins in 1920 with the Post office’s first attempt to commission a standard public call box to replace the multitude of weird and wonderful ‘silent cabinets’ randomly popping up everywhere. the result was the concrete K1 with its noticeable red door. though hardly any survive (the concrete frame weathered predictably badly) it did pave the way for the subsequent model the K2 - the first proper, familiar looking red phone box.

the domed roofed and all-over red K2 was the result of a competition held in 1924 and won by Sir Giles Gilbert-Scott, who was to continue refining his iconic design until the 1960’s. learning the lessons of the K1prototype, he made it entirely of cast iron and weighing in at over 1 ton it certainly didn’t come cheap, limiting its production chiefly to the capital and the south east. consequently it’s probably the K2 more than the K6 that visitors to the UK think of when they think red call box. look closely in places where they coincide, as they frequently do in the capital and you’ll notice that the K2 dwarfs the later K6 and that its horizontal windows are of equal width. all K2 boxes are listed buildings, and though predominately a London phenomenon, a handful escaped to the provinces, notably Oxford. there are also several dotted around the UK in private collections and museums.

cost and bulk aside it was cleverly constructed and an instant success. ventilation was provided via the crown in the roof section - it was made up from small, round holes – and legend has it that the dome was Scott's homage to the 18th Century architect Sir John Soane, R.A. (1753-1837) whose family tomb is surmounted by a very similar feature. whatever the inspiration this is a proper roof, dealing effectively with the elements, rain and litter. an ingenious design suitable for town and country, just waiting that little bit of tweaking to take the entire empire by storm and revolutionise the way we all talked to each other....

tales from the red telephone box

this spring has been truly busy at mms, seeing us waxing lyrical about the good old public pay phone.

...you know, those bright red kiosks that used to be on every street corner from lands end to john o’ groats, as ubiquitous as the post box. much loved and recently declared a design classic, these national treasures have stayed in the public imagination long after their day to day utility has declined. after all when was the last time you actually got your 10 pence piece out, pulled open that iconic (and rather hefty) red door and climbed inside to make a call? not since your mobile became your laptop, camera, media player and all round personal assistant....


the phone box was first commissioned by the Post Office in the 1920’s to standardise the many different "call offices", "silence cabinets" and "kiosks" that had sprung up in shops, railway stations and other public places since the turn of the century. by the 1960s over 60,000 of the familiar red boxes had been installed across the whole country. since then the rise of the mobile phone, email and social networking has made the public telephone box, once so ubiquitous and centre stage, largely redundant and financially untenable. and despite a conservation campaign in the late eighties when 2000 boxes were designated as listed buildings, the new millennium has seen it recede to the peripheries, a forlorn relic of bygone times, decommissioned, vandalised, misused or threatened with removal.

only 4 such boxes remain in Manchester’s town centre: nestled unnoticed in pivotal conservation areas they visually embody the evolution of the modern city; that original, modern city that the marketeers constantly evoke and exploit...

this little box seemed to us at mms a fitting metaphor for the entire modernist project and so the invitation by FutureEverything to take part in their 2010 festival with its widened theme of the City offered the perfect chance to explore this notion via an art project, one which would re-connect these small buildings & listed structures with their surroundings, celebrate and commemorate their 75th birthday and raise their profile as at risk yet much loved structures.

the result was Ailis Ni Riain’s haunting sound installation which premiered in MOSI's red kiosk and remained installed throughout the festival. we have plans to expand the project in the future, but in the meantime here for the historically minded is the story behind the smallest 20th century listed buildings in the country, maybe the world...

read on for all the history and drama of the K2, k6 and ill fated K8...

the practice of writing; 20 lines a day

Harry Mathews - famously the only american member of the OuLiPo, the experimental french literary group, and friend of perhaps its most well known member Georges Perec - in his book '20 lines a day' set out to follow a rule Stendhal once set himself, to write ‘Twenty lines a day, genius or not’. it was an attempt to overcome ‘the anxiety of the blank page’; an integral if not crucial part of his writing practice, his way of warming up if you like, before going on to whatever his actual writing project may be.

i began this diary, this little journal, hidden away inconspicuously amongst mountains of other bloggers, in the same spirit (but minus the talent) - not as an attempt to perfect an idea or topic, but simply a place to practice getting things down on paper in the first instance. a method for overcoming the fear and loathing of that intimidating blank page. a place where i could just write something, anything, and see what might emerge and where it might take me.

3 years later and i still manage considerably less than 20 lines a day, so it is perhaps fitting to conclude the theme of these last few posts with this encouraging segment from Mathews' own preface, to bolster the spirits of even the most timid scribbler...

like many writers, i often find starting the working day a discouraging prospect, one that i spend much energy avoiding. four years ago i was reminded of an injunction Stendhal gave himself early in life: vingt lignes par jour, genie ou pas. stendhal was thinking about getting a book done. i deliberately mistook his words as a method for overcoming the anxiety of one blank page. even for a dubious, wary writer, 20 lines seemed a reassuringly obtainable objective, especially if they had no connection with a serious project like a novel or an essay. for the next year or so i began many writing days with a stint of at least 20 lines, written about whatever came into my head on a pad reserved for that purpose.

hopefully Mathews own 'dubious wary writer' might fanally put paid to the ogre of the unstoppable driven genius forever hovering at our shoulder....

the problem with writing – episode 3...

with this bilious reality forever goading me, its perhaps not surprising that the longer i leave it, the more impossible the idea, let alone the act of, writing becomes; the more severe my allergic reaction to the terrifying glare of that accusatory sheet of blank paper. a flick through this journal over the past three years amply attests to the tedious cycle of self pity and naval gazing i regularly succumb to.

but what strategy for thwarting all this lamentable wallowing can best be deployed by the reluctant writer? part of my own aversion to committing ideas to paper is the fear of not being ready, of my thoughts not being polished and honed to perfection; of exposing myself to ridicule or disdain by others more expert than myself. of delaying and procastinating until i am absolutely sure of my veracity and authority – but when, in reality, is there an end to research, when is meaning ever complete, definitive or total?

perhaps it’s best to rid oneself completely of all this mythologizing of the writer, let go of the intimidation emanating from all the books already written and embrace the idea of writing as a processual, dialogical process; as a work in progress, constantly under construction and revision. of recognising the notion of the artist/writer/creative as one more voice in an open ended, ongoing collaboration of ideas and enquiries: an ongoing conversation with yourself as well as all the others out there trying to make sense of the world. a strategy that acknowledges the fallacy of the written word as the perfectly resolved articulation of the 'genius' mind, a definite authoritative full stop. if we can accept the principle that as individuals we are ever in flux, always growing and changing, constantly being influenced and transformed by everything and everyone around us, then the proposition of a fully resolved definitive piece of writing becomes implausible - a veritable intrusion to scholarship, a prohibition to learning.

so far, so sensible, even obvious. but how to action this new modus operandi, this potentially liberating tactic?

in recent months it has come to my attention that a couple of bright young bluestockings, whose keen minds i rather envy, share some of the anxiety and discomfiture about the practice of writing that i all too often describe to you dear diary. so despite the blatant absurdity of attempting advice on this thorny topic given my own state of mind, here for the benefit of anyone else labouring under the weight of their perverse compulsion to communicate ideas in words, is my humble Advice To Reluctant Writers:

strategies for writing - i dont have one:

- i just cry for about a week before i'm due to write anything, procrastinate endlessly, stop dressing or washing (this is shamefully true!), crawl in and out of my bed in my pajamas for a tearful, headache ridden snooze, get up again, feel sick, take migraine tablets, wander round the flat for a bit in a hopeless daze, open my laptop, look at my notes and research files to fuel my depression, go on facebook, look up loads of things instead to intimidate myself with the fact that the subject im attempting to tackle has been thoroughly and expertly covered by everyone else anyway, cry some more, fall asleep for hours, get up at about midnight in a snot filled, delirious haze and desperately stay up all night til a version is churned hysterically out, go back to bed about 5am, get up at 8am and do it all over again........

things to avoid – rushed deadlines; i know i tend to leave it all too late:

- im fine with the reading, the looking things up, the thinking and mulling, but find it impossible to create a plan or precis to follow. i tried all that planning and ordering during my masters and it always defeated me - i was still finalising the abstract to my dissertation as i was photocopying the body of it in triplicate for binding on the morning of the hand in day. not funny or good practice....

ideas to hold on to – ‘practice’; understand the way you write and prepare and accept this practice rather than try to alter it:

- it’s the only useful thing my tutor told me. he said that maybe the crying, the blockages, the not-washing and going to classes in my pajamas (again this is tragically truthful - the masters stage of my course saw me regularly arrive for tutorials and seminars still in my bedwear, and i would start to cry in class if anyone just looked at me....awful) was my 'practice' (i should explain that this was the art school so my behaviour was seen as creative not deranged) and that writing was as much of a process as drawing or painting. this, though probably obvious to most people was something of a revelation to me and has been a useful mantra ever since. it has allowed me to attempt to work with what i’m actually like rather than try to over analyse or change it. i now (in theory) understand that i need to start the whole sorry process much earlier than i think i need to, to allow it to proceed along its natural course.

- also i try to recognise that my obsession with research is more to do with insecurity as academic rigour and eventually stifles any fragment of faith in my own initial idea or thesis - so remember that you should stop when 'they' (all those pesky experts) start intimidating you. write what you feel, take a break and then start smoothing and editing this initial, unruly stream of consciousness. i find writing smaller things regularly for no one other than myself really helpful - its why i started the diary. a private vehicle for trying out ideas and topics of interest that might eventually be useful for something bigger.

- lastly have someone to talk to – often an problematic idea becomes suddenly clarified when you’re describing it out loud to someone else....

well that’s it - thats the advice. the sum total. that’s all i’ve got.

...all i have to do now is practice what i preach.

the problem with writing. episode 2

so even reading has a downside. it reminds me of the shadowy 'writer', an elusive figure forever scribbling away just out of eyeshot. purposeful, driven, indefatigible.

this image of the genius author (the 'intellectual' personified) constantly torments me, mocking my pitiful, irrelevant attempts to set down my own meagre thoughts on the passing of the 20th century and the forging of the 21st. as something of an obsessive reader, whose lifes small memories can be best conjured up or recalled by the books she was reading at the time and an amateur historian and erstwhile classicist, both my business and pleasure has always had books and their writers at its heart. writers loom large in my world and enjoy a privileged, somewhat hushed, awed status for me.

so i am forever returning to one eternal truth. to the idea that writing is somehow an innate or effortless practice, at least to actual, proper writers. that it is the natural preserve of the thinker, the intellectual, and best left to them.

and it cannot be learnt, cannot be forced but rather, is a need, an urge, a compulsion. that when all else has failed the author, the novelist, the commentator or poet in their paltry life, at least there is the act of writing, of setting it all down on a page and with it some personal meaning and self affirmation. a defiant two fingers to an indifferent world, a mark making that says i was here, i was real – i write therefore i am.

a writer is self evidently identified by the act of writing. it’s what a writer IS, is what defines them - its in their blood. in interviews, memoirs and biographies its always the same; clues scattered everywhere as to this one eternal truth - the pure unadulterated instinct to write. writers are simply always writing, always scribbling away, getting an idea down on paper to turn into something poetic, brutal, incisive, timeless. even as a child it seems any proper writer always knew they were a writer and spent their infancy constructing tales, telling stories to their teddies and entering writing competitions whilst barely out of nappies....beguiling and intimidating, deconstruct the life of any writer and its invariably there. the writing gene.

i was never like this. i will never be like this. i spent my childhood eating up the words of others, not creating them for you to eagerly devour at some future time. i didnt entertain my teddies or the family pet with tales of my own devising. i read instead. stripped moston library bare by the time i was ten - it was a small library i confess. worried the neighbours with my peculiar predilection for wandering through the streets armed with a tower of books and reading them whilst crossing the road or tucked up alone in some corner of the vast wastelands around my home. but never, not ever, did i attempt to emulate one. never had the urge. there was simply no need when so many literary giants were freely providing me with so much knowledge, pleasure and friendship.

so what exactly makes a non-writer attempt to write? and how does one proceed, learn the rules, practice the craft and perhaps improve or find a valid voice and not feel foolish in daring to inadvertently aspire to the pantheon of gods just described? join the fray so to speak.

where did this emerge from so late in life - and what on earth is the point? this is the million dollar question. far from identifying an urge or complusion to write, ive identified the opposite - a dread of writing, a fear of it. my instinct is if anything NOT to write. yet a visceral swell of self loathing and physical sickness begins to surge up if i havent tried to make sense of something forming in the corner of my brain by writing it down somewhere.

then it proceeds to claw away at me and make me nauseous. i avoid it, wrestle with it, research it and read about it, dive off into interesting culverts and cul de sacs, cry about it and sometimes finally commit something of it to paper. then i feel a surge of joy, merely i suspect that this self abusive cycle is spent - a surge of relief is more like it, of freedom and levity.

until the whole damn process starts all over again.

happy birthday manchester modernist society!

one year ago today i wrote about the brand new manchester modernist society on these pages.

i had just finished typing up our manifesto and had put the final flourishes to the fledgling website with a welcome call-out to fellow modernists near or far. our facebook page was a day or two old and had just three members; myself, young jack hale and my assistant maureen. we sat in cornerhouse cafe with our laptops and giggled at the arcane preposterousness of creating a society between us, a society that had no intention of being official or trailblazing or of marketing for members. simply an idea based on the gloriously amateur clubs of yesteryear, like the ramblers and the clarionettes or the even the suffragettes. a hotch potch of all the things that personally inspired us, with inclusivity and conviviality at their heart - plus a little civil agitation thrown in for good measure.

it was all a little tongue in cheek as little did we guess that anyone might be interested in our peculiar obsessions. we had no idea how to go about it or how it would work, we simply wanted to start doing something rather than endlessly talk about it. something that was in the playful spirit of the lovely loiterers, the specificity of the 20th century society and the art/subversion of apartment, my former home. something that combined actual live activity or exploration each and every month, with some solid but accessible information and signposting to further reading and specialists on matters of interest or topicality, and regular collaborations with other groups or disciplines to create new ways of celebrating or highlighting our 20th century cities.

our first tentative expedition was a trip to leeds to the New Monumentality exhibition & talk at the henry moore foundation, attended by just three of us. thank you alan and amanda for a great afternoon and for all your subsequent support and ideas.....

one year on we are busy evaluating our first art commission and programme of activities attended by about 90 people or more, a moonlit paean to the odeon attracting around 120 adventurous souls, plus the launch of our embryonic modernist map of manchester at salford's the hub, attended by 60 or so modernists, urbanists and map lovers.

here's to the coming year. whatever it brings, the heart of our remit remains the first thing we wrote one year ago today...

We want to explore the extraordinary story of the 20th century in the broadest possible sense, especially its everyday vernacular landscape, start conversations, bring people together, raise awareness and perhaps even make the occasional difference – but most of all to get out there and enjoy ourselves in it.

hope to see you enjoying the city with us sometime soon!

guilty pleasures and ingrained habits...

suddenly its the cusp of summer and there's been a lot going on in niblock towers to lead me astray.

too many ideas and scribblings have made it straight from my notebooks onto the pages of the manchester modernist society rather than here. in between researching the modernist map and getting it launched in time for MADF2010, commissioning the kiosks project for FutureEverything and installing it at MOSI and working alongside the MMDC/UHC on a moonlit presentation cum protest at the delapidated but dignified husk of the city's former odeon/paramount cinema there has been little time to organise my own thoughts and assemble them for the diary. and now in the brief gap before hurtling headlong into our autumn/winter projects i find i have a pile of abandoned jottings on topics that have taken my interest over the past few months and a bunch of faded cuttings that seem woefully out of date to quite know how to tackle.

so defeated have i felt at so obviously failing to keep up with my pointless doodlings about the city and its everyday splendour that i confess to burying my head in what i know best - the pages of a book or four.

the official laziness of the bank holiday, when everyone it seems lets out a sigh of relief, kicks off their shoes and takes it easy, has been the perfect opportunity to further avoid writing and instead indulge in a good old read of the pleasing stack of books littered around niblock towers. there is always a veritable tower block of books to hand - second hand finds, amazon bargains, plus those bought on various 3 for 2's at blackwells or waterstones - half read, waiting to be read or being leafed through sporadically. for at heart dear diary, as you know too well, miss niblock is a reader not a writer.

we all have a favourite genre, a guilty pleasure so at odds with the carefully constructed version of self we present to the world that it ranks almost as a vice, a sordid secret. books we feel might shock or disappoint those we want to impress. books that arent erudite, learned or important, that arent of literary or academic worth. but books nonetheless that we cant put down, that we read in one sitting til we've reluctantly turned the final page. holiday or convalescent books, books to enjoy with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit – the equivalent of an afternoon columbo or murder she wrote.

surely everyone has such a secret vice, the books we turn to when the world has let us down, when we need reassurance that some things are solid and dependable, that can cheer our gloomy spirits, be it celebrity biog, romance, chick lit, sci fi....

and it struck me as i picked up the ones most calling out to me from my wobbly book tower that my own filthy habit, my own dirty secret is crime. admittedly ‘smart’ waterstones/guardian endorsed fashionable euro-crime, such as wallander, dibdin, montalban, mosley, reverte perez and the rest. books with a certain following since the dramatic arrival of stieg larsson to the scene. suddenly crime is the hot topic of the chatterati.

but it wasnt always like this. my little secret wasnt always so acceptable, so trendy - ever since i can remember ive read one whodunnit (as they used to be called) to every half dozen serious or 'proper' books, both as a school girl and later as a bone fide classics student. and it was ever so since childhood. cant help it, i cut my teeth on the determinedly unfashionable, from nancy drew and the hardy boys, to sherlock holmes, wilkie collins, agatha chistie, ngaio marsh, margery allingham, dorothy l sayers, and even enid blyton's rockingdown mystery series.

and i cant hide them, these pecadilloes, never could. they remain on my shelves to reread whenever the going is tough and my brain needs a breather. they are rarely demanding, are packed with rules of the games and loaded with conventions, or cliches, depending on your point of view. really, each one is the same. a predictable formula.

so just what is it about them? and why am i not ashamed of this somewhat lurid obsession? because in their own way they are familiar and reassuring, offering a hint of (safe) excitement in the chase, but no actual danger. and no, for me its not the crime itself that interests, its the mystery and its solving, the making of order out of chaos.

i even love cluedo. its the only game i've ever had the inclination to play. sad but predictable.

anyway cant stop here chatting, im off to watch an episode of columbo....

save our ghostsigns....everyday frescoes of the people!

good to see jonathan glancey taking up the cause of those once ubiquitous faded signs adorning and decorating the sides of crumbling old buildings great and small, or ghostsigns as the History of Advertising Trust’s online archive evocatively call them. as he points out,

British towns and cities boasted a promiscuous palette of painted adverts like these. Standing on the tops of ladders, signwriters had a field day celebrating Bovril, Hovis, Boots and Nestle's Milk "Rich in Cream", along with Puck Matches, Bile Beans, Peterkin's Custard and any number of local crafts, trades and services.

Many signs survive, in ghostly form, on the sides of ageing buildings. I bet there's one near you. Ruthless modern development means that such "ghost signs" (as they are known by the History of Advertising Trust) are disappearing.

And yet they deserve to be saved. Here are urban folk-memories from an age before the triumph of the paste-up poster, cinema, magazine, telly and internet advertising.

back in September 2009 over at the manchester modernist society we ran a little homage to the peculiar beauty and cultural significance of these fast disappearing relics in our own city, prompted in part by the sudden passing of one particular local favourite, the much loved barkat sign on dale st, needlessly painted over by one assumes its new owners.

here’s what we said ....

Our post war murals are in effect treated no differently to the vernacular street signs adorning so much of the city like Barkat Knitwear, perhaps the boldest and most colourful example of the genre which lit up Dale St for god knows how long until being unceremoniously, criminally painted over by its new owner /property developer. Like our commissioned murals it brightened up the daily trudge to work, school or the shops come rain or shine, a landmark, an icon, an everyday fresco for the common man.

A quick perusal of flickr shows that the Barkat sign was until very recently a much loved fixture in the landscape, admired for its colour, exuberance & the rugged, battered textures of its surface; appreciated as an invaluable slice of social and cultural history; as much a historical artefact as anything dug up on an excavation, a window into the day to day life of the twentieth century city, as valuable as a wall of Latin graffiti in Pompeii. The Barkat sign straddled the boundary of Ancoats and the outer edge of Northern quarter, once the heart of the textile, food and commercial district, a bustling labyrinth of workshops, showrooms and factories. These buildings – their sides, facades, doorframes - were literally, physically, billboards for products, signposts and adverts in an era before PR and marketing departments, television ads or internet publicity campaigns. Sign writers were skilled artists and their work was detailed, meticulous and in great demand. Though the industries declined and the businesses disappeared their memories remained, faded peeling apparitions, relics and remnants of former glories.

And whilst they share many of the attributes of post war murals, the fragility of their materials, their commercial nature and inherent anonymity renders them even more vulnerable to the threat of regeneration, demolition or eradication. From modest pieces such as the Barkat to lavishly painted adverts promoting everything from universal products to specific, local services and businesses, they are both visual treasures and social/cultural documents, multiple narratives of the city past and present enriching the built environment.

Perhaps the time has come not only to challenge our notions of what art is but to broaden the boundaries of what constitutes the archaeological object. Every time we paint over, dismantle or jet clean one of these images we erase a crucial element of the fabric of the city, a little bit more of our history and yet more of our archaeological record, the story of ourselves. Furthermore, Bristol council’s decision to consult the local population on the fate of graffiti art covering the walls of its city buildings demonstrates the beginnings of a welcome reassessment of the ‘canon’, one that reflects and acknowledges the value and importance of art and design in the public realm, beyond that which is traditional or officially sanctioned. Perhaps it’s also time to include an anonymous oeuvre that paved the way for the banksys of today. These quotidian frescoes embody art, social document and historical artefact. If we can accept graffiti as art then why not sign writing and graphic design?

Reimagined as a vast open air Tate Modern minus the exhibition fee and restrictive opening hours, bursting with paintings, murals, sculpture and pop art from every era, the city becomes a living canvas, a vibrant and thought provoking backdrop to our everyday lives, reflecting like all major collections, media and styles of every period. But this is a collection that boasts artwork from the famous to the unknown, reflecting the times and cultures of the changing city, always thought provoking, visually stimulating and a pleasure to visit and inhabit.

RIP - barkat door sign, needlessly erased, 2009

How property development became the new punk....

owen hatherley’s ideas have long found favour on these pages and i often return to his writings for inspiration and intimidation. in yesterday's guardian podcast he turns his unflinching gaze onto our own fair city and as usual hits the nail on the head.

its a brilliant piece. exploring the impact of architecture on manchester’s cultural scene, he elucidates what some of us have been trying to suggest for the last decade to a largely disinterested citizenry, in thrall with the all pervading orthodoxy of the reigning post bomb narrative; that of the great entrepreneurial victorian city reborn triumphantly to the present day. this mythology of the ‘original modern’ city, brashly beguiling with its relentless self aggrandising swagger, has successfully airbrushed out a whole century and the experiences of the people in it.

to many of us still living outside the shiny glass and steel bubble of the regenerated centre, in the ordinary fragmented spaces not yet given the urban splash treatment, hatherley’s thesis is nothing new, but to hear it boldly enunciated is still something of a novelty. inevitably hatherleys reading will go down like a lead balloon to those wedded to the hollow sham that is spinningfields and new islington, vulgar neo-ruins in waiting to the false idols of the free market economy.

but just what did become of the 20th century city, the urban topography of postwar manchester in particular? the idea that prior to ’96, the entire city was a dismal shithole - and by extension, the lives and experiences of all who inhabited it - has held sway, unchallenged, for far too long. the grand civic aspirations and modernist landscape envisaged as a new utopia replacing squalid unsanitary slum dwellings, seen so clearly in recent excavations over on dantzic street, were sold off, obliterated and missed by no-one. as hatherley explains,

this is the narrative about modernist architecture that exists in numerous reminiscences and histories – we loved it at first, in the ’60s, then we realised how appalling it was, so we knocked them down and rebuilt simulations of the old streets instead.

in manchester, after the ira bomb of 1996 and before the 2008 financial crash, property development became the new punk rock...a post-rave urban growth coalition of old punks, ravers, developers and new labour mandarins took control of the city, transformed it into Britain’s regeneration flagship, done in the name of a city that created joy division, factory records and the hacienda, wiping out as much of the 60’s city they took inspiration from as they possibly could, in an orgy of demolition and rebuilding.

nowadays, when manchester is profiled and reminisced over, its most often than not from a narrative which leaps from the victorian city of manchester liberalism, the unrestrained capitalism much loved by thatcherites, to the city recreated and regenerated after the bomb. its old entrepreneurs built the mills where workers toiled 12 hour days and died before they were 40, and the new entrepreneurs sell the same mills to young urban professionals as luxury housing, with rooms half the size of the old council flats. the poverty of 19th century manchester and the inequalities of today are effaced whilst in between is a no man’s land – except that now, after the recession, these empty spaces are back and the estates of ancoats left in ruins after failed regeneration schemes.

is the post bomb deal with the devil finally beginning to crack? as the fissures begin to appear in first of the great glass shards of 'new' manchester, collective amnesia is no longer the order of the day...

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launched in july 2009, Loops is a new journal of music writing; a promising urbanist marriage between publishers Faber and Faber and Domino Records. its second edition is fresh out....im nipping out to buy an issue immediately. it sounds right up my high rise....

the train now departing platform 12…

long before the instant gratification of cheap airlines, the railway station was the epitome of glamour and modernity, gateway to far off lands, symbol of the triumphant submission of time and space to a new metropolitan world order.

accordingly the railway was a central motif on the silver screen, a rumbling cathedral to sophisticated urbanity, to the relentless efficiency of the metropolis, all whirring pistons, bustling smoky platforms, colossal clocks and the clackety clack of the destination boards, site of passionate trysts, clandestine assignations and mysterious intrigue. from dr zhivago to some like it hot, the lady vanishes and brief encounters, the railway has long evoked both the romance and menace of the urban experience.

in contemporary life this ubiquity might have receded but its nostalgic hold on our collective imagination is reaffirmed in the harry potter franchise. who hasn’t secretly looked out for platform 9¾ when they’ve passed through kings cross? or at least wished it might be possible? in our hearts we all long to be whisked away on a journey to a far off world, real or imaginary…..

as you might recall, dear reader, brunswick sits in the crook of the city’s two giant causeways, the mancunian way and piccadilly station, the latter prime gateway to the north west since its opening in 1842. my daily routine is consequently dominated by travel, speed and noise; other people’s schedules form the backdrop to my life and mundane existence. and whilst i could walk around the station in my customary expeditions across town, i invariably prefer to walk through it, relishing the muffled tannoy announcements, basking in the hustle and bustle of commuters, day trippers and holiday makers and its tantalizing glimpses into the lives of so many strangers.

so it was only natural that i should gladly accept an invitation to a journey with a difference departing at 6.30pm on march 4 from platform 12…

‘night and day’ is a photographic celebration of the musical footprint of the city by jan chlebik, a lyrical, poetic text by phil griffin and musical annotation by guy garvey; the elbow frontman’s observation that the halle orchestra was in fact the first manchester band being the springboard for this temporary exhibition.

chlebik’s raw and seemingly unassuming depictions, shorn of artifice, special lighting or crafty photoshopping, perfectly captures the grimy, unlikely and often uninviting geography of the musical landscape of the city and reawakens the excitement of hunting out a favourite band down some dingy alley or improbable spot in the days before purpose built arenas held sway. in these wistful images, stripped of the glamorous paraphernalia that follows the cult of the musician, the venue becomes a metaphor or receptacle; a memory box or more literally a musical box ingrained with a unique archive of precious memories and seminal encounters, reverberating with the soundtracks to a multitude of lives, connecting otherwise disparate generations and musical tastes across time and space. and all the while word wizard phil griffin conjures up a truly melodious topography casting music as ‘city cement’ where ‘the city is stage, and performed, set, script and score’, its notes saturated into the very masonry of the buildings.

and ‘off the plinth’, outside the usual gallery confines, the long walk along platform 12 becomes the ideal frame for accompanying our guides headlong, pied piper-like, into the stratigraphy of the city on an acoustic ride through the free trade hall, via the opera house, the ritz and bridgewater hall, calling at the band on the wall, the roadhouse, night and day and the nearby star and garter, which the taller amongst us (like the nearly 7ft tall mr haslam) could just about spy on his tippy toes.

of course, this musical tour includes the obligatory hacienda and younger sibling the boardwalk but this is no mere harping to factory mythologizing or madchester glories but a thoughtful tribute to a long standing love affair which outlives temporal fads and fashions, with room for alternate itineraries such as the twisted wheel, the jolly angler and the short lived hardrock, whose residues seep into gutters and along drain pipes and remnants still drift on the breeze faintly audible to the odd soul stepping out for a smoke on the night air outside such johnny-come-latelies as the warehouse project or deaf institute.

this ‘city for fagins boys and bar room bores and ladies of the night’ drew me back into half forgotten dives such the international, fagins or the desolate b&q car park where once ziggy stardust played guitar amidst the ghosts of a former bowling alley, or debbie harry’s vocals might still be detected besides the hurly burly of the turkish cheese counter...

so if you find yourself at piccadilly station be sure to make your way to platform 12. who knows where this trip might take you....

snow, a transformative cartography

cartography (in greek chartis = map and graphein = write) is the study and practice of making geographical maps. combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively

a transformative cartography reimagines the map not as fixed or permanent but fluid and multi layered

………………………………….

the snow continued.

the moon, a cutlass slash in an ink-black sky, glittered over an icebitten brunswick more brothers grimm storyboard than inner city estate; the mancunian way a sinuous white river, cars drifting silently by; the graveyard usually windswept and forlorn now a byronesque ruin; common or garden urban decay transformed into fields of arctic wilderness, desultory barbed wire fences an armoury of stalactite daggers.

in the days that followed the city held its breath and stayed indoors, venturing out for many merely a tiresome battle with nature. for others it was an adventure playground, a winter wonderland of impromptu opportunities to lark about, all snowball fights, elaborate snow constructions and spontaneous strolls. cul de sacs became mini ice rinks and parks aspen ski slopes, with tea trays, summer inflatables and handy ‘for sale’ signs reinvented as sledges, snowboards and toboggans.

each snowfall seemed to signpost yet more undetected enthusiasms, whimsies and idiosyncrasies, including a man sauntering through hulme, large parakeet on shoulder; a lone skier gliding effortlessly on long poles towards ardwick green; a cheeky robin red breast perched on the carotted nose of a jolly snowman in umist; a long legged heron picking its way across the mancunian way revetment and onwards through the underpass; a gaggle of birdwatchers huddled in heaton park snapping squirrels, robins, jays and chaffinches against a picture perfect alpine scene; a daisy chain of enthusiastic tobogganers hurtling down blackley golf course connected only by one another’s jackets and a string of carrier bags…

but as the days progressed and the novelty of narnia became just a slippery day to day normality, each new delivery of snow mapped another brunswick – more workaday but equally fascinating - a world of otherwise intangible habits, gestures, rituals and routine suddenly exposed, a noisy, visually arresting tapestry of footprints capturing the habitually elusive and ephemeral; a daily trail of routes and journeys, of dog walking and jay walking, of exuberant delight in treading fresh snow versus a pedantic desire to retain virgin crispness.

an ephemeral archaeology of everyday activity as fragile as bare feet in sand washed away by the incoming tide….

in this cacophony of footprints a secret life of brunswick and its inhabitants is disclosed.

far from dominating the landscape as we like to think, in reality we share our space with other populations, their daily routines etched intaglio style into the snow; a world with squirrels and foxes as prevalent as pets, all busy navigating our alleys and ginnels, walking through our playgrounds and nosying in back gardens, getting on with lives every bit as intricate as our own; a world where pigeons prefer to walk up footbridges than fly over them and cats make their way across car parks from bonnet to bonnet rather than sidle around or beneath them; of blackbirds, wagtails and sparrows as frequent as magpies, and where frozen canals testify to a bustling thoroughfare of ducks, geese, coots, swans and passing seasonal visitors.

in his ‘practices of everyday life’ de certeau developed a new vocabulary for differentiating space and place where place is the fixed, objective order of things and space how we deal with spatiality as a ‘practiced place’. extending this analogy to mapping and touring, maps can be read as ‘frozen’ representations depicting environments as unchangeable and monumental, entirely at odds with the personal, animated way people actually navigate space in their daily lives. once upon a time mapping was simply a record of where we had been and how we got there; itineraries essentially, with traces of the describers still visible. but over time these maps have become ever more fixed and abstract and the describers (ourselves) have disappeared completely.

for de certeau our everyday activities animate place - civilian tactics in a battle to reclaim our place in the grandiose isolating narrative of the planned city. and in each fresh flurry of snow our footprints map out this quotidian animation of place, outlining the itineraries of the past 24 hours or less – those habitual, unnoticed, intangible traces doomed to remain undetectable in a future archaeological record.

here vividly displayed in the snow is de certeau’s ‘practiced place’, each mark a conversation or visual eavesdropping. some are spontaneous, a snapshot capturing the exuberance of unselfconscious playfulness, an unbridled celebration of the season, others more deliberate declarations or social messages, but mainly they are just business as usual, mundane minutiae of our day to day lives. whilst the ever present urban graffiti and occasional vandalism cements the typical clichés of the inner city, these temporary traces tell another story, less well told, their sheer number and proliferation eloquently describing a population that is altogether more convivial and productive than can normally be discerned, a cartography of our everyday world, as told by the people who inhabit it. a map animated and enlivened by our intricate, intertwining journeys, just as de certeau imagined; its describers (ourselves) at last, if only briefly, reinstated.

snow, a transformative practice

“it was growing darker every minute and with the snowflakes swirling all around him he could hardly see three feet ahead... everything was perfectly still as if he were the only living creature.” Edmund discovers Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe…

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the night the ice queen transformed brunswick it had seemed an ordinary night much like any other…

at first a gentle flurry of soft white flakes, just enough to glaze the roof tops, before long a thick blanket strewn across the mancunian way, reducing the clamour of the traffic hurtling past my window to a whisper, as though cocooned in a deep shag pile carpet. looking back, maybe the moon loomed a little lower that night; more luminous, almost blue, against a bright, inky sky. but that was all.

later, much later, awakened by an unaccustomed silence deafening my motorway perch, i wandered on to my balcony into a whirling life-size snow-globe. delighted, i reminded myself that this would all be gone by morning, this being manchester not new york, and after a brief foray downstairs to frolic in the magic dust, i reluctantly trotted back to bed and the deep contented sleep of a child exhausted by an unexpected christmas eve snowfall.

but when morning came, it had not melted away.
far from it…

looking out from my balcony, instead of the usual bold skyline and rich textures of the city, was nothing.

no colour, no buildings, no sound. no city.
only white.

only snowflakes. a softly whirling all obliterating snow storm.

nothing stirred, not even the motorway; now a silent river of white, a natural phenomenon, the urban cacophony of lights, noise, speed, of urban life, extinct, extinguished, bleached out.

only brunswick, my dragon-guarded, moated camelot, frozen and stilled…

24 hours of snow might seem something of a non event to the rest of you but in this city it is momentous, almost unheard of; unnatural. and should snow fall, the perpetual mancunian dampitude (if i might coin a phrase) ensures that it rarely sticks, melting away on impact.

this therefore was an event of magnitude.

narnia had come to brunswick and transformed everything - my neighbourhood, and as it transpired, the whole city, the entire nation.

and with it we too, its citizens, were transformed.

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as the district gradually awoke to this new world, we ventured out, encased in wellies, woolies and waterproofs, to wonder at the strange conditions before embarking on our usual day. but this was no usual day...

before long, gradually accepting that cars were frozen, roads outside inaccessible and that clearing a path through the snow was a losing battle, the entire community gave up and came out to participate in a spontaneous gesture of playfulness and jollity.

...snow was scooped up, snowballs were thrown, snowmen appeared on every corner, and neighbours joined forces in our mini squares to create entire snow-families complete with domestic pets and various dwellings, from tower blocks to giant igloos. even a medieval castle was constructed by a particularly enthusiastic group using summer buckets and spades. brunswick, from being a monotone concrete inner city cliché was now a lively public arena, a convivial space, an outdoor art gallery where everyone was at once artist, curator, audience and spectator. soon cameras and iphones were clicking, ideas, suggestions and assistance offered and accepted, as we all embarked on impromptu walkabouts to examine the fruits of our collective labour - social conventions overturned, shyness overcome, conversations struck up, experiences shared.

intriguing differences could be detected across the assorted corners of our enclave – local chinese families joined together to make snow pigs and gigantic kitties, native mancunians tended towards the 'traditional' snowman (carrots for noses and twigs for arms) complete with woolly hats and scarves, whilst overseas students from nearby umist adorned their creations with jaunty sunglasses and straw hats, as if ready to board a plane for warmer climes. across the flyover all saints art students indulged in fantastical creatures from far off worlds and other dimensions, dragons complete with ridged tails, cherubs and gargoyles with wings and crested plumes; and sackville park sparkled, a vision in fairies, angels and cheeky fig leaved adam & eves, christmas tinsel, baubles and decorations making an earlier than scheduled reappearance.

narnia took us unawares, illuminating traces normally invisible to the naked eye and casual observer, permitting us to be other than our everyday selves, revealing a more lighthearted, creative, mischievous, unselfconscious citizenry than is usually apparent.

going underground

adventure, wrote alexandra louise eugenie marie david-neel (24oct 1868-8sept 1969), a habitual peregrinist and determined free spirit who performed for many years with a travelling opera company as 'mademoiselle myrial' before trekking through the tibetan highlands and living as a hermit for 2 years in the himalayas, is my only reason for living…

the sorry disappointment of manchester’s ‘big’ new years eve merely succeeded in cementing my seasonal ennui with a sulk of schoolgirl proportions, so as the world outside seemed to pull itself together and embrace 2010, i simply cocooned myself deeper into old habits wishing, not for the first time since that unexpected release from my 70 year hermitude, that i was back in the rather more exciting past where i belong.

clearly what was needed was a little adventure, bluestocking style, to lift the spirits.

but where to find it? in my day adventure was to be found way across the globe in far flung and ‘exotic’ lands under fiendishly adverse conditions, but as you might recall dear journal, my project since arriving unexpectedly into this decidedly peculiar new century, has been to adapt this tradition into an exploration of the quotidian world around me, to find, as those angels of anarchy so sublimely suggested, the extraordinary in the everyday.

as every flaneur knows, all you need is the imagination to see it, and in manchester something never fails to pop up and rekindle ones jaded affection and inspiration right in the nick of time. adventure it seems can simply drop into your lap - or inbox…

so it was that the 2nd January saw me sloshing my way towards the victoria station map, wrapped up warm, sensibly shod and armed with a sturdy torch as tantalisingly instructed in my invitation to attend an underground expedition. an expedition into the dark, swirling underbelly of the city, courtesy of new manchester walks, one of the plethora of guided walk companies that have recently sprung up all over the city. flaneuring it seems is now quite a la mode!

and despite the inclement weather – damp and drizzly prior to the current ‘big freeze’ of 2010 – there were at least 35 people loitering with intent to ‘urban ex-lite’, excited by the rare opportunity to discover some of the hidden spaces lying beneath our feet, a world of abandoned air raid shelters, cold war nuclear bunkers, unrealised tube systems, forgotten coal mines and renegade priests hidey holes. manchester is a warren of unexplored tunnels, each with a fascinating story to tell and it transpires, given the popularity of this walk and the enthusiastic clamour to attend the periodic talks by underground expert keith warrender, an army of frustrated devotees eager to read more and witness it for themselves.

so we set off, a crocodile of strangers united by a palpable whiff of childlike excitement bordering on giddiness, whipped up expertly by our affable guide, mr glinert of manchester compendium fame.

mr glinert drops arcane facts and tantalizing nuggets aplenty as he leads us pied piper-like from location to location and on to our subterranean goal and this, combined with his years as a london tour guide, creates a peculiar phenomenon, replacing the city we take for granted in our everyday experience of it, with an excursion, an away-day. suddenly we are transformed into tourists of our own city, regarding it as wide eyed and curiously as we might a trip to the roman catacombs or a london underground tube tour, reminding us that the city is a limitless treasure, an endless repository interwoven with thrilling yarns, narratives of lives past and present, great and small; a vernacular bayeux tapestry into which we constantly weave our own stories as we go about our daily existence.

there’s every chance that this will become a regular tour, perhaps with more access to the city beneath our feet gradually becoming available. so i won’t say too much. most of the walk was overground, as entry to many of manchester's tantalizing secret spaces or forgotten places remain prohibited, such as the US commissioned atomic bunkers or the regional government hq visited and slept in by winston churchill.

the access we did get was both reward and enticement for more of the same: the images so familiar from warrender’s books and 'reality hack', the recent urbis exhibition, only the tip of the iceberg to the actuality of clattering down the cold metal rungs of the spiral staircase leading at last into the cavernous gloom of the manchester and salford junction canal.

there, beneath the great northern warehouse, abandoned in 1938 and converted into use as an air raid shelter during ww2, is an engineering feat par excellence, an underground cathedral or manmade blue john mine, complete with impressive stalactites, soaring height competing with lurking, ever present claustrophobia. here, and along its crumbling tunnels and uneven footholds, our torches and lanterns barely illuminate the inky blackness making each twist and turn a lone voyage of discovery despite one’s shadowy companions. it is an exhilarating, all too brief glimpse into a collision of narratives, one of victorian inventiveness, endeavour and splendour; another of a shanty town, a squalid place of resilience, fear and cooped up boredom, the rows of makeshift toilet blocks, wardens lookouts and prohibitive instructions still clinging to damp walls telling an evocative story that could easily transplant to any time and many situations.

what was obvious from the numbers that happily attended a not well advertised event on a dreary day in january and the tangible satisfaction of the group even as we were led from one inaccessible tunnel to another was that there is an appetite for the city beyond what is habitually offered to us, that we crave more from the powers that be than endless shopping facilities, glitzy hotels and windswept glass fronted business graveyards. that the story of architecture and the urban environment is more than grand palaces, wide boulevards and lofty skyscrapers and that what lies beneath us is a revealing, thrilling and often poignant parallel history.

at a fiver a time, commercial guided walks aren’t something i’d usually recommend, preferring to encourage the re/discovery of the city for oneself or by finding a group of like minded loiterers to play with, but given that these delicious and intriguing tales of the city are usually inaccessible i highly recommend you get your torch and sturdy boots ready and make your way to the victoria station map just as soon as a next tour is announced

…..and do watch out for a sprightly 148 year old lurking about at the back.

much ado about nothing

it’s the new year and not just any new year, no - it’s a whole new decade, perhaps the real start to the 21st century after the rehearsal ‘noughties’ or whatever we finally decided to call them. so it’s officially a big deal and i can’t shake off the nagging suspicion that i should really have seen it in ‘in style’, in the grand manner with a flourish; on an exotic expedition atop some far flung corner of the world; surrounded by glamorous friends counting down to midnight with champagne and caviar on renard’s daring dirigible; or ensconced in a cosy berth on the orient express, speeding through a succession of windswept lupine steeped vistas, Russian samovar in hand - whimsies i have partaken of aplenty in days now long gone, dear diary believe me, in years with far less portentous baggage attached….

instead, after a week of lounging about in my jimjams happily immersed in the pile of books that santa generously deposited on my balcony (no chimney in niblock towers you see, but he’s a resourceful fellow mr claus...), eating buttery toasted pannetone for breakfast, lunch and supper, i find myself reluctantly shoehorned out of my nest to usher in the new decade with a thousand drunken revelers for a meagre ten minute firework display provided not by the grandees of the city council but (witness a stern dressing down by the manchester evening news in past years!) by the owners of the big wheel. such are the tediously entrepreneurial ways of the twenty-first century commodified city.

and so it was that we gathered somewhat prosaically not in the victorian extravagance of waterhouse’s fine grade I listed civic gesture and the grand sweep of its historic square, ushering in the new year to the sonorous chime of the town hall clock presided over by our cheeky besequined santa and the imperious gaze of old prince albert. no, it remained resolutely darkened and not amused and we were herded unceremoniously into the beleaguered remnants of that oh so nineties experiment, exchange square, heart of the so called millennium quarter, reduced within a few short years from confident public plaza/ cultural space to inglorious cluttered crevice, crushed under the combined weight of endless health and safety obstacles and relentless commercialized encumbrances. where once there was the makings of a cosmopolitan continental square fit for impromptu gatherings, loiterings, picnics, festivals, community displays and temporary exhibitions, markets and seasonal merrymakings, is now a confusion of bollards, instructions, prohibitions and furniture, televisual bombardments and the obligatory big wheel, the waltzer of the 21st century. none of which lends the requisite air of glamour or grandeur to the first day of the future, the start of the new millennium proper, taken for granted in other great cities of the type that manchester believes itself to be, if we are to heed the self important declarations of the ubiquitous cllr pat carney.

in short, whilst grateful to the combined efforts of the lib dems, the m.e.n and the owners of the big wheel for providing some semblance of a convivial open air event, the result was a little desultory. whilst other cities effortlessly and with much panache manage free concerts, cavalcades and carnivals complete with fire eaters, jugglers, lone pipers, brass bands, lantern processions and fire breathing parades, proudly officiated by lord mayor or celebrity, local radio and tv stations providing live satellite link ups on big screens to unlikely twinned towns, we cobbled together a cheap sound system blaring a party-mix tape of old ibiza tunes, culminating in a lacklustre dj-style countdown and roughly 7 minutes of impressive enough but barely coordinated pyrotechnics from the top of the arndale centre. (which with my mms hat on was a noble modernist coming of age for the much despised brutalist landmark..! so thats one accidental point in the events favour...)

meanwhile just around the corner chethams brought some unexpected dignity to the occasion with a roof top midnight bugler regaling a darkened and forlorn urbis with the plaintive strains of auld lang syne. it was lovely and an untapped resource for a proper hogmanay 2011....

then as quickly as it started, it was over; printwork clubbers rushed back to their various shenanigans whilst the rest of us, silver surfers, families, excited toddlers who’d stayed up specially and assorted overseas visitors wandered back to our respective homes slightly bewildered only to switch on the tv and watch other cities do it properly!

it seems to have become something of a niblockian tradition to kick off the new year with a complaint about civic pride, community spirit and lack of public amenities and it gives me no joy to return to this well worn theme as we look the shiny new decade in the eye...

….the future it turns out is threatening to be something of a damp squib.

lonelady - a study in perversity

another proud moment for modern bluestockings, as one of our own unleashes her twisted genius on to the world....

lonelady of the brunswick chapter releases the debut album Nerve Up on warp records in february 2010. her first single is available now to buy or download. listen to immaterial here and read paul morley’s reaction....

meanwhile my young assistant maureen ward shares her thoughts on the making of the album and the creation of the studio in ancoats that she helped build for the occasion, a place they habitually referred to as the cell...

lonelady - a study in perversity.

ancoats. a rotting factory on the rochdale canal. winter 2008.

the sickly bouquet of bruised walls, a deep topography of powdery blown paint deposits, decoration transformed into excavation, flemish pieta pantones, air flecked with a million nameless swirling spores, conversation suspended in shards of icicles. rivulets of condensation trickle down a splintered window...

what little view there is through the tiny panes of shattered glass is defiantly none post-bomb manchester; a bricked up council estate awaiting the dubious pleasures of urban renewal, rows of gas canisters stock piled for some unnamed apocryphal horror behind barbed wire, the lurid mural of a ladies wrestling club hovering threateningly above the litter strewn canal, the drifting huddles of swans and geese the only witness to our unremitting foolishness - the gargantuan task of forging a homemade recording studio in a crumbling corner of a dilapidated mill, hewn from the tattered remnants of whatever mangled artefacts were to hand along the canal or dragged from beneath the brooding skeletal hulk of the resident gasometer...

...a perversely self imposed prison cell.

the daily trudge along the tow path, physically, symbolically turning our backs on the spectacle of the glossy cityscape. we ponder the contradictions of a city totally enamoured of its own mythologies yet woefully blind, nonchalant to the vicissitudes of these idealised landscapes - defiant birthplace of industrial and technological revolution, its non conformist radicalism the engine of social change and reform, yet equally home to unbridled entrepreneurialism, ostentation and rampant capitalism; two sides of the same coin perhaps. this schizophrenia, this contradiction is what makes the city what it is, is its maddening, fundamental nature...

like all Mancunians they were in a state of constant irritation that so much went on in the capital, whereas anyone could see that Manchester was in every way superior. george melly

i would like to live in Manchester. the transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. mark twain

two portraits, two visions; one brash, entrepreneurial, in thrall to bright sparkly distractions - harvey nicks, selfridges, labels, gadgetry, cheryl cole, sky bar, panacea, fuck me heels on deansgate – tawdry symbols of wealth, status and street savvy; the other dark, monochrome, gothic, moody, motorways, satanic mills, cemetery gates and angel meadows, dead pop stars and disappeared night clubs….

brunswick. a north facing tower block window. winter 2009.

LL on my laptop in my high rise crow’s nest, i am teleported back to ancoats in the depths of winter, scrubbed, swabbed down, purple chilblained fingers warmed only by a daily pot noodle or huddled over a meagre flask of coffee; making something out of nothing, not so much searching for the light in the pouring rain as revelling in the perversity of its inhospitable barren beauty.

LL strips back the cheap veneer of glass and tinfoil, of ambition and lies, a self appointed sonic archaeologist digging away, peeling back layer after layer of suppressed topography until she has uncovered, recovered the brittle, workaday ordinariness of a manchester that has been trampled, buried and renovated until it is unrecognisable. a painful vulnerable process more root canal work than excavation, stripping away not only thirty years of expensive cosmetic surgery but exposing raw, ragged memories, ideals and nerves now wriggling, bare, helpless; the dove-grey patina of the old city that lurks beneath. a new kind of beauty is revealed, alive with the rich hues of slate and mauve we’ve been persuaded to outgrow, discouraged from appreciating.

immaterial tingles with the anticipation of youth, harking back to dreamy days when every moment was an adventure, every new dawn a promise; melancholia with a dash of optimism

repulsion jabs through my fingers as i type, its jagged brittleness emphasised by the hopeless inadequacy of what passes for my speakers.

marble twists relentlessly into my wizened heart with the shards of its serrated melancholy, a paean to every pang of suppressed remorse that lies hidden & crusted over after a lifetime of grown up composure.

nerve up is a paradox of hollow sumptuousness, its sparse eerie spaces ringing with a spiky anti-sexiness that’s riddled with erotically charged danger.

music is as personal as a favourite book. it conjures up longings, memories, emotions both welcome and best left alone. it takes us effortlessly to times, people and places we’ve cherished, forgotten or neglected. lonelady pickles out a manchester we seldom choose to revisit. she is harsh, discordant, uncompromising, imperious, unconcerned with approval, a study in perversity - stripped of those endless makeovers and gaudy recladding all that is best about the city is laid bare, if it could only be persuaded to stop dressing up like a whores boudoir, available for hire 24/7 in its desperate need for national and international endorsement.

where once we were first, modern and original, we are now corporate, branded, lapping up those international names that grace our high street, more sheep than shepherd, more herd than innovators.

LL claws at our subconscious, scrapes back our pretentions, the hollow sumptuousness of her prison cell a new route to our lost dignity.