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.

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....

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…

**************************

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.

**********************

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.

food for the soul - angels of anarchy at manchester city art gallery

angels of anarchy opened to national reviews at the city gallery at the end of september. there was a glamorous sounding preview attended by most of manchester (except myself as usual - always the last to know...) plus the irrepressible jeanette winterson for good measure. everyone seemed to have been there or at least be talking about it....

so far so usual. its not too often that a gallery gives its space over to an all female perspective and when it does it can garner as much criticism as praise. so i was intrigued by the premise. but without the invitation to submit a review of the exhibition to a strict deadline, im still not sure i would have attended - partly because of the price tag, partly because of the subject matter and partly i have to confess because im rarely excited by the city art gallery.

but a couple of things drew me there....the opportunity to find out more about the intriguing leonora carrington, a personal favourite of mine, and curiosity to see what this new lens, this new way of looking at an easily stereotyped art movement, might reveal: a counter balance to the whitworth's subversive spaces show earlier in the year, which similarly debunked myths and preconceptions, but from a totally different perspective. unlike angels of anarchy the whitworth show toured and can still be seen at the Sainsbury Centre UEA, Norwich, 29 Sep-13 Dec.

writing for a deadline and with word contraints is rather different than pootling about in a corner of cyberspace, chattering to yourself about whatever arcane topic takes your fancy, and predictably i found the task difficult. im not sure that what eventually emerged was an actual art review - im not an art critic, just a citizen with an interest in piecing together some insight into recent and contemporary culture from the many creative outputs available to me, but together with the other reviews posted up by more experienced art reviewers and bloggers, a peruse of the angels of anarchy website should hopefully inspire you to take a trip over to the city art gallery and make up your own mind...

whatever your perspective, this is a landmark exibition, and together with the whitty's subversive spaces is an unmissable opportunity to catch first hand the results of the usually invisible world of the academic researcher in the fields of visual culture and history of art. their painstaking work, four years or so in the making, has given this old bluestocking, at least, much food for thought.

angels of anarchy is showing at MAG until 10 january 2010. visit their dedicated website for information, a programme of surrealist events and activities, and a whole host of opinions and reviews, including my own...

Bluestocking Salon: Regeneration & The Public Realm

so, immediately after thursday’s Evening of Modernist Delights, a mini cavalcade of brunswick bluestockings and i travelled to london to participate in TINAG. my contributionwas billed rather grandly as a

‘Blue Stocking Salon: Regeneration & The Public Realm: an informal tea and conversation on the theme of contemporary urban renewal and its aftermath; introduction to walks and research into the Castlefield Urban Heritage Park and Manchester...’

tinag is a rather marvellous endeavour. a quick peruse of its website rewards with this summary: This Is Not A Gateway {TINAG} is a voluntary organisation that creates arenas/platforms for those whose point of reference is the city. Working across disciplines, TINAG encourages inter-cultural dialogue and rigorous production through four strands...

armed with a sturdy teapot, a 3 tiered cake-stand and my trusty bluestockings, off i set to meet and make friends with an army of international urbanists, activists and dreamers. my afternoon tea was planned for the last afternoon, an attempt to bring something of the informality of the bluestocking circle to the present day, an opportunity to reflect on issues raised during the festival. my hope was that killing castlefield, a project and series of walks along the leeds – liverpool canal for last summer’s artranspennine08, might provide a suitable backdrop and case study for a more general reflection on urban regeneration and its legacies.

and hanbury hall, a disused huguenot church hall in the heart of spitalfields, turned out to be the perfect setting - spruced up and painted by the tinag team it turned into an ideal hub for a thoroughly modern salon, just the place where a likeminded group might meet over tea and cake to chat and exchange ideas and information on a particular topical theme.

the hall was the bustling heart of the festival, filled morning to night with a series of talks, discussions and armchair sessions, whilst the tea shop provided the perfect spot to take in the exhibitions, films and project launches or rest a while and plan what to see next. over the weekend i settled there often to listen, watch, read and make friends. perhaps my favourite encounter was with the bulgarian photographer Nikola Mihov ‘s mother, a poet who last visited Britain in 1973 enjoying the opportunity for a whistlestop tour of the south of England with her coterie of young post-socialist era born urbanistas, the TRACE project team. like her i was captivated by the enthusiasm, energy, insights and perspectives emanating from this veritable hub of global urbanism.

finally the time came for my own session. tea was brewed, cakes and biscuits sliced and my little pamphlets scattered on armchairs and tables. gradually the space filled up and around thirty guests settled in whilst a slideshow of snapshots of castlefield and the surrounding waterfronts was projected on screen to illustrate twenty years of manchesters urban redevelopment.

to kick start proceedings i offered a brief resume of some of the festival themes, ideas and discussions that might resonate around the room and spark off conversation. and the attendees, hailing from birmingham, london, belgium, germany, bulgaria, sweden and far flung perth swiftly set the agenda, with conversation ranging across general and specific experiences of the processes and consequences of social housing renewal projects, how they affect what it means to be community and how we at grass roots level might influence and shape the city as it continues to grow and change. what we all seemed to agree on was that present and past dominant models haven’t proved satisfactory, that the ever growing schism between social and private housing is extremely inadequate and that there is a growing apprehension and tension around the ideal and future of shared public space and the public realm.

and afterwards as i packed away my tea set and said my goodbyes to this inspiring room of urbanists, activists, citizens and residents of the 21st century i was struck by how similar our experiences are no matter where we hail from and despite ostensible differences; that there is an urgency to addressing how we live in cities, who creates them, who they are for and how we can continue to create conversations and grow strength from each other’s experiences, to ensure that our cities are truly spaces for all, not merely a privileged few.

on a personal note, it renewed my faith in face to face conversation and forums for discussion and i am hesitantly looking forward to attempting to create a regular manchester salon or tea group where we too can share thoughts, ideas and concerns and get to know each other ‘off-line’…watch this space!!

Post script: For anyone with the strength to carry on reading, here’s a transcript of my introduction to the session:

the images up on screen are a snap shot, a photo album of a series of journeys exploring castlefield urban heritage park and its surrounding canalways made as a personal response to an article that appeared on Manchester confidential called Killing Castlefield.

A flyer is scattered about which attempts to summarise the histories, decline and renewal of this historic district of Manchester. Do take a look of you want to know more about Castlefield’s story. It was originally presented for artranspennine08 as a series of journeys and walks, of drifts and explorations, documenting its forgotten landscape by the Edwardian flaneuse Miss EP Niblock.

Artranspennine08 was the third incarnation of a 5 yearly art festival which reached out from Manchester and Liverpool across the Pennine region taking in Leeds, Sheffield and Hull. This latest version saw over fifty emerging and established artists placing artworks, staging events, making videos, and hosting exhibitions in cyberspace and in multiple venues and locations throughout the Pennines; responses to the notion of the Transpennine region first mooted back in 1998.

‘Killing Castlefield’ was an examination of an urban success story of the eighties and nineties, interrogating accepted orthodoxies surrounding dominant models of urban renewal, a warning to the relentless redevelopment of our cities, investigating the past, present and future of Castlefield, the granddaddy of a plethora of subsequence schemes across the city and triumphantly designated ‘Britain’s first Urban Heritage Park’. Now as a new breed of developers hover ever closer in an unseemly land grab, the mismanagement and short-termism inherent in the cultural strategy teams responsible for the ‘branding’ of our cities and the profusion of identikit renaissance schemes in other cities, despite increasing recognition of their economic and moral redundancy, has never been clearer.

there have been numerous echoes of the last twenty years of Manchester’s own urban renewal programme this weekend at TINAG. globally it seems we are facing the same challenges and responding in a variety of ways, contesting entrepreneurialism and the erosion of our public spaces. In the exhibition monumental architectural complexes in post socialist Bulgaria, the tension between preserving and regeneration and the contestation of location, memory and space take on a particular political tenor. the emerging case studies from many of our post socialist neighbours such as duopolis aptly capture questions we have not successfully debated in our own experiences of regeneration, that we perhaps have so far swept under the carpet but that post recession we can no longer afford to ignore. Views from above and below, depicting neighbourhoods in Istanbul and London, presented an international perspective on a familiar trend of privatisation of urban land, entrepreneurial governance and aspirations to attain world class status, something Manchester does relentlessly – there is never a time when we aren’t bidding for a games, a super casino, a major football tournament. City change, exploring the urban festival as culturally led regenerational tool in the historic city of Porto, has echoes of the now abandoned Castlefield festival in the specially created amphitheatre, a core element of its roman reconstruction (largely invented or embellished from frugal remains!). How can such initiatives have real legacy and community sustainability once the developers have gone? And whilst such urban transformations continue and gather pace, who benefits, and who loses out?

Questions that rose immediately to mind for me include –

· is the past worth preserving and if so whose history is told?

· What do we want from the contemporary city and how can culture construct a path to this city?
· When major regeneration programmes such as spitalfields in london, new Islington in Manchester and the other millennium projects swing into action, what has it meant to local populations, what is its aftermath? What were the ideas underpinning the projects and who was driving them?

· What is a successful regeneration project and what does it look like?

· What will we take back as urbanists to our respective cities and situations?

Slideshow photo album.

- some of these appear on the flyer and blogsite killing castlefield; more will follow shortly….

Oxford rd to knott mill – exploration of the arterial route in and out of castlefield, still a somewhat neglected way to navigate the city often deserted apart from a few anglers, the odd solitary jogger or dog walker and a large colony of swans, geese and ducks, despite clean up campaigns and clusters of regeneration around its basins,.

Castlefield is the story of movement, trade, travel and commerce, on the intersections of 2 important revolutions, canals then railways, running and forming the leeds / Liverpool canal route. The Castlefield Basin is the original Mamucium, arguably the largest single contributor to the prosperity and growth of Manchester, its influence spanning 2 millennia – home of the Roman fort, the world’s first passenger railway station, the Museum of Science & Industry, as well as epicentre of the legendary Granadaland, the first independent purpose built television studios, designed by Sir Ralph Tubbs, architect of the 1951 Festival of Britain’s centrepiece, the dome of discovery.

Nb – regeneration of the canals is not without contestation, as the cleaning up of the silted up canals accompanies the clearing up of the active gay cruising grounds along its city centre edges, censuring and tidying away these perceived unsavoury aspects of canal life with what many activists have described as the commodification of manchesters gay community, containing it into its own district, reducing it to a mecca for the stag and hen party boom and a presence in the official pink history trail. Manchester has long been quick to seize on the commercial values of many of its unique cultures across the city, the gay village, the northern quarter, the curry mile, the Italian quarter, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the first urban heritage park, all part of the campaign of the original modern city….

Knott mill to potato wharf – the heart of erstwhile Heritage Park. 2 main narratives, the industrial city of Stephenson bell, railways and the roman city, the fort, the timeline, the vicus, the tower. Alongside are the remnants of the nostalgia museum industrial constructed to support these narratives in an open air museum – the castlefield visitor centre, the amphitheatre, the signs and information points, the trail markers dotted about, barge ring pulls, horse tethers etc.

Granada Land to Albion Wharf - Behind the museum of science and industry is a third abandoned, forgotten and forlorn narrative – that of Granadaland, heart of Granada tv, home of coronation st and Sherlock holmes series; for many years with its own studio tours, Granada Studio Tours, a reinvention of the glory days of northern independent film and television. Now both the tv station and the studio are defunct; their physical remnants an archaeological landscape….

Piccadilly basin to New Islington – redeveloped piece meal in the last 5 years and still unfinished capitalizing on the promise of Ancoats Urban Village and New Islington over the boundary to north and east Manchester. The descendant of the Castlefield HP model , masterplanned by the enfant terrible of private development – its progress, social effects and aftermath are hotly debated and anticipated, especially in the wake of credit crunch and a tangible slow down in the property market. ILVA, the purpose built ikea type warehouse showroom on its edge, proudly heralded as the dawn of the commercial viability of the programme, only lasted a year before closing down for good.

No one wants to buy a used, second hand luxury loft apartment when the incentives, enticements to buy into the latest developments are overwhelming. Does this demonstrate the innate weakness behind this unsustainable model. As each new quarter or development is marketed and revealed, the last one is effectively ‘killed' off. There seems in practice no actual growth of the market, of the citys reach and capacity, simply a constant merry-go-round - instead of the radiant city, we have the rotating city - those pioneers who buy off-plan and move in often are simply not rewarded as a new rival, a new quarter, stalks in and sees it off, attracting grants, investment in a wearying groundhog day of self aggrandizing marketing.

Ancoats to Chips – working mills, community clearance and compulsory purchase, old landmarks, new icons, life disrupted by or as yet ignorant of urban regeneration fever....

print. the final frontier…

the shrieking violet taking the blog on to the street...

blogging has its fair share of detractors, for whom the continuing explosion of the blogosphere is the final nail in the coffin of our media drenched culture– fuelling a million vanity projects, a tsunami of inanities, yet more evidence of society’s preening narcissism and an unhealthy dependency on self promotion, forever spewing out inconsequential twaddle on facebook, myspace, bebo & twitter. it seems we have never been so opinionated nor so eager to share our every waking moment with strangers…

yet in reality blogging is a predominately private and rather solitary practice, its fantasy landscape a eerily silent cocoon that typically garners few visitors or at best a miniscule passing audience. after a few anxious posts you quickly become accustomed to the callous reality that no-one actually reads your pearls of wisdom, whilst anyone inadvertently stumbling into them doubtless pays them scant attention before backing off to somewhere more enticing. in truth your carefully constructed prose lies suspended, pristine and vacuum wrapped, in a virtual bubble that is rarely inspected or invaded.

your literary struggles, ostensibly connected to a bustling, media savvy global highway of infinite possibility, all too often remain private property. one obvious solution is to regard the project as a work in progress, a hyperstudio to test out half baked notions and experiment with form, structure and subject matter, free from the paralysing self consciousness that comes from nervously anticipating a critical eye. but this studio, this fermenting hotbed of experimentation is, through another lens, merely a prison cell precluding the rough and tumble of healthy dialogue; denied the cut and thrust of peer review all those postings are simply another type of narcissistic self indulgence.

it is therefore a necessary evil to leave the safety net and anonymity of your cosy blog page and submit an occasional piece to the vagaries of a printed publication or magazine, even though such an enterprise is littered with various pitfalls, embarrassments and even derision. what has so far been mutable, improvable, a rehearsal room or practice run for an imagined first night, becomes a static, solidified mausoleum of your words. no amount of blogging can really prepare you for the unforgiving glare of black ink on white paper, a tangible visceral object that the reader can take away to peruse at their leisure, study, pick apart, comment on, challenge or simply dismiss as inadequate or irrelevant.

so it is with genuine trepidation that i draw your attention to a little flurry of print activity on my part recently, in two wonderfully diy manchester based publications. as someone who is passionate about the city and the peculiar, endearing and often frustrating landscape we inhabit, it's a pleasure to see such publications emerge and thrive and a privilege to be offered the opportunity to contribute to them. thank you both ~

the latest issue of the splendid but irregular fanzine belle vue, called simply belle vue2, includes a mini essay on living in a tower block that i originally presented to the tower block tour a couple of years ago, an event organised by cube as part of national architecture week. it can be purchased in cornerhouse and piccadilly records for £2 and has some lovely evocative pieces by the likes of our very own mr barrett.

meanwhile this months edition of the already indepensible shrieking violet magazine contains an article on the many wondrous but endangered murals, mosiacs and vernacular artworks scattered across the city; you can find issue 3 in a host of outlets including piccadilly records or download it via their blogspot. the shrieking violet is a fascinating hybrid, a blog thats also a fanzine, a bold enterprise that puts its money where its mouth is, heralding a new spirit of grassroots creativity taking its ideas directly onto the streets and not being afraid of mixing new media with the more traditional. its free too!

on a slightly different note the manchester modernist society for whom i also write were featured in the manchester evening news recently. the comments section on their online version is well worth a perusal; public opinion ranged from agreement that our architectural treasures are being needlessly eradicated, to accusations that we are deluded crackpots....

what next? a retreat back to the shadows of the internet? no indeed - for my next trick i will be attempting to review angels of anarchy for the Manchester city gallery’s exhibition microsite, a self imposed challenge currently paralysing me with fear and loathing, plus an essay to accompany the totally fabulous lonelady’s imminent single release, the first since her signing to warp. then im off to the capital to lead an informal modern day salon at this years this is not a gateway festival in spitalfields, which will eventually be included in their annual publication.

im sure to stumble and fall along the way but surely flexing ones atrophied cerebral muscles is preferable to doing nothing at all? as is facing the risk of disapproval or dissent from a wider audience? time will tell dear journal, time will tell….

barnacle bill and his pirate ships – marseillans secret harbour

marseillans tuesday market, food, flowers and general household goods with a little vintage and local ceramics thrown in, is fast winding down as the church clock strikes 12.30. throughout the morning it has taken up the whole of the miniature 17th century colonnaded market place, meandered past the church square and spilled out into the place de republic beyond, up to the busy les marins sailors bar at the roundabout. traders are packing up into battered renaults or dawdling with old friends, sharing a smoke and a café noir before moving off. others shout encouraging cries of tout a cinq euro to stragglers, pleading with passers-by to take the last of the flowers off their hands, even though to do so is blatant daylight robbery...

...within minutes most of the town is staggering under the fragrant burden of bargain bunches of bougainvillea, fat headed sunflowers or overblown blousy dahlias and the square is ankle deep in a scented river as florists swill out empty vases and drag containers away. then as the market recedes the cafes and restaurants pick up the trade and, where bright awnings displayed boxes of vegetables and colossal hams so recently swayed, tables and chairs appear, plat du jour boards are written up and hung on trees and lampposts. waiters scurry back and forth with entrees, café noirs and aperitifs, and lunch is duly served.

we stroll away from the vieux ville past the pretty mairie and its obligatory petanque pitch, noisy with a half dozen devotees passionately squabbling as always over whose boule has actually displaced the cochonnet (victory hanging on curves, angles and geometry), and make for the harbour to eat our market goodies, enjoy the sea breeze and watch the boats bobbing about. of all the ports on the basin de thau, marseillan is probably our favourite – well this week at any rate. last week we were sure that meze was the one…and later in the week revisiting sete down the coast, we’ll remember that in fact sete is definitely the best.

one satisfying side effect of our unhealthy puce habit is that it affords access to a clutch of secluded backwaters along our little coast, a treasure trove for flaneurs, moochers and idlers like ourselves, revealing forgotten hamlets and stranded old ports tucked out of the way of the sun worshippers and beach revellers that flock to the stretches of sandy beach beyond the etangs. overlooked little spots that still have space for the workaday rhythms of quotidian life for its inhabitants, a life that though still acknowledging tourism, isn’t altogether dominated or relinquished to it. in these places can be spotted all sorts of relics, human, artefactual, architectural, all clinging unnoticed like barnacles on the underside of some great tourist steamer, quietly getting on with everyday life in the languedoc.

a spot of coast-hugging along the trusty old d613 in either direction will swiftly reward anyone wishing to observe the janus face of the petite camargue and the shifts in economy brought to bear in a mere generation. whilst one face basks in the sun, sea and parasol revenue, the other trades on the cliché of its traditions and distinctive way of life. whether this delicate balance can survive the rapid development of the latest section of the shiny a75, the toll route currently gobbling up everything in its path on the way to the sea, remains to be seen.

marseillan and marseillan-plage offer a perfect example of this common schizophrenia. whilst marseillan-plage is inundated with holiday makers and weekenders attracted by its sandy beach and plethora of sun loungers, marseillan itself, once a flourishing fishing town with a splendid harbour and fine old market place, is now ignored. it’s a typical tale - marseillan sits amongst a pocket of old fishing ports lining the petite camargue, an evocative string of salty but unfortunate smelling etangs and scrubby flats populated by birds and not much else. some of these lovely old harbours handled trade for the romans, whose great via domitia passes close by, carrying goods from cadiz past gibraltar all the way to rome. indeed, the ruins of ambrussum lie only a few kilometres inland, further evidence of the regions former glories. but time has played a cruel game - in recent generations the petite camargue has become all but forgotten as the old harbours either silted up and faded into obscurity or flourished in the 70’s tourist boom like the modernist resort of le grande motte further up, a planned futurist community that now looks as dated as an episode of thunderbirds. (though secretly im quite smitten with this too….)

yet marseillan has a trick or two up its sleeve - it sits at the extreme end of the camargue on the shallow expanse of the basin de thau, one of the biggest salt lakes in the languedoc and a major centre of shellfish cultivation. along the coast roads are frequent glimpses of wooden oyster racks protruding from the water, cruel rows of torture chambers for marine life. this has brought marseillan both independence and a sense of purpose, its harbour bustling with various old salty sea dogs repairing their vessels, scraping barnacles off the raised flaking hulks of their sturdy little yachts and sailing boats, clambering about the riggings and crows nests or simply huddled in clusters doing routine maintenance or repairs, re-painting a faded eye on a prow, raising a jolly roger (no really! these be actual pirates…); a vision of faded peaked caps, dusty blue shorts, espadrilles, assorted white beards and fancy moustaches. it’s also the home of the famed noilly prat distillery – another plus for both the resident sea captains and vermouth pilgrims who book themselves in for a daily tour and degustion. so as another lazy afternoon beckons and the oppressive heat of an august day takes most residents indoors for lunch, a siesta or an afternoon under canvas, marseillan blatantly ignores its passing tourists.

oh, you’ve found us, marseillan shrugs, so what…? take us as you find us, we wont be putting on any shows or making a particular effort, but you’re welcome to eavesdrop and take a peek at whatever we’re doing today; stay or go, linger or scarper, its all the same to us.

and with that marseillan gets on with patching up its nets, indulging in a spot of fly fishing in the curve of its sheltered horseshoe harbour, or simply padding about weather beaten old vessels - the odyssey, the antigone - all brass portholes and wooden cabins, fiddling over sail cloths and flagpoles, inspecting gang planks, or snoozing in their hammocks, not a care in the world….

sweet mint tea at les puces

7.30am, two café noirs and a welcome pause from the tousle of the early traders in the vast, dust bowl of a car park, tarmac beginning to shimmer in the heat, a portent of the day to come.

tonton ambles across, all smiles as ever, proffering 2 tiny moroccan glasses of fragrant the a la menthe to our little table in the corner of his café, shady under the canvas awning, generously crammed with the sprigs of the bunches of fresh mint that adorn his counter. ludicrously sweet, hot and deliciously minty, it’s the perfect pick me up. tea for my manchester girls, his usual greeting, chuckling at the memories of his decade of lost youth and adventure in preston and clitheroe. good times, he says, his english a rich lancashire burr, incongruous here in mosson from our french algerian grizzled giant, exciting times, preston north end, he enthuses, and the music, aah the best of times! evidently so, with 3 grown up boys from his adventures who stayed on, doubtless with even broader accents….

mosson, the last stop on ligne 2 of montpelliers tram system, where its outer suburbs run out and collide with the languedoc proper, parched scrubby countryside, dotted with battered old farmhouses, dilapidated cattle sheds, a smattering of vineyards and sunken meadows meandering along the banks of the hérault and its tributaries, inhabited it seems by nothing more than the odd donkey, any number of raucous crickets, and wherever the etang and their attendant oyster beds break through, glimpses of exotic pale pink flamingos, the only significant colonies in europe declares the eager guidebook.

mosson, a gigantic overspill on the arse end of the city, high rise and dilapidated like the notorious hulme estate but twice its size and humanised somewhat with splashes of mediterranean colour; windows, doorways and balconies bedecked with plants, herbs and hammocks, austerity brightened by the simple addition of sunshine, flaky painted shutters and gaudy blinds adorning otherwise plain edifices like glittering jewels in concrete. architecture is so often in the vernacular details, its lived-in clutter creating more beauty than any aesthetic drawn up by the designers.

mosson is plainly out in the sticks and barely mentioned on the tourist maps, hardly picturesque and though certainly 'exotic' with a profusion of cafes and local eateries harbouring old men in fezes or taqiyah and long faded djellabas smoking tiny black cigarettes, halal stores piled high with the rich spices, herbs and olives normally only seen in a north african bazaar, is plainly not awaiting fashionable restoration by the type of English second home owner eager to colonise the next up and coming quartier. yet each sunday from 6am to 12.30, this is the place to be if, like most languedocians, you have the flea market bug. les puces is the regional obsession adopted even in the smallest village alongside the everyday food and general markets with larger all day affairs appearing in various fields and scrubby patches of spare land at the weekends. mosson though is the mother of all flea markets, the biggest, most shambolic and best; boisterous, messy and unpredictable, genuine vintage and antique traders budged up against junk and household bric-a-brac of every description, used battery salesmen, hardware, locksmith and mobile phone (broken and very old, never new ones!) emporiums, 3 for 1 beach towels and african hair care vying with pantalooned crusties selling dusty indonesian knick knacks and home made friendship bands brought back from far off travels. inbetween are stalls who appear to have merely tumbled the contents of their wash bags on to the floor, grubby brassieres and mismatched wellington boots next to washing up bowls filled with marbles, headless barbies missing an arm or a leg and far too many small blue smurfs to satisfy any logical explanation. its an english car boot sale with a surreal twist.

this sunday morning is no exception, the car park already festooned with ancient camper vans, prehistoric renaults, colourful awnings of every hue proclaiming that the market is already bustling and ready for the hunt! those in the know head straight for the right hand corner, beyond the resident café stands and their tantalising petit dejeuners of café noir, pain au chocolat and boisson, competing with fragrant tagines and nan breads stuffed with falafels and hot harissa, (like tono the owners are french north african, with menus a profusion of savoury, spicy delights) an oasis of respite from the harsh sun and ever growing crowds.

...and then, where the car park peters out and meets the hinterland of the olive groves and fig trees of old mosson, nirvana - row upon row of brocantes and antiquities sellers nestled under the pine trees at the far edge. here can be found the weird and the wonderful, the essential and the pointless; rusty sundials and battered weather vanes, faded photograph albums filled with forgotten lives and once-important occasions, enamel signs for long gone businesses and nostalgic brands of cigarettes, brass bed frames, roman amphora and columns, caryatids, gateposts and doorways from ramshackle farm houses, enormous scythes, saws and assorted farm implements, beautiful bed linen and table ware, ancient cooking pots, cafetieres and espresso sets from every era, medicine cabinets and garden furniture, and enough crucifixes, rosary beads, virgin marys, sacred hearts, wooden pews and stained glass windows to tempt the most ardent atheist….

12.30 and its chez tonton for at least the third time. we compare notes as always on landmarks around the north west, tono fearful that the memories of his youth might disappear along with preston bus station, and we show off our finds – an old bronze tap, pleasingly antiquated with a slight green patina around the spout, a clutch of requiem cards, the most intriguing the bespectacled mademoiselle celine robin, who died in 1944, still unmarried at 89 (is that a shy or cheeky smile i spy around her lips?), a faded ballet green fish keep perfect for bringing a little taste of the languedoc to my brunswick balcony, an oblong typographers font tidy, a box of gaily patterned 1950’s gouaches, pristine in their packaging, and perhaps best of all an edwardian fencing foil, pale steel sheathed in its red safely tip, long slim handle wrapped in fine coils of soft leather for gripping. as we finish the last gulp of our the a la menthe, gather our treasures and head for home, tono laughs shaking his head at yet another incomprehensible set of finds from his favourite mancunians.

au revoir, see you next week….you know there’s a lovely flower market here every wednesday, he adds as he always does, so beautiful like you’d never find in england...

a persuasive thought that hangs in the air as we wend our way across the emptying car park. but puce addicts that we are, we know in reality we’ll already be knee deep in agde’s weekly puce, a picturesque affair that winds around its medieval fortifications, eagerly looking out for that elusive vintage fencing mask or 1920’s aviation goggles….

the secret life of a holiday resort

arriving by night or any weekend in the high season and palavas is a once sleepy fishing port transformed forever into a gaudy french blackpool. thumping music leaks out of every harbour nitespot til the early hours, beachside waiters bustle back and forth with trays of plat du jour, whilst jeeps stuffed full of brash young bucks screech in and out of the portside car park looking for action.

but things are never what they might first seem. wander into palavas on a weekday morning and this seaside resort shows a quite different face…

market day in the vieux ville’s tiny square by the old church spills out on to its surroundings the heart of old palavas, winding into its little maze of streets in a blaze of colour and cacophony of scents on the morning breeze.

it’s 7.30am and everyone’s out already, a population scarcely seen (but occasionally glimpsed from behind shady window sills of faded villas) when joining the evening perambulation on the harbour front, where café bars and souvenir shops vie for the tourist euro. a posse of tiny old ladies are out in force, bent double with arthritis but sprightly nonetheless with baskets at the ready for the scrum for the freshest produce, piled high on trellises and displayed in stacks of luridly labelled boxes, fresh fish laid out on chunks of smashed up ice under stripy nautical awnings, whilst crabs and lobsters skulk from a tumble of nearby buckets and baskets. further along, the charcuterie is setting up shop, chatting neighbourly to the olives and cheese stall next door, enjoying a café noir and a breather before the crowds turn up. here from the safety of the local café tucked under the arm of the old church, is the perfect spot to observe the ordinary hustle and bustle of this parallel palavas.

the vegetable stall is where the drama is this morning, teeming with ladies clutching their bright baskets, laden with the rich pickings of so many plump red tomatoes, insurgence of herbs, outsize peaches and juicy nectarines, intoxicating bunches of ripe-indigo grapes, snappy crisp peas ready to pod, gnarly courgettes and fat pale onions, enveloped in layer after layer of fragile, papery skin. the ladies, gaudy in their button through tabards, clashing with the vivid reds, purples and greens of natures best, gather in the never diminishing queue at the counter, sharing a natter whilst expertly squeezing, sniffing and generally scrutinizing the various delights on offer. yet others pass by carrying fresh warm bread, the ubiquitous baguette wrapped in jolly twists of paper, stopping for a ‘bon matin’ before hurrying to church for morning mass or benediction. all the while the local cats and their endless broods of kittens are lazily winding in and out of the throng, accepting titbits and the odd scratch of the forehead or occasionally goading the inevitable army of jack russells out and about for their morning stroll or lolling under café tables with their partners in crime, palavas’ old chaps, dapper in pressed shirts, belted pants and wide braces or jaunty in well worn sailor shorts, v-necked tees and faded sea caps. then baskets and trolleys bursting with tonight’s dinner, they move conspiratorially in twos and threes towards the enticements of the charcuterie, rotisserie at last wafting about the hot meaty juices of slowly roasting chicken and pork. meats procured, olives sampled and a cheese or two tested, a nearby display of nylon tabards beckons and the flock of blue rinses, tight perms, sensible sandals and colourful frocks moves on. essentials taken care of, they can finally afford to browse and indulge in a new pinny, carefully assessing the sartorial delights from behind tortoiseshell spectacles, wisely secured on long cord around necks.

meanwhile on the main drag, shops are opening and tourists are stirring, pottering about in their sarongs, flipflops and designer shorts. the café starts to fill up with mums and restless enfants, a sack of mussels arrives for the plat du jour, and like our flock of elderly ladies, strays and salty sea dogs, its suddenly time to move on.

as the church bells strike 9am, the secret and humdrum life of palavas fades away for another day of business in holiday town…

off the beaten track - hilaire le grand, a Russian detour:

night time, st hilaire le grande or thereabouts, and the skies burst their banks, rain bouncing off the dark, uneven camber of the old n6 so furiously that our only option is to take shelter by an unused railway track, occasional flashes of lightning our only guide. a bucolic storm ensues, a torrent rarely seen in the city.

taking to the road again after a night squished in the car dozing dismally, the roar of the deluge an impossible lullaby, we are met with the unlikely glint of what appears to be the dome of an archaic orthodox church, miniscule but pristine, a chapel really, a gold Faberge egg shining in the pale morning light. yesterdays mysterious road diversions have it seems not only led us deeper and deeper into unmarked ‘yellow’ roads, cutting through dense woods whose velvety blackness the forked flashes had barely illuminated, but into another time and place altogether, an unscheduled detour into nineteenth century imperial russia.

blinking groggily at this little pre-soviet island (whose dates intriguingly overlap between the end of one empire and the birth of another) on the d21 to mourmelon le grand – only a few miles from rheims but a whole century away – we amble towards the apparition to investigate. sure enough the mirage doesn’t evaporate as we approach, it simply reveals 3 lines of plain gold font which reads,

aux soldats russes, morts au champ d'honneur, en france, 1916-1918

to the side of the chapel behind a wrought iron fence and laid out on an immaculate lawn are row upon row of neat white crosses with in its centre a cenotaph dedicated to the memory of a russian expeditionary force that fought in several decisive battles between 1916 –18. beyond, two ossuaries bear the remains of over 1000 compatriots who died in these now silent fields so far from home, never identified, the inconnu. we gaze for a while at the names on the crosses painfully outnumbered by those still unknown, unnamed, but commemorated with equal care and compassion in this corner of northern france, like so many other young men in so many other flanders fields.

the scale of these fields and their endless graves, the frequency of their occurrence and military precision creating a sobering optical illusion, makes for a disquieting experience the first time one takes to the roads here. the facts of the ‘great’ war are so well known, so much the dry stuff of the school syllabus or sunday night documentary that it is a shock to find the simple white crosses so affecting, so heart-rending; a jolt to remember that many grandfathers fought in these trenches, many grandmothers lost brothers, lovers and sons, an entire generation laid out in stark rows on eternal parade.

but what of this field? what brings an orthodox chapel and its retinue of monks here, to this tiny corner of france? what is the tale behind the discreet brass sign bearing the words russe ermitage orthodox, the turquoise of its domes nestled behind shady pine trees, an anachronism, an exile of revolution?

a small signpost beyond the hermitage walls offers this scrap of information –

the cimitière militaire russe de saint-hilaire le grand contains the graves of over 1000 russian officers and men. in 1937 a chapel, 16th century in design, was built to commemorate all of the russians who died on the Western Front, tended to this day by the monks of the adjacent orthodox hermitage.

further enquiry reveals that the russian expeditionary force was sent to france by the then russian empire, initially made up of 2 battalions, the first russian special brigade which landed in marseille in april 1916, and the 2nd special brigade which served alongside other allies in northern greece. the first brigade served with distinction until the outbreak of the revolution in 1917, when the entire force was disbanded, interred in alien camps or returned home. however some stayed and formed the legion russe (or Russian Legion) joining up with the elite french moroccan infantry division. the combined units then took part in the fighting around amiens in march 1918, with severe losses to the moroccan division and the russian legion, its captain even being decorated with the medal of the legion of honour. in may, the moroccan division took part in the fierce fighting on the road from soissons to paris, with losses accounting for nearly 85% of the russian legion's forces, but despite this continued to preserve a significant russian presence in the west and, indeed, in the great war itself, right up until the armistice, attracting volunteers to the very end. after the german withdrawal to the border the moroccan division, including our russian regiment, advanced upon moyeuvre but the operation was halted by the signing of the armistice treaty in november 1918. after armistice the entire russian regiment was recalled and demobilised, and while some chose to remain in france, others returned to revolutionary russia. among the latter was rodion malinovsky, the future soviet minister of defence.

this stirring and rather romantic account can be easily found online, for those requiring more detail. or wiki gives a more dispassionate outline of events.

as we drive off and out of the little copse, absorbed, a little sombre, leaving the fallen russians far from home in the care of their monastic sentinel, life resumes its usual rhythms, a hare lolloping exuberantly in the bright morning sun, whilst nearby a fox exposed momentarily from its early morning ablutions misses a sure chance. and in the meadow beyond, a lone falcon perches atop a hay bale, contemplating breakfast.

and before we know it we too are breakfasting on buttery brioche and bitter café noir in a roadside café once more en route to rheims, our sunrise detour a flight of fancy, a mere whimsy in the morning mists….

diary of a French odyssey…postcards from the route nationale

...the next few posts will appear haphazardly and from a variety of locations…we are motoring through france en route to the languedoc to stay on the edge of montpellier on bertie’s old boat.

forgive me then if they are more sporadic even than usual, being hasty reflections, vignettes and sketches of the journey and places spied along the way….

here's the first offering:

rough common: gothic splendour in the mundane~

driving through the side roads of the English countryside, revelling in the verdant verges of its many motorways and b roads en route, i caught myself thinking how much lovelier are these patches of wildscape, how much more vibrant with their cornflowers and poppies, bulrushes and wild roses, dragonflies and butterflies darting here and there, than the tarted up landscaping and flowerbeds adorning so many city and suburban roundabouts. perhaps it’s the startling contrast, the show of nature’s resilience even in the least likely of spots, bright and defiant amidst the worst that we can throw at it, the grubby concrete, the fumes, blown tyres and dented bumpers. but i’m being sentimental again, romantic even. a dark gothic romance for sure, finding beauty and wonder in a few weeds on a scrubby graffitied roadside….

how appropriate then to discover that we were driving through the inauspiciously named hamlet of 'rough common'. just how did a town decide to call itself such a prosaic and seemingly down trodden name as rough common?

and then i was reminded of owen hatherley’s theory, put forward in militant modernism, of the underlying English preference, elevation even, of plainness and austerity, of ugliness over the classic and the pretty; a rejoinder to European modernism in the same vein as that earlier romantic reaction to the enlightenment expressed in the gothic tragedy of frankenstein, the tainted morality of dr jeckyll and the dark excesses personified in the lives of Byron and Shelley, a preference for the corrosive glamour of heathcliffe or maximillian de winter over some handsome pallid hero played out a century later in the emergence of punk and continued today in the squalid dramas of pete doherty and la winehouse.

and i wonder if here is a link to the urbanists, loiterers and various flaneurs championing of the failures of modernism and its much maligned material of choice, the ubiquitous concrete, a substance which given more than a cursory glance is simply waiting appreciation of its subtle shades and textures, of the sheen of its burnished corners, of the unlikely alchemy of its mauves, aubergines and royal purples, brilliant after a rainstorm, tantalisingly brief as any rainbow. perhaps it’s the climate, a difference in hues, where the sun drenched European palette of pinks, terracotta and aquamarine is sadly wasted on grey skies and cold light: only in this god forsaken corner of the world could we, must we, make a virtue out of the drab clouds and rain sodden skies; discern a vibrant palette from such an uncompromising end of the colour spectrum. necessity clearly is the mother of invention.

this then is the veiled allure of the humble hamlet of rough common, the unexpected reward for a small effort, a closer look, a second glance...

as a friend recently advised me, there is no room in the modernist's vocabulary for the term ugly, merely the embracing of that juste mot - a challenge!

an invitation to a manchester modernist society tea party!

Sunday 19 July
An Invitation to the first Manchester modernist society tea party!

~being a most cordial invitation to a luncheon in the grass,

in the shadow of Gustav Metzger’s Flailing Trees,

Manchester Peace Gardens,
St Peter’s Square, Sunday 19 July from 2pm, and then on to Procession:
An exhibition at Cornerhouse, 4pm- 6pm.

Manchester is currently in festival fever with music, exhibitions and activities literally spilling out of the buildings and into the streets. It’s the perfect opportunity for even the most jaded of city dwellers to re-invigorate those humdrum routines, find new nooks and crannies lurking in the familiar and examine the everyday landscape we all too often take for granted with a more curious eye…

One of our personal favourite commissions is temporarily installed right here in the city centre. Here's the press release statement ~

‘Flailing trees is an arresting new piece of public art that will stand in the Manchester Peace Garden for the duration of the Festival. It comprises 21 inverted willows, a subversion of the natural order that brings nature and the environment into sharp focus. With flourishing branches replaced by dying roots, the sculpture is both a plea for reflection and a plaintive cry for change, and is sure to provide a catalyst for debate.’

What better way we thought to enjoy the dying embers of the festival and reflect on the installation’s poignant message before its removal to the Whitworth Art Gallery than with a spot of afternoon tea under its temporary shade; our own modest celebration echoing the doubtless more lavish Festival Feast taking place round the corner in the Albert Square pavilion!

Replete with tea, cake and conversation, we then propose a short meander to view the splendid Procession: An Exhibition, at Cornerhouse on Oxford Rd, which brings together a collection of objects from last Sunday’s Deansgate parade and attempts to contextualise the event within a local historical vernacular.

As the brochure says - Contemporary and old-fashioned, popular and obscure; don’t let Procession: An Exhibition pass you by…

So, do join us in our little celebration and reflections of the end of a magnificent festival in the space created between two remarkable public artworks that seem to us at mms to articulate the common links between much contemporary art practice and an emerging archaeology of the contemporary past.

RSVP….Parasols or umbrellas, deckchairs or plaid blankets, picnic paraphernalia and contributions of delicacies, sweet or savoury, most welcome…..

melancholia, madness and modernity

reader, too long have i tarried in the shadows with those grinning ossified corpses….

after a month of melancholia brought upon by a combination of time travel jetlag and an assortment of the debilitating and unpredictable side effects that only being dropped unceremoniously into a urine tinged red phone box can induce, i seem to have finally emerged with not a little relief into the bright and sweet smelling present of a lethargic, sunkissed manchester.

the past few weeks have been a bewildering grind of confusing and conflicting ideas and information, converging and conflating to produce a space – time vortex through which this poor old edwardian bluestocking has been forced to hurtle back and forth, force fed a virtual tangle of disheartening data on the precarious state of the public realm and the peculiarities of a property developing autocracy as it continues to gobble up the cityscape. truly, as alice herself hinted, nothing makes sense in the contemporary world…

my research-in-progress into the present day, its quotidian practices and its impact on the archaeology of the recent past is becoming distinctly discouraging, downright depressing in fact, and for the first time since my unexpected emergence from my dusty duties deep in the bowels of the museum archives, artefacts all safely wrapped, labelled and preserved, the realities of being a student of now, custodian at large of the contemporaneous, has hit home. this overpowering revelation has of late deepened despite the many inspiring and inventive projects of the friends and acquaintances i have made since delving into the beautiful palimpsest of this city, walking the streets through the eyes of its myriad dandies, flaneuses, mischief makers, artists and activists, i confess to being at a loss to find a place for myself here in the 21st century that doesn’t seem an arcane and fanciful indulgence, a precious waste in a time when every minute counts.

it seems to me that whilst an interest in contemporary everyday practices in the context of the built environment has much in common with the study of the prehistoric archaeological landscape, it is not enough to merely theorize, document and postulate. a more productive, down to earth practice is called for…and urgently. but i am simply not equipped for the pressing and political aspects of this new endeavour and the temptation to retreat to the reassuring realm of the long and desiccated dead has never been greater. never has the trench and trowel of the neolithic seemed so cosy in the face of the careless and wanton destruction of the recent past, the cultural and architectural vandalism perpetually leering from every street corner like a grinning cadaver from each mediocre new property development, or worse still the wilful bulldozing of the rich vernacular of our cityscape even as the effects of the so called credit crunch stymie any actual construction.

old habits die hard and after much grappling with a sorry combination of writing-and-thinking block i finally succumbed to the familiarity and reassuring permanence of the edwardian world of the boffin and bluestocking, of the polymath and the amateur, for some much needed respite in former haunts of londinium – the glory of the bm, the modernist magnificence of the riba headquarters and the fabulous wellcome collection, 'a free destination for the incurably curious'. here amidst the curiosities, shrunken heads and implacable medical implements i eventually found a kind of sanity, in the aptly titled madness and modernity exhibition, and the promise of a possible route through the emerging 20th century and its uncertain journey towards modernity and ultimately to where we are right now.

madness and modernity identifies fin de siecle vienna, the avant garde centre of modernity, as a tumultuous period of transition in which the arts, literature, architecture and philosophy blossomed but also as a city obsessed with the mind. political unrest had left the viennese with an overwhelming sense that they were living in 'nervous times' where anxieties about mental health were allied to fears about the modern city. and here amidst the tower of fools, the madhouses and maladies of the dawn of our own era, the grotesquely distorted limbs and ghoulish pallor of schiele and kokoscha’s withered portraiture, were parallels aplenty to our own distinctly twitchy, pathological neuroses as we enter the 21st.

certainly the unmistakable parallels to my own nervous state of mind were lit up like an electrical circuit, as i try to adjust my own peculiar situation, an edwardian spinster trapped in a tiny red tardis on the edges of a somewhat forlorn conservation area, or living in the mundane landscape of an ‘at risk’ council estate, symbols of an outdated present that we have barely begun to evaluate or make sense of - of a present that, as it hurtles into an uncharted future, threatens to fade away in the face of global transformations that are still unfolding.

returning to manchester in a torrent of unrelenting rain was only too predictable but perhaps in hindsight a hiatus of sorts, a space to absorb these new revelations and bridge a personal time-space compression of nearly one hundred years into six eventful ones that would surely impress even virilio! so it was timely then that a number of invitations plopped into my inbox this thursday, just in time for the meteorological and metaphorical clouds to break in my own private horizon.

first off was a spot of tea with the ever soothing mr barratt who has a flurry of publications due out soon. he was en route to performing at the farewell gig of the manchester poetry magazine the ugly tree at central library and was 'quietly chuffed' (as he put it) at his other well deserved literary recognition by arthur shilling press. i left him to triumph in his lucky shirt for a leisurely walk along the railway arches towards castlefield gallery for the preview of the social lives of others.

against such a balmy setting manchester positively reeked of urban cool, warm sunlit night, clean white cultural space bursting with arty types spilling decadently out into the cobbled glow of the railway arches, under the lego phallic excess of beetham tower. and the show was right up my cobbled alley too - all dead animals, totemic fetishes, elongated antlers, reclaimed tattered penguin paperbacks - and tres busy with all the great and the good out in force for this manchester / london exploration of our contemporary obsession with novelty, production and consumption against the schizophrenia of its inbuilt decay and obsolescence. lurking amidst the assembled detritus of our collective excesses i bumped into the lovely kate feld of manchizzle fame, blogger extraordinaire and 'hub of blogging goodness' (the guardian!), as well as a rare reunion with the erudite dave haslam fresh from bbc breakfast where his vox pop assessment of the city skyline was apparently edited to exclude any mention of phalluses from the delicate sensibilities of early morning viewers...

hilary jack herself, woman of the hour, was a glamorous vision as ever but feeling the strain perhaps in her central role of artist as opposed to curator of the already sadly missed apartment, whilst mr harfleet was clearly reveling in the novelty of a busy gallery opening that for once wasn’t in his own home…

later ambling homeward in the company of the razor tongued lonelady, herself in reflexive mood, following the mammoth task of forging her first album from a homemade studio in a rotting segment of a dilapidated ancoats mill, hewn (to the casual observer) from the tattered remnants of whatever mangled artefacts were to hand along the canal or under the brooding gasometer, we pondered the pros and cons of living in a city at once in love with its many mythologies yet woefully blind or at least nonchalant to the vicissitudes of its ritualised landscape -at once defiant city of industrial and technological revolution, social change and non conformism and yet home to unbridled entrepreneurialism, gaudy spectacle and rampant capitalism. two sides of the same coin perhaps this schizophrenia, this modernist madness is what makes the city what it is, is its distinctive usp…

and today as i wandered into the anarchic bustle of the city centre, down oxford rd, through china town, past the brutalist edifices of piccadilly tower and the former bank of England, once home to so much bullion, out into the maelstrom of piccadilly gardens, i was struck with these manifestations of the real life and soul of the metropolis.

piccadilly in all its grimy un self-conscious pandemonium, is the spiritual home of the city, in fact any city. site of the old infirmary and asylum, hub of our transport systems, hemmed in with monuments to every significant era of our civic history from georgian splendour, victorian warehouses, 60’s sci-fi, to post bomb regeneration centrepiece, it’s our largest open green space. here the entire citizenry it seemed thronged together in the first heat wave of the summer, transforming what is ostensibly one of the least attractive spaces in the city, its already grubby tadao ando artwork, its patchy, parched grass and inelegant display of foul plastic urinals into a place of genuine beauty. here in the blazing sun was a cosmopolitan scene as old as time, transporting us back to ancient rome, carthage, mesopotamia, to the kasbahs and markets of all the great civilisations past and present, where people do what they have always done best - make music, sun worship, sit together and relax, chat, picnic, eat ice cream or idly play ball, rollerblade, skateboard, dance, flirt or a heady combination of all of the above…..

in short the city is alive, is transformed by how we use it. let’s use it well and wisely, lets enliven it with our shared encounters, with the untidiness of the lived experience, in the unruly and unauthorized colonised spaces we still have left in the urban landscape.

the city is ours, we only have to claim it….