Manchester

Manchester is a great mix of old and new. I had been told that every Northern city except York is just like Melbourne, (or to put it accurately, that Melbourne is just like every Northern city) and its true, except of course that all the things in Melbourne that feign old world charm can actually be found here in living colour. Well, you know, that muted, ye olde colour anyway. There are trams, indie record shops galore, decent hip hop coming out of clubs and pubs, working class history museums, one pound pints and good curries. I believe we may have even sited fresh fruit while here. Not as hum drum as you might think. Needless to say, I liked Manchester a lot. I'd been won over even before I'd found my bed for the night. I mean it was always going to be hard for me to not like a place that puts caricatures of Morrissey and the Happy Mondays on its tourist info map.

We even had a major rock moment over a XXL can of Red Stripe at a bar called the Night and Day. After finally sitting down after debating just where the best Mancunian watching spot might be our ears pricked up to the sound of Johnny Marr and gushing man with a Dictaphone discussing the ins and outs of whether releasing “Handsome Devil” was a good idea of not. I never knew that music biographies of fading rock gods were really cobbled together by interviewing the same people over and over again for 20 years until their half baked theories on life became a mantra to be repeated over and over again, especially to anyone who could finance yet another publication. Well now I know.
This was on Oldham Street, and here there was so much more to love. For instance, it was here that I found what I thought was always going to be the Shangri-la of England; the mythical decent coffee, and a warehouse devoted to retaining all the flannelette's and crispy shirts that I would ever dare wish to own. And there was even a Postal Strike going on down the road. To pay tribute to this wonderful place Louisa and I felt that going to see the preview of CONTROL here would be apt, though it became pretty clear pretty quickly that Ian and I weren't seeing eye to eye about the place. My doubts soon evaporated in the face of an ART EXHIBITION NEXT DOOR THAT WAS ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD, and the Peoples History Museum down the road that was equally outstanding.

So all in all we came, we saw, we got totally charmed and then we had to leave again.