Hermit Comes Home

You may remember some time ago I wrote about what could have been the best job in Manchester – living as a hermit in the tower of the Manchester museum. Refresh yourselves here, if you feel the need.

Well, I have news on the hermit front – he’s arrived! That’s right, it was actually true and not just a stupid idea. Well, it may still be a stupid idea but it is also true.

Our resident hermit, who, it has to be said, must be sweating his little Hermit toes off in this weather up in that tower, moved in over the weekend and he’s already been busy blogging- his only form of communication with the outside world. Highlights include a rather detailed description of the gunk he’s had to clean out of his temporary home, the museum’s loft apartment apparently not having been used much in the last century or so. “The bodies of insects, dead skin cells, droppings, mould, minerals deposited by passing traffic, city grime, dust,” are some of the delights he moved in with. Nice.

The purpose of his residency, as we briefly glossed over before, is something to do with purpose and existence and killing the planet – a nice upbeat project to give a man living on his own for a month. He’s also been tasked with questioning the purpose of the actual museum collection and, rather alarmingly, seems to be doing so by threatening to destroy most of it. I quote: “Each day over the next forty days I will choose an object from my collection and offer it up in a spirit of sacrifice. The object will be announced through a variety of media, including this blog. I will then destroy it.” Blimey. Way to protect our heritage, Mr Hermit.

The idea is that people put forward an argument to say why the objects should be saved and, if our secluded friend deems the argument worthy enough, he will save the artefact in question. Quite how he’s been given so much power is beyond me, but never mind. It’s all about questioning things, apparently. I’ve got a few questions of my own at the moment, which I shall reserve until more offerings from the hermit come forward over the next few months. Rest assured, we’ll be monitoring his progress. I’ll leave you with a photo, not of the hermit himself but of his first item up for sacrifice – a human skull.

For Better or Worse

For most people one spouse is quite enough, thank you very much. Having one person getting in your way in the morning, wanting to watch different programmes on the TV and eat different things for tea is plenty. One woman in Manchester, however, is apparently quite happy with all of those little foibles as she is positively collecting husbands. Five in fact, at the last count. That’s a lot of TV arguments.

Not content was she with having married, and never divorced, four of the unlucky fellows but she recently picked up number five, a soldier, and signed the book once more. It was only on the drive up to Scotland for their honeymoon when she revealed to him that she was already married – four times – that the police were called. One wonders what the conversation went like: “Darling?” ”Yes darling.” “I’ve got something to tell you...” followed, presumably, by something beginning with ‘f’.

It’s worth noting that her vocation is listed as ‘former glamour model and adult film actress’ and also that she was jailed for the same offence (that’ll be bigamy) for six months in 2002. There is, apparently, nothing to stop this husband-collecting vixen. Apart from another jail term, presumably, which she now faces. Unless any of the male guards are particularly susceptible to her apparent charms, in which case she might just have number six in her sights.

Big Breakfast

The nation’s ‘obesity crisis’ is never far from the news these days, with the waistlines of our youth and, indeed, the whole population being of grave concern to us all, apparently. After all, if the world needs saving from a collision with Mars, as also recently reported, it’s not going to be a race of fatties that’s going to do it, is it? No. No it’s not.

Such cholesterol and calorific concerns are far from the mind of an enterprising cafe owner in Bolton, however, who is some way to earning himself a record from the people at Guinness. Mario Frappola’s cafe, the inventively named Mario's Cafe Bar, in Westhoughton, offers a full English breakfast to apparently rival no other. At £10 a time customers with clean enough arteries and a strong enough desire to try and fill them as quickly as possibly can receive the following, served on a tray (no plate being big enough):

10 sausages

10 eggs

10 rashers of bacon

10 slices of toast

5 black pudding slices

Tomatoes

Mushrooms

Baked beans

And if you can eat it all within 20 minutes you get it for free. The British Heart Foundation are, unsurprisingly, concerned. “Not a good idea,” was their verdict and Mario has, by way of recognition, started making customers sign a form dissolving him of any responsibility should their circulatory system pack up after sausage number 10. No one has yet to complete the challenge yet, however, so I’m sure there will be plenty more takers. As far as we know no one has died trying yet either.

Eggs at the Ready

Unless you’ve been locked in a cupboard for the last week (apologies to those who actually are locked in cupboards, but kudos for maintaining an internet connection) you will have heard the news that the BNP have managed to actually get one of their people voted into something. The circumstances are somewhat convenient, it has to be said, in that most people couldn’t be bothered to vote for anyone, in light of the recent discovery that MPs have been stealing our money, and so the few BNP supporters out there seized the opportunity of our collective lethargy and voted in not one but two of their representatives.

So BNP leader, and one of the elected individuals concerned, Nick Griffin tried to talk to some people of the press in London yesterday and got driven off the streets by a group of people with opposing views, who waved banners, chanted slogans and threw eggs at him. Strange that the humble egg has become a universal weapon in such circumstances but I suppose it is entirely built for the job, being strong enough to throw yet fragile enough to break on impact. Incidentally, is this actually egg emerging from Mr Griffin’s right ear?


I digress. The point is, he’s giving it another go tonight in Manchester, presumably in the hope that those who oppose the BNP’s policies are a bit more subdued up north. The pub they’re holding the conference in has already been mentioned on the web. I suspect he’ll be thankful if he gets just eggs.

Cigarettes and Alcohol

I don’t seem to be able to leave Messrs Gallagher alone recently, this being the third time I’ll be writing about them in four posts. Difficult to ignore today though as they are set to play the first of their three concerts in Heaton Park tonight (the others being this Saturday and Sunday – they presumably have things on Friday night). Here's a picture of one of them actually in a park:

Heaton Park is, for readers unfamiliar with Google Maps, a large park to the north of the city centre right next to the M60 and there’s a lot of grumbling going on today – mainly in the MEN, it has to be said - about the hassle this is all going to cause. This little diatribe in particular has caught the imagination of many of their readers. I got about halfway through and gave up – don’t they have editors over there?

Anyway, will there be lots of traffic? Will the thousands of people cause untold disruption? Will Oasis play any decent new songs? The answer to only one of those questions is certain.

Roll With It

Following my report of tenuous pub marketing a post or two ago, I thought I’d follow suit with a tenuous Manchester story of my own. It concerns a certain Mr Gallagher again, not in the locale of his native Burnage this time but in the altogether more southern environment of his new stomping ground in London, namely one of pubs around Primrose Hill. Not papped falling out of a club or punching a photographer this time, as was once the norm of his media coverage, rather an unwitting victim of the new Google Street View. That’s right, ‘Our Liam’ was one of the many thousands to be caught on camera by the closest thing we’ve seen to a real Big Brother. He was sitting outside his local at the time, enjoying a pint, when the little camera car went past. How or why someone discovered this is nearly as troubling as the fact it happened in the first place but I won’t dwell on that – here he is, captured for all to see, blurry face supplied by Google. We got a four year old to do the Photoshopping again, as you can see:

Close up:
His ‘people’, incidentally, have confirmed it is him. Quite likely, apparently, that he would be sitting outside the pub in the middle of the day drinking pints. The lucky git.

Sick as Parrots

So it’s all over – the much hyped clash of the titans, the best footballers in the world, the two best teams in the world, the game the world has been waiting for – and Manchester United didn’t even turn up in the end.

Old Trafford was a buzz of activity yesterday – stalls, usually only out on match days, selling flags, t-shirts and Eric ‘God’ Cantona banners, were doing swift trade, the pubs around the ground were heaving and the Travel Lodge at the end of the road had flags and scarves flying from many of its windows.

I can’t help but be intrigued by the apparently blind devotion with which some people follow their football team. The people on the news yesterday who spent enormous amounts of time and money getting to Italy and staying near to Rome who didn’t even have a ticket and were, apparently, happy to just watch the game on a TV in a bar (which wasn’t serving beer by then). I appreciate there is a heightened sense of atmosphere in such places – Old Trafford and Rome last night - but still, it’s just a football game on a TV, isn’t it?

Anyway, if it keeps them happy then good luck to them. Needless to say the city is in a sombre mood today, the flag stalls gone and their owners no doubt cursing the lack of victory parade through the city streets. Old Trafford stands defiant but without the red-shirted devotees who were present yesterday. When I passed today, a man had taken advantage of the lack of people and was playing with his remote controlled car on a piece of waste ground out the front that would, had the trophy returned to Manchester, have been filled with burger vans, scarf sellers and beery, jubilant fans. Instead of the sound of thousands singing victory songs in unison, the air around Old Trafford today was filled with the pathetic buzz of a tiny motor; perhaps an equally fitting tribute, given the circumstances.

What's the Story?

You’ve got to admire some people’s entrepreneurial spirit. In these testing financial times, with pubs and restaurants closing daily all over the country, one plucky Manchester company is bucking the trend and actually opening one up – nay, re-opening a former victim of the aforementioned financial meltdown. The Farmers Arms in Burnage is now in the hands of the apparently thriving Levenshulme Pub Company, an outfit that already owns two watering holes in, unsurprisingly, Levenshulme.

So how does one go about trying to make a success of a once-bankrupt pub? What could possibly be tried that hasn’t been tried before? Well it’s simple – find a tenuous link to the surrounding area and flog the hell out of it. Ladies and gentlemen The Farmers Arms presents the Oasis Music Lounge - a place for fans to come and listen to the music of their favourite band (because, obviously, you don’t hear it anywhere else in Manchester) in a room a bit closer to where the Gallagher brothers grew up than most other pubs in the country. Have Messrs Gallagher ever been in the Oasis Music Lounge? Well, no. What about The Farmers Arms? Probably...possibly...who knows? Who cares?

To be fair to the Levenshulme Pub Company, they do have some unique features in their new venue – some photography of the band taken at their gig in Eastlands and some undisclosed memorabilia, and despite the obvious tenuousness of this venture, I wish them well. It’s good to see people trying things out and taking a bit of a gamble instead of just moaning about why it wouldn’t work and never doing anything about it. I might even pop down myself. What are the chances of Wonderwall being on the jukebox when I walk in?

Rich Chocolate

Those of you out in Manchester at the weekend, perhaps jogging your way around these soggy streets on the Great Manchester Run or waiting to see a certain Mr Bolt run like a, well, bolt, might have noticed a new addition to Deansgate’s snacking options. Just opposite the Great Northern complex a new sprig has sprung in the form of The Chocolate Cafe, the second of a chain whose flagship outlet sits in the relative tranquillity of Ramsbotton. It specialises, you won’t be surprised to learn, in chocolate-based foodstuffs.

Essentially, however, it’s a cafe – you can get toast and scones and tea and coffee, stuff like that. They also do jacket potatoes with one topping for the rather breath-intaking price of £4.95 and, even more intake-inducing, cold sandwiches for £6 a go. That’s pretty steep by anyone’s standards but the toasted sandwiches surely take the WHLN Prize for Food-Induced Hyperventilation, sitting pretty as they do at the lofty heights of £7 each.

Their gimmick is the chocolate pizza – a chocolately take on the traditional dough, tomato and cheese format, substituting the likes of ham for fudge, olives for chocolate buttons and pepperoni for those little discs covered in sugary balls – jazzies they’re called, apparently. They look a bit like this:

So that’s all very nice except when you discover that a six inch ‘pizza’ with three toppings will set you back seven quid. It’d be interesting to find out how much chocolate you actually get for your seven bucks, but interesting enough to spend £7 finding out? Possibly – I’ll let you know.

Expensive MPs

MPs, Kit Kats, manure, swimming pools and housekeepers. No, not the plot for a horror film (or a porn film, Mr Smith) but just some of the things that MPs have been spending our money on over the last year or so. That’s right – OUR MONEY! Isn’t it outrageous? Well, yes, it probably is and they should be punished in some way. Maybe that horror film isn't such a bad idea.

There’s a certain irony in the level of outrage being thrown around though, especially by people who collect expenses from their own work – I bet there’s the odd Kit Kat in there too, as well as lots of other things. OK, so it’s not public money they’re spending, directly, but you’ve got to in some way feel for the public nature in which the MPs expenses are being aired and scrutinised, haven’t you? No? All right, so you haven’t. Let’s look at Salford’s finest as an example, the Right Honourable Hazel Blears:

Charges against included claiming for three different houses in one year and spending £5000 of OUR MONEY on furniture in just three months. She also claimed the mortgage payments on a flat in London, the hotel costs incurred when she sold the flat and didn’t have anywhere to stay, and didn’t pay tax on the £45,000 profit she made on the flat when she sold it. Hang on a minute – she bought a flat with OUR MONEY, sold it and pocketed all the profit? How does that work? Are these expenses some sort of investment scheme for our elected representatives to use to dally on the property market and see what profit can be made? Here’s a thought – if the flat had lost value by the time she sold it, what’s the betting she would have used expenses to pay off the deficit?

Give us back our money, Blears!

ID Manchester

It seems Manchester is to become national guinea pig and be the first city to trial the Government’s latest attempt to glean money from us at every available opportunity and monitor our every move while reducing us all to mere statistics – that’s right people, ID cards are coming to town. Here's a little unofficial FAQ, in an interview style that seems to be inexplicably popular amongst apparently ‘on pulse’ publications these days, on the whole ID card issue:

What is it?

It’s a card that confirms your identification. Your name, date of birth, eye colour, height, dress sense, taste in music, sexual preferences, inside leg measurement and favourite type of sandwich. (some of those might not be true)

Do I have to have one?

Not yet but if the current group of Labour MPs who are in charge of our country decide they like them, you will.

I don’t want one.

Tough shit. If they have their way, you will have to.

Fine, I’ll get it and just chuck it in a drawer then.

Sorry, did we mention you will be charged £60 for the pleasure? That’s not optional either, by the way.

Bastards. So what’s the point in it?

Good question. Very little, say opponents and Tory/Lib Dem MPs. It will basically do what a driving licence and/or a passport does at the moment – i.e. it confirms who you are. The only big difference will be the compulsory aspect. And the fact that it’s nice and neat and fits in your wallet. A bit like a driving licence.

So what’s the point of the trial?

Supposedly to ‘see how they go down’.

But I don’t have to have one yet?

No, it’s a voluntary trial.

Are they charging for them?

Yes, £30 in the trial.

So I have to pay but it’s not compulsory?

No.

Ha ha – screw you suckers, I’m just not going to bother then!

Quite. You and the rest of Manchester, probably.

Macho, Phallic Manchester

DJ and prolific scribbler on the subject of ‘Manchester’, Dave Haslam has recently done a piece for the BBC website about the ‘changing cityscape’ of Manchester. It’s only short but worth a watch – have a look:



Fairly predictable stuff, I guess – Castlefield, old vs new, post-bomb regeneration. I liked his take on the Beetham Tower though - “macho, phallic power being expressed”, apparently. I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before, I have to admit. I think I’ll be viewing the city in a slightly different light now.

Time to Invest?

News reaches us that apartments in the Media City development are going with as much as 20% off list price, with a promise that this is as low as they will get. For those ‘out of the loop’, Media City is a large development being built on ‘The City’s Iconic Waterfront’ (that’s Salford Quays) in preparation for the influx of lots of businesses – BBC, Sony, Bupa, Nike, Royal Mail – in 2010. ‘Lots of businesses’, of course, means lots of people working for them – 15,500 in fact. And what do people need? That’s right – supermarkets. Oh, and places to live, which is why an apartment in the Media City development is such a good investment.




Do I sound like and estate agent? I’m sorry about that. It is true though and if this 20% business is to be believed then it might not be the worst investment going at the moment, even if it is property. Whether this would be a savvy move or not would, naturally, remain to be seen (i.e. in five to ten years time) but then that is the nature of property investment. The problem is that for most of us to buy such an investment we’d need a little something called a mortgage and that, as they say, is the problem. I’ve heard they’ve taken to just laughing in your face now, if you go asking for one.

Late Night Entrepreneurs

The late night kebab shop is an intriguing place. On the one hand, a messy, perhaps even violent night is pretty much assured, especially if you’re in a prime city centre location. But the rewards for enduring such undoubted inconvenience must be relatively high. After all, how else would so many such places stay in business?

News that one of Britain’s most well known fast food brands, Greggs, are to attempt a foray into the late night market shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, therefore. It seems their branch on Oxford Road, one of the main late night thoroughfares in town, is applying for a license allowing them to open until 4.30am. A good thing, no doubt, for many of the student types who frequent the area and have penchant for a steak bake.



It makes me wonder therefore which areas of this potentially lucrative market are being under-exploited. After all, what better a captive audience than a very drunk, very hungry one with crumpled ten pound notes falling out of their pockets? Captive audience probably isn’t the right expression there but without anything more than the neon lights of a kebab shop to tempt them currently, maybe a unique, creative alternative would turn them into a captive audience. The only thing is, what? What do you need at 3am when you’ve had...ahem...a few drinks, other than some greasy food?