mightaswell.

“Where there is much light, the shadow is deep” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

I’m constantly trying hard to see the good things about Manchester – yes, it’s got a lively and lovely arts & culture scene, a university that’s world famous for its research, some amazing bands, two fairly good football teams (not taking sides here) and, uhm, the Manchester Egg.

Lately, however, it seems that Manchester is trying really hard to make me think of it as a filthy soggy snot rag that is nothing but appalling: we’re currently on an impressive winning streak, breaking the country’s shittiest and least desirable records. Reading through my daily feed of “Inside the M60″, I came across these gems:

• Much to everyone’s surprise, Chorlton received the “Newcomer of the Year” award for being the nation’s “Burglary Capital”.
• Greater Manchester health organisations have received the highest number of written complaints in the last 12 years, earning themselves the prestigious “Mr Motivator” award.
• Young people in Manchester proudly carry the “Nasties of the Year” award for having one of the highest rates of STIs in the country (Ugh. Remind me to wear rubber gloves on the bus.)
• The city has the 6th highest rate of car accidents involving children in the country. No jokes about that one. The whole North West seems to be full of mad drivers, with Preston, Liverpool and Blackpool being in the top 4 on the list.
• A “Stoner of the Year” special mention goes to Greater Manchester for having the 2nd highest number of cannabis farms in the UK – unfortunately we lost that one to North Yorkshire.

And what’s the best solution for all these problems? Oh yes, spending cuts for Greater Manchester Police. Manchester’s future is all rainbows and sparkly unicorns! Whoop!

Honestly, I’m certainly not disenchanted by these news, and I’m in no position to blame anyone – shit happens everywhere. But at the moment Manchester seems to attract it like a freaking Swiffer cloth! People of Manchester, please enlighten me: what the hell is going wrong here? Or is it just my feed reader?

* That was an accident. I mean “YOU. YOU MANCUNIANS.” But you know what… who am I kidding. I’ve been mancunianized, I just can’t help it.

As I happily announced a few weeks ago, I had booked a place for one of Manchester Confidential’s “Tunnel Tours” to explore Manchester’s damp and dark underground. And since I’m German, i.e.  efficient to the point of stubbornness*, I decided to plan something else before the tour to go with the “underground” theme. Yes, I went for high tea at Cloud 23, the bar on the 23rd floor of Manchester’s tallest building, the Beetham tower (better known as the Hilton Hotel, or Playstation 2 as I call it).

After a scarily fast ride on the lift, we were greeted by an incredibly friendly waitress and lead to our table – right-by-the-floor to ceiling windows, looking out over the city centre and Salford. The views were amazing, and after two years in this city it was fascinating to finally see it from above. The tea was served in mismatched vintage tea cups and pots, which seemed surprisingly twee and quirky in this place, and the sandwiches (they even took note of the “Attention! Vegetarian! Handle with care!” warning we issued when booking), scones and cake were lovely. I’m quite looking forward to taking any potential visitors there again (so I can eat cake while they’re distracted by the panorama. Ha!)

Swapping the heels for trainers, we moved on to the second part of our “Towers & Tunnels 2010” tour. A fairly large group of adventurous Mancunians had already gathered outside the Bridgewater Hall when we arrived, sporting wellies and carrying torches. Our tour guide gave us a quick introduction to the use of canals in Manchester and the importance of the Great Northern railway station: it used to be one of the largest goods exchange places in the country, with access to the underground canal and the railway to transport goods by water and land.

We descended into the old canal system via a… uhm… secret door at the back of the information room (who knew that room even existed!) in the Great Northern, climbing down a stair case into a corridor that lead into a large hall. This was the beginning of a walk through damp, muddy and very dark tunnels, at times only lit by our torches, while the guide stopped the group at some points to talk about the use of the tunnel for trade, and as an air-raid shelter in the second world war. I had a great time down there while learning something exciting about a part of the city I won’t see again any time soon – and walking around in the dark with torches felt like being on a school trip!

In the light of its history, it’s a shame the Great Northern is now almost completely useless (apart from the AMC cinema), and I really hope the tunnel tours help putting it into the focus of both people in Manchester and businesses again. At least the tours seem to be a huge success – almost all of them are fully booked months in advance.

* And by “efficient” I mean I can carry a mug with steaming hot tea, a laptop with an open lid, a heavy bag, two books, my phone, a pencil case, a packet of biscuits and a plate with toast downstairs from the lounge into my bedroom just so I don’t have to walk twice. Never mind the burns on my hands.

One of the reasons why I actually like Manchester (sometimes) is its hyperactive arts and culture sector that seems to be just crazy about organising festivals. There’s the Jazz Festival, Future Everything, the Literature Festival, 24:7 Theatre Festival, the Family Friendly Film Festival, the Didsbury Art Festival, Manchester International Festival, the Comedy Festival, Food and Drink Festival, the WestFest, FuturEverything… this city really is ONE BIG FESTIVAL!

Well, that’s  certainly fine by me. I’m happy to stop bitching about the depressing weather, lousy public transport, scary crime rate and social inequality in order to engage in a bit of culture, especially when paired with food.

After days of torrential rain in Manchester, I awoke this Saturday morning to find the sun burning down onto my face, convincing me to finally make a serious attempt at visiting the Didsbury Food Market. Located just around the library, this teeny tiny gathering of stalls may not be big enough to be called a “market”*, yet it managed to keep me busy for quite a while. And by that I mean “stuff my face and succumb to impulse buys”, spending a small fortune on: a cheese & vegetable tart from “Silver Apples”, beautiful macaroons from the “English Rose Bakery”, a home made Battenberg from the lady with the pretty apron, two necklaces from “In All Her Finery”, and a cupcake from “And the dish ran away with the spoon”, who are just about to open a shop in West Didsbury. What a lovely way to start a Saturday morning. A few more regional fruit & veg stalls, and I’m happy to throw all my money at local businesses there every week!

Moving on into the city centre, I enjoyed a little more of the rare sunshine at the Mad Scientists’ Tea Party, a trailblazer event for the Manchester Science Festival (another festival!). Exploding plastic tubs, lava lamps made from oil and vitamin tablets, rainbow coloured cupcakes, giant soap bubbles and an incredibly fascinating camera obscura in a yurt were keeping children and parents entertained.

What I found even more interesting than the activities however was the eclectic mix of people at the Tea Party – families with their Saturday shopping, teenage mums, emo kids not willing to give up their usual spot at Cathedral Gardens, and two tramps who got seriously excited about the explosions and kept sticking vitamin tablets in film containers. Until recently, I would have sniffed at this and left quickly, but I suppose I’ve been in this city long enough now to understand: this is Manchester. It’s just… a bit different. Nothing wrong with it, eh.

* See, I’m from a very rural area. Some of the boys I knew would sometimes drive to school with a tractor. We do proper markets. It takes all day to get from one end to another. There’s dozens of stalls selling organic hand grown happy fruit and vegetables, artisan cheese from happy cows, tons of uhm… happy meat, Turkish and Greek deli stalls, hundreds of different types of bread loaves, rolls, cakes and sweets. No need to explain why I turn into a little fatty every time I visit my family at home.

Once you get into the habit of running outdoors two or three times a week, it can be quite confusing to move to a different city – finding suitable routes of various distances takes some time and patience, especially if you live in an area without parks, and treadmills in stuffy gyms are certainly no substitute.

As soon as I had left the red brick desert that is Rusholme (including a house that I shared with 5 people and several venturous mice, boasting special features such as mouldy walls and a kitchen ceiling that caved in one night) I began exploring south Manchester on google maps and found that little green spot called “Fog Lane Park“, just off Wilmslow Road. Apparently a bit of a “dodgy area”* due to it bordering on Burnage’s council estates, the park didn’t seem very popular with anyone I asked about it. (And I have to mention that someone actually managed to spray a graffiti onto a bush. Good work!)

At the first sight, there really isn’t much to this fairly large park – a field, trees, a football pitch and a kid’s playground. But if you set out to explore the little corners and keep your eyes open, you will find a pond, occupied by ducks and geese, next to constructed wetland, small patches of wild flowers, squirrels fighting each other, proud parents watching their kids play football on Saturday afternoons (sounds cheesy, but I’m not making this one up – I ran past a happily smiling family yesterday, absolutely heart warming!), an impressive number of different dog breeds and even some apple trees.

I know, I know – in my very first post I said that Fog Lane park wasn’t “too exciting” and now I’m praising it? Well, it may not be a lovely picnic park like Fletcher Moss, but it has a fantastic atmosphere in grey and rainy weather, with dark clouds hanging over the tall trees, heavy from the rain they are about to unleash onto the city (and, boy, they DO unleash buckets of rain with full force at the moment). Fortunately, the leaf canopy is dense enough to keep you dry before you run back home, along Old Broadway with its beautiful large houses and magnificent flowers in their front gardens.

* Dodgy area = The whole city bar Chorlton and Didsbury. Hang on, Chorlton was only just named the “nation’s burglary capital”? Ah well.

[Photo of curious duck by "Cokaigne". Thanks!]

I still seem to constantly forget that WE’RE ON AN ISLAND! Having spent the best part of my life in central Central Europe, the smell of salty sea water is something so unusual to me, I can’t help but get excited and squeal in delight whenever I see a stretch of sand and some seagulls*.

After several gray and rainy weeks in Manchester, a daytrip to the seaside came just in time to cheer me up, and so we headed for Formby on a surprisingly sunny Saturday afternoon. The dunes around Formby Point were absolutely beautiful, a vast area of  sandy hills, some covered in grass, perfect for a walk and a bit of climbing. Further down at the beach I was fascinated by the dead jelly fish (of the “Lion’s Mane” species, I just found out) – big gelatinous wobbly blobs on the sand – and by the view of Liverpool in the distance, which looked like a huge industrial moloch and reminded me of Gotham city!

We were feeling quite adventurous that day, so we decided to drive a few miles further down south to Crosby to see Antony Gormley’s “Another Place” statues. After getting lost in Crosby (thanks to some confusing sign posting), we finally made it down to the beach and saw… a man, standing in the sea, the water up to his waist… and another one… and another one… CHRIST, they were EVERYWHERE!

Yep. Found the statues.

I hadn’t seen any pictures of “Another Place” before and really wasn’t prepared for this – 100 life-size cast iron statues of nude men standing on a 3 km strip of Crosby beach, looking out onto the sea. It had a similar effect on me as the first time I saw Jaume Plensa’s “Dream” on the side of the motorway: somewhere between fascinating, creepy, impressive and “this is SO freaking me out”. I certainly know what’s going to haunt me in my dreams in the next few weeks, thanks for that.

People of Manchester! You may not always be aware of this, sitting in your pubs and bars, restaurants, malls and air-conditioned cinemas – but you DO live on an island, and you’re really damn lucky. Now go and make the best of it.

* Actually, no. No seagulls, please. I nearly got attacked by one in Edinburgh once while trying to have a sandwich in a park. It was a particularly tough stare-off, me vs nature (the Scottish seagull). I couldn’t cope with that nasty seagull death stare, so I caved in and left the park eventually. In tears.