mightaswell.

Since the BBC already called me an artist last year, I might as well continue with the artsy stuff. And this time it will be less hairy, promise.

I am fairly obsessed with replicas of real-life items that are either incredible small or unusually large. Have you ever wondered what kind of person buys the giant Toblerone chocolate bars at the duty free shop? Yep, that would be me. But even more than plus sized things, I love miniatures. Mini-everything. Mini-food in particular. Those Japanese videos of mini plastic food? Addictive.

I love browsing the supermarket shelves and discovering new tiny versions of real food. Mini cheese selection. Mini pizzas. Mini-mini easter eggs (seriously!). Mini chocolate bars. Mini vegetables. Those mini cake loaves you get at Costa Coffee. The mini-bottles of spirits on the plane. They all look like the real thing… but tiny! It’s like sex for my eyes!*

To celebrate the awesomeness of mini-ness and  in order to live up to my reputation as an artist, I will spend the next week living off nothing but miniatures. MINIMIZE ME.

Starting with a weekly shopping trip that will fit in my hand bag, I am going explore the world of miniature food, sip from tiny teacups, eat my food from saucers, and use the tiniest frying pan I could find in the shop. Expect a week of madness, hunger and wonderful tinyness, starting from Monday the 25th July 2011.

Any suggestions for tiny food? Please post in the comments!

* Oh whatever. Not everything I write has to make sense, does it?

The Fresh Queen of West Diddy

Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
I’d like to take a minute flowin fresher than Fiddy*
I’ll tell you how I became the queen of a place called West Diddy

In Southwest Germany, born and raised
on the school bench where I spent most of my days,
doing my homework, mathematics all cool
And all coding some websites outside of the school
When that one massive uni that looked pretty good
Made me an offer I could not refuse
I sent them one little letter and my mum was proud
She said ‘have a great time in Manchester, now get out!’

I whistled for a black cab and left in a hurry
The licenceplate said ‘MCR’ and it smelled of curry
If anything I could say this town was quite gritty
But I thought mightaswell stay here, welcome to West Diddy!

I pulled up to a house that was made from red bricks
And yelled to the cabby ‘I’m sorry, no tips’
Looked at my kingdom and it was rather pretty
So I settled my throne as the queen of West Diddy

I couldn’t resist. It was a particularly long bus journey. People of West Didsbury forgive me. You may now officially declare the end of the blogging world as we know it.

* That’s cool speak for Fifty Cent. Yo.

[Photo by blitzi]

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.