mightaswell.

Due to my being in possession of a Unirider, some people with, GASP, jobs, believe I am an unworthy creature whose life consists of staying up all night partying, destroying my house and annoying my neighbours*. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the pleasure of being an undergraduate student in this country and therefore cannot live up to these expectations – being a student is a much less excessive affair in Germany than it seems to be here. I usually try to get past the smelly boozers and dirty takeaways of Fallowfield as quickly as possible, since even shopping at the Sainsbury’s on my way home can be painful at times (Now repeat after me: pyjamas were never meant to be worn anywhere outside my house. A supermarket is not my house.).

But hey, this wouldn’t be mightaswell if I was just accepting the facts and avoiding Fallowfield by all means. Why not just go and live the student lifestyle myself – with a particularly classy night out in Fallowfield. The task: drink only the most fluorescent or silliest sounding drinks, eat stuff that doesn’t usually classify as edible in your life, stumble around in heels, make use of cheap booze offers, and spend not more than £20.

Having invested a considerate amount of time on my make-up and hair (you gotta do what you gotta do) I even decided to wear heels, which happens about twice a year and makes me regret every time that I wasn’t wearing ’shoes for people with flat feet’, as I was told to. The night started with a romantic three course meal at McDonalds, yet another place which, as a vegetarian / part time vegan, secret hippie and general chain-refusenik, I have probably visited as many times as I have been seen wearing heels in my life. After some difficulties identifying the one vegetarian option on the menu, I settled for a ’spicy veggie deli sandwich’ with fries and a banana milkshake. That’s three courses, right? (To anticipate the result, my night ended with a cup of peppermint tea and a hot water bottle on my belly.)

Feeling a little dirty and very disappointed with the semi-cold fries, we made our way into Fallowfieldia, the first stop being the local Wetherspoons. The pub was fairly unspectacular even for Wetherspoons standards, and after a pitcher of Woo Woo (silly name: tick!) which is basically just cranberry juice++, we moved on to Baa Bar. Here’s a confession: I don’t actually mind Baa Bar when it’s not busy. The drinks prices are fair, they’ve got German beer in bottles (makes me feel like home…), the insane shooter menu is fun, and the music is generally very quiet. I even suggested they could advertise with something like “Baa Bar – not shit until 9pm!”, but I’m not sure that was convincing enough. In the style of Baa Bar, I went for a bright green apple flavoured fizzy alcopop (fluorescent drink: tick!) and a few shooters with names like ‘Sassy Bitch’, ‘Dave’ (eh?), ‘Twilight’ and ‘Pinky Winky’ (silly names: tick! tick! tick! tick!). Our visit to the rather quiet Baa Bar was followed by a quick stop at the Tesco’s next door to buy a box of Rennie. You gotta do etc.

Moving further up Wilmslow Road, we headed for a quick drink and a game of pool at the Cheshire Cat, where we encountered a person sleeping on the sofa, the bar staff playing ‘catch the peanut with your mouth’, drinks smashing on the floor, and someone being sick all over the sinks in the gents toilets. (I’ve got pictures of the toilet incident, but I think posting these would be one step too far, even for me.) It was also the first time I heard Bjork’s ‘I miss you’ in a bar. Lovely place.

A fairly recent but very clever addition to the watering holes in Fallowfield is the second branch of the beloved cheap as chips cocktail (””cocktail””) bar Font. Sticky tables and unnecessarily loud music are as much a part of Font, as are huge queues at the bar and toilets that were obviously bought from the hellhole store (ok, I stole that one from Das Racist). Nonetheless, we decided to savour some of their delicacies on the cocktail (””cocktail””) menu and ended up bumping into someone we least expected there: people my age. My mates were probably as surprised as I was to meet them there, but the instant ‘we’re in this together now’ feeling convinced us to stay, despite the painfully loud music that reduced my vocal chords to shrivelled up parcel twine.

After only two cocktails (””cocktails””) however, the accumulation of fluorescent drinks, greasy junk food and shooters with silly names cut a hole in my stomach and therefore the evening fairly short. All my plans to end the night with a little dance at Robinskis or the Revolution’s UV party of the year were annihilated. I admitted defeat and went home.

So, how was it? Well. Fallowfield was rather quiet due to it being the end of term time, and therefore rather uninteresting. I got away spending a minimum on drinks, I saw some appalling toilets and got stuck on dirty tables a few times. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, but hey, I’ll be back in Fresher’s Week to get the full Fallowfield experience.

Did I just write a 900 word blog post about going out for drinks? Hell yes I did.

* Hint: Having a 9-5 job doesn’t make you a better person.

As I promised (warned, that is) you last week, I went on a little trip to Levenshulme. As a loyal reader* of the South Manchester Reporter, I was aware of the existence of this area of Manchester, but could never really pin down what exactly constituted Levenshulme. Or what was happening there. Or who lived there. In order to battle my ignorance, the fab Helen from Love Levenshulme volunteered to put up with me for an afternoon and give me an introduction to the wonderful world of Levenshulme.

On a very lovely and very sunny Sunday, I climbed the stairs to the top deck of the 192, leaving behind Piccadilly and slowly moving down Stockport Road, past teenagers in sleeping bags camping outside the Apollo, through Ardwick and Longsight, finally getting off at Levenshulme rail station to meet my guide for the day. Our first stop was the absolutely brilliant POD deli which had its name from its location – a former post office! (Yeah that kind of stuff does get me quite excited.)

We spent almost two hours at POD, stuffing our little faces with delicious food and chatting away with Helen and her “almost next door neighbours”. “There are lots of families in Levenshulme!” they said, pointing at the children and prams squeezed into the tiny café. “Oh really?”, I replied. “I just thought it was well dodgy!”. I learned that, while certainly having its slightly more grubby areas, Levenshulme was full of families, a large student population, parks, and a lovely little creative scene, which was proved by the handmade cards and brooches displayed at POD.

We only just managed to drag ourselves off the chairs at POD and move further down the road, past a phone box that looked like it had been the location of a very long and potentially very interesting phone call, containing six emtpy cans of Skol Super - a 9% lager. Welcome to Levenshulme!

We arrived at the mysterious “Antiques Village”, which, as it turned out, wasn’t an actual village, but an old council building that had been turned into an antiques shopping mall. We explored the little museum-like shops that had bits and bobs crammed in up to the ceiling, including a creepy self-inflating Michelin man, discovered the amazing Agaphantus Antiques shop (ooh! Shiny!) that Helen had only just mentioned on Love Levenshulme, and had a cup of tea from the little café in the village. And that’s where my trip to Levenshulme ended – distracted by lovely food, lovely chats, and shiny things, I didn’t actually manage to explore the dingy backstreets I had been hoping for. I suppose there is only one way to solve this (terrible, teeeerrrible) problem: I have to come back to Levy as soon as possible!

Special notice: Love Levenshulme are running a photo competition titled “Levenshulme Loves”. The deadline is on Wednesday 3rd November, so I recommend you pay a visit to Levy, snap some awesome pictures (i.e. better than what you see below…) and send them in as soon as you can. Fame awaits you!

* When we first moved down here, we used to put the South Manchester Reporter in the bathroom as toilet reading material. Now it just goes straight into the recycling.

Manchester is a city of many neighbourhoods, all with different reputations, ranging from “nice” or “hippieish” to “grim”, “dodgy” and “I WOULDN’T GO THERE!!”. Withington seems a bit lost somewhere in between the studenty madness of Fallowfield, and the civilized suburban middleclassness of Didsbury. There are a few rough areas as well as some very nice places like the vegetarian cafe, bar and gig venue Fuel, and my favourite underground boozer Indigo, but there seems to be no consistent opinion about this area. I thought I might as well go and explore it myself – and so I embarked on a little day trip to the hardly known, quaint little village called “Withington”, located in the South of Manchester.

Only a short bike ride away, I started my day with a hearty breakfast in the local eatery The Coffee House – “A place where friends meet when it’s time to eat”. This little gem of copywriting is surprisingly appropriate for the greasy spoon on Copson street, the commercial and social hub of Withington. The Coffee House seems a popular meeting place for the pensioners and workers of the village, while serving huge fry-ups that would make all you Koffee Pot fanatics weep from joy*. The four ladies who work at the cafe whip up bacon barms by the dozen and buckets of steaming hot tea for the hungry crowd, determinedly and patiently tracing all orders while whizzing through the cafe with wagon wheel sized plates in their hands.

Having eaten enough mushrooms, beans and toast to last until next month, I set out to explore what Withington is famous for: its charity shops. The NSPCC shop, right next to “Withington Fruit & Veg” (good & cheaper alternative to the Co-op), is possibly the cheapest of all, cramming in 25p vinyl singles, as well as paperbacks and records for 50p. While I’m rooting through books and scarves, the three ladies in the shop are busy discussing their last holiday to Blackpool: “I stayed in a hotel that was like a combination of Fawlty Towers and the Titanic! I left after one night!” I leave with a book and a Human League 7″. I don’t even have a record player.

At Age Concern next door, I find a nice big handbag in a bargain bin and move on to the Lighthouse Charity Shop, which doesn’t have anything particularly exciting on offer. Across the road, I visit the Barnabus Boutique, a Christian charity shop that houses a little cafe (read as “has a coffee machine on the counter”). I am tempted to buy a DVD titled “Caribbean Wreck Heaven”, but feel a little disappointed after finding out it is only a DVD on deep sea diving.

Leaving behind the magical world of charity shops, I leave the main road for a quick peek into my favourite shop in Withington, the one without a name that simply says “CDs. DVDs. Vinyl” on its shop window. The place is packed up to the ceiling with, well, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, books and Star Wars memorabilia, and I never fail to find something to spend my money on. Today, it is a Flight of the Conchords DVD, which the shop owner hands me wrapped up in a Sainsbury’s bag. Don’t waste a thing!

My last stop for today is the often overlooked Withington Library, which has put me off so far with its ugly exterior. But oh, how wrong I was! As soon as I enter the building, it feels like I have walked into one of those Harry Potter tents that look like huge mansions on the inside. The tiny library consists of only one, presumably octagonal, room with large windows and big, round skylights, with an almost airy feel to it. I wonder why I have never considered visiting the library, and I definitely know where to set up camp next time I have some writing work to do. On my way home, I make a quick stopover at Martin’s bakery on Copson Street for one of their strawberry tarts that found their way into my heart* with their gooey jelly like topping and pools of custard.

So, what is Withington? Is it just a strip of charity shops along Wilmslow Road? Well. It may be a bit rough sometimes, there are fights, drunks, drunken fights and the traffic can be a nightmare, but between the library and the shops on Copson Street, Withington is almost like a little village with a diverse community, if you look at it from the right angle.

* Stomach.