‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #32 John

‘I remember my winter, trudging up to Oldham on two buses, sat in the back room with endless tea and a whole rotisserie chicken…’

What’s your name?

John.

What do you do?

I am a writer, predominantly about clubs and dance music, for several publications including The Guardian, Time Out, Skiddle and The Skinny, for whom I was Clubs Editor, and from where all of this stemmed. When I see distant or elderly relatives, I joke that ‘I write in advance about what most people can’t remember!’ No, they don’t tend to laugh either. It’s a real struggle. I also work for a research company occasionally, and still get my head down with the odd bout of office temping. I am trying to distance myself from the brain prison of data entry.

Where do you live?

For the past year or so, I’ve lived in Chorlton, home to the highest proportional home burglary rate in the UK. So you can assume that if this questionnaire drifts off into the ether before your mind does, I have simply been robbed of my ability to complete it. I had always liked Chorlton even when living in the city centre, but the Metrolink made it much more appealing. Plus there’s cheap swimming and moderately priced ale to offset the constant climate of fear that you could return home any time to nothing but a dope stained set of late 70s upholstery.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

As a teenager in a North Wales village, in no uncertain terms I wanted to get the fuck out, and fast. I considered going to university in Kingston Upon Thames, Derby and a few other spots, but really wanted Manchester (not so) deep down. I just about squeezed in to MMU to study Film and Media, which I screwed up and dropped out of after two years. Somehow, with almost no financial means and only temporary jobs flyering alongside a brief stint as caretaker managing a declining chain of sex shops in Northern satellite towns, I managed to stick around. Soon to be 27, when life still feels uncertain, I remember my winter trudging up to Oldham on two buses, sat in the back room with endless tea and a whole rotisserie chicken, avoiding eye contact with the endless money shots repeated on a first generation plasma screen inches from the counter. The only security I had was a hammer stashed in a small cupboard.

I moved to Manchester for ‘the scene’, although I wasn’t sure what that was at the time. I did stand up for a few years and ended up working on a few writing projects for television and so on. I was much better at the latter side of things. Eventually, my interest drifted more toward music, and dance music especially. I started to DJ (sometimes badly, dropping random Panorama Bar house in between Foals remixes at Now Wave), and somehow kept my head above water. Some best of times, most worst of times.

I have lived in town in pokey student flats with TVs tuned only to Sky Action – on which I watched the finale of Alien Resurrection on a daily basis – then in Rusholme, where a burglar shat in my yard and a DNA officer inspecting the scene asked me if I’d ever met Steve Coogan, ‘and was he a dickhead in reality too?’ I lived above Abduls, on whose food I briefly subsisted, stealing wi-fi from a Chinese exchange student and never having to heat the flat, which was so warm in the summer months, I was physically unable to occupy it most of the time. Eventually I moved to a flat near Piccadilly, and lived with a rotating cast of characters, starring me as landlord and handyman.

What’s great about this city?

It’s a massive cliché, but almost everyone in Manchester loves music, and many more become readily engrossed in the culture surrounding it. Perhaps this is true of any large condensed populace, but the people are largely very funny too. But it’s mainly great for all the brilliant, life changing experiences and opportunities it has afforded me over the years. Or, perhaps I have afforded them to myself? Perhaps the real city, is inside myself…? (It’s not, it’s in Manchester.)

What’s not so great?

I think the city centre as a whole has declined rapidly, and the atmosphere is markedly sour compared to less than a decade ago. The cuts to resources for the homeless or those with mental health or drug problems has disenfranchised people on a huge scale; From a humanitarian angle, it’s unjustifiable, and from a more cynical tourist board perspective, it doesn’t present the city in the best light. Obviously the blame here doesn’t necessarily lie locally, though. I also worry that the city’s small enough to be almost entirely franchised and operated by half a dozen powerhouses across retail, clubbing, dining… It’s great that there’s money and ambition available still, but a streak of independence and even the sort of radicalism that the city’s cultural heritage often trumpets wouldn’t go amiss, albeit from those with far more imagination and conviction than most of us, myself included, are able to offer.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I don’t have much of a taste or sense for good architecture, although I’d like to. I enjoy the corridor of university and residential buildings on Whitworth Street, and the general feel and sights of the Palace/Cornerhouse junction. I seriously hope that the latter building stays put.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

My favourite living Mancunian is probably Kosmonaut’s bookings manager and former Piccadilly Records staff member, Pasta Paul. Not only is he one of my favourite DJs - which is saying something as he can’t mix for shit - but he loves the city more than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s still dashing around from gig to gig, opening to opening and record shop to record shop without a shred of disillusion, or the usual ego and expectations that consume some ‘local characters’. He has achieved what is surely one of the UK’s largest network of friends without ever succumbing to Facebook, and has not but a bad word to say of anyone. He is an immaculately dressed force for good in what can occasionally feel like a sea of ridiculously attired cynics.

Pasta Paul aside, I would have really loved to have met Tony Wilson, especially as I have a fondness for old Granada TV idents as much as acid house. Like many, I feel like Manchester’s musical heritage has occasionally been frequently pillaged for personal gain by many of those instrumental in it, but in and of itself, Factory is perhaps one of the most important labels of all time, and yes, Vinni Riley is good music to chill out to.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I love clubs, and I love them best when they’re dark, loud, full of smoke and not entirely welcoming at first glance. I really think Soup Kitchen’s basement is, on a good night, up there with the best in terms of a space to dance, and definitely one of the few dancefloors I feel most comfortable playing records to. Dan, who books Soup Kitchen’s club, has afforded it an amazing reputation in the face of massive competition, never allowing the listings to go stale, and maintains a wry sense of humour or perspective when I’d potentially be losing my mind.

I really like Albert Hall, which is a great example of what happens when several ambitious organisations take a risk on a venue that probably seemed obvious to a knowing few for so long. I love This and That, which even despite a few dodgy visits of hundreds, will always remain my personal victor in the endless Northern Quarter Rice and Three war. I still love Common, whatever’s on the wall there, and whatever they do to make their fries taste really good.

I enjoy strolling through Granby Row, beneath the railway arches, which feels pleasantly secluded and is as good of a bench sitting spot as any in the city. As well as the Archimedes statue, I particularly enjoy the ‘Vimto Bottle’ monument, which I genuinely thought was a really durable inflatable promoting the drink for far longer than I should have.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Following on from the above, I’d love to see more green space, which has always felt exclusive to the greater suburbs. I hope one of the occasional plans to transform Stevenson Square or the like into a greener environment comes through. But that it is genuine green space, not a continuation the council have of adding relatively miniscule patches of grass amid largely stone or concrete areas. I would rather see relatively miniscule patches of stone and concrete amid large areas of grass. I know you’re not supposed to say that sort of thing nowadays, but deal with it, incredibly well paid town planners!

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Make sure I went somewhere dead nice to get a sandwich at lunch, and then keep the receipt, say I was having a meeting, and claim it back on expenses at a later date.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Mick Hucknall.

The Shakespeare Girl : a novel

‘GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,

TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE.

BLESE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES,

AND CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES …’

I’m writing a novel. Yes, another one. My first one is currently sitting unpublished in a  metaphorical sock drawer, as all first novels should for a time. One day I will take it out, dust it off and take another look, and possibly cringe, or maybe even re-consider and re-submit it.

In the meantime I have an MA in Creative Writing to complete. My final piece of work for the course is a novel: The Shakespeare Girl.  As part of the project I’ve set up a website to accompany the novel, which you can look at here. I will be adding various reviews, images, news items and guest posts to the site over the coming weeks, and eventually I will post an extract or two from the novel itself. 

The opening quotation above, as you might know, is taken from Shakespeare’s tombstone. If we believe, as many do, that these words are amongst the last ones written by the playwright himself, they reveal an anxiety about exhumation which also makes an appearance in sixteen of his thirty-seven surviving plays. When I first read about this peculiar obsession, I was intrigued. I began to read about the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, and discovered that the building sits right on the riverbank, hovering over the waters of the Avon, and that it is in some state of dilapidation.

Erosion, disrepair … a thought occurred to me: What would happen if you had to dig up William Shakespeare…?

That was the starting point for a story, which I decided to people with characters whose lives are somehow connected to the Bard: a professor, a student, an actress… In homage to Angela Carter’s Wise Children, I also decided to include some type of reference –obvious, oblique, or somewhere in between – to every Shakespeare play in the course of the book. Not to be clever – I’m learning about Shakespeare as I go – but to try and neatly dramatise the way in which Shakespeare infiltrates our daily lives, often without us knowing.

So, whenever time permits, I’m working away at the novel. The plot, I think, is decided. The characters, I hope, are beginning to come off the page. It’s ambitious, hopefully funny, certainly accessible, and I can’t wait to finish it.

If you’d like to get in touch about my writing, or about anything Shakespearean, or better still, if you’d like to contribute something to my website, then I’d love to hear from you, at this address here. If you’re on Twitter I also have a dedicated account to follow, here.

Thank you for reading …!

Manchester: In Residents ... #7: Andrew

‘This city’s greatest contribution to world happiness came in the squat and lugubrious shape of a comedian, decades ahead of his time...’

What’s your name?

Andrew Moor

What do you do?

I ‘facilitate learning’ in Film Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. I’m there because I ran away from reality and went to university in 1991 when I was 27. The ‘90s was a decade when absolutely nothing of note happened so I ended up staying at university until 1999 by which time I’d accidentally specialised myself out of all usefulness. My job is almost entirely teaching and admin-driven lunacy but I’d rather be working here at Oxford Road Comp. than down the road at the Chorlton-on-Medlock Finishing School for Daintie Gentel-folke. Every now and again I accidentally stumble into a meaningful teaching-related encounter.

Where do you live?

In a small off-white box in the dormitory-‘burb of Hulme. Newsflash: Hulme lacks charm. It is reassuringly bland, aside from the bile-green luminescence of Asda. After ten years I still can’t find my way around but I don’t think I’ve missed anything. I’m being mean: it’s handy for town, I sometimes see the sparrow hawk whooshing over the university, and last month I belatedly discovered ‘Kim by the Sea’. The pizza was good, the drinks were good, the décor was good, the clientele looked ‘characterful’. It’s a fab place: check it out.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I finally left Newcastle in 1999 when I got a lecturing job in Bangor. I thought I liked the countryside. I still miss a lot about North Wales and I go back there all the time, but the ‘Bangorness’ of Bangor caused me to seek out Manchester, it being the nearest place with anything worthy of the name ‘shop’. A gradual relocation happened – just weekends at first – and I’ve been based here for about a decade now.

What’s great about this city?

When I settled in Manchester I thought I’d found the area I wanted to live my life in. I loved the splurging Gothic buildings, the wide streets, the mess (Newcastle is a more classically-restrained gem). I loved the size of Manchester, it seemed manageable: small enough to get about on foot but big enough not to be able to do everything in. I used to have a theory that since London is a city-state unto itself and since it is easily the least English place in England, that Manchester exists as the greatest English city. I love its Northernness too. When you come from Newcastle you are taught that Geordies are (a) everywhere, (b) special and (c) the friendliest people on earth. All I can say is that I lived there for thirty five years, during which time not a single stranger enjoined me in civil conversation. When I moved to Manchester and used to do Saturday morning grocery shopping in Stretford Arndale I had to factor in an extra thirty per cent of time for chatting to women about frozen peas.

What Manchester does best is probably music. For gigs of all sorts, in so many diverse venues, it’s hard to beat. Even at the posh end it has two full symphony orchestras, and when Mark Elder is conducting the Hallé you won’t find a finer orchestra on the planet. There’s been a cluster of club nights over the last ten years which have meant quite a bit to me. I loved being in dank smoky cellars dancing forever while second-hand sweat dripped off overhead pipes. I loved not being able to find my way about at HomoElectric in Legends. I loved it when Club Suicide ran out of beer. Recently I’ve loved nights at Kraak. None of these places were ever my natural habitat though. I don’t go to gigs as often as I used to and I tired of damp cellars – without the smoke you can only smell the mould and the toilets. It’s nice to know these places are there though, and I still get excited for other people when I see them wandering, vaguely lost, down Oxford Road, looking for the Academy.

Most of these feelings hold firm but I sometimes find Manchester a bit limited. I’m often scuttling around the city at a loose end, pining for London (which I find more relaxed, more playful, less psychotic). Conversely, I sometimes find Manchester a little too big and crave somewhere rustic with sky, trees, birdsong…

What’s not so great?

Dear Manchester, your theatre’s rubbish. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say this, perhaps native Mancunians have a reverence for it knitted into their genes ab initio, but (and it pains me to say) The Royal Exchange is fingernail-pullingly rubbish –or to be more precise, dutifully mediocre. The space is awful; it’s almost invariably badly used; the programming couldn’t be duller; and in ten years of patience I’ve seen only two worthwhile (i.e. memorable) productions there (Twelfth Night and the damn-good Matthew Dunster’s Macbeth). It was after an arduous production of Dr Faustus a few years ago that I pledged to never set foot in the place again. A fit of pique perhaps, but my god it was awful. Go to the Liverpool Playhouse/Everyman instead, one of the most exciting regional theatres in the country. Or if you’ve got about twelve hours to spare, engage with the eastward evening traffic and head over the hills to Sheffield. Go to Leeds even, the ‘South of the North’, and try the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Even Stratford is do-able. Let’s hope the revamped Library Theatre will kick-start something. Remember, this city was once home to Annie Horniman and Joan Littlewood!

Piccadilly Gardens. Okay, maybe Manchester isn’t meant to be attractive as a whole; individual buildings are breathtaking but it’s flatly featureless – a City on the Plains – and it’s the dirtiest, most litter-strewn place I can think of, where men piss in the streets with neither anxiety nor regret. But seriously, what collective mental meltdown happened at the Town Hall the day they signed off Piccadilly Gardens? Concrete over most of the only patch of grass in the city: saves on mowers, bulb-planers, pruners... Build a drab office on part of it: it’s a way of grabbing cash and Kro needed to go somewhere, so appealing is Danish cuisine. Stick what I think is a fountain there: it might be the only wash that some of those feral spawnings ever get. But I can’t imagine anywhere in the world, from Albania to North Korea, has anything as unremittingly bleak as that concrete wall. Palestine, maybe? The pissoirs say it all: are they for weeping into? If I ever had a soul, Piccadilly Gardens has destroyed it. Did any of you see Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang at the Manchester International Festival? Did you hear the collective tear-inducing, bosom-clenching gasp of nostalgia from ladies of a certain age when they screened Kodak slides of Piccadilly Gardens in the 1950s? Those flowers survived the Luftwaffe but like foot-soldiers they fell under the lumpen philistine boots of Manchester’s governors. Shame on them.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I paused a week before answering this, and it needed a walk around the city before the reply towered before me. It’s The Town Hall. It’s vulgar, it screams, it’s obvious, it’s magnificent, and life’s too short for anything other than magnificent, screaming, obvious vulgarity.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

This is a tricky question now the Market Street Mincer has minced away, and obviously I never actually spoke to him. An acid-spangled madman with thinning hair and a baggy vest used to turn up on his own and dance ‘uniquely’ everywhere I seemed to be. He was another sight for glad eyes but I don’t know who he was. Google turned up a few good folk, namely Thomas Beecham, John Dee and Alan Turing. Alfred Wainwright gave me the Lake District. Tony Wilson only ever made my spirits rise. I miss hearing his voice. I chatted to him once about biscuits. That said, long-cloistered consideration leads me to the conclusion that this city’s greatest contribution to world happiness came in the squat and lugubrious shape of a comedian, decades ahead of his time; a poet, a craftsman, and a joy: Mr Les Dawson.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

This is the hardest question. I’ll name-check Chorlton and Sale Water Parks, they make my heart skidaddle nicely. None of the venues or restaurants I can think of tick every box, though if Greens was around the corner I’d be there weekly. Port Street Beer House and the Molly House are the places I’d take a visitor. Because it’s topical and because it’s the place I’ve been most often I have to mention Legends. It would be sad if it left us but I really do believe that a building is just a building, that there’s always another building, and that people maketh the venue.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Manchester is the world’s only arctic monsoon district so it would be fantastical to suggest ‘relaxing beer gardens serving gastro-food’. For my money what Manchester needs most is a nice park in the city centre. We only have about four trees. It’s also missing a sensible transport policy (why people voted against the congestion charge is beyond me). Can we please have no private traffic on Oxford Road and an integrated bus service?

If I was Mayor for a day I would...

I wouldn’t seek this position out, but were civic puissance thrust upon me I’d give generous grants to Nick’s Fruit and Veg Stall on Oxford Road and to any outlets selling only vegetarian food and/or second hand clothes and to anywhere screening films made for grown-ups. I’d give Manchester a permanent weekly open-air market-place and double the rates on every litter-producing fast-food shit-hole. And I’d sort out the Old Fire Station travesty on London Road, at gunpoint if necessary.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Bren O’Callaghan at the Cornerhouse.

Andrew’s book Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces is published with I.B. Tauris. He is also co-editor of Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker (BFI). He is currently writing a book on gay cinema.