The shoe leather is wearing particularly thin thanks to our latest trip to London (cultural highlights to follow).
Stumbled across the pleasing Soho Pizzeria at the end of Carnaby Street, initially rejected by Katharine, despite the reasonably priced menu, for looking too posh.
Live jazz piano accompanied my very well presented, if slightly dry, tuna and tomato salad. The pizza itself and profiteroles that followed were faultless and the service (perhaps slightly too) prompt. We only spent thirty quid between us.
This posted via mobile via Flickr. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
There’s something of the traditional barber in this sign that long haired men will be charged as women.
It reminds me of the Chorlton Barber’s previous owner who had a couple of manly female customers who liked a short back and sides. The question here is whether this establishment at London’s Euston Station should, on the same basis that it treats long haired men as women, treat women who conform a certain butch stereotype as men.
This posted via mobile via Flickr. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
‘We don’t want no Southerners looking after our kids!’
– Gordo, Manchester Confidential
Last night’s legend had it that having got a good kicking on Manchester’s Oxford Street, Manchester Confidential’s Gordo’s Mancunian pride was further bruised by the discovery that to benefit from the good work of music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins children were bussed down to London. You can help change that by clicking here to donate. Peter Hook, David Potts and plenty of friends did their bit last night…
And what a night. My companion was better at spotting the legends from the Manchester music scene and we reckon there was the inevitable smattering of Coronation Street stars (but not being soap fans we were only sure about one ex).
David Potts performance sans-Peter Hook also hit the spot and the support was bluesy and competent, even if nobody seemed to catch their names. We settled on Cabbage Waste, but it might have been Cabbage White or even Cabbage Bash. Sadly the pics I took of them came out rubbish. Oh well.
To place the event in context, the NUJ and it’s campaign partners believe that between 1990 and 2002 more than 270 journalists were killed in war zones, but in 2003, 2004 and 2005 that number increased to more than 100 each year, some times more than 150. In addition, journalists have been subjected to kidnappings, physical attacks and arbitrary detention. The BBC’s Alan Johnston is currently held somewhere on the Gaza Strip.
Those who report from war zones do an important job and the apparent targeting of the media compromises the ability of those us fortunate enough to live in a peaceful democracy to come to an informed opinion on our own country’s role.
Whey hey! It’s only New Order legend Peter Hook with Monaco bandmate David Potts taking to the intimate (i.e. small) stage of Manchester’s Hard Rock Cafe in aid of music therapy charity, Nordoff Robbins. Yours truly is here (well on the bus home after) thanks to listings website Manchester Confidential. And it’s all because we don’t want no Southerners looking after our kids.
Boddingtons is a pint real ale fans cruelly describe as something a lager drinker might like, but the demolition of the brewery is sad all the same.
Whitbread’s marketing the beer as a national brand in the 1990s made a significant contribution to reshaping the city’s regenerated ‘original modern’ image and I’m still proud to own a full set of ‘cream of Manchester’ postcards.
This posted via mobile via Flickr. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
As part of the run down of Holmes Place to Virgin Active (should that be Virgin inActive?) this rather strange (and totally ignored, because it’s not what they mean) locker policy has been introduced: ‘large lockers must be left empty at all times.’
There’s a fear that Virgin may only be as good at gyms as they are at television, as they close facilities for an over promised refurb that’s weeks over due and then fall silent. Letters and comment cards go unanswered for months.
This posted via mobile via Flickr. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).
‘The hand-rearing of Knut is a breach of the animal protection code. He’ll rely on humans forever and this cannot be right.’
– Animal Rights Activist Frank Albrecht
There seems little logic in calling for the head of Knut, the polar bear cub who some say should die for being too tame. To kill little Knut would be to give in to a base fear that human beings should not interfere with nature… as if we haven’t always interfered with nature.
He’s unlikely to grow up to have wild polar bear friends as wild animals tend to fear their domesticated equivalents. Closer to home a tame stray cat at Oxford Road rail station is shunned by the wilder members of her species, but we’re not about to kill all our pets. Wild polar bears are solitary, friendless creatures anyway and being wild and free isn’t all we humans romanticise it to be. Wild animals most often live a subsistence existence in constant fear and die drawn-out painful deaths.
More dangerously, an irrational fear of interfering with nature may be all that stands in the way of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild and ridding the world of malaria, a disease that kills a million people a year and does much to keep Africa poor.
Last time I wrote about the Darkness, I received threatening emails (but tamer comments) from fans one of which was foolish enough to use his school PC. I didn’t grass as it would be petty to interrupt his GCSEs over such nonsense, but I did gloat when proved right.
And yet I was rooting for Justin Hawkins to win the right to represent the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at Eurovision. Scooch’s winning is a terrible mistake. The British public has come over all nostalgic for the great days of Bucks Fizz and Scooch did everything they could to exploit that. Hell the show was even called ‘Making Your Mind Up’ and they dug Bucks Fizz up for the night. But that was 1981 and even Eurovision’s moved on: this is nothing like Bucks Fizz.
You need a freak to win and Hawkins is that freak. But his ego had clearly got the better of him and the performance on the night was grotesquely under rehearsed.
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The shoe leather is wearing particularly thin thanks to our latest trip to London (cultural highlights to follow).
