I still haven't posted about the Richter/Pärt event at the Manchester International Festival, which I went to see after my council leader tweeted that "Richter/Pärt at the Whitworth one of the best things MIF has done. Ever!"

Don't think I'd put it ahead of Maxine declaiming the Masque of Anarchy two years ago, but I did enjoy it. Several works ( Read more... )

We did it again! Another Manchester redwash, with Labour winning 32 wards out of 32, as in the previous two council elections! Since the Liberal Democrats entered the coalition government in 2010, all their councillors have been knocked out - the last nine fell yesterday, the ones who had come in on the same day as the general election.

( The numbers game - you can't all lose! )

I've been very bad at keeping up with my ramblings in various parts of the country since we went to press four weeks ago. This post is intended to catch up with assorted picture spam from March.

( Nine pics of Ely cathedral )

So, further to my excursion up the West Lancashire Coast, rather a lot of pictures, as I'm still playing with the new camera.

( Cricket at Southport )

This is the final weekend of the Didsbury Arts Festival, so today we had ( a PIG in front of the Library )

The main report on my trip to New York last month is here. This is the second of three supplementary posts on particular places I saw.

As I said in my post on the Chrysler Building, when I first came to New York in the summer of 1981 I stayed in a flat (in Greenwich Village) from whose balcony we could see the World Trade Center to the south and ( Read more... )

The main report on my trip to New York last month is here. This is the first of three supplementary posts on particular places I saw ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post some photos I took during the Heritage Open Days this weekend.

On Saturday, I stuck to the far end of Didsbury. I started at the former Wesleyan College, which I remember as Didsbury Teacher Training College (when I was at primary school a lot of the students did teaching stints with us), though it later became part of ( Read more... )

Just heard that, as part of Heritage Open Days this weekend, Gorton Monastery will be hosting Gorton Visual Arts' project "Chaos" which they describe as "a contemporary visual representation of Peterloo... The collective pieces of casted plaster sculpture use present day personal carried items which may be dropped and lost during an event of Chaos ( Read more... )

Today was my 50 and a half birthday, and quite a lot of people came to my house and ate and drank things.

( Here is a portrait of me by one of my guests )