Tired, I sit on the train between carriages. There are no seats left at all, and belatedly a woman comes round to give us small bottles of water as compensation for the cramp, heat and irritation. I joke that she should bring us wine instead, but she assures me that this would only cause more riot. I sit and read Sartre instead in preparation for my paper on his reflections on May '68.

We go out in Salford. The Crescent pub still reverberates with the drunken discussions of Marx and Engels who used to frequent it. We admire the many Halloween costumes of its denizens and I put some music on the jukebox.

We get up early the next day. The city is still covered with exploded balloons, smashed glass, glitter, sick and other All Hallows' Eve detritus.

The International Buffet in Chinatown seemed a little ambitious.

Intangibles are advertised. There are a lot of intangibles in Manchester, which these days is built (or not built) on the shifting sand of financial speculation and cultural ether. No more Cottonopolis and no more Lowry:

To say the truth, I was not thinking very much about the people. I did not care for them in the way a social reformer does. They are part of a private beauty that haunted me. I loved them and the houses in the same way: as part of a vision.

The Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows are a breakaway friendly society who pre-date the welfare state. We will probably need them again at some point in the near future.

She almost certainly will.

Manchester is a profusion of signs. Many of them, unfortunately, are boring.

The alien disk of Starbucks hovers over the classical market.

Mondrian meets shopping mall.


Life finds a way! Whatever 'Dobbins' used to be, it's now a kind of large post-industrial flower-pot.

'Play more, work less'. All very well in theory...killing the puritanical insect that preys on the life of the people may take more than a couple of graffitos.

This Artaudian shop-front howl was my favourite bit of the whole of the city.


Parts of Manchester occupy a grey zone between not yet crumbled and not yet finished.

The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench....must surely have reached the lowest stage of humanity - Frederick Engels on Manchester, 1847.

This sign tells the residents of the Yuppiedrome in the background where to get off.

Tlön, Uqbar, Urbis, Tertius

The Bank of Baroda had seemingly benefited little from the latest round of bailouts.

On our way to the prison, we find this composite: a necktie affixed to a bathmat. We fail to decide which Halloween costume/sex act this might have been a part of.

The Solar Tower. Looks a little bit like its sign.

Update: A reader writes: This didn't used to be solar. It was built in the 60s and previously looked like this, although all they've done is add solar panels to the concrete bit, because bare concrete is somehow unforgivable. It's a very architecurally impoverished city, Manchester, somehow getting the worst of every era - pompous Victorian gothic competing with bland system-built 60s blocks (no equivalents to Alton estate or Trellick tower, or rather there was in Hulme but it was demolished in the 80s) and then all the yuppiedromes. And all the music they've made has been rubbish since around the mid-80s...

The underside of this unfinished car park uses ancient Mayan symbols to communicate with our alien overlords.

The sadness of things, part 35,249

Sometimes Saturdays cost more than this.

When cities are finished, do they cease to live?

On our way to the prison, we see some graffiti. It is not unfrightening.

Though some of it is rather silly.

We knew as never before that we were in England, and had been for quite some time.

A Hatworks! Built in 1845, although apparently, it is not a Hatworks at all, the name being merely a cover-name to disguise Jewish ownership of the business. In a depressing lack of historical development, drunk Arsenal fans on the train on the way home shout about the 'Yids' winning a match. I help a posh lady finish her crossword, getting the name of a Margaret Atwood novel, a branch of Italian monks, some matriachal mammals, although not the Greek muse of music (Euterpes) or the powder used in fingerprinting (lycopodium) which bothers me until I get home and find out.

Strangeways, here we come. Built by Alfred Waterhouse, also responsible for the Natural History Museum, this place saw the execution of many people in the late 19th century and early 20th. It is supposed to now be called HM Prison Manchester, but I doubt anyone calls it that.


One of the things about capitalism, remarks O, who is over for the conference, is the way it so utterly destroys city planning, in the old sense.

Security meets the fourth estate meets higher education.

Even the enclosures are enclosed.

You won't be surprised to know that I was very fond of this Apocalyptic disco poster.

Generic hotel pods meet Eastern Europe in a strange synthesis of the 1960s and the 21st century. I wanted to stay here, obviously.

The entire Australian rugby team have apparently been tattooed here, each with a fresh needle.

Shampooing, rooms, hairbrushes, shaving...all for 2d.

Resentment of traffic employees meets haiku art project on the wall of one building.

This is the Arndale centre, famously (partly) blown up by the IRA in 1996. It spearheaded Manchester's regeneration. As I take this picture, a bloke says 'why are you taking that? It's horrible. The IRA should have finished it off once and for all'. We discuss how amazing it was that no one was killed in the attack, despite its scale. 'There are a lot of Irish in Manchester,' the guy says, 'they probably told each other'.

In this shop I buy a copy of 'Stocking & Suspender Special, no. 20' and 'Winsome', no. 2. I can't find out anything about either, but I think the former is from the 70s and the latter the 50s. Winsome features some fine stories, among them 'Hands Off!' by Terence Desmond, which features a woman named Ruby Bale having an affair with a man named Fred York as her husband, Roger Bale, is more interested in the bridge he is building than in her:
'How is the bridge going?' asked Ruby sweetly.
He launched off into a flow of technicalities. He explained the need for additional strength in lateral supports owing to the fact that the stresses occured at high velocity. Steel could tire, he said.
Ruby stood it for a minute and then flared.
'Yeah? So what! You're away a week and all you can do when you see me is talk, talk!'

Winsome also features an advert for the following titles, also published by 'Candid Publications': 'The following titles are available in the Candid Publication series of Bedtime Stories: - CHILLY, DIZZY, ZING, DALLY, JEWEL, DROOP, RUSTIC, DAUB, COOKIE, RIPPLING, SOCKO, PLINK, SPINK, DANDY, FRESH and DUSTY. Price 2/9 each, post free.'

I wonder if guns will ever stop being popular.

In the really souped-up bits, there are large pieces of public art. This used to be the corn exchange until the IRA blew it up and turned it into a shopping mall.

Oh look, Manchester got one too! I had hoped the future would have been filled with hover-cars rather than giant bicycle wheels turned into tourist-view-providing machines.

This super-tacky Christmas decoration is not likely to last very long, I'm certain of it.

Knowledge peeked out from the corner of the art gallery, as the last of the Autumn sunlight left the city and we made our way to the station.