Tripping the lit fantastic

Some of the Flash Mobbers took a road trip yesterday, to Lancaster. Little Dave and Mister Ben have stories in the latest Flax anthology, appropriately enough called Flash Mob (Flax026), and the launch took place at The Storey Institute where Litfest is based. What a great building, and how nice to finally meet Sarah Hymas, editor of Flax. She introduced proceedings then ten of the eleven writers read their 400-word inclusions (which you can see, and hear, online). Next was a break, when we were encouraged to check out Flax028 - a new haiku commission from Maya Chowdhry with a stop-motion film of seeds growing running in an inside-out garden shed. Actually we just chatted to folk and scoffed chocolates. The ten then read pieces of their other work: some, like Norman Hadley's sci-fi Panspermia, were companion pieces to the entries; others weren't even prose at all. Carys Bray's tale had a nice wet theme running throughout, even down to a mention of Noah's Ark, and I really liked Clare Kirwan's bit of smut, Parallel Conservatory.


Dave (lefthand foot) delivered more of his one-sentence stories: Unicorn Logistics, Strategic Magpies, Finger Thief, Perpetual Hen Night Endless Stages, Tyson/dog, Soul For The Devil and The Mould On The Chip... Ben (righthand foot), meanwhile, read a story with no name about a man with a cactus for a hand and a difficult relationship with his father. Dead funny.


Claire Massey, who had butterflies in her first story and moths in her second, Growing Cities, then read the contemporary fairy story A Book Tale (Flax027). This was commissioned for last October's festival along with the amazing Word Dress, custom-made from the pages of books by wedding frock designer Jennifer Pritchard Couchman. Claire refers to "the book dress" and its "crumpling sound" in the story, which nicely reflected Growing Cities with its miniature town of red-bricked houses, derelict mills and boarded-up pubs, as well as another of her pieces Feather Girls (which appears in Salt's The Best British Short Stories 2011) through the "dress of smoke and feathers".

Science fiction

Last night I went to see Fritz Lang's 1927 crazy futuristic sci-fi silent movie Metropolis at the Cornerhouse. I was very excited about this as: a) I haven't seen the film for nearly 20 years as it never seems to get shown (that first time was in no less than the hugely imposing Palais de Chaillot, opposite the Eiffel Tower, yes in Paris, in a special bunker-like screening room; something, I think, to do with La Cinémathèque française); 2) I thought I'd missed it this time as when I was due to go last week I was feeling poorly and pathetic, and I thought it was only going to be on during Manchester Science Festival (23-31 October); iii) it's a scrubbed-up print with new footage they (whoever "they" are) found in Buenos Aires, of all places. Then I got very very excited because I noticed on the ticket while chowing down on my scrummy three-bean and preserved lemon tagine that it was on Screen 1. Oh man.


It didn't disappoint. Dystopia. Modernism. Maschinenmensch (great word; love German). Flappers. Art Deco. Brave New World meets The Great Gatsby tipping a wink to Alphaville and 1984 mixed with Bladerunner and The Fifth Element sprinkled with Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and even Back To The Future. Oh, and let's not forget Frankenstein and even a bit of scary shadowplay à la Nosferatu.


It was good. And it made me think of that show at the Whitworth Art Gallery a year ago, The American Scene: Prints From Hopper To Pollock. Compare the lithograph New York by Louis Lozowick from 1925, below, to the stills and poster from Metropolis, above. Credit for the film artwork and sets goes to Erich Kettelhut, who was apparently art director, set designer, trick photography (special effects), painting effects (visual effects) and technical consultant. But still, similar, non?

Sweet as...

You would have to have been deep in the Amazonian rainforest not to have noticed the recent pinnacle reached in cupcake outlets and home baker delivery services in Manchester, and, in honour of National Cupcake Week starting today, I thought I'd do a quick round-up of the sweet treats vying for your attention before anyone else yawns and says they're bored of the whole thing.

The original destination outlet in Manchester, Sweet Tooth Cupcakery of Chorlton and, since 7 June, Oldham Street (pictured), offers up the official Cupcake Week flavour for Wednesday with award-winning baker Vicky Parker's Ernest Hemingway creation: ginger cheesecake base with a vanilla and lime sponge, lemon and lime curd and a toasted meringue topping. I popped into the Northern Quarter "milk bar" branch for a vegan chai-flavoured David Lynch (see bottom photo) and a damn fine coffee with co-owner Fred Royle, who gave me the skinny on his and wife Lorna's business USP: creative, nicely retro, with plenty of Northern charm. On 25 September, Sweet Tooth's Vicky is teaming up with Ministry Of Craft to run a two-and-a-half hour cake-decorating workshop (a second follows in October), while the Sweet Tooth Cupcakery (who you can follow on Twitter at @Sweettooth_UK) is also up for Best Newcomer in this year's Manchester Food & Drink Awards: winners will be announced at a special ceremony during the Manchester Food & Drink Festival on 11 October.


Afflecks-based The Cocoa Emporium vintage cafe and cakeshop offers competition in the Northern Quarter (more on that here). Also in on the trend is Hey Little Cupcake, whose Sex And The City-inspired, Prestwich-based MD Sarah Wilson (@HLCupcake) cottoned onto yet another concept imported from the States: the pop-up shop. She'll be manning her temporary retail space in Spinningfields for the next week or so if you need a sugary hit while in town. Oh Crumbs! Cupcakes (@ohcrumbscupcake) also supply a number of city centre venues once the pop-up place folds.

Out in the suburbs, Chorlton-based Peach Pie was recently tried and tested (Michelle and Vicky's caramel shortbread was a sugary hit in more ways than one) at the last (and possibly last ever) Didsbury Food Market, as was a moist and fluffy slice of classic coffee and walnut sponge cake from And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon (@dishesandspoons). Another husband and wife team, Anna and James are due to open a new shop and tearoom later this month on hipster-rich Burton Road in West Didsbury: you're spoilt for choice here, with other establishments, including Silver Apples and Folk, also selling homemade cakes. Also in Didsbury is home baker Airy Fairy Cupcakes, with ex-marketing gal Laura (@airyfairycakes) getting in on the social media scene and supplying boxes of blue-iced beauties for the inaugural South Manchester Tweetup in August.


Finally, although it is slightly off message, there's The English Rose Bakery, whose Emma Brown (@englishrosebkry) has cunningly eschewed the cutthroat competitiveness of cupcakes to shower Manchester with the niche macaroon. Flavours include the company's signature English Rose, plus almond, chocolate, pistachio, Earl Grey, caramel and vanilla. She plied the recent Parlour Chorlton opening bash with a "macaroon tier", whatever that may be. The only thing is, I'm just not sure I'm a fan of macaroons. I'm still trying to acquire a taste for almonds, and, allegorically, I'm still stuck puking on the side of a mountain having been dragged up here by overly Gore-Texed Alpha males trying to prove that the panorama will be worth it. One day I may well see the view and be amazed, but until then I'm not complaining about the cakes.

It's all about me

Last week, some survey by some person somewhere revealed that Manchester is the third biggest European user of Twitter. We come after London and Paris, so we're in good company. It goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I have lived in all three of these hip'n'happening cities and no other conurbation (unless you count Liverpool which I inhabited for perhaps as long as a month).

Anyway, as if to prove the Rainy City's position of social media status, yesterday was a busy old day in Manchester's interweb.

First off, some bloke from The Guardian did some live Tweeting travel feature thing: "armed only with a mobile phone – and ready to go wherever the best of your tweets take him". He was called Benji Lanyado and it was called the TwiTrip. Yawn. Still, somehow me, along with many of the other regular Manc Twitterers, got sucked into the whole thing and started blatantly self-promoting and showboating, and desperately bigging up places for this bloke to go in a "my suggestion's better than yours" kind of way. I was finally namechecked at about 7pm, along with my Chorlton mate Gill: "@benjilanyado: Instalations at the Cornerhouse, thanks to @Wordsnfixtures @Gillmphoto & @popisthis http://flic.kr/p/8tt24N". If you're remotely arsed, you can see the TwiTrip to Manchester in its entirety here.

Secondly and very bizarrely, @wordsnfixtures starting trending on Twitter. WTF? This is what the Tweet said: "@TrendsManc: Sarah-Clare Conlon, @wordsnfixtures is now trending in #Manchester http://trendsmap.com/gb/manchester". My colleague Josh (aka @technicalfault) loudhailed this announcement across the office (which was rather embarrasing as it does probably mean that I'd spent more of the day dicking about on Twitter than doing any actual work. And we all know that such a thing would never happen, right? RIGHT?). He then showed me how to do a screengrab, for proof, like. Look, I'm right at the top, above that Benji bloke:



Thirdly, the first-ever South Manchester Tweet-up chugged back some ciders and shimmied into its sparkle boob tube for a night out in Didsbury Village. Such a glamourpuss, this latest social media mover and shaker has not one, but two hashtags: #southmcrtweetup and #southmanchestertweetup. Organised by Tom Mason (@totmac) and Nicola Cooper-Abbs (@ncooperabbs), the get-together went swimmingly with quite a gaggle of creatives, SEOs, PRs, developers, local business reps and even some "normal" folk, and lovely Laura from Airy Fairy Cupcakes put on a spread of sweet treats. Didsbury Life's Helen (who I didn't recognise because I am a complete dunce, although, in my defence, it has been a while) is going to do a write-up about it, so look out for all the action shots down on the DL blog. Rumour has it the next SMTU might be in Chorlton. Hold on to your hats, kids, I'll be able to crawl home!

Fast food notion

At the risk of sounding obsessed with takeout, I'm sharing this T-shirt with you. It's on Threadless, a cool Chicago-based site where you get the chance to submit tee and hoody design ideas, which the "community" then votes on to decide which ones get made up! Anyway, fast food and fonts is a winning combination, I'm sure you'll agree, and Burgervetica, designed by David Schwen (who is also modelling it), got through to the production stage. Tasty!

Beware: loose chippings

Appropriately, the end of National Chip Week has fallen on a Friday. The latest in a long list of dates dedicated to random everyday things, National Chip Week has its own website (thanks to the magic of PR) and even a "Chip-tionary" (inward groan) of terminology from around the sceptred isle.


Modern English Language Professor Clive Upton is quoted as saying: “It’s interesting that the word ‘chip’ is almost universal across the country, except where it’s been Americanised as fries, but it is in the language surrounding the chip’s accompaniments and serving methods that regional phrases appear. For example, what they call a chip butty in the south of England will be known as a chip cob in the Midlands and a chip barm in Manchester.”

There used to be a splendid chip shop in Chorlton that had a side room where you could dig in to your supper while enjoying the tropical fish, Coronation Street on loop, Stella on tap and choice of optics for "un petit digestif". Sadly, it's now a fancy antiques shop, but Beech Road Chippy still does a nice line in mushy peas while the newly opened Atlantic Fish Bar on the main drag has haddock the size of whales. My favourite chipshop name has to be The Codfather, out on the other side of Stretford. I also like the moniker Chippery, which I've only ever seen in Lancashire's Longridge.

A good Scotch egg

This evening we'll be celebrating Burns Night round ours, complete with a genuine Scottish haggis bought at the butcher's in Juniper Green near Edinburgh by a friend from Ayr. We'll be having it traditional style with tatties and neeps, although we may pass on all the speeches and singing, and bagpipe-swinging.

I admit I know very little about the Bard of Ayrshire Rabbie Burns, whose birthday we'll be celebrating, so I have been checking him out online. He wrote Auld Lang Syne, among other things, and is known as "Scotland's favourite son" and the "Ploughman Poet" (presumably because he couldn't get enough of Branston Pickle).

It turns out Steinbeck's title Of Mice And Men came from the Burns poem To A Mouse, as did the phrase "tim'rous beastie". So that's where the name of Timorous Beasties, the trendy Glasgow-based wallpaper company, whose designs were once described as “William Morris on acid”, came from. Some of their patterns remind me of last year's Turner Prize winner Richard Wright's fleeting, almost diaphanous gold-leaf mural. This one's called Bird Branch:

Rhyme and reason

Well, won't you look at that. The Guardian is today running a feature about The Rise Of Poetry In Advertising, in which it discusses that McDonald's ad I'm a fan of and tells you what you'd already learnt via Words & Fixtures (ever the trendsetter) some weeks ago.

I was interested to discover, however, that's it's good old green champion Pete Postlethwaite who reads the I'm afraid inferior and somewhat on-bandwagon-jumping, if nostalgic Betjemanesque (so I'm told), poem on the Cathedral City ad. I do like PP, especially after seeing a) his moving bow-taking following his first-night performance as bonkers old Prospero in The Tempest at the Royal Exchange last year and b) him regularly buying The Big Issue while he was doing the Manchester run.

Back to the feature, and I do think they make a good point about bringing poetry to the masses. You can't really complain, can you?


Anyway, forget that: check out that nice picture of cheese on toast. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Pie-making with a difference

I'm quite liking The Blogpaper, as mentioned yesterday. It seems to be quite good at bringing curious things to my attention. Today, I've been checking out Toxel and their many and varied "design ieas and tech concepts", and their link to Ed Bing Lee's magnificent knitted American-style fast food.


This perfect slice of pumpkin pie is from Lee's Delectables Series. It makes me think of the Double R diner in Twin Peaks.

Der burger meister

(From TV Ad Music)

This, Exhibit A, is Favourites (The People's Restaurant), the current ad for McDonald's. It features an ode to Drive Thrus, Coke and Chicken McNuggets, and promises something for everyone who is 'just passing by'. (C'mon, you must've seen it.)

I have to admit I've been sucked in by the poem; I like it. It has a good rhythm and a clever simplicity. It's also read in a pleasant lilting Liverpudlian accent by the actor David Morrissey (star of such shows as Red Riding, State Of Play...). It was written, so it says in trade mag Campaign, by the copywriters/creative team Tony Malcolm and Guy Moore, aka Tony & Guy (yes, like the hair care bunch), for the agency Leo Burnett, and the background music is apparently the opening track from Stephen Frears' flick The Grifters (I can't remember: I've only seen the film once, when it came out in 1990, which is an awful long time ago now). If it is, then I find it a bit odd given the movie's tagline: Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who's conning who?. Er, Pelman versus McDonald's Corporation, anyone?

Anyway, forget that; I've been known to consume the odd Filet-O-Fish for my wife in my time, so I'm not going to get all sanctimonious and hypocritical. Back to the poetry. It was on a TES online forum, no less, where I learnt that the Favourites piece follows the same pattern as a work of great importance by the famous Australian artist Rolf Harris dating back to 1964. The Court Of King Caractacus, as it is entitled, starts like this: 'Now the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' The next verse begins: 'Now the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' Then: 'Now the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Catactacus, were just passing by.' You get the picture and I guess you see where the fine fans of the Times Educational Supplement are coming from.

So, 'The It bods with their taps and prods eating a Big Mac while writing their blogs, were just passing by.' I have to say, I often chow down on a Big Mac while writing my blog.

Yeah, I'm lovin' it.