Bye bye bye bye bellulah

Time to go. It'd be three months next week, but I'm off tomorrow for a month anyway. I wanted to try this for a while to see what it's like to blog and what the bloggy world's all about. And, I've had sooo much time on my hands for the past 9 months, from tomorrow I won't have nearly as much time to myself. I'll still enjoy visiting other blogs and a big thank you to everyone who came here and especially to the wonderful people who commented, I'll be lurking.

Matootoo on the open road

I just bought my first car, for £100. She's called Matootoo.

So it goes

De La Salle and not MGS (Mostly Going South), that's what made the difference. Have you read Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice? .....Manchester is big-headed, good-hearted, full of itself, opinionated, even-handed, arrogant, musical, over-confident, but comes up with the goods, even if they're not the exact goods you really want.

The Free Trade Hall, the Halle Orchestra, GMEX, Deansgate, Afflecks Palace, Placemate 7, Piccadilly Radio, Manchester United, UMIST, Joy Division, the Hacienda, Friday's, Saturday's, the Underground Market, I'm in love, I'm in love with the girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore checkout desk, the Buzzcocks, The Smiths, Gordon is a Moron, Anthony H Wilson, The Communist Manifesto, the Trades Union Movement, the Royal Exchange, Caroline Ahern, Fat Bob, Pauline Calf, Queer as Folk, Shameless, Oxford Road, Eighth Day Vegetarian Cafe, Canal Street, the 41, the 112, the 263 and 264, Peterloo, Suffragette Movement, Trams, RNCM, both Old Traffords, the Stone Roses, What do you call 12 Mancunians in a filing cabinet? Sorted., The Hollies, 10cc, Mark E Smith, Anthony Burgess (Xaverian), MCFC (I suppose, if you like that sort of thing), The Apollo, Marc Riley, Mark Radcliffe, Piccadilly Gardens, Frank Sidebottom, John Cooper Clarke, Alistair Cooke, Manchester Town Hall, St Peter's Square, Albert Square, MRI, Ringway, Christie's, the Palace Theatre, the Refuge Assurance building.

That's what I think of when I think of Manchester.

(Apologies for the blatant Salford thefts, but what the heart wants)

Still by Steve

Steve was one of my first friends. He told me that the big girls had come back for the Spacehopper when it disappeared after 3 months and he read my cards and told me I would die aged 88 (murder victim). We had a secret club in Sandra's garage, the password was Nastursium, hope it's OK to give that away now, I had such trouble remembering it at the time, and payment for entry was a bag of sweets to be shared around and he would read out his made up stories of bloody death and creepy carnage. He introduced me to Joy Division too, which was a very good thing.

Now he's telling stories to a much wider audience in posher surroundings. I'm sure he'll Still accept lemon bonbons as payment but I expect the password's changed.

Break a leg, Steve.

Olive

For years I thought her birthday was the 8th August and sent cards, presents and flowers and phoned her on the 8th every year and I never forgot because it was the same day as a good friend's birthday and my cats were born on that day and I remembered phoning her to tell her on the day.

Then, when she was 90 she told me that actually her birthday was the 10th and this year she was having her ears pierced as a present to herself because she'd always fancied it and why not?

The past being a different country, Olive has been and is still my translator. From a time when most people knew their lot in life and made the best of it and were happy with an absence of trouble, rather than aching after lives led by other people. Working 'in service', then a hat shop, visiting disfigured soldiers in hospital during the war, raising a family, holidaying at the coast, a trip abroad to Austria in the 1980s. Everything else is details. Olive feels incredibly lucky to have had such an untroubled life and to still be enjoying every day. Of course it hasn't been untroubled, but she always had a loving husband, a home and enough money to pay bills and feed her family, who stayed close to home and had families of their own.

What more could a young working class girl ask for?

Over the past 15 years, since Arthur died, she's taken up painting and won a Commended in a regional competition; worked, until the last year or two, in the local Help The Aged shop; regularly attend concerts in Manchester city centre; won a Best Garden competition (with a little help from her weekly gardener); fostered pets; knitted jumpers for Kiwi oil-slicked penguins, and been an all-round wonderful Grandmother to me.

Next week I'm going to visit for a couple of days. Yeh! Just the two of us for two whole days and nights. I'm going to ask her everything in case it's the last time I ever see her. Although it'll be just as nice to just be together, she's that sort of person.

PS: The first time I ever Googled for people, my grandmother was the only member of my family with a virtual presence, she was listed as an official knitter for Trafford Borough Council.

Love it when a plan comes together

Yesterday my travel buddy Em gave me two tickets to see Gogol Bordello at their one and only gig in Canada this year. It just happens to be in Vancouver, a couple of days after we are due to arrive and a few days before my birthday, and the venue is only 500m from our hotel.

Oh, it's just all so wonderful.

Years ago (1989?) I was travelling round Northern Italy with my boyfriend and we found ourselves being driven around Milan late at night in a raging storm in the teeny-tiniest little car, that doesn't have a red doors and a plastic yellow roof and that you push along with your feet, by an Italian soldier who was trying to outrun the military police and get us to the railway station for the midnight departure to somewhere.

Cowardice being the better part of valour, we ran like fuck when he slowed to walking pace and opened the doors, and got on the first train we saw. It was absolutely packed to the ceiling with a Dark Side of Pink Floyd fans who were on their way to Venice to see them perform on a big floating pier in front of St Mark's square. We changed our plans and went along for the ride. A lighter in the air affair, but one to remember with great pleasure.

Does anyone remember Archaos? They toured and then camped out on Clapham Common in the early 1990s for a couple of summers and juggled flaming chainsaws while doing wheelies on the wall of death on motorcycles. The first time I went to see them I came out in a daze, it was like a 3D virtual Mad Max circus, but real. You just don't get entertainment like that anymore, outside Moss Side.

Any favourite nights out...?

Seventh Heaven

Jenny lists 7 songs she's currently listening too, here are mine -

Santa Marinello by Gogol Bordello: New York/Hungarian Gypsy Punk, Clash, Pixies, Pogues type combo who are so much fun on disc, I can't wait to see them live.

Ickythump by the White Stripes: My fave tune this year so far, bit prog rocky

the whole of Takk by Sigur Ros: Not listened to this for ages and then plopped it on one day and fell in love again. It's practically one extended track anyway.

Life During Wartime by Talking Heads: Takes me back to being a student and going to see the concert film at a late night showing in a small independent cinema. and dancing, in a cool fashion, in the aisles. They were so entertaining, intelligent, a bit dark but danceable and singalong.

Tom Traubert's Blues by Tom Waits: I have a different favourite Tom Waits song (does that need an apostrophe or not?) every month. Something in the lyrics or his voice or the music or the mood will catch me and that'll be my new fave for a while.

The Cowboy Song by Tom Hanks (from Joe Versus the Volcano film): Not much to write home about as a song, just makes me happy.

Open Heart Zoo by Martin Grech: He was about 17 when he recorded this and yes I did hear it on the TV commercial and go looking for it, but I'm glad I did because the rest of the cd was a real find. noisy and intense, but rewarding.

None of these would make my poptastic top 40 fave song list, but you don't want to eat cherries every day!!