My flat (apartment in American)

I think this is sort of a mundane topic, but figured some people might want to know.

I live in a one bedroom flat with what seemed to me to be a weird address.  It is a different postal code system than I'm used to.  I reside at 15 Regent House, 36 Denison Road, Manchester M14 5RY.  If I try to tell someone around here where I live, I have to say in Rushholm, just off the Curry Mile, across from the Chinese Embassy.  Giving a street address isn't that helpful, unless you know the area REALLY well, which most people don't, as Manchester is a big place.

Here's Denison Road, which is only four or five blocks long:

My block of flats (read apartment building) is at the end of the sidewalk.  The walls along the walk shaped stone, and have moss and ivy in spots.


Here's the Chinese Embassy as seen outside my front room window:

Obviously, this picture was taken a bit earlier.  It was mid December, and the snow was falling in the quiet, gentle way that happens when there is no wind, and no sound.  I find it so soothing, and somewhat magical.  I really enjoy it.  Especially from inside with a cup of hot chocolate.

I rent a furnished flat, because shipping furniture was too expensive, and basically pointless. (And I have no furniture worth that much anyway.)  The place is all done in blue, which I like.  I could have picked one done in purple, but it was up several floors and there are no lifts (elevators) in the building.  Here's what it looked like before my stuff arrived:

And after:

Ah, yes...books on every flat surface, and craft stuff all over the place.  I have a closet full of DVDs and another with bags of spinning stuff, spun stuff, cloth and textile tools.  Much better.

(You can't see the books in the hall, bathroom and back wall of the front room.  I brought about half of my library, only 500 or so books, and have added another dozen or so since I got here)

Now, of course the whole place is much messier.  Chet once told me I would keep a clean house, except wherever I was working, and wherever he was working.  At the moment, I'm rewarping the loom, and the desk is covered with books and papers (and headache meds), so the front room has piles of library books (read and unread) and yarns and clay donuts all over the place.  It'll get sorted...sooner or later.

Platt chapel and cemetery

Just down the road from my flat is a small, overgrown cemetery.  I pass it on the bus every time I go grocery shopping.  One Sunday, I decided it was time to visit the place, partly because I was very curious, and partly because I woke up a bit out of sorts and hoped the walk would cheer me up.  Nothing like visiting an empty building and graveyard for perking up the spirits...

This is the first view you get as you approach the building from the north.  The view is slightly deceiving, as the place is located on one of Manchester's busiest roads, but the effect is the same.  The small ivy is really beautiful.  I love the combination of light and dark greens on the leaves.

And on the gate...

The chapel itself is a small place, made of the same red brick you find all over this part of England.  I don't know how old it is, but the most recent burial in the cemetery is 1879, I think, and the date 1810 came up on one of the headstones I took a picture of, but I didn't take notes, so I'm not sure if that's the earliest one.  But the building has to be older than that.  It was used for a while as a meeting house for a photography group, according to the sign hanging from the front, but it is now empty.

There are burials along the side closest to the road, and out from the front door - fewer than thirty.  Some of those with head stones are overgrown (though not those in the previous picture).  Ivy is taking over this one.

This one is being enveloped by brush...

Some headstones are fairly clear of plant life. 

The small stone in this grouping has me wondering.  Is it a foot stone, or a memorial for a small child?  There was no writing that I could see, but then the writing on some is becoming lost as the stone sinks into the ground.  Like poor Alice's here.

Not all of the graves are memorialized with head stones though.  About half of them are full body markers.  I'm not sure what they are called.  (You can see the wall between the chapel yard and the street on the right of the picture, and the chapel wall is on the left side, just to give you an idea of how small the space is.)

The day itself was alternating rain and sun.  The image above shows the rainy part.  The next (and last) picture shows the sun.  I think I was there for about half an hour, all told.  I got rained on twice, and the sun came out only once, but it was a nice day anyway.

I like this picture of the front door area for the small sculptural detail that is typical for around here, the pretty ivy climbing the window, and the modern building across the street.  It's called The Toast Rack by the locals.  Its a block of flats, though why it is that shape, and what the metal arches are for is beyond me.

By the way...the chapel is for sale.  If you're interested.  Just sayin'.

Yo!

Last Saturday, or was it the Saturday before...anyway, Janilee and I went to the Manchester viewing wheel (the official name of the ferris wheel I've mentioned before). We also saw the cathedral together, and I took more pictures.

Just to the right of this picture is a sign stating that the cathedral has been used in videos, documentaries, and, oddly enough, video games.  I'd sure like to know which ones...

And of course, there are always interesting gargoyles and grotesques.

The quire is part of the oldest section of the building, with misericords that date to the first decade of the 1500's.  For those of you who don't know what a misericord is, it is the underside of a wooden seat, that when folded into the wall, can be leaned on to rest when the mass requires long periods of standing.  Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

I always find it interesting that the carvings are almost never of a religious nature, considering that they are inside of churches.

Some of the oldest carvings are missing pieces and/or no longer have faces.

The cathedral also displays military flags from the Manchester units.  The oldest are more than 100 years old, having been on display since right after WWII.

The oldest mortuary brasses have been taken off the floor to preserve what is left of them.

And some of the more modern sarcophagi surprised me.  This gentleman is done in the costume of the day.  For some reason, I don't think about sarcophagi as anything later than the High Middle ages...

After touring the cathedral, we went to Selfridges, the American goods store.  Here is the Wonder Woman window painting, I mentioned earlier.  I wonder why they decided this image as representing an American store?

Inside the store, in the basement, is an internal but separate food shop called Yo!, hence the title of this entry.  Yo! is a modern Japanese 'fast food' restaurant, where the prepared dishes go by on a conveyor belt.  Near your bar stool seats is a small area with water taps, having clear or sparkling water, chopsticks, napkins
and the condiments.  You choose which dishes you want to try, and at the end of the meal, the waitress counts up the bowls according to color, and you pay based on how many bowls of which color.  The cooks are in the center, surrounded by these conveyor belts, so they can put up new dishes as needed.

One of the cooks was a black man (no racism intended, just a description), who was singing rap.  It was a surreal experience.  A black man, singing rap, in a Japanese restaurant, in an American store, in the medieval section of an English town.

Life is always interesting, if you keep your eyes open!

Market Street on a Saturday

I spent some time here on the first warm Saturday of spring because I had some time to kill between a play rehearsal and the performance.  It was enough time to do something with, but not enough time to make it worth going home.  You know how that goes.

Market Street is just off of Picadilly Gardens, where all the buses and trams stop in downtown Manchester.  The whole thing is like a mall where the main thoroughfare is outdoors, instead of inside.  Except the food court, which is the only covered second story of the main street.  It's not like a strip mall - you can move from one store to the next inside, through the back of the store as well as walking in the front entrance, like most American malls.  Here's a shot:

You can see the food court spanning the street directly ahead.

As is typical of a mall, the shops try to get your attention with unique displays.  My favorite is this clothing tailor shop.

And a closer shot...

You gotta love a shop that decorates with walls of antique sewing machines.


The people watching possibilities are endless.  Wait long enough and someone with hair every color of the rainbow will walk by.  There are balloon vendors, cotton candy sellers, food and flowers sold out of little portable shops (usually done up in brown and gold, for some reason).  They even have street mimes.

This guy is my favorite.  He looks just like some of the bronze statuary that are all over Manchester.  Until you look at his eyes.  When I first saw him, he was in a seated position, holding absolutely still.  I love the way his tie and coat look like he is in a strong wind.

That particular Saturday there was also an artist working for coins.

Amazing!
Of course, there are also street musicians of every sort, from a single recorder to an accordion, a blind electric guitarist, and including a one man band working on the corner of Market Street and New Cathedral by the Marks and Spencer's. And just because it wasn't interesting enough, there was a rally of rappers for Jesus, an anti-religious group rallying against them ('corporate greed is the cause of all problems, not evil' was their point), and some Middle East demonstration of some sort:

If none of that interested you, you could always watch the kids playing in the fountain.

One toddler was bound and determined to join them, even though the water would have knocked him on his diaper.  Dad kept grabbing his little jacket and pulling him away, but as soon as he let go, the boy would run, giggling, back to where the big kids were playing, wanting to join in the fun.

All this for the cost of a fifteen minute bus ride!

Alrighty, then!

Ok, people!  You read the sign.  Let's see some Frisbee, kick the can, Red Rover, Hacky Sack, or something!  At least get a game of tag going...

This building is Manchester in a nutshell, to me

 Its a McDonald's on the corner of Oxford Road and Cheepstow (I think).  It is a snapshot of Manchester because there is nothing quite as worldwide as McDonald's: they are everywhere.  The shop is inside a repurposed building, which, according to the stonework on the left hand side of the shot, is "The Picture House."  Most of Manchester is made of this color brick or rock work.  And the whole thing is slightly tatty.  One of the windows in the upper story is broken, and pigeons roost there.  And if anything is everywhere in Manchester, it's pigeons.

I sometimes sit at the bus stop on the right hand side of the picture to waiting to catch the second bus to get to church.  The Pakistani (?) Embassy is across the street.

Impulsive day

Tuesday, I met with my adviser, Gale.  I always feel like I should have worked more or harder before I meet with her, then feel like maybe I did enough, but encouraged to work better or more for the next time we meet.


Afterward, I took a bus to Picadilly Gardens.  The fountains were on, which was lovely.  It was a beautiful day, blue skies, cold enough to wear a coat, but not cold enough to need it buttoned.  I walked up Market Street, which is the local version of a mall, to find Selfridges, a store that has American food.  I needed some Reeces for a meeting of ladies who had asked me to talk about America and bring some American food.  You can get hot dogs (canned in brine, but whatever), and hamburgers, so I thought I'd bring something not so conventional.

The main window of the store had a two story tall painting of Wonder Woman and what I assumed was Medusa, who was green with snake hair and bound with a blindfold.  Just outside the store was a large Ferris wheel, which I decided to get on before going to the store.  It had a recorded 'lecture' given by some local DJs explaining what could be seen from the wheel.  I had my camera with me, so I took pictures.

From the wheel, you could see the old Medieval section of Manchester, including a couple of pubs that survived WWII and IRA bombings.  People were having lunch outside because it was such a nice day.  More impressive is the Manchester Cathedral.  There has been a church on that site for over a thousand years.  The current building has been standing since the 1400's.  I'm going to have to see that soon.

After getting the Reeces (and deciding NOT to get Krispy Kreme, at almost 10 pounds per dozen!), I walked around the mall a bit.  Some ladies tried to get me to take a survey about my clothing purchases, of which I have made none since arriving.  They were kind enough to suggest some places to shop for a gal my size.  Then I found a Sony store and asked about some form of connector for my camera so I could upload pictures.  They found me one!  Now I just have to work out how to use it.  My usual approach of looking up and saying "Um...Huz?" is just not going to be effective this time.  It does mean new pictures soon though.

After all that, I took a bus home.  (Discovered yesterday that the Oxford/Wilmslow Road route I spend most of my time on is the busiest bus route in Europe.  Don't have to wait more that two minutes for a bus, which is nice)  I got home just as the local weather reasserted itself, bringing a cold wind and overcast.