This is my student city but I feel little easy familiarity with the place.
In the last 30 years Manchester has put on a set of new clothes and I have little recall of her old outfit.
We started off next to a favourite place though, finding a free *free* parking space next to the Whitworth .... a half hour stroll later on this lovely mild day had us at Waterstones Deansgate for @Beathhigh's signing of his newbie 'The Impossible Dead.'
I reckon there are few of us who follow Ian on twitter disinterested in this volume. Never before have I watched the journey of a book from conception, through pregnancy, labour and now here at the birth. All shiny and wrapped ready to leave the bookshop.
The Author was there, early, scribing away like a good 'un.
Book purchased, I joined the queue.
I stood behind a chap who had brought 'A question of Blood' to be signed. He declared himself 'a Rebus man.'
In the queue I learned that said chap flies to Belfast every 3rd day for work (& has done for I think he said 18 years). He used to fly out of Manchester but BMI have cancelled the route so 'till easyjet take over, he's flying out of John Lennon. He takes his kindle on the plane and has 19 books on it .... but the worry of leaving it somewhere is substantial.
Behind me was a woman who was buying the book for a xmas pressie but still undecided who to get it dedicated to ...... I reckon she was going to read it herself first .... (very carefully using a bookmark ... and not in the bath). Debate then ensued as to which page one should proffer for signature. I hadn't a clue. .... Anyway the man himself sorted that out.
Then it was my turn ..... Apart from the fact that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my short term memory failed and I forgot the words for Town Hall it went very well ..... He was lovely!
Next we went to the City Art Gallery ...... and saw loads of stuff.
Things I remember:- A nice early Lucien Freud portrait (Girl with Beret), a Bacon, a Bridget Riley which made you see yellow where there was none, a Peter Lanyon and a whole room of Grayson Perry.
I loved Perry's artist statement which in brackets at the end admitted to post hoc rationalisation and that really rather unfashionably he had been striving for beauty.
And then we went to hear Michael Frayn talk about his memoir My Father's Fortune: A Life
Frayn set out by saying that he was and remains unsure as to whether he should have written this book about his father. It has not been cathartic but instead stirred things up that remain stirred up.He holds that in writing about, photographing or painting an individual they somehow become diminished. A really interesting session followed considering fact, fiction, the unreliability of memory...
Fragments ..... On the limitations of sight .... In order to see, the eye moves continually ....every image is constructed over time, incomplete and coloured by expectations. We rely on algorithms and mechanisms to recall ...memories change their shape all the time. Stories have their own logic/dynamic .... we 'improve' stories .... stories tell themselves. And as for the brain .... I'm not sure I got this......Apparently when we make a decision ..... electrical activity in the brain has reached a peak before we ourselves are aware ..... This questions ideas of the sovereign self ....
I'm tired now ..... He did say more....... I didn't buy a book and get it signed tho' I do fancy giving it a read ....apparently it's funny. The queue was long and courage all used up.
Just to mention. If in Manchester, the Town Hall is amazing ....... neo gothic ...vaulted ceilings .....painted ceilings...stained glass... mosaic floors...... Ford Maddox Brown murals......
Then at the end, half way to the car we went to Trof in 'The Deaf Institute' for wine and scrummy food .........
