Skywatch Friday: Mr Blue Sky meets Mr Whitebeard, aka Zippy

The clock counting down to Christmas is ticking, like it or not, and the Manchester Christmas Markets are in full flow. A giant Father Christmas takes pride of place at the Town Hall, as he has done since the 1980s.  The current incarnation is nicknamed Zippy as he bears more than a passing resemblance to the said character from Rainbow (look below!)... Visit other Skywatch Friday posts around the world.

You can read my latest guest post Mulling over some midwinter magic in Europe's north west at 4 Manchester Women for a brief history and overview of the festive Mancunian markets.

Coffee calling...any flavour you like #aromarama

If only the internet had an "aroma" app (aromarama?), then I could share with you the wonderful smells drifting across St. Ann's Square from this Christmas Market stall, trading solely in coffee beans of many flavours. My fellow Mancunians and I are fortunate needing only to wander into the city centre to get a fix.

Please join me here at Mancunian Wave throughout December where I will be showing you some of the hundreds of festive market stalls spread around the city. Manchester City Centre does do Christmas extremely well!

ABC Wednesday: "T" is for tasteful tactful toilet talk at the Lowry

Linking with ABC Wednesday where we have arrived at the letter "T". Sorry to lower the tone but toilets are an everyday necessity. Here we have a fine example of the sink area in the plush pink ladies at the Lowry Centre.

I co-wrote a proposal a long time ago for a book called The Urge to Go, which looked at everything from Roman sewers to loos in space, via Australian dunnies and the loos with the best view (one near Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio got my vote). Although rejected by publishers, there were a plethora of similar books and websites that appeared within the following decade. We were ahead of our time I guess.

Toilet hire is not something we might thing of often but it is a big job for events and festival organisers. Nixon Toilet Hire have, I'm sure, heard all the jokes as they go about their business providing an essential service at events such as firework displays, music festivals including Leeds. Reading and T in the Park, the Newark beer festival and the Great North Run.

World Toilet Day  was on 19th November.  It's a serious health issue if you do not have access to such facilities, as millions of people round the world still don't...

Back nearer to home, I was pleasantly surprised by a toilet block on the Trent & Mersey canal near the Anderton Boat Lift at the weekend. It was a cold and frosty morning outside but inside the loos were beautifully heated, spacious and even had a shelf full of books in the lobby entrance. Narrow boat voyagers are treated well along that stretch of canal!

My monthly guest post for Smitten By Britain is now up and it features Polperro, which is where I recently visited after a morning in nearby Looe…  Do You Know Polperro? .

Normandy stalls at Alty-all over by Christmas?

This coming weekend (1st and 2nd December) the Normandy Markets return for a two day visit to sell sell sell at Altrincham Market. Sunday 2nd December is also the Altrincham Christmas Market, so there are plenty of opportunities for some creative and thoughtful Christmas shopping. 

Every Thursday evening until Christmas Altrincham also has a Twilight Market  from 5.30 until 10.00, with seasonal produce, quirky gifts, crafts and vintage, live entertainment and warming street food. Could it be the most stylishly festive of all Manchester's suburbs?

The monthly vintage market (as seen in this photo) is in Altrincham Market on Sunday 16th December: it'll give you a final chance to buy home-made cards, crafts, locally produced cakes and ales, and various vintage and retro gifts for the special people in your life. 

It's so much nicer than going to the supermarkets or chain stores with their over-packaged soulless offerings- Support independent traders ;-)  @altyxmas @altvtgmarket

Linking today with Ruby Tuesday.

Monday MMUral... For fox sake?

The Chatham Building at MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University ) is being refurbished externally. The enterprising students and staff have come up with some wacky self portrait life-size murals and interpretations of themselves, which line three sides of the building at present. More next Monday.

The fifth one, top row is rather freaky, being made up of almost all hands. The fox on the bottom right is my personal favourite, followed by the anti- Government cuts demonstration montage on the bottom left.

Linked to Monday Murals at the Oakland Daily Photo blog.

Closed on Sundays...Cross Keys dance bar

The Cross Keys pub and "dance bar" in Ancoats has seen better days. Plans to demolish the Jersey Street and Radium Street pub were thwarted in 2010. 

The pub has been licensed since the mid 19th century, when Radium Steet was named German Street (It was hastily renamed in 1914 as World War I commenced....) 

Radium is to do with the radium treatment for cancer which was taking place at the world famous Christies hospital a few miles away. More on the chequered Cross Keys history at the always reliable Manchester Pubs blog.

Weekend Reflections: Chetham's through the looking glass

Chetham's School of Music bends and bows but does not break in yesterday's beautiful late November sunshine. Today Mancunian Wave is taking part in Weekend Reflections. 

From the Chetham's website I have borrowed this snippet which I found to be fascinating- I hope you do too...

"The 20th century brought huge expansion in educational opportunity and at one point three schools shared the yard – The Manchester Grammar School, Nicholls Hospital School and Chetham’s Hospital School, where boys still wore traditional Tudor dress. Music slowly but surely put down the firm foundations throughout the 1950s and 1960s, helped by Manchester’s strong musical tradition, manifested in the success of the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, and the City’s music colleges (amalgamated into the 1970s into the Royal Northern College of Music). 

In 1969, a bold and far reaching decision was taken – to change the boys’ Grammar School to a fully co-educational boarding specialist Music School. Today, over 40 years later, Chetham’s enjoys a reputation as being a celebrated and internationally renowned specialist Music School."

Skywatch Friday; raindrops aren't falling on my head

Some of the infamous Manchester rain settles on the glass canopy at the Royal Exchange Theatre, as we look out into St Ann's Square and the skies beyond. Here's a surprisingly  rather romantic video of Manchester in the rain.

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Fall foliage - she comes in the fall at the Ritz....

The last of the autumn leaves are rapidly plummeting, the beech trees are all waving goodbye to their foliage in the suburbs, and at a pace faster than people can sweep up. 

This time of year often reminds me of the classic Madchester 1990 tune by Oldham's Inspiral Carpets - She Comes in the Fall. This gritty live footage of the Inspiral Carpets at the Ritz in March 2012, captures the energy well...

ABC Wednesday: "S" is for The Studio

"S" is for The Studio in the Royal Exchange building. The Studio's an award-winning fully flexible space dedicated to new and innovative performance premiering in the North West. It's a space for commissions, new work and new ideas, the support and encouragement of groundbreaking participation from all ages and groups and where they develop and collaborate with the next generation of theatre makers. The Studio theatre space holds 90 people. (The main theatre in the centre of the Royal Exchange itself holds many more of course!)

Linked to ABC Wednesday .