I recently* discovered my liking for things with button eyes – which is probably why the desk in my office (listen, people of Manchester! I’ve got an OFFICE. I’m a GROWN UP. Go me!) is occupied by button-eyed creatures of all sorts.
You can probably imagine how delighted I was when I discovered 365 Days of Cardboard Kid to give me my daily fix of button-eyedness: Cardboard Kid, the 2-dimensional cardboard-coloured and square looking anti-hero, who tends to get in quite dramatic situations sometimes.
I kept following the adventures of my new little cardboard friend with excitement – until last Friday, when the poor kid was involved in some sort of accident (my guess: pub fight…) and suffered severe injuries. I was more than just mildly upset, to say the least.
Fortunately, Gareth gave me the opportunity to look after the poor little fella and posted him to me, neatly wrapped in two envelopes. The other residents on my desk were rather excited about the new arrival and gave Cardboard Kid a warm welcome (only that lazy Rubix Cube couldn’t be bothered leaving his favourite spot in front of my screen). Updates on the kid’s way to recovery and his adventures with his new the button-eyed mates might follow (somewhere on Gareth’s website or facebook page).
If you think I’ve gone bonkers, you may or may not be right.
* Not quite true, I’ve been madly in love with Domo Kun for almost a decade now.
Last Thursday, the new look of visitmanchester.com was revealed and celebrated with a launch party. The website is supposed to be the ‘official tourism website for Greater Manchester‘ and provides information from fun and informal (5 top cheap eats in Manchester et al) to business related (such as conferences and hotel bookings). Naturally, such a wide range of topics and huge amounts of information, along with the technical requirements poses a real challenge for web designers and developers.
Given the rather enthusiastic twitter comments about the new website, I was keen to have a look at it, expecting something nice, neat, user friendly and visually pleasing. The following dialogue then took place between my 14 year old (that was in the 1990s!) hyperactive internet-ecstatic persona and my current cynical, Manchester-critical, internet-bored and rather boring 24 year old self:
Me then: “WOAH this is awesome! Everything’s moving!!1!!!11!” Me now: “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!” Me then: “CHECK THAT OUT! The navigation DISAPPEARS and then COMES BACK! They must have used FLASH, that is soooo cool!” Me now: “JESUS CHRIST why is everything…what…where has the navigation gone… ah there it is… hang on, is this a one-page-website? That’s cool actually! One-page websites are the future.” Me then: “MAAAN there’s like, wavy lines coming down, in different colours, and text, and photos of random people! This is THE FUTURE! I WANT TO BOUNCE AROUND! LOL!” (downs another pint of peach ice tea. I used to drink several pints of this stuff a day, going from one sugar high to the next.) Me now: “Why are there photos of random people and overlapping text snippets in the background? I can’t read anything. Is that a twitter feed or something? I don’t get it. Wait… this is not a one-page navigation, only the top boxes stay the same. Oh, no it is actually… everything I’ve seen so far is still on the page! How handy. And confusing.” (left eye starts twitching) Me then: “So many totally cool boxes EVERYWHERE! I LOVE boxes! I love CSS! CSS boxes are the FUTURE!” Me now: “Where is the navigation gone now? Eh… I feel dizzy… they could have aligned the boxes at least. Why does the menu on the left appear twice? What… Oh it says ‘Deutsch’, let’s see if they’ve got a proper translator. Whoops… no… that German looks very English to me. Huh?” Me then: “Colours!” Me now: “I don’t feel well…” Me then: “Wavy lines!!” Me now: “This is confusing…” Me then: “Mouse over effects! I LOVE mouse over effects!” Me now: “What is happening to me…” Me then: “Live Twitter feeds*!” Me now: “Everything is spinning… uugghh…” Me then: “Maaan when I grow up I want to MAKE COOL WEBSITES, like, totally!!” Me now: “Make it stop, please. Please!!” (curls up in a ball and stares at a blank wall for half an hour) Me then: “Man, you’re lame. Duh.”
While I don’t have doubts about the usefulness and quality of the content, I couldn’t possibly imagine using visitmanchester.com for anything other than casual browsing and exploring. I really don’t want to actually search for any particular information there – the website is just too confusing.
Thanks to magneticNorth for giving me the shakes and five minutes of insanity. Don’t take it personal, but WOAH! This is one mess of a website. I suppose if you test it on the over 50′s next time (Happy belated Silver Surfers’ day by the way) you could produce something less headspinning.
Time for my Horlicks now!
Edit: They made a video about the launch as well, featuring an interview with the creative director of magneticNorth (who I confused with Gary Lineker first). “Neverending cascade of information” is quite appropriate and sounds as scary as it looks. “Hopefully this will spread out…” Yeah…but… no. Please don’t.
* Ok so this is nonsense. We didn’t even have facebook then, let alone twitter. It was geocities all the way.
Basically a part of Manchester (uh oh, I really shouldn’t say that), Salford is still the big unknown to me. Even after living here for 2 years, I only ever managed to cross the bridge once*, have a wander around the Adelphi campus, and then escape back to Manchester straight away. I was quite looking forward to spending a day in “the other city” last Sunday, when several Mancunian promoters were hosting the “Sounds from the other city” festival (which was pretty awesome by the way – I’ve written a more detailed review on bunmagazine.tumblr.com)
As soon as I had crossed the bridge and left the hot pink sign screaming “Welcome – you are now IN Salford” behind me, I was greated by one of the members of society who regard tracksuit bottoms as suitable for wearing outside a gym (Please note: They’re not.), smiling at me with his teethless mouth, then shouting at his son who was wearing matching trackies. Welcome indeed.
Walking down Chapel Street was a rather sad experience: Almost every other building, presumably former pubs, on this road is empty, boarded up and crumbling. What a shame, given it is so close to the city centre and could act as an extension to Market Street, with the Northern Quarter on the upper end of the street. It almost feels like Chapel Street was intentionally left deserted to avoid any kind of confusion with Manchester – a clear cut between the centre and Salford, constituted by a no-man’s-land devoid of function (okay, it’s not that bad, but there really isn’t much on that road).
There seems to be an ambitious regeneration (let’s hope it is more ambitious than the website…) project going on (Spinningfields 2 anyone?), and with events like the Sounds from the other city festival the usual Mancunian crowd takes notice of the existence of their neighbour at last – but there is still a lot of work to be done to make this area of Salford not only a place you could easily go to, but also one you would want to.
Looking down Chapel Street towards Manchester (Jenga-like Courts of justice on the right)
Islington Mill. Former cotton mill, fantastic gig venue and artist space. There’s always something happening and it’s usually quite loud.
* Not incuding the trips to the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, but that doesn’t necessarily count as seeing anything of Salford itself.
My weekend activities? Well, there was a feminist march in Manchester, a geeky (un)conference in Cambridge, and a fancy afternoon tea at an underground restaurant in London. Hosted by a lady who goes by the name Ms Marmitelover, a small number of people gathered at a private house in north London to enjoy drinks, food and – sun! All top secret, semi-legal and home made.
There was a “psychic in the shed” (not my words) who told me some interesting things about my life. I had to choose tarot cards and picked “Death”. Oh.
The kitchen. Hardly visible in the back, giving instructions (and always wearing a timer round her neck): the lovely Ms Marmitelover – hostess, chef and underground restaurant legend. (I don’t know if she’s a legend, but she’s been doing it for 1 1/2 years now and she’s nice, so I think she deserves legend status).
In addition to tomato tart, blue cheese quiche, high heels biscuits, red velvet cake with raspberries, strawberry tart with custard, and tea infused vodka, we had this: rude biscuits, rose & chocolate marshmallows, Marmite cupcakes – absolutely delicious. I can’t wait for a pop up restaurant / supperclub / underground restaurant / youknowwhatimean to appear in Manchester!*
Until then, I suppose you have to make sure you book a place at one of the many supperclubs next time you go down to London!
* I’d totally do it, but that would mean entire meals consisting of dhal and broccoli, not too sure if that would go down too well with the foodies.
Last week was absolutely shocking. For the first time in almost a year the weather actually made me want to spend time outside. Park time! Since we all know that Platt Field’s park is an utterly useless waste of green spaces (ok, so that’s not true, since I consider all green spaces valuable. But don’t you think they could have come up with something slightly more appealing than a bit of grass, a half arsed rose garden and a concrete pond that constantly suffers from bizarre algae?), my task on Saturday was to find a nice park in south Manchester. Fog Lane park isn’t too exciting either, so there were Didsbury park and Fletcher Moss left to choose from (I know there’s quite a few more, but I didn’t feel that adventurous). I went for the one with the fancier name and ended up at Fletcher Moss, situated right behind the “Didsbury” pub (which was absolutely heaving – after all, it was derby day). How convenient.
And ooooh I love love loved it. I managed to secure the best spot by a little pond in some very pretty Japanese / botanical garden style bit after wandering round the vast fields and a wooden bridge like path. I even felt too warm in the sun to wear a cardigan. Happy times.
Yes, I write letters. Not just any letters though. I write angry letters. In, what I presume is, the great British tradition of passive aggressiveness, I write politely phrased letters to whoever I believe might be responsible for whatever it is that makes me furious, kindly asking them to ‘SORT IT ASAP YOU HEAR ME?‘. Most of the time, I get angry about the cleanliness of places, or sexism in the media; Metro is one of my favourite targets regarding the former, and public areas in Manchester for the latter. Or vice versa. You know what I mean.
As I am currently drafting a letter to my MP, Mr John Leech (yes, it’s THAT serious. I will use the word ‘eyesore’ and send an actual letter in the mail), I thought I might as well share my passion with you. Please find attached an email I sent to the Heaton Park management team in June 2010 after a visit to the ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ performance regarding the toilet facilities.
Dear* Heaton Park team,
while I appreciate* Heaton Park as great* and rather tidy* park, I was shocked to find the toilet facilities near the farm centre in a terrible condition last weekend. The general cleanliness of the facilities was poor, hardly any of the doors could be locked, the washing basins were dirty and there was absolutely no tissue available – other visitors commented that it was almost as bad as “portaloos at a festival”. I visited the park on Sunday 20th June to watch the Shakespeare play and I expected the facilities to be looked after, especially for such an event.
Please take this as a kind* suggestion to improve the bathrooms to make Heaton Park more pleasant* for all visitors.
Thank you very much*,
Angry Letter Lady.
I’m such a twat.
Nevertheless, here’s the reply I received from Mr Peter Davenport, only a few days later:
Dear* Samantha
May I first thank you for your email regarding the condition of the toilet block.*
At Heaton we make every effort to ensure that all our visitors leave the facility with every intention to return after a satisfying experience, it is always disappointing to have reports that our facilities are being maintained under standard, our contracted clean team are responsible for the maintenance of all the toilet facilities within the Park and have to monitor them at least every hour and clean where necessary, as you can appreciate with visitor numbers so high this sometimes has downsides to the service when monitoring other buildings within the Park. […]
We will ensure that your supportive* comments and constructive* criticism are relayed to the clean team so that any further operations maybe implemented however as detailed above we will occasionally due to heavy use fall below standards expected from the management of Heaton Park. Once again on behalf of Heaton Park I would like to apologise* for any inconvenience caused and hope this will not reflect on any future decision to visit.
Regards
Peter G. Davenport
Well, thank you Peter, thumbs up for the quick reply and the friendly reply. Much appreciated. Angry Letter Lady is happy again.
Sam Bail 
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