Day Trip to Madchestar

Antony Gormley

A kiwi friend is visiting her family in Southport, we live in North Derbyshire...where to meet? Manchester! What to do in Manchester? Need a place to chat, need a bit of walking around, need cake...the Art Gallery of course.

Kate Malone, Pineapple [detail]

We bundle ourselves into the car to Grindleford and hop on the train that used to be a bus (I kid you not) and trundle very slowly Manchester bound. It's an old train, and has a certain smell that should you wish to reproduce, get your old running trainers very wet, leave them in a plastic bag for about a month, then retrieve them and dry them out on a radiator.

After stopping at every village in the Hope Valley, and every lamp post we arrive in a soggy Manchester. 

Very lovely to greet old friend, and she has kiwi chocolate and biscuits, we set off in an art galleryish direction. A little confused with all the roads and traffic, we are beeped at by a bus, we reach our destination. (we are country bumpkins after all).

Rebecca Lawton, Roll'em Girls '16

Straight to the cafe of course, need to catch up and obviously need to eat a giant chocolate croissant to fortify ourselves for the day. Taken in by the Kate Malone ceramic pineapple on the way, the exhibition we came to see was really excellent. Fashion and Freedom "New fashion and film inspired by the women of the First World War"

We learnt things (who knew Emmeline Pankhurst's 'guards' were trained in martial arts in order to protect her) we really enjoyed the designs and the films accompanying the exhibition were well worth a watch - go see it. 

Favourites were the knee embroidery with an embroidery frame, a commentary on women being able to display parts of their body previously frowned upon. Women - now allowed to expose their knees, would actually decorate their knees!  I liked the use of embroidery to portray this and the frame of the hoop - brining a traditional female occupation into the public eye. 

Time for lunch, that chocolate croissant couldn't possibly be expected to keep us going all day. Back to the cafe, a lovely lunch, more chat of course. We  felt fortified to view more art.

The obligatory photo of the Gormley and onto some Japanese design via traditional paintings. Some lovely organic ceramics. 

One plate, four forks

Feeling inspired, onto an art shop. Sheffield's art supply shops I often find are not great. Fred Aldous beckoned. OMG - I'd never been in before. Things just seemed to leap into my basket, lovely lovely things, lovely thinks that smelt of creativity and pencils, things that will help improve my creativity. I want to live there, apparently it's not allowed.

Ey up duck

Original duck face

Time for cake before the train back to Grindleford. A minty (yes minty) brownie, kinda nice, kinda weird. More chat and a selfie - we forgot to do the duck face as seen earlier.