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. 

  

Are we cut out for London?

A trip to London Town was well overdue. Daughter in the midst of revision for test week at school…a whole weekend away was out of the question, so a day trip on the train to primarily see a textiles exhibition was ideal. We have an incredibly early start, on the train for 6.40. We treat ourselves to a bacon buttie and a coffee from the buffet and we are there…London baby.

The Textiles museum doesn’t open until 11 am so we hop on a bus to Oxford Street. It’s just gone 9 am, which appears to be the perfect time to go to one of the busiest shopping streets known to ladies with a desire to spend. No other shoppers. Unfortunately not all the shopkeepers are there either - 10 am start - what southern softies. From the bus we spy a desirable open shop and all pile in. I wander round aimlessly, wife and child spot the sale rail. New skinny jeans tried on and purchased all before 10 am! Impressive. That's teenagers for you. Right - on to Muji!

Textile time. On the tube and on foot to Bermondsey. Lots of walking, but it's in the glorious sunshine to it's all good.

John Rombola "circus scene'

We love love love the textiles. Artists textiles form Picasso to Warhol. There were fabric samples, videos, stories, dresses made out of the fabric from the relevant eras, women bending Maisie’s ear saying when I was your age I would have loved a dress like that and a decent cafe. All happy. 

Still life with jug

We head off in a Tate Modern direction. I’d located a Sushi bar which looked fun. What’s this? Closed! Pah. We are hungry and choose the restaurant opposite which looks OK. Trendy with trendy prices but very acceptable, even provided a still life should you wish to sketch at the table. We didn’t. 

Cy Twombley 'Untitled'

After a bit of stamping around the Tate, catching up with old favourites...it's cut out time. "Henri Matisse The Cut Outs" Along with hoards of others we are filed into the exhibition. We met up with my cousin and all together we vaguely manage to translate some of the accompanying text to his artist's book 'Jazz'. We are in awe of Matisse's cutting out skills and loved the video of him pointing with a large stick at his art work. Assistants then dutifully pinned the scrap of paper to the wall as directed, all under his watchful eye. I want to do that! I wonder if child would be amenable to being my assistant? Moving on...I really appreciated seeing images only previously seen in reproductions. I loved seeing the holes left by the drawing pins, the imperfections in the paper and the scale of the work. Cut outs - far out!

How much more stamping around can we do? Not much. Weary day trippers head back to the train, back to home and to bed. We didn't see the queen but we had a right royal time. 

Every one was taking this shot...so I did.

The boys were back in town

An impromptu road trip for our French boys was a lovely New Year’s Eve surprise. A trip to the Hepworth was in order to show off Yorkshire’s cultural side. 

We squashed in to the car and headed for Wakefield. 

The advantage of going NYE is the lack of competition for a parking space, we achieved a boss one and headed on in. 

We had fed the boys a massive brunch in the form of English breakfast - enough bacon to sustain a person for a considerable amount of time. So, of course, the cafe is the first place we went to! After all, our cake levels must have been at an all time seasonal low by this point. The cafe is lovely - good food, friendly staff and the afternoon wintery light was beautiful.

Fortified with cake, hot chocolate and fizzy pop, we headed for the art. As always, all were  impressed by the Hepworth’s collection and intrigued by the visiting shows. Photos of favorite pieces were shot. To the shop then!

NYE was topped off by a top evening at friends in Sheffield - more than happy to include our boys at short notice. Hosts and other guests alike had to kiss everyone twice because of the French element. This seemed to go down well. Our hosts provided a delicious buffet and we then all played a game based on food and etiquette - not my strong point. The boys were happy; a significant number of questions began "What region in France…" They were, however, unhappy when we lost by one point due to a question concerning Finland. C'est la vie.

We waved adieu to the lovely boys on a very rainy New Years Day, making sure they left with a large slab of cake to be consumed in emergencies! We all hope they come again soon.

Anyone fancy a swim?

France part two

La Piscine

Lars and Maisie

Our dear friend Lars took us into Roubaix to the swimming pool - La piscine. No not for swimming as one might expect, but for art purposes. The old Art Deco swimming pool in the town, is now La Piscine - the Museum of Art and Industry, and is a beautiful setting for a great collection of drawings, painting, sculptures and textiles. There is still a suggestion of pool, and every little while the sound of swimming pool joviality is played over the loud speakers for a few seconds. Fantastic - we all loved it!

The visit was made even more interesting, one of the curators known to Lars (the benefits of knowing a local) gave Maisie some smelly bits of paper (like perfume samples) which were supposed to match up to certain paintings. A project by a local artist I think. 


Off we trekked to find the corresponding paintings - first up 'Combat de coqs en Flandre'  Remy Cogghe 1889 - not my favourite subject matter, or my favourite smell it would seem. The paper was impregnated with a smell reminiscent of stale tobacco and sweat. Yuk!  After a sniff of the pool (fairly realistic), and an assassination (fairly unpleasant and unplaceable) we found a still life of a breakfast setting. When we opened the bag with the smelly paper, we were pleasantly surprised and relived to sniff le petit dejeuner  - chocolate and while linen. Yum - off to patisserie again? Why not, we are in France after all.