The Shrieking Violet issue 20

After a hiatus of six months or so whilst life got in the way, the Shrieking Violet has finally reached issue 20.

Issue 20's cover is by Manchester-based freelance illustrator and designer Catherine Chialton. Her work is generally inspired by science, nature and food, and is split between using ink and vectors. Continuing Catherine's normal linear and patterned aesthetic, this piece was inspired by the usually grim Manchester weather, but with a brighter finish to it.

Manchester-based filmmaker Richard Howe continues his series on mental health in the movies by looking at Betty Blue, which he fell in love with at the tender age of nine. Check out Richard's films at https://vimeo.com/18599252, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhye0hzz72Q and www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj6H_eCz_4s and tweet Richard about films @rikurichard.

Artist, writer and arts administrator Jack Welsh has contributed an article about old and new public artworks by Eduardo Paolozzi and Daniel Buren in Tottenham Court Road tube station, London, which has been undergoing extensive renovation. Jack is based in Liverpool, but frequently works in Manchester. He recently completed a Masters in Arts Management, Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester. His dissertation, examining how the Art on the Underground programme contributes to the economic development of London, is part of a longstanding research interest in the role of art and design in underground transport networks.

Joe Austin writes in praise of twentieth century artist Frank Dobson, sometimes referred to as the first truly British Modern sculptor. His interest was sparked by the discovery of a sculpture by Dobson in his local park. Joe is a qualified architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 23 years or so. Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about.

Midlands-based writer, musician and occasional wrestler JT Wilson has written about the Mystery Castle, a folly in the Arizona desert. JT first heard about the Mystery Castle while researching his forthcoming novel (about cryptozoology, love and other animals). He shares the hero's fondness for grandiloquent gestures, but not his architectural talent. Say hello to JT @jt_stories.

Sam Lewis, a London-based musician, and occasional music writer, interviewed Michael Azzerad, author of Our Band Could be Your Life, as part of his Master's dissertation on how technology affects music. Listen to Being There at http://beingthere.bandcamp.com.

Freelance illustrator Fuchsia MacAree has contributed two drawings, one of Queen Victoria and her border collie, and one repeat pattern originally created for a fundraising Movember exhibition. After degrees in graphic design and illustration, she is now doing a year-long residency in Dublin.

Rebecca Willmott has written a children's story about the January Blues, hoping this will become a longer story in time. Rebecca graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2011, specialising in Children's Literature in her final year. The story shows how baking (in particular, gingerbread men) brings the two characters together whilst mourning a great loss. It is influenced by the Shrieking Violet and Rebecca's many culinary experiments. Rebecca also submitted a gingerbread man recipe for the Shrieking Violet's third issue.

Richard Bilsborough, who has spent the past 14 years being told he should take up cookery, has contributed a recipe for pork, barley and apple stew. He is from Preston, plays guitar for a band called Fighting and has a very dull administrative job.

Valentina Orrù has recently completed a MA in Arts Management, Policy and Practice at the University of Manchester, researching urban regeneration and cultural planning. In love with Manchester and with a passion for cities, cultures and travelling, she loves discovering new worlds without forgetting her origins. Valentina is very pleased to contribute a traditional recipe from her Italian region of origin Sardinia, translated into the Sardinian dialect of her home village Mogoro, to this edition of the Shrieking Violet.

Read issue 20 online here:

Download and print your own copy as a PDF here. To request a free paper copy email your name and address to Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

I have been asked to do a guest lecture about self-publishing and the Shrieking Violet blog/zine for undergraduate students on Manchester Metropolitan University's interdisciplinary Unit X in April.

Read about issue 20 of the Shrieking Violet on Creative Tourist here.

Histories written in metal: UHC's Tin Town at Campfield Market

From the late seventeenth century up until his death in 1758, the Second Earl of Warrington amassed a large silverware collection at his country home in Dunham Massey in Cheshire, encompassing everyday household objects ranging from plates, cutlery, candlesticks, bread baskets and chamber pots to large water cisterns.

More than 250 years later, Manchester artists' co-operative Ultimate Holding Company has used this precious collection – much of it sold off over the years but now being returned to its original home – as the starting point for a project to refashion these glittering, valuable objects, at once functional and decorative, in one of this century's most ubiquitous materials, common domestic tin foil. With only an hour to spend with the collection at Dunham Massey, some of UHC's works copy the design and decoration of the Earl's silverware, approximating the scale and complexity of items in the collection, whereas others are entirely new constructs inspired by the history of the time and the webs of stories woven by the industrial revolution, which formed the backdrop of the Earl's lifetime.

The resulting exhibition Tin Town, currently on show in makeshift structures in the centre of the vast, underused, functionally ornate space of Campfield market hall just off Deansgate in Manchester, meditates on how we place value on materials and which objects we hold dear. UHC's tinware collection, moulded, engraved and held together with metal tape, is both beautiful and fragile, comprising lightweight yet fully formed replicas of the solid, heavy pieces which inspired it, made all the more impressive by the objects' underlying delicacy and transience. The product from which UHC's tinware is made, today commonly known as tin foil is, in fact, aluminium foil; tin was superseded in the mid-twentieth century both because aluminium is more flexible, and because tin slightly tinged the taste of food in kitchen use. Once a rare and expensive material, today aluminium is both readily available and highly sought after for recycling. Far from being disposable in the way we understand the word (ie, implying a lack of value), part of the value of aluminium comes from the fact that it can be recycled easily, and used again and again and again.

Tin Town also refers to one of the lesser-acknowledged aspects of the industrial revolution, temporary, overcrowded settlements of navvies, the undersung (often immigrant) labourers who built the infrastructure of the industrial revolution, such as canals – including Britain's first canal, the Bridgewater Canal, designed as a way for the Duke of Bridgewater to transport coal to Manchester from his mine at Worsley (begun shortly after the Earl of Warrington's death, the Bridgewater Canal eventually extended out to Dunham Massey). Tin towns grew up alongside major building projects such as these, a fact acknowledged both by the show's title and presentation and by the painstaking engraving of a typical navvy settlement on one of UHC's decorative tin plates. Like the Earl's silverware, which over the years has gone from existing as objects of use to becoming ornaments in glass cases, the value and role of the canals which powered the industrial revolution has changed too – from places of industry, toil and commerce to quiet backwaters and pleasure spots, part of the repackaging of the sites of our industrial history as destinations of as much interest for daytrippers and historians as the elegant stately home or traditional country park.

Tin Town is at Upper Campfield Market, Liverpool Road, Castlefield, Manchester, M3 4FH until Sunday February 24, open daily from 11am-7pm, and is free to visit. There are also a number of drop-in art workshops on Tuesday 19, Thursday 21 and Saturday 23 February from 1pm-3pm. For more information visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/local-to-you/north-west/things-to-see-and-do/article-1355767317799/?campid=tintown.

The Shrieking Violet rice pudding

I recently started a PhD, and during two weeks training in how to be a research student we had a session on time management (we were mainly told fairly obvious things like 'checking your Facebook page will not help you with your research'). One of the things we had to do during this session was to think of five things we could not live without. I decided that without food, sleep, fresh air and exercise (getting out for a walk every day, even if it's only just to the shops), and having time to spend by myself and having time to spend with other people with whom I have things in common, I would quickly get very miserable and find it hard to function. We were then asked to narrow our choices down to the two most important (food and sleep for me) and finally pick the one thing we really couldn't live without. Whilst I was trying to choose between food and sleep, it turned out everyone else was thinking about things like their family and their pets.

However, I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of food in my life, not just as sustenance but also as a way of experiencing experimentation, adventure, comfort and familiarity. I feel like thinking about what I am going to eat, where I am going to get the ingredients from, and how I am going to cook them, gives my days and weeks structure, as well as something to look forward to, and I hope that however busy I became I would still have time to cook for myself. As well as trying out new recipes, I also love making old favourites. Strangely enough, I had never made rice pudding until recently, but it is a great dish as it pretty much looks after itself – once you have put the ingredients in the oven you can just leave them for a couple of hours until it's ready. I'm not a big eater of desserts, so I tend to make it into a main meal, or eat it cold for breakfast. I've also started making sure I have a pomegranate around (they are fairly cheap on the fruit and vegetable stall on High Street in the Northern Quarter and, once deseeded, last in the fridge for several days) as their seeds can be added to any number of dishes, sweet and savoury (see also the Shrieking Violet porridge recipe below, and an aubergine, walnut, pomegranate seed and brown rice salad I invented recently).

On one of the occasions I made rice pudding for a communal dinner lately, my friend Lauren Velvick commented that she would love to make rice pudding but didn't know where to buy pudding rice. It was her birthday last weekend, so I made her a 'rice pudding kit' based on the ingredients and recipe below.

The Shrieking Violet rice pudding

Ingredients 

100g pudding rice
50g sugar
700ml soya milk (or other type of milk. I really want to try using coconut milk from a can but have not got round to trying it yet)
Freshly grated nutmeg
1 bayleaf
5-6 cardamon pods
½ of one pomegranate (seeds)

Serves 2 

Method

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees celsius. Grease a large oven dish. Wash and drain rice and add to dish. Add sugar and milk and stir. Grate in a generous amount of nutmeg and add the bay leaf and cardamon pods. Cook for two hours until the rice has reached the desired consistency (I like mine quite runny). Remove from the oven, remove the bayleaf and cardamon pods (if wished), stir in the pomegranate seeds and serve.

The Shrieking Violet porridge 

I never used to be a great porridge eater (it’s the stodgiest food I know of, but strangely, and contrary to popular myth that it will keep you full until lunchtime, I’m always ravenous again an hour or two after eating it), but I have found myself eating it a lot in the winter mornings as it’s relatively warm, quick and convenient. As a savoury aficionado, I’m also not a big fruit eater (perhaps because I’ve never been much of a snacks or desserts person) and fruity porridge is also my way of feeling like I’m doing my bit to keep my diet varied and vitamin-filled.

My main complaint about porridge is that it’s often runny or bland (unlike rice pudding, which I prefer runny), but I get around that by cooking it until all the liquid is absorbed and making as much of a meal out of it as possible. Using up some leftover desiccated coconut and chopped nuts one day was inspired, if I say so myself, as it lends the porridge some crunchiness; further ammunition against the blandness!

Ingredients

50-70g porridge oats
½ cup soya milk or water
½ pomegranate (seeds only)
1 apple (or peach/nectarine or plum), chopped
1.5cm ginger, chopped or grated in while the porridge is cooking
½ teaspoon cinnamon and/or ground ginger
½ teaspoon golden syrup or honey
Desiccated coconut or chopped hazelnuts

Serves 1

Method

Heat milk/water in a large pan. Add chopped fruit and simmer for 5-10 minutes depending on how much time you’ve got and how soft you like your fruit. Once fruit has softened, stir in oats, adding more liquid if required. Stir in ginger and cinnamon and sprinkle liberally with coconut/nuts. Keep stirring until porridge has reached desired consistency (up to a couple of minutes). Remove from the heat, stir in pomegranate seeds and serve in a bowl with a teaspoon of golden syrup or honey.

Delia Derbyshire Day 2013 at Band on the Wall

With its futuristic bleeping, mysterious whooshing, ominous organ and chugging guitars gearing up to transport the viewer into a different world, the theme tune made for the Dr Who series in 1963 is one of the most distinctive, evocative and appropriate pieces of music ever created for television, and it still forms the basis of the theme tune used today. Long attributed solely to composer Ron Grainer, the contribution made by sound pioneer Delia Derbyshire, a member of the innovative BBC Radiophonic Workshop, has often been overlooked – but now a Manchester-based group, dubbing themselves 'Delia Darlings', are to celebrate her work and legacy with a mini-symposium at Band on the Wall, timed to coincide with the 50th birthday of the series. The Delia Darlings – contemporary classical composer Ailís Ní Ríain, experimental electronic producer and found sound manipulator Caro C, and gramophone glitching artist Naomi Kashiwagi – were inspired to put on the event because “we felt increasing the visibility of her amazing work as a pioneer in the UK was still of relevance today". 

Coventry-born Derbyshire was also behind many other sonic experiments and sound effects, which she termed 'psycho-acoustics', and the Delia Derbyshire Day seeks to reappraise her ongoing influence on electronic, experimental and popular music. As Caro C explains, “She is best known for her realisation of Ron Grainer's original Dr Who theme tune but she also came up with so much more interesting and curious creations." Naomi Kashiwagi added: "One of the things that drew me to Delia Derbyshire was the tactile, systematic and meticulous processes she used, cutting and splicing tape together to construct music. Manipulating sounds from everyday objects created something extraordinary and in many cases otherworldly and timeless."

An afternoon event will include a screening of award-winning film the Delian Mode, followed by a Q&A with director Kara Blake, and a panel discussion featuring experts on Derbyshire's intriguing life and work (3pm-6pm). This will be followed by performances of new commissions undertaken by the Delia Darlings, who have created new works based on their adventures in the Delia Derbyshire archive, accompanied by live visuals from Kara Blake (8-10.30pm). Caro C explains, “We felt it was rather exciting that her audio and other material archives happen to be held here in Manchester. So we thought why not make a day of it and with some true Delian experts on board and present."

Derbyshire's archive, which contains original tapes and other materials, is held by the University of Manchester at the John Rylands Library. David Butler, senior lecturer in screen studies at the University, who helped bring the archive to Manchester, said that the Delia Darlings were among the first to delve extensively into the archive, and he was delighted with the project's aims and potential impact: "It's always been our hope that Delia's tape and written archive would provide the inspiration for new works responding to Delia's life and extraordinary music,” he said.

Caro C enjoyed listening to the digitised tape archives and hearing pieces in construction, such as the spacey, reflective 'Blue Veils and Golden Sands'. "The craft and grace in this piece really moved me," she explains. "I was also particularly blown away by a synth pop piece she made in 1971 and the techno track that she made in the late 1960s. She really was ahead of her time and I love it when my concept of time being linear is challenged."

Among the most interesting artefacts were Derbyshire's school books, which Caro C says she found "really touching, maybe because I had not kept my own and they reminded me of all the care and learning we put into our school work (sometimes)". She said: "The Latin exercise books and English essays were really interesting for me – with hindsight you can see signs of her career there already."

Caro C's piece uses some of Derbyshire's school exercise books and sine tones, as well as her sampling or her own voice, for inspiration for lyrics and sounds. She explains that she was inspired by how visionary the music of sound pioneers like Delia Derbyshire was, and the “technical ingenuity, time and dedication required to do what they did”. In today's age of laptop software, which makes it easy to experiment with new sounds, she feels Derbyshire's efforts, as well as the work of other sound pioneers like Daphne Oram, are more worthy of respect than ever.

The film and performances will also appear at FACT in Liverpool (Wednesday 16 January), Queens Social Club, Sheffield (Friday 18 January, supporting Eccentronic Research Council) and Newcastle's Star and Shadow cinema (Sunday 20 January).

Delia Derbyshire Day takes place at Band on the Wall on Saturday January 12.

Full Day: £12. Afternoon event only: £6. Evening event only: £7.50

http://deliaderbyshireday.wordpress.com

The Delian Mode illustration by Brigitte Archambault 

Things I enjoyed in 2012

Music 

Big Star Third, Barbican, London 

Big Star are my favourite ever band, and I have my dad to thank for getting me into them when I was a teenager. Whilst I love individual songs on #1 Record and Radio City, for me their final album Third/Sister Lovers works best as a complete piece of work, with its surprise mix of rocking pop songs, strange, otherworldly clanging and heart wrenching string and horn arrangements – it's one of those records I used to spend hours listening to in the dark trying to work out how the arrangements fitted together and how all the sounds the record were achieved. In 2008, my dad offered to take me to see their singer, Alex Chilton, at Shepherd's Bush Empire, but I decided to move house that weekend instead. I came to regret this a lot, as Chilton died a year and a half later at the age of 59, of a heart attack, so I never got to see him. When I heard about an event at the Barbican with a guest cast of musicians playing Big Star's third album in its entirety with the original string and horn arrangements, a few weeks after my dad's 50th birthday, therefore, it seemed like the perfect present. We decided to make a day of it in London, but my dad was in an unbelievably grumpy mood and barely spoke to me all day, and I was worried the gig wasn't going to interest him either. I've never seen someone perk up so suddenly, though. The revolving cast of musicians from bands like REM, Yo La Tengo and Teenage Fanclub really worked (with the exception of John Bramwell from I Am Kloot, whose nasal whining was completely out of place) and my dad was on the edge of his seat throughout the gig, smiling broadly – not least when Ray Davies was brought out as a surprise guest to rock the stage at the end. The Barbican concert hall is beautiful too – all wooden inside with really clear acoustics.

Chain and the Gang, Kraak Gallery, Manchester

I went to this gig as all girl punk band Trash Kit, one of my favourite bands of recent years, were on the bill, not knowing anything about headline band Chain and the Gang. In between bands, my friend excitably said 'There's Ian Svenonius, shall we go and have our photo taken with him?', to which I replied 'Who's that?'. Turns out Chain and the Gang singer Ian Svenius is a bit of an indie hero, having played in several cult bands over the years. It suddenly made sense why the audience was noticeably older than the usual crowd at this type of gig, and John Robb jumped up on stage to introduce them (possibly the only time I have ever been at the same gig as John Robb). Whilst Chain and the Gang are indisputably punk rock, their music is classy, stylish, musically slick and, most of all, fun, with front man Svenonius and front woman Katie Alice Greer dancing around the stage and playing off one other. 

Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield , Academy 2, Manchester

No surprises here – Dando and Hatfield duetted on classic Lemonheads tracks and took it in turn to play their own songs – except I'd never realised what a strong singer, guitarist and songwriter Hatfield is in her own right.

Trust Fund/Two White Cranes, my garden, Manchester

The last gig I'll ever have in my canal-side garden (I'm moving house soon) was a good one: Roxy Brennan, formerly of the Mountain Parade, writes sweet, simple folk songs as Two White Cranes, whilst Ellis Jones, formerly of the Bumblebees, sings falsetto over a Casio keyboard and sparse guitar under the name Trust Fund.

Dan Deacon, Islington Mill, Salford 

I maintain that Dan Deacon provides the most fun you can have at a gig – including dance-offs, a strobe light app for iPhones and making the audience create a tunnel with their hands then run through it to come out outside the building and then do the same again to go back inside. The music – euphoric dance – isn't bad either.

ATP, Minehead

I admit the appeal of ATP isn't really about the music – watching bands is always going to come second to wandering around charity shops, and exploring up and down hills and along the beaches in Minehead itself, interspersed with trips to Butlins' cinema and wave pool, but it was also great to see Minutemen, Young Marble Giants and Apples in Stereo, who were as fun as I'd hoped they would be. 

Wake Up Dead, Wim Wams, Irma Vep, the Hipshakes, Hotspur House, Manchester 

Top floor punk party with a view over the rooftops and train tracks of Manchester, in one of my favourite spaces in the city.

Honourable mentions go also to Francois and the Atlas Mountains, Rozi Plain and Being There, all at the Castle in Manchester.

Art 

Jane and Louise Wilson, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 

The best exhibition I've seen in Manchester in a while, Jane and Louise Wilson's photos, videos and sculptural installations show both the human and environmental impact of the Chernobyl disaster (and, elsewhere in the exhibition, recreate the scene of the murder of a Dubai businessman), in an exhibition that exposes the limits of human planning, surveillance and control. Read my review of the exhibition for Corridor8 here.

Martin Creed, All the Bells

Martin Creed's Work No 1197, a mass artwork which involved trying to get all the bells in the country to ring as loudly and quickly as possible for three minutes as a wake-up call heralding the start of the Olympics, was definitely the event I was most looking forward to during the Olympic year – although I found it frustratingly hard to find other people who shared my enthusiasm for getting up at 8.12am to make a noise. Other towns, villages and cities had organised All the Bells events; Manchester had none, and I had visions of being reduced to standing outside ringing my doorbell by myself for three minutes. However, I borrowed an agogô bell from the samba band I play with just in case, and at the last minute joined up with Alison Kershaw to ring some bells at St Luke's art project in the Longsight suburb of Manchester. St Luke's is based in a modern church on busy Stockport Road – one of the main roads into Manchester – and, it turns out, the church does not have physical bells but uses old cassette recordings of peals which are blasted out ahead of services and events. Calls to worship are on one side of the tape, weddings and funerals on the other; the church would be stuck if it lost the tape, said Alison! Alison had downloaded the special ringtone Martin Creed had created for the event (I couldn't, as it was only available for smartphones), and we stood, smiles on faces, banging away outside the church, church bells ringing in the background, as local residents came to their doors and windows in bewilderment. Admittedly, these were the only bells we we heard in Manchester, and some wags started the Twitter hashtag '#noneofthebells'.

Mark Leckey, Manchester Art Gallery

For this show, Leckey faced off a huge speaker stack against a giant, metallic piece of industrial machinery formerly used in a factory. On the opening night, Leckey's DJing made the room reverberate with sheer, bone-shaking noise, contrasting with the monumental solemnity of the two pieces of redundant equipment during usual exhibition hours, facing each other in silence, and the frantic activity of his youth culture film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.

Victoria Lucas, Untitled Gallery, Manchester

The best use of birds in an art gallery since Birds on Guitars (the Barbican, 2010), this simple yet lovely installation transformed tiny Untitled Gallery into an aviary by projecting a film of the gallery, temporarily populated by small, brightly coloured birds, onto the back wall, placing the viewer in a mirror image of the space. Watching the birds fly around the room was strangely captivating in itself, but what really made the film was the accidental presence of a strange figure (supposedly a bird expert) wandering in and out of the frame, failing over and over again to catch the birds with his hands and line them up on a low wire strung across the gallery.

Seven Sites, various locations, Manchester/Salford

Laura Mansfield and Swen Steinhauser's series of artistic interventions into everyday sites across the two cities, from a church to a curry house.

Hans Haacke, Reina Sofia, Madrid 

Fun but thought-provoking installations that make you look again at the art world and art's relationship with power, money and prestige.

Tracy Emin, Turner Contemporary, Margate 

I went to this exhibition expecting to be underwhelmed, but found Emin's personal, confessional drawings on the subject of sex, and her self-portraits, moving and affecting. It's rarely that I feel I can relate to a feminine topic, writer or artist just on the basis that I am a woman and am therefore supposed to have some kind of shared, woman-specific outlook on life, but I did feel a connection with Emin's work and experiences. She may not be the most subtle of artists, but I also thought her tapestries were really quite beautiful. We were there on the opening weekend, when the artist herself was wondering the building amid the crowds gathered to see this solo show in her home-town.

Michael Dean, Henry Moore Institute Leeds

One of several exhibitions I saw in Leeds in 2012, and Henry Moore Institute is another small gallery whose exhibitions always impress. Michael Dean fundamentally transformed the visitor experience, from creating sculptural door handles to carpeting the gallery's floor spaces, placing gallery assistants on the floor and filling the space with huge, tactile objects, some of which were so large they had to be made in situ.

The Humble Market, FACT, Liverpool

Part of Abandon Normal Devices festival, Brazilian/UK theatre collective Zecora Ura led viewers on a group tour through several scenarios, forcing the viewer to reevaulate their relationship to the artworks, as well their relationship with other members of the audience.

I've also really enjoyed all the exhibitions I've seen at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, which I feel really punches above its size. The venues impressed more than much of the art at Liverpool Biennial this year – with the exception of John Akomfrah's video installation The Unfinished Conversation at the Bluecoat, which refracted memories through snippets of archive film to explore the ideas and life of Stuart Hall. In a rare (at least in my experience) occurrence for a gallery, members of the public sat still for forty odd minutes to watch the film in its entirety instead of hovering uncertainly at the back or wandering in and out. In Manchester, I enjoyed small solo shows by Daniel Fogarty and Mary Griffiths at Bureau Gallery.

Books 

Whilst neither of these books were published in 2012 (or, indeed, recently), they are both among the best books I have ever read and had me engrossed during 2012.

Waterlog, Roger Deakin 

The type of book you wish you could carry with you all the time for inspiration, guidance and a bit of comfort on bad days, Deakin uses a uniquely beautiful turn of words as he swims his way around the country's waterways, evoking the sense of freedom, excitement and spontaneity that swimming al fresco brings.

Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azzerad

I wish I'd read this book, about the bands, record labels and publications that spread the DIY spirit across America, ten years ago: it should be compulsory reading for anyone with ambitions for forming a band, putting gigs on or releasing records (skip the Mudhoney chapter, but the Minor Threat, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Beat Happening chapters are particularly inspiring amidst the fights, drugs and decadence).

Film 

Lawrence of Belgravia 

One of the most honest and least contrived 'rockumentaries' I've ever seen, Lawrence of Belgravia follows Felt/Go-Kart Mozart frontman Lawrence over a period of years in a warts and all, fly on the wall journey into the life of a pop star. Sometimes frustrating but mainly just heartwarming, the film makes you cross your fingers for Lawrence to get his big break, snag Kate Moss, and become an indie superstar. If anyone deserves it, he does.

Make Your Own Damn Art 

A documentary following the life and work of artist Bob and Roberta Smith. I found Smith's ethos, attitude and approach to making art refreshing and inspiring. From creating a gallery in his garden shed (anyone can make a gallery, he suggests) to selling affordable artworks at art car boot fairs and playing in a middle aged punk rock band, if Smith had a manifesto it would be 'Make your own damn art: don't expect me to make it for you', something which resonates with the Shrieking Violet. It's an important message for anyone who's ever wanted to make an artwork, a piece of music or even a zine but not known where to begin, so never quite got round to it.

Utopia London 

Utopia London pays homage to twentieth century town planning and the city in which its director, Tom Cordell, grew up. Comprising interviews with some of the key architects in the rebuilding of a city left ravaged by the Second World War, the film shows the ideals and aspirations of those behind the Modernist movement, demonstrating how they aimed to build a better, more equal world by fusing design with artistic and scientific innovation. Many of the architects are now in their eighties, yet still full of spirit and idealism, and some of the film's most moving movements are when they are taken back to the sites of their buildings to see how they fared. Utopia London is thought-provoking, inspiring and uplifting: a must-see for anyone who has ever looked around and wondered: how did our towns and cities get to be the way they are?

Bata-ville: we are not afraid of the future

On the list of things I want to achieve before I die is making a documentary film. Bata-ville, in which a coach full of (mostly elderly) former employees of paternalistic shoe company Bata is taken by two lively artists on a pilgrimage from Bata's now defunct factory in East Tilbury to the company's Moravian hometown, is surreal, funny and subversive in its attitude towards history and the meaning of memories. Bata-ville is the type of film I would love to be able to call my own.

Swandown

Whilst I find Iain Sinclair's writing difficult to read, he made for good entertainment in this travelogue with a difference. Swandown follows Sinclair and Andrew Kötting (director of the wonderful, poignant coastal odyssey Gallivant) on an unlikely, intrepid adventure by swan pedalo, which begins with the pair bobbing up and down on the sea off Hastings and culminates inland in the waterways of London, with plenty of laughs along the way as well as opportunities for reflection.

Nostalgia for the Light

Beautifully filmed and soundtracked yet devastatingly sad documentary which intertwines the wonders of Chile's observatory centre in the Atacama desert with the search by groups of women for the remains of loved ones missing, presumed dead, under the Pinochet regime. Nostalgia for the Light captures the grandeur, emptiness and openendedness of both the landscape and human existence, in which there sometimes are no answers, only mysteries.

TV 

I know he's a nasty man, but Michael Portillo is still my favourite TV present (his genial nature and colourful outfits make me smile), so I was pleased that the year started with another series of Great British Railway Journeys and ended with a new spin on the concept, Great Continental Railway Journeys, which saw the episodes extended into hour-long explorations of various European destinations.

Also worth a mention is the Jeremy Deller Culture Show special (for roughly the same reasons I enjoyed the Bob and Roberta Smith film).

Theatre

The Royal Exchange never disappoints, and the costumes and music are always particularly impressive. I saw a swinging production of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and a tense take on Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending there.

Radio 

2012 was the year in which I finally started listening to 99% Invisible's short podcasts on architecture, urbanism and design; recent highlights have included instalments on Buckminster Fuller, Kowloon Walled City and dazzle ships. As well as covering diverse subjects in a diverse, engaging way, Roman Mars has my favourite voice on the radio.

The Hobart Man: life as a travelling service engineer

Over the summer, Manchester Modernist Society put me in touch with a new acquaintance called Bill Mather, and suggested his father, Roy Mather, might be willing to share some of his memories of working as a 'Hobart Man' in mid-century Manchester and Cheshire. I travelled to his home in Stretford to meet Mr Mather, and the following is based on our conversation.

When Roy Mather joined the Manchester branch of Hobart in 1945, as a service engineer maintaining automated, labour-saving devices such a mixers, dishwashers, mincers, potato peelers and coffee machines, it was the start of a four decade career that gave him a behind the scenes view of how Manchester lived, worked and played as it emerged from the rationing and austerity of the war years to become a swinging modern city.

Like many of his generation, Mr Mather left school at 14. He spent two years at Lewis's department store on Market Street before joining Hobart, a working life which immersed him in the city's social life. 'The Hobart Man', as he was known, made regular maintenance calls to canteens, bakeries, butchers, grocery shops and coffee bars (and even Strangeways prison – anywhere that provided catering on a large scale). One chain Mr Mather remembers particularly well was Kardomah, which started in Liverpool and had branches in various other cities in the UK and internationally. Kardomah had a presence in Manchester at Albert Square, Market Street and Market Square. The art deco-style Market Street branch, illuminated with neon signs, was a glamorous sight, designed by the prominent industrial designer Sir Misha Black, and Mr Mather remembers that Kardomah was a popular meeting place, serving thirsty shoppers an exotic and sophisticated range of coffees, as well as live music.

These were the days of mass employment at places like Trafford Park. Cheap lunches – the main meal of the day – were provided to workers in huge canteens, and workers socialised together when the day was done at working clubs. The Hobart Man was a regular visitor to companies such as Kellogg's, Brown & Polson and AIG (later GEC/Metropolitan Vickers), which had bases in Trafford Park, making sure the giant mixers, potato peelers and dishwashers were running smoothly. Nearby, the busy Manchester Docks were still filled with big Manchester liners with names like Manchester City and Manchester Renown, which sailed as far as Canada. The Hobart Man serviced equipment in the ships' galleys; one memory which makes Mr Mather laugh is leaving a ship's galley with the machinery in bits, with the intention of getting spares and returning the next day, but climbing onto an identical-looking sister ship instead and having to jump off when the ship started moving. He reflects that this was a dangerous thing to do as, “in those days, if you fell in you wouldn't live long there was so much pollution”.

Initially, Hobart had a showroom and offices at 97 Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, in between a shoe shop and a Boosey & Hawkes shop which repaired musical instruments (this was taken over for the production of aircraft parts during the war, Mr Mather remembers). There was a workshop in the basement and a philosophical society on the floor above. The premises was later demolished to make way for Manchester's highway in the sky, the Mancunian Way, and the street would be unrecognisable to today's the Hobart Man. Now the heart of student land, lined with takeaways and university buildings, Oxford Road and Oxford Street once had a reputation as being Manchester's entertainment streets, home to several cinemas and picture houses. Mr Mather also recalls calling on a number of restaurants when it still was a bustling high street, including the Palace Restaurant, next to the Palace theatre, and the Prince's restaurant on the corner, as well as Lyons cafe and Duncan & Foster, which had a restaurant at All Saints and bakeries on York Street.

At first, The Hobart Man had to carry his tools on the bus or the tram. Tyres were among the goods which had been rationed during the war, and a shortage of vans in the 1950s meant it wasn't until later that Hobart staff got Escort vans. Hobart moved on to Redgate Lane in West Gorton, and Mr Mather was allocated a 'patch' covering Stretford, Sale, Altrincham and South Cheshire – as far as Crewe and Nantwich. In the days of a reliable and predictable postal service, instructions were sent through the post each morning with the day's jobs. He recalls: “Every day was different. You didn't know where you'd be going in the morning.” There was a certain freedom, and Mr Mather made sure to time his jobs to where he knew he would be offered the best lunch! He also put his local knowledge of the roads to good use at the weekends, going on cycling trips around Cheshire with other members of Hobart staff and the then-burgeoning Youth Hostel Association.

One of many other perks to the job was being given a 'wrap' to take home after a maintenance visit – a bit of meat, perhaps, some sausages, cake, or a bag of sugar or flour (remember, rationing of sugar and sweets, introduced during the war, continued until 1953, and meat until 1954). Mr Mather's children still recall the excitement of him bringing liquorice and blackcurrant toffee home from Benson's sweet factory in Bury every July when the factory shut down and The Hobart Man was allowed access to the staff shop.

Hobart closed its Manchester branch in 1982, amalgamating with the Liverpool branch and moving to Widnes then eventually to Warrington. The company introduced pagers to notify staff of jobs, meaning that The Hobart Man no longer had the level of freedom enjoyed by Mr Mather earlier in his career. However, Mr Mather has fond memories of his time as a Hobart Man and still wears the engraved gold watch that was presented to him in 1970 to commemorate twenty years of service. Mr Mather's might seem an ordinary career, yet you could call him a flaneur, a wandering observer for the modernist era; his everyday memories bring to life Manchester's forgotten streetscapes and working history in ways that mere photographs could not.

With thanks to Roy Mather for sharing his memories, and his son Bill.

There wasn't space for this article to fit into the modernist magazine's forthcoming 'Cuppas' edition but the new issue, which will be packed with more cafeteria and cafe themed writing, is launched next Thursday at North Tea Power.

Review: Greater Manchester's Public Swimming Pools: A Pictorial Guide

The Shrieking Violet issue 15 featured a page about Levenshulme Baths, the historic swimming pool in the Manchester suburb of Levenshulme, drawn and written by John Mather, who got in contact after setting himself the challenge of swimming in each of Greater Manchester's 50-odd public pools.

His project is now complete, and the resulting guide, Greater Manchester's Public Swimming Pools: A Pictorial Guide, is out now. Mather's watery journey was a labour of love, and he fights the corner for what he terms “swimming's unique and often understated role in society” – the Guide is clear that the function of swimming reaches far beyond health and fitness to encompass social and community benefits. As well as acting as a guide to each building and each pool's facilities, Mather's book goes out beyond the pool doors to take a wider look at the people and communities they serve, taking care to include something memorable or special about each pool's location, from local landmarks to famous innovations such as Rolls-Royce (Stretford) and Stephenson's Rocket (Eccles), and show the “fascinating and diverse collection of towns and people” that is Greater Manchester. Each entry is handily annotated with essential information such as contact details, location and amenities such as parking.

Mather's love affair with swimming started when he learned to swim in Bury's old Victorian baths, which “seemed not just a place to swim but more like a landmark of civic pride and opulence”. Just as there is a huge diversity of towns in Greater Manchester, there is a great variety in the styles of pools found within them, from those associated with Manchester's first city architect, Henry Price, in the early twentieth century, with the old-fashioned pool-side cubicles remaining (Withington, Chorlton), to a number of pools built in the 1960s and 1970s – including Radcliffe Pool which, Mather said, set a benchmark for future pool building by local authorities – as well as recently opened, bang up-to-date facilities and even a pool in a converted cinema (Tyldesley). Mather views each pool on its merits, without expressing a preference for any architectural period or style.

The Guide is often humorous, and Mather slips in references to local celebrities, from the Rochdale Pioneers, who opened the first successful co-operative shop in the town, to Frank Sidebottom (Altrincham), John Cooper Clarke (Broughton) and George Formby (Atherton), as well as local personalities such as longstanding swimmer Sam Quinn, who has been a Broadway Baths regular for 75 years.

Dive below the surface, and you discover stories about the individuals who have used these pools over the years. Greater Manchester, Mather says, has a long tradition of swimming and Olympic success, a “long forgotten 'Golden Age' of swimming prior to the First World War”, when “Greater Manchester's swimmers literally led the world”. For instance, Henry Taylor from Chadderton, a swimming instructor for many years in the town, won three golds at the 1908 London Olympics. Today, the region's pools are used by everyone from learner swimmers to elite swimmers from national and international teams, and have hosted many Olympic and Commonwealth medallists.

Pool buildings have social history written into their brickwork and tiles. Now derelict, Collier Street Baths in Salford, opened in 1856, is Britain's oldest surviving swimming baths building. Withington Baths in Manchester, which still says 'Men' and 'Women' above the entrance where the sexes would once have been separated before entering the water, took the daring step of allowing the city's first mixed bathing in 1914. No visit to Manchester's pools, of course, would be complete without a reference to Edwardian water palace Victoria Baths (despite the current lack of water!), and Mather considers the past, present and future uses of the building.

I read the Guide as a call to action, a reminder to get swimming and use some of these pools before they disappear forever. Rochdale's spectacular art deco Central Baths, which were still in use as recently as this summer, have now been demolished. The futures of Levenshulme and Chorlton Baths are both uncertain, and there are plans to close the historic, much-loved Royton and Crompton pools in Oldham (Crompton Baths is the oldest Baths in Greater Manchester still serving its original purpose) in order to replace them with a single, modern facility.

Greater Manchester's Public Swimming Pools: A Pictorial Guide can be purchased for £5.99 at www.lulu.com/shop/john-c-mather/greater-manchesters-public-swimming-pools/paperback/product-20441129.html.

Olive Shapley poster for Shape & Situate zine

I have contributed a badly linocut poster about radio producer and presenter Olive Shapley to the new edition of Melanie Maddison's Shape & Situate: Posters of inspirational European women zine (as seen at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in May!), which will be launched at Leeds Zine Fair at Wharf Chambers on Sunday November 4.

Now in its fourth edition, Melanie's project celebrates underlooked women in all fields of society. I felt compelled to create a poster about Olive because I became intrigued by her during my involvement in the Manchester's Modernist Heroines project. Of all the women we focused on, Olive is the one I keep returning to and trying to find out more about, and my poster is inspired by the presence she still has in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury today – as well as being honoured by a nursery school bearing her name, there is a street named after her. Olive's former home, Rose Hill, where she housed Vietnamese boat people and single mothers, became Didsbury's first £1 million house in 2002. I have an unfulfilled ambition to procure some of Olive's radio programmes – particularly her 1930s Engels-inspired documentary the Classic Soil, and children's shows – with the aim of organising an Olive Shapley listening party, but they are proving hard to come by (the Classic Soil is available at the British Library, but apparently 'the ending is missing' from the recording, and I imagine it would be very expensive to hire copies from the BBC).

Melanie Maddison and Lindsay Starbuck will also be running a social history workshop at Leeds Zine Fair, entitled 'Remembering who we are', which will feature examples of inspiring social history zines and provide an opportunity to contribute to a collective zine being compiled on the day. The zine fair is being hosted by Leeds' Footprint Workers' Co-op, and will be well worth attending!

The Co-operative Women’s Guild: an alternative education

In March I am going to be doing a talk at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum about the co-operative women's magazine Woman's Outlook (published by the Manchester-based Co-operative Press between 1919 and 1967). The magazine intrigues me because it blended news about the campaigning and educational activities of the Co-operative Women's Guild with tips for cooking, nutrition, child rearing and homemaking. I am trying to find former readers, or at least women who were members of the Guild at the time, to speak to. Lynette at the Working Class Movement Library got me the name and phone number of one woman, Pat Williams, who was willing to talk about her memories of being part of a Branch in Sale, Cheshire in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when she was in her late twenties and early thirties. She was also a member of a standing conference for women. Pat's mother was a co-operator and in the Guild before her, and Pat herself became a member of the Co-operative at the age of twenty when she got married and her new mother-in-law took her to sign up. Pat looked after her four children, and later ran a nursing home “on the basis of socialism and co-operation”. Now in her seventies, Pat is still politically engaged. She is a long-term member of the Labour party – she received a certificate from then-leader Gordon Brown when she reached fifty years of membership – and was still attending the Labour Party Conference until last year. She continues to be part of a Co-operative members' group in Manchester.

Whilst Pat didn't read Woman's Outlook – in fact, she hadn't heard of it (although she has been reading the Co-operative News, also published by the Co-operative Press, for years) – I chatted to her on the phone for over an hour and it was a brilliant way of getting a sense of what it was like to be part of the Women's Guild, and what it meant to members, even in the 1950s and '60s when the Guild was an ageing organisation and membership was declining. Pat recalls that the Guild was “mostly elderly people” when she joined, and that “some of the elderly women were so active”, but that a new group came in of about six women in their twenties and thirties. Pat attributes the Sale branch's success to an “exceptional leader”, and remembers that branch meetings attracted around 30 members. There was also a branch in nearby Altrincham. Membership was made up of “all sorts” and “all ages” of women, from teachers and proofreaders to MPs' wives, although Pat recalls that many of the women were poor and bought secondhand clothes. 

Co-operative identity 

What really struck me was how strongly Pat identified as a co-operator. She explained that “the Co-op was always part of what you were”, adding that “the divi meant a lot” to members and that the visiting Co-operative insurance man “became quite a friend” . This meant, she said, “we were very loyal to the co-operative movement” – members wouldn't have dreamed of going to a non-co-operative competitor. She also said: “It meant something to be in the Women's Guild. We were very proud of it.”

An alternative education 

Pat emphasised just how important the Guild was as an alternative education for its members, saying: “It was our learning group and our university. This was the great thing about the co-operative movement. It widened women's access to society.” Many of the older members would have left school at 12 and 13, although Pat describes these women as “far-reaching” despite their lack of formal education: “They had very little education but knew what was right and what was wrong.” The Guild, says Pat, was “an opener for so many women”, and a “forerunner in everything”. She said the Guild was a way of “learning what was going on in the world”. Pat remembers that her branch talked about subjects that were taboo at the time such as domestic violence and homosexuality: “It got rid of all those taboos.” Branch educational activities included talks on jobs and other issues and guest speakers were invited to speak at meetings, from university lecturers to a Lord. Pat highlighted that they were also there “to listen to us too”. As Pat said: “Not only was it social, the meetings were interesting. We were active politically as well as socially.”

Campaigning and issues 

Members of the Guild felt empowered by their activities. As Pat says, “we felt we had a say” and “we were recognised as not being frivolous”. This was important because at the time, says Pat, “the co-operative movement was very much a man's thing”. She explained “You can get votes for women but it doesn't mean you are going to be taken seriously or that businesses are going to put you on their boards.” The Guild enabled members to tell directors of co-operatives how they felt about the way co-operatives were being run at that time, and the Guild encouraged its members to become members of boards of co-operatives. She explains: “We were interested in the running of the shops and the way the co-operative movement was going. We went to all the meetings of Co-op food stores and we all asked questions. Our questions had them quaking!”

Another important aspect of the Guild's work was to tell MPs how members felt about certain issues. Pat remembers that “it was a very interesting time”, saying: “There was always something going on. I can't remember everything we did but we were always very busy!” Campaigns undertaken by Pat's branch encompassed working hours, equal pay for women, the colour bar, anti-Apartheid, and banning additives in children's food. The branch also boycotted South African food. Pat remembers that one protest, calling for equal pay for women, involved going on an open lorry from a co-operative shop in Sale to one in Manchester, and that the women were shouted at by men in the street to get back to changing nappies! It seems that the members' opinions were sometimes taken into account by those in authority, though; Pat remembers that the Branch was consulted by the town clerk on the building of a new council estate, and asked what facilities were needed.

Each Guild branch was connected to the wider co-operative women's movement, and Guildswomen had a chance to meet up every year at Congress. Pat remembers voting on what was coming up at Congress, and attending one congress in Blackpool. She remembers it fondly as a social as well as a political event: “We all believed in the same thing. It was almost as good as going to the Labour Party conference!”

A social organisation 

The Guild also ran social activities such as autumn, Christmas and Easter dinners and theatre trips. Pat gave the impression of a supportive and close-knit group of women; she still sees members she was friends with in the 1950s. Pat also remembers that many of the branch members were very good at baking – in those days, “you didn't go and buy a scone or a cake, you made one”. Guild members had their own speciality, such as pastry, and “people passed on things”. She says: “There is nothing wrong with learning to be a good cook and a good manager – it's all a part of a woman's life.”

The end of the Sale branch 

The Sale branch, which met in an old co-operative hall, had to find a new home due to redevelopment of the area. There were attempts at starting a branch on a council estate, but Pat said these failed when women stopped going out at night because of concerns over safety. She also admits that, for many women, who were increasingly going out to work, the Guild had outlived its purpose anyway. She said: “It was great, and it did what it needed to do at the time. Things have changed for women and co-operative women have had a lot to do with the change. Today, more women are educated. Women don't have time for things like the Women's Guild now.” However, Pat would like to see more women's groups today: “Women on their own are better. They've got their ideas”

Between Two Rivers review

Where the wide Ohio river meets the vast expanse of the Mississippi stands the city of Cairo (pronounced Karr-o), Illinois. You would expect a settlement near two rivers to thrive and for a time it did, as a steamboat port, its prosperity reflected in its fine colonial-era architecture. Cairo could have become one of America's biggest cities, yet today it is derelict and all but abandoned by its population.

Between Two Rivers, a new documentary by Manchester-based filmmakers Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright, sets out to tell the story of how Cairo has become a city whose only viable option for the future may be as a museum for a forgotten industrial past. In 2011, during the course of filming, Cairo made the headlines as the US army blasted holes in a Missouri levee, controversially drowning fertile farmland in a bid to save the city from destructive floodwaters. The film ponders on what in the city is worth saving, reminding the viewer that Cairo may have been spared this time but that its future is still far from certain.

It is no surprise to learn that both Jordan and Cartwright are painters; Between Two Rivers is a painterly, poetic film, evident from the misty opening shots of silhouetted trees, submerged in a desolate river, to languid images of ruin and urban decay. But the film is far more a visual metaphor for the death of the American dream (as in the aestheticisation of the ruins of Detroit); it uses both interviews and archive film, such as footage of 1960s racial tensions in the city, to question the social, economic and moral order that has prevailed in Cairo and expose the inequalities of the American experience. The film also challenges the reliability of memory, and the tendency to hark back to a golden age which may never have existed – or at least not for certain sections of society.

Cairo is like an island, a gateway between the American north and south that sits comfortably in neither. The city has historically attracted migrants from the margins of society, acting as a holding place for those who are too poor to move on elsewhere. There's a sense that Cairo's precarious situation cannot be attributed just to acts of nature, but that human attitudes and actions have contributed to its decline.

The filmmakers spent four years making Between Two Rivers, and getting to know a range of interviewees, from a former senator and congressman to members of a local soul band and a purveyor of fresh fish (who suggests she provides a lifeline to those subsisting on welfare). The most striking aspect of the film is the pride expressed by those who call Cairo home, and the hope they cling on to for the city's future, despite all odds. There are some people, at least, who are not going to give up on Cairo too soon, and Between Two Rivers goes some way to explaining why.

Between Two Rivers is currently screening at film festivals. To keep an eye on upcoming screenings visit www.betweentworivers.net.

Sound and vision: Hythe's acoustic mirror

On the roughs above Hythe in Kent, on Ministry of Defence land, stands a 30 foot high concrete ear. Borne on a frame of umbrella-shaped iron rods, the disc is angled towards the sky, ready to catch any sounds that come its way. The sound mirror looks out over the flat expanse of Romney Marsh, and miles out to sea (France is just 23 miles away), once assigned the task of monitoring the sky over the English Channel. In 1923, when the mirror was built, it was hoped that in the event of an attack it would pick up the engine noises of enemy aircraft out at sea; an improbable yet innovative early warning defence system. The sounds of the plane would bounce back to the focal point of the mirror, where a waiting operator would be alerted the the presence of planes. Picking up sounds up to 15 minutes before the unaided ear, this bought crucial time for anti-aircraft defences to be activated. This stretch of coast had long been on the frontline of defence against invaders, and the mirror overlooks the remains of the solid, brick-built Napoleonic Martello towers which stud the coastline below; the nearby Royal Military Canal, similarly built to withstand the threat of French attack, is just out of eyeshot.

The mirror worked on a similar concept to the modern TV receiver, except with sound waves instead of radio waves, and was the latest in a series of attempts by the military to harness the potential of sound. Experiments had started during WWI, when the possible dangers of devastating airborne attack was realised, and similar technology included sound ranging to detect enemy guns as well as listening wells. A 1916 account of tests of a sound mirror considered the invention to be a success: “A man 100m distant, reading a newspaper in a low voice was heard perfectly. Airplanes were heard up to distances of 8 kilometers.”1

Precursors to the concrete mirrors were cut directly into the chalk of the Kent hills, and there were experiments with acoustic mirrors at Hythe before the 1923 mirror; an earlier 20 foot cast concrete mirror had been built alongside a building lab, workshop, store and provisions for technical assistance to live on site. An acoustic research station was also built at nearby West Hythe.

When the potential of the sound mirrors was proven – it was claimed that they could capture up to ten times for sound than unaided ears – plans were made for lines of discs to be erected around the coast. A 30 foot high mirror was built at Abbots Cliff near Dover in 1929 and a 200 foot mirror at Denge, near Dungeness, with microphones positioned on the forecourt to capture noise, was completed in 1930 (two, smaller mirrors had also been built at the site beforehand). Building materials were carried along the coast to the latter by the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway, a passenger train which was itself later put to military use during the second world war.

For one reason or another – the inconveniences of wind and rain, increased noise and the advent of faster planes – the sound mirrors never saw action (like the Martello Towers and Royal Military Canal before them). They were abandoned in the 1930s in favour of radar, and orders were made for them to be destroyed.

These orders were never carried out. Today, the Hythe sound mirror has faded into the Kent hills, camouflaged into the landscape and rendered nearly inaccessible by a thicket of head-high thorns and nettles, overrun with rabbits. The mirror is slowly crumbling into the hillside and now resembles a part-eaten biscuit, with a chunk taken out of the side. The structure might have been abandoned and the technology made obsolescent, but the most striking thing about the site today is its extraordinarily rich sonic landscape. The entire hillside hums as breeze sweeps through the trees and long grass, the thistles creak in the wind and grasshoppers rub their legs together. Birds take turns to fill the air with their coded langauge: from high peep-peeps and chchchs to the woo-woo-wooing of the wood pigeon. Sheep intermittently baa in call and response. This natural background noise is occasionally punctuated by the rumbling of a distant, out of sight plane, the distant bark of a dog or the brief revving of a boy racer and sirens on the coast road below.

1. Quoted in Echoes from the Sky: A Story of Acoustic Defence, Richard N Scarth (Hythe Civic Society, Hythe, 1999), accessed in the Local Studies Unit at Hythe Libary

This recording has been submitted to the Field Recording Archive, a new initiative based in Manchester.

For more information on sound mirrors, including sound mirrors at other locations around the country (particularly on the North East coast) visit the website of Andrew Grantham.

The Shrieking Violet on A Wondrous Space

The Shrieking Violet has been asked to guest-curate a page called A Wondrous Space for a week as part of the Northern Spirit theatre project, which celebrates life in the north.

I am the third in a series of guest bloggers drawn from Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, and I have chosen to focus on my favourite northern food experiences; namely pie, peas, and more pie. I have contributed recipes for Eccles cakes and blackberry buns, together with a mini-celebration of Eccles the town.

My posts will appear this week, starting on Monday 17 September.

Read each curator's posts at http://northernspirit.org.uk/category/a-wondrous-space.

Find out more about the project on the Guardian blog The Northerner.

The Shrieking Violet issue 19 (and third birthday party!)

The Shrieking Violet is three, and issue 19, a bumper edition, can be read online now! The printed version, printed by marc the printers (b/w with f/c cover) will be launched at a special birthday party at Atelier[zero], Manchester's pop-up canalside Olympic village, at 2pm on Saturday August 11. Come along for rowing boats, a ball pool, a 'library with no books', purple (Angel Meadows blackberries) cake and more! Event invitation.

This edition's cover is by Hannah Bitowski, who lives and works in Liverpool and is based in artist-led gallery the Royal Standard. She works in a variety of media, with a penchant for screen-printing and mask-making. This illustration was inspired by a selection of themes Hannah currently draws from: masks, the abstraction of portraiture, facial geometry and the cosmos – particularly inspired by Johannes Kepler, a 17th century mathematician and astronomer who was infatuated with the idea of God existing in geometry, with all answers of the universe coming from there. Even though his theory of the platonic solid solar system was wrong, Hannah thinks the theory in itself, and his attempt to fit geometry into all things, great and small, is enough to warrant praise. This piece attempts to merge the similarities between ritual and reality, myth with maths.

Here's what you'll find inside:

Manchester-based filmmaker Richard Howe continues his series on mental health in the movies by looking at Jesus' Son, directed by Alison Maclean. Richard is currently editing the film Realitease, which touches on mental health. Watch the teaser at https://vimeo.com/45743438 and tweet Richard about films @rikurichard.

I visited the National Football Museum to find out how it compares to Urbis, and see what it has to offer a non-sports fan.

Anouska Smith, a crafter and maker with a beady eye for sparkly things at www.junkieloversboutique.com, offers a guide to her favourite Manchester tea-places. Spot her somewhere in the Manchester suburbs finishing up those cups of tea or trying to avoid the puddles on the side of the road.

Simon Sheppard has contributed an article about a very eccentric fellow named Pierre Baume. Following a career change, allowing him to indulge his passion for modern history, Simon qualified from Liverpool University as an Archivist in 2008 having previously gaining a BA Hons in History from UCLAN. Simon hails from Bolton, but is currently living in Manchester, where he spends his spare time partaking in his new ‘hobby’, Real Ale.  To accompany Simon's article, Manchester-based illustrator, musician and DJ Dominic Oliver has imagined what Baume might have looked like...

Liverpool-based writer and journalist Kenn Taylor, who has a particular interest in the relationship between culture and the urban environment, considers some of the implications of the privatisation and fragmentation of our railway system.

James Robinson is a photographer and dabbling videographer. He studied philosophy in Manchester and now lives in London, where he plays bass for indie pop-rock band Being There. James is very proud to provide the Shrieking Violet with its first animal feature. The title, Perros y gatos, was inspired by a sticker album he bought on a school trip to Spain.

Joe Austin has written a tribute to three post-war murals in London and Coventry, by Dorothy Annan, Gordon Cullen and William Mitchell, and highlights the often-uncertain future of public artworks like these. Joe is a qualified architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 22 years or so. Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history.

Liz Buckley has reviewed Stanya Kahn's exhibition It's Cool, I'm Good in the Cornerhouse galleries. Liz is an Art History graduate living in Salford, and will be starting an MA in Gallery Studies in September at Manchester University.

Godfrey is a rough excerpt from a novel by Matthew Duncan Taylor that may or may not be published next year. Matthew is a journalist who currently works for the Winsford and Crewe Guardian newspapers. He plays in the south Manchester-based bands Former Bullies and Great Grand Suns. Some short stories he has written can be found at matthewduncantaylor.blogspot.co.uk.

Sarah Hill is a Manchester-based artist, and the founder and creative director of Video Jam. Sarah has written an introduction to the project. If you are interested in getting involved, contact her at sarahfrhill@gmail.com.

Issue 19 finishes with a recipe for delicious apricot and poppy seed bread from Shrieking Violet favourite Bakerie in the Northern Quarter.

Read it online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Download and print your own copy here. Printed copies can also be picked up from the Working Class Movement Library on the Crescent, Salford, and the Bakerie tasting store (the Hive building), Lever Street, Manchester and Piccadilly Records.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Talk: ‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’

I will be doing a talk on the former Co-operative Women’s Guild periodical Woman’s Outlook at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum next year (Thursday March 21), as part of a series of lectures on aspects of co-operative history, and would love to hear from anyone who has memories of reading the magazine between 1919 and 1967.

Working in close proximity to the National Co-operative Archive, I have developed a fascination with Outlook. For nearly five decades it was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and onetime editor Mary Stott later rose to prominence as a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s page. From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles encompassing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, from suffrage and peace to maternity benefits, pensions and nursery education, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world – at the same time as helping prepare them to take on more prominent roles in co-operative societies.

Topics covered by Outlook such as female representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by evaluating whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

I would love to hear from any women who were members of the Women’s Guild in this period, especially those who remember reading Outlook or any other co-operative periodicals, as well as anyone who has any interest in the magazine. If you can help, or can put me in touch with anyone who might be able to help, please email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.