Transmitting the outskirts: LoneLady's Scrub Transmissions

It's often too easy to conflate place with music, and vice versa. It's tempting to view a city through a lens of its cultural production, to hold on to a static image of past achievements and overlook the ways in which places, and their culture, continue to evolve. It's also easy to reduce an artist to their urban identity, to limit them to an artistic lineage that is geographically - and therefore to some extent always arbitrarily - defined.

There is a sense of LoneLady trying to break out of these boxes, to get away from a very particular - and often male - Mancunian identity. Yet at the same time, her music is undeniably shaped by Manchester. It's the place where she grew up, on the eastern fringes of the city. It's also where her two albums to date were written, rehearsed and recorded, in largely self-built rehearsal and studio spaces in former industrial units in isolated areas outside of the city centre. Until recent acquisitions by developers capitalising on Manchester's property boom, apparently redundant buildings such as these, surrounded by half-demolished buildings, light industrial activity or red light districts, were available and affordable to artists due to their relative geographical and cultural remoteness. Despite their uncertainty of tenure, artists became used to coexisting with damp, cold, mice and indifferent landlords, fashioning and reinventing these spaces to fit their needs and finding the space and freedom for invention and experimentation amidst physical decrepitude. These were the places where most of Manchester's real creative work was done.

LoneLady both acknowledges this geographical specificity in her work and attempts to break away from it; most recently, she's stretched her wings with a long-term residency at Somerset House in London. As a Mancunian woman, she sees herself not just as struggling for visibility within the mainstream music world, but also as an outsider to the city itself. She situates herself both physically and metaphorically on the edges of Manchester, and outside of the myths manufactured by those who wish to shape our perceptions of it.

LoneLady wants us to share and understand the mundane places and subtle experiences which influence her sensations of the city day-to-day, and her place within it, as a place that is lived in, worked in and travelled through, and as a city that - far from the promotional spiel of business, tourism, redevelopment and economic growth - continues to be uncertain, often difficult and sometimes unwelcoming for those who exist outside of its dominant uses and narratives.

Far from the shininess and spectacle of city centre redevelopment, LoneLady tries to tell us different stories and show us other cultural landmarks. In 2012, she invited us to plug our headphones in and experience her music in the context of 1960s elevated motorway the Mancunian Way, through her temporary installation The Utilitarian Poetic, which embedded a previously unreleased track beneath a flyover on the outskirts of the city centre. TUP drew our attention to a structure that is a permanent presence in the city, yet which is almost always experienced in transit, and a place where few stop to linger. Removing fast-flowing traffic from the city's roads, the Mancunian Way flyover distances motorists from the city at ground level, yet it also creates a constant background hum for those who live and work in the estates and buildings alongside it.

Six years later, LoneLady again asks us to turn our back on the city centre and to venture east to the inner-city neighbourhood of Miles Platting, an area that borders Clayton on one side and Ancoats on the other, on the banks of the Ashton Canal. East Manchester, a former industrial and mining district, where Clayton is situated, remains one of the poorest areas of Manchester, despite the new sporting facilities built for the Commonwealth Games in 2002. By contrast, Ancoats, which borders the hip Northern Quarter area of Manchester city centre, has, in just a few years, become unrecognisable. As derelict former factories and mills have been converted, alongside infill apartment blocks, a previously under-visited area of the city has been filled with bars, shops and restaurants catering to young professionals, and is regularly featured in local and national media as a 'foodie destination'. 

New-build flats are gradually encroaching further into east Manchester, following the improved access to the city brought by the building of the East Manchester tram line. However, in spite of its proximity to Ancoats and Manchester city centre, Miles Platting feels like a different world entirely. Here, we see and hear different uses for the city, which don't fit comfortably elsewhere: families gather in special dress in small sections of industrial units repurposed as places of worship; graffiti artists find ample space to exhibit their work. There's also evidence of others left behind by the city's redevelopment, including rough sleeping and heroin use, on wasteland exposed by the demolition of former industrial buildings.

There's also a atmosphere of openness and space here, lacking in a city centre that is increasingly embracing height and density - of a place that is yet to be rediscovered and rebuilt. Into this left-behind landscape, embedded in a tower of rubble, LoneLady has inserted 'Little Fugue', an unreleased track from 2014. Behind you are the skeletal outlines of abandoned gas towers. In front and to the side are patched up industrial buildings, some missing windows, and subdivided for a variety of commercial and creative uses. In the background, plodding indie rock competes across the canal with band practice emanating from a facing building. Through the headphones, LoneLady's guitar chimes gothically over a synthy, dancey track that both suggests something of her city's heritage, but shows it is possible to do something new and different with it.

Then we hear a voiceover, a story about what this area has meant to her. It concludes by urging us to: "Hear the voices of the landscape, before they're scrubbed out."

Scrub Transmissions went live on Sunday 18 February and continues until the battery runs out (duration dependent on weather conditions!). For map and further information, visit http://lonelady.co.uk/blog/scrub-transmissions-miles-platting. 

An accompanying 'zine by LoneLady is available from the Peer Hat and Piccadilly Records in the Northern Quarter.

Fallowfield Loop damson gin

In the 1960s, Dr Beeching paved the way for the reduction of the British rail network, closing small village stations and branch lines and catalysing the ascendancy of the motorcar as the dominant mode of transport in Britain*.

Some of long-closed lines are now reopening, after decades dormant. Others, their tracks removed permanently and their station buildings now converted into shops and supermarket cafes (as is the case with the former suburban Manchester stations of Levenshulme and Fallowfield), offer cyclists miles of dedicated bike path free from the traffic and aggressive motoring that increasingly chokes our towns and cities.

Manchester’s Fallowfield Loop stretches around eight miles, looping around the south and east of the city. Beginning in inner-city Openshaw in east Manchester and ending in leafy Chorlton in south Manchester, it undulates through the former industrial dormitories of Gorton and Levenshulme, passes picturesque Debdale Reservoir, skirts the boundary of Stockport at Reddish, and cuts through studenty Fallowfield and leafy Whalley Range.

The Loop has the feel of a linear park, offering a backdoor view of the city and its patchwork of official and unofficial green spaces. The Loop itself is an underacknowledged green space. In spring and summer it’s overgrown with branches forming a green tunnel, although in autumn the slipperiness of the accumulated layers of leaves can be treacherous. In winter, the foliage drops right back to reveal numerous back gardens, allotments, recreation grounds, school playing fields, overgrown brownfield sites and industrial land reclaimed as country parks. It links up with other traffic-free routes, too, from the Ashton Canal, with its miles of recently resurfaced towpath, to former branch canals such as the Stockport canal.

The Fallowfield Loop has become a place of community activism and communal litter-picks. It’s also a place of memorial, to young people who have killed themselves. Recently, it’s become a site of protest, with large EU flags unfurled unmissably from road and railway bridges; when removed, they reappear again soon afterwards, imported en masse from China. Pro-EU graffiti sprayed along the path places the UK at the heart of the EU, and the Manchester bee motif is placed centrally within the circle of stars that represent the EU member states; it’s a reminder that Manchester, along with the neighbouring local authorities of Stockport and Trafford, which the Loop passes close-by, voted remain in the EU referendum, in common with several other northern cities. It’s also a place for creativity, from street art murals celebrating the city’s architecture, to hand-written personal declarations (and accusations – ‘Louis K has a tiny penis’). It’s a place to encounter culture, from bicycle theatre troupes offering outdoor Shakespeare performances to public artworks sponsored by the cycle charity Sustrans, which document and draw attention to the flora and fauna of the route. It’s a place of learning and instruction, for small children to gain confidence and practise their bike skills away from the road. It’s also a place for family time: on father’s day, it’s noticeable how the number of men with small children increases.

Not all is benign – once or twice a year the ambush of women or opportunistic robberies make the deadlines, and mounted police undertake regular patrols. However, generally it’s a place of conviviality and sharing: if a cyclist stops at the side of the path, the next to pass will stop to see if all’s okay, and offer help fixing a chain or a spare inner tube.

Although cyclists benefit the most from a safe cycling environment uninterrupted by the frequent stops and starts of traffic lights, the Fallowfield Loop is also well-used by walkers, joggers, dogwalkers, students, and schoolchildren on their way to and from school, as well as shoppers just getting from A to B. It’s a meeting place, too, particularly for groups of teenagers.

These looplines are also fruitful places for the urban forager. Depending on the season, edible mushrooms, horseradish, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, plums, damsons, sloes and apples can all be found along the Loop, whilst in late-summer individuals and groups of people of all ages gather with an assortment of receptacles, from large yoghurt tubs to seaside buckets, Tupperware tubs and carrier bags, to gather blackberries, and offer hints on the best spots.

This year’s damsons were picked along the Fallowfield Loop, in a year that was unusually fallow for apples, yet plums and damsons of varying hues were in abundance.

* For a more detailed account of cuts to train services in Manchester see https://mancunian1001.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/the-reshaping-of-our-railways-1-before-beeching.

Three litres of sloe gin, or a tale of two blackthorn bushes

This sloe gin started life in late-summer 2011 as ripe sloes gathered from two blackthorn bushes: one on the banks of the Ashton Canal, Ancoats and one by the River Sett between New Mills and Hayfield in the Peak District.

The Ashton Canal winds its way from central Manchester to the market town of Ashton-under-Lyne, six miles to the east. It's a remarkable journey that takes walkers, cyclists, boats and geese past the boom and bust regeneration of inner-city Manchester (half rebuilt and reinvented as New Islington, half still rubble and spaces left by ruined mills and factories); alongside Manchester City Football Club's glittering stadium and the slightly less glamorous Eastlands retail park (highlight – ASDA); near the shabby Victorian elegance of Philips Park, Manchester's first public park, leading to reclaimed nature reserve Clayton Vale and the Medlock Valley; and next to Fairfield Moravian Settlement, an island of tranquil cobblestones and Georgian cottages surrounded by suburban Tameside with its canal-side sports pitches and pensioners playing waterside pétanque.

We are lucky to have this urban oasis running through the city: the canal would have been closed in the 1960s if the local council had its way. When road transport became widespread, canals went out of fashion. They grew obsolete and expensive to maintain – and it took volunteers across the country long and laborious hours to restore Britain's canal network. These campaigners reimagined a new use for the inland waterways as sites of leisure and tourism – for boating holidays and afternoon walks – rather than toil – horses and boats still hauled coal and other goods along canals, including the Ashton, well into the twentieth century, the purpose for which they had been built centuries before. At Ashton-under-Lyne, the Ashton Canal hits the Portland Basin (home to the Wooden Canal Boat Society and Portland Basin Museum), where canal adventurers head south east onto the Peak Forest Canal to continue their journey through the Cheshire towns of Hyde and Marple and then on to New Mills (a place defined by its spectacular geography; the town rises up into the hills as the rivers Sett and Goyt descend into sunken Torrs below) and Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, where the canal comes to an end.

The second blackthorn bush was encountered along the Sett Valley Trail between New Mills and Hayfield on a rainy yet peaceful bank holiday weekend walk. Hayfield is a picturesque rural village overlooked by the Peak District National Park's highest point, Kinder Scout – a landmark visible back in the city, from Ancoats, where this story starts. In April 1932, Kinder was the scene of one of Britain's most famous protests. Several hundred ramblers from Manchester and the surrounding region, including folk singer Ewan MacColl, led a mass trespass up Kinder Scout to protest that what had previously been common land had been taken over by private interests. It's them we must thank for our rights to roam over Britain's countryside today, something we can take for granted: the ability to explore and reach out from the crowded cities around us, to wander at our leisure.

2012 will be the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass. Find out more at http://kindertrespass.com or visit Salford's Working Class Movement Library, which holds material related to the protest.

The Golden Age of Canals, an excellent BBC4 programme about the formation of the Inland Waterways, mass activism to save canals and their changing uses, will be repeated on Monday at 7pm.

Sloe gin, blackberry and apple pie and other recipes from the Ashton Canal

Sloe gin

I developed a taste for homemade sloe gin at my grandparents' house at Christmas time, and I have been regularly consulting them for advice on how to make my own sloe gin. Here are some instructions.

First, identify a sloe bush (as I have discovered, this is difficult — it took me ages, after going through a process of elimination with several other bushes with black berries. It helped when I found out sloes are a type of plum, as then I just squeezed the berries, which look like fat, purple grapes, to see if there was a stone in the middle!). I discovered a bush, conveniently enough, growing out of a wall opposite my favourite building along the Ashton Canal and spent a couple of hours immersed in bushes getting plucked and scratched by branches and stung all over by nettles.

Second, find your jars — I spent a long time wandering around city centre shops in search of suitable jars, before finally settling on some biscuit jars from a pound shop (I'm sure you could probably do better than this by finding a demijohn or something). Then, sterilise the jars by putting them in a pan of boiling water.

Third, pick the sloes! All the recipes called for 450g per litre of gin but, even after doing some climbing to reach the higher branches I only managed to gather 350g (so I accordingly adjusted the amount of gin I used to 777ml).

Once home, wash the sloes and prick all over with a clean needle (I dipped the needle in boiling water). This is the most time consuming part.

When the sloes are ready, place them in the jar with the gin (I used cheap gin from Aldi) and 175g of sugar (the recipe called for caster sugar, I only had light brown sugar so used this instead).

Then, shake, seal and find a cool, dark place for the jars — mine are in the cupboard under the stairs. I split the mixture across two jars so there is space to shake the liquid without spilling it.

Then, shake the jars every other day for a week, then every week for two months (or longer, depending on how soon you want the gin to be ready). After a week, my sloe gin has already turned a warm, red colour like rosé wine and the sloes are getting lighter and lighter, starting to leave the bottom of the jars where they all settled and float around the liquid.

If you don't manage to find any sloes, try grape vodka instead, following the sloe gin recipe above but substituting the gin for vodka, adding grapes instead of sloes and using half the amount of sugar.

Blackberry and apple pie

Shortly after I had picked the sloes, I found an apple tree laden with ripe apples sitting next to an abandoned, boarded up housing estate. Frustratingly, I could only reach one of the apples, although I managed to knock another down with my umbrella and picked a third, after inspecting it for maggot holes, up off the floor.

There were also several blackberry bushes nearby, so I also picked lots of blackberries.

I made a pie using two of the apples and about a dessert bowl's worth of blackberries. I had some pastry in the freezer from the last time I made pastry, so defrosted it. However, to make the pastry:

Place 112.5g butter/margarine in a large bowl. Add 225g plain flour and rub it into the butter. Add a little salt and gradually add cold water table spoon by table spoon until the mixture starts to stick together, and shape it into dough. If you like cinammon as much as I do, add a table spoon of cinammon. When the mixture has formed a dough, wrap it in clingfilm (or a spare carrier bag if none is to hand) and refrigerate for 30 minutes. It will then be stretchy pastry!

Instructions:

Chop the apples and simmer in a little water and 75-100g sugar for 15 minutes (a tea spoon of cinammon is also a nice touch), adding the blackberries towards the end.

Meanwhile, divide your pastry in two (with one portion slightly larger) and roll out two separate pieces of pastry, thinly, on a floured surface. Line a tin or small round baking dish with the larger of the two pieces of pastry.

Add the fruit to the bottom of the pastry, having drained off almost all of the liquid (retain these juices, add to milk, sprinkle with cinammon and allow to cool down for a delicious milkshake!). Then, place the other piece of pastry on top of the fruit to form the pie lid, removing any excess pastry from the sides. Fold the edges of the bottom layer of pastry over the pie lid to form a thick crust to seal the pie. Use any leftover pastry to make a blackberry or apple shaped ornament on top.

Cook for an hour (after 45 minutes, I added a glaze consisting of of 50ml milk, a tea spoon of cinammon and a tea spoon of sugar to the crust) or until the pastry is hard. Allow to cool down then serve with custard.

Apple porridge

The remaining apple I used in porridge for breakfast.

Instructions:

Chop the apple and simmer in a little water for fifteen minutes or so (depending on how late you are running for work!). When the apple is soft, add 50g porridge oats, two tablespoons of cinammon and stir. Add half a cup of milk and stir, adding sugar and more milk or water as required.

Sleeping beauty: The Ashton Canal (article for Things Happen zine produced by Manchester Municipal Design Corporation)

Geese file by, the odd heron perches on the bank, and overgrown trees form a canopy over the bottle green stretch of water. Willow blossom floats placidly, sometimes catching the sun. You might think you’re in the countryside, and not in Ancoats, less a mile outside Manchester city centre. Trees grow out of the sides of once regal looking mills. Others, blackened, have succumbed to vandalism and arson. But the Ashton Canal has an air of enchantment; bracken clings to canal banks, roses rise from the edge of the water, poppies provide flashes of colour amidst the rubble of partially demolished buildings and, in summer, the bushy blossom of buddleia, or butterfly plant, forms a dense purple corridor. Later in summer, tangles of blackberries and sloe will yield fruit. It's a peaceful place away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre, where the heritage of Manchester's industrial past sits side by side with the future.

The canal, which was built over 200 years ago, was still carrying tens of thousands of goods per year even up until the 1930s, before it was left to fall into disrepair in the following decades when the coal pits of east Manchester closed. That the canal is still open at all is thanks to hundreds of volunteers who came from all over the country to clear rubbish blocking the canal in the early 1970s, when the local council wanted to close it. However, after decades of disuse the canal is slowly being rediscovered and reawakened. Boarded up housing estates, mills covered in barbed wire and empty tower blocks contrast with the first signs of the redevelopment of the area – from the Sportcity complex built to house the 2002 Commonwealth Games to Will Alsop’s lurid canal side CHIPS building, three chip shaped blocks perched jauntily on top of one another offering apartments at the top and space for art exhibitions and businesses at the bottom, which was opened last year.

Sue and Al, a forty something couple from Northwich, go on a canal holiday every year and have been on waterways all over the UK. They’re making their way along the Ashton Canal at the end of a trip along the Cheshire Ring of canals which links the Ashton Canal to the Bridgewater, Macclesfield, Trent Mersey, Rochdale and Peak Forest Canals. Sue said: “We know the city centre quite well but we’re coming into Manchester from a whole different angle. I love the contrast between derelict old industrial buildings on their knees about to fall down and the shiny new apartments blocks next door as the area’s regenerated.”

The Ashton Canal passes the six miles from Ashton-Under-Lyne to Manchester city centre through what have, for decades, been some of the most deprived areas in Manchester; Openshaw, Clayton, Bradford and Beswick and Ancoats. Sue admitted: “The hire company told us trouble spots to look out for but everyone’s been fantastic. I can’t believe how many people use the canal. A group of school kids even helped us through a lock and they loved it.”

In 2001, Urban Splash was chosen to plan a whole new waterside community of low density, environmentally sustainable family housing to be built on the site of the notorious Cardroom Estate in Ancoats, which sits towards the city centre end of the Ashton Canal, and the area was rebranded New Islington. As well as renovating historic mills and the old Ancoats Hospital to attract new residents to the area (the population could rise tenfold, with the number of new properties planned far exceeding the houses being replaced), current tenants were consulted on the design of their new houses, built in collaboration with leading architects selected by competition. An annual summer festival would help established communities mingle with newcomers to the area.

This proposals for this community, with the canal as its centrepiece, were inspired by cities such as Amsterdam, and promised to incorporate facilities like new doctors surgeries, schools, a farmers market and – listed with great precision on the New Islington website – ‘the best fish and chip shop in Manchester, a poncey wine bar, a chic little Italian with red checked tablecloths and a restaurant with 3 Michelin stars’. A phrase was coined to describe this way of living – an ‘uburb’ – combining all the facilities of the suburbs with the urban lifestyle of the city centre. Richard Hatton, Director of Development for Urban Splash, explains: “The idea of New Islington is to be allowed to evolve rather than being subject to one grand master plan. There are quite a lot of different feelings within this area – there’s a bit of everything. The idea is that it’s family friendly. You’re never too far from shops but also never too far from park land. It’s earthy and it’s different from anywhere else in Manchester.”

Work was also started on new canals and a marina. Boat mooring profits will be used to maintain a new eco park called the Cotton Field complete with a beach, orchards, pine trees, a climbing wall and nesting boxes to encourage birds. In the long term, it’s hoped the new canals could even provide water for the surrounding buildings. The park was due to be open in summer 2007, but the credit crunch seems to have put everything back and there’s still no sign of waterside dining, a wine bar, fish and chip shop or farmers’ market either. However, Richard is confident: “Within a year or two there will be lots more boats, lots more colour and lots more life.”

The tour company New Manchester Walks brings visitors to this still relatively underexplored yet fascinating part of the city on a walking tour called Watery Wastelands of Eastlands (soon to be renamed Grand Canals of the East). Green Badge guide Steve Bourne explains: “Almost everyone who visits the region doesn’t know what they’re missing here. This part of Manchester contains the world's early industrial beginnings, but it’s been hit by yet another recession in recent years. We’re just doing our bit to help put it back on the tourist trail again."

To call it a wasteland, though, doesn’t do justice to the deceptively wide array of activities the canal is already used for. Businesses still operate out of some of the remaining mills, from wholesale companies to environmental charities. Bass and drums drift over the canal, coming from rehearsal rooms in mills, and a couple are also home to networks of artists’ studios. A large volume of cyclists pass through to the Velodrome at Sportcity and, on match days, an army of fans in sky blue shirts march to city stadium. People also use the canal for its own sake, from jogging to just sitting day after day watching the world go by.

One sixteen year old from Gorton cycles to the same patch, just past the city centre, every weekend, where he sits and fishes for hours at a time, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone. He admits: “It gets me out of the house. I like it because it’s quiet.” Another, an Ancoats resident, walks his dog along the canal for an hour every day.

Two twenty something cyclists from south Manchester have arrived at the Ashton Canal after following the Fallowfield loop to Debdale Park in Gorton, and are returning using the canal as an alternative route to city centre roads: "We like the ducks. There's not really an equivalent in south Manchester – there’s no water to cycle along. It’s a good facility but it could be improved and cleaned up – we haven’t seen one bin for people who are sitting drinking or having picnics."

Ironically, although canals initially foundered into disuse in the early decades of the twentieth century in the face of competition from rail and road transport, a new transport link could help see the area cleaned up and rediscovered, when the Metrolink extension into east Manchester opens in 2012 – running almost parallel to the Ashton Canal.

Read the article online (the title was changed, not my idea!) in issue 2 of Things Happen here or in free paper copies around the city:

Open publication - Free publishing - More design lab

Also features Creative waterways, Manchester Modernist Society, Sans façon, River Medlock, Contemporary Cartography. www.mmdc.org.uk

Where the Wild Roses Grow - Part 2

Waiting for the blackberries to grow

Long before the blackberry was a type of communication device, and before the ‘pick your own food for free’ movement became fashionable because of the recession/ a general concern about where our food comes from, blackberries were the original free food. The summer tradition of scouring the nation’s hedgerows and fields for ripe blackberries has even given birth to its own verb, blackberrying - or, to pick the fruit of the bramble.

Blackberrying is as much a part of the English summer as summer fetes and swimming in the sea. Our summer may fluctuate between broad sunshine and torrential rain, yet I like to think this is helping the blackberries along. I have spent many a lazy day wandering canal side and through the countryside with a bag in hand, eating some guiltily along the way yet returning home with handfuls of delicious food, squishy but not soft, sweet but not too sweet.

In his poem Blackberry-Picking, which concerns a childhood blackberry picking memory, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney places the blackberry at the heart of summer, describing the ‘sticky’ juice of blackberries as ‘summer’s blood’. He makes it sound almost intoxicating by describing it as ’thickened wine’, going on to explain how its juice creates ‘stains upon the tongue’ and leaves the eater hungry for more. Blackberrying is an annual summer tradition, a rite of passage even, something to be looked forward to through the spring and early summer months, to be shared with family or someone special. He sums up the suspenseful summer feeling of waiting for the white flowers to give way to hard green berries that turn red and then, finally, into a ‘glossy purple clot’ ready to be eaten. The poem ends with a change of mood - like the summer, the edible life of the blackberries quickly comes to an end - they can only be picked for a short time, that comes around just once a year, like the all too short summer itself.

Similarly, the American writer Sylvia Plath found inspiration in the fruit for her poem Blackberrying. Blackberries are popular in England and America, where they are also grown commercially, although apparently the type of blackberries that can be bought in shops are blander and less flavourful. In Plath’s highly sensual poem she describes the excitement of the blackberry picking experience by telling of a ‘blackberry lane’ that has in it ‘nothing, nothing but blackberries on either side’. She paints pictures of ripe blackberries as ‘big as the ball of my tub’, ‘fat with blue-red juices’. Her blackberries too are alive and rich, giving a ‘blood sisterhood’ to those who pick them. (Rich in vitamin C, blackberries are a type of antioxidant and during the first world war children were given time off school to pick them so their nutritious juice could be sent to troops.)

My first summer in Manchester I spent hours picking my bounty along the banks of the Ashton Canal, culminating in the bushes of Phillips Park out by Sportcity. I was stunned at the riches on offer - Manchester blackberries are giant and juicy and, in the areas I went, completely unharvested by anyone else. Blackberrying is often a competitive business - in my hometown down South, I have often arrived at the best bushes, which deliver year after year, too late, finding only stumps - yet Manchester’s are ripe for the picking.

If you don’t have a park or canal near you (in South Manchester, I imagine that Chorlton Ees would be ideal), the chances are that you can find them in you back garden/ in your nearest alley way. Bramble bushes are weeds that tend to spread and take over any patch of uncultivated land, from wasteland to neglected gardens.

To pick blackberries, it’s advisable to wear long sleeved clothes - but nothing that could get caught on the bushes or is easily plucked - and closed footwear. Also, wear dark colours if possible and preferably old clothes as blackberries stain easily (in the old days, the juice were used as a dye). I generally use carrier bags to collect the fruit, although you can use any kind of container, from Tupperware to old ice cream tubs.

Blackberries can be picked in August and into September, although in English folklore they should not be picked after Michaelmas (October 10) as it was said the Devil had contaminated them with bodily fluids. Even today, children picking blackberries are told only to pick from the higher branches where dogs can’t reach them when urinating. On that subject, it’s also best to avoid picking blackberries by busy roads, although it can be tempting as they ripen earlier from the pollution, and to wash blackberries before use.

Once picked, blackberries will keep in the fridge for a day or two, but can also be frozen. Blackberries are good turned into jam and in cakes, buns and pies, as well as served on their own or with ice cream and custard. The classic blackberry dish is, though, undoubtedly the crumble.

The crumble is one of the easiest, cheapest and quickest, yet tastiest and most impressive dishes that can be made. It’s virtually impossible to get it wrong, as it contains just four basic ingredients, which you probably already have in your cupboard - butter, flour, sugar and fruit.

Blackberry crumble for two

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees c
200g blackberries (if you fancy it, substitute half the blackberries for apples, plums or another fruit of your choice)
60g sugar
30g butter (or vegetarian/ vegan equivalent)
60g plain flour

Extra adornments such as ginger/ cinnamon/ oats for the topping, as desired

Grease some kind of ceramic baking dish with butter. Cook the blackberries in a pan with a little water and half the sugar (or more, depending on how sweet/ tart you want the mixture) until soft. Place in the bottom of the baking dish. Place the butter in a large pan and add the flour, rubbing it into the butter until it resembles bread crumbs. Mix the rest of the sugar in. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the top of the blackberries ensuring all areas are covered and press it down a bit so it forms a tidy topping. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the crumble starts to go brown on top.

Best served with custard.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you could make blackberry brandy for the winter, which is delicious as a fruity accompaniment to Christmas cake and ensures the summer lingers on through the cold months. This is my grandad’s recipe.

450g blackberries
225g sugar
1 litre gin

Wash blackberries and put in a large sterilised jar. Pour in sugar and gin, seal, shake well. Store in a cool, dark cupboard and shake every other day for a week. Then shake once a week for two months.

"They grew down the river, all bloody and wild" - Where the Wild Roses Grow (Ancoats)

It's finally summer. The goslings that patrol the the canal with their parents seem to become less like yellow balls of fluff everyday, getting bigger and more gooselike before my eyes and taking more and more confident steps, and the sunshine is ever bringing new flowers in different colours.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon walk along the Ashton Canal to see what destruction had been done to B of the Bang (more on this vandalism of Thomas Heatherwick's sculpture later!) I spied these wild roses, a few spots of bright colour growing out of a tangle of weeds, an unlikely sign of life against the backdrop of one of the many rows of boarded up houses in this area.

Naturally, I walked the rest of the way home with this song in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8srgfw7GDkM

Rapunzel

The Shrieking Violet is unemployed. And spends most of her time wandering round aimlessly. However, she has been meeting up with inspiring people who have been setting her challenges. This was a challenge - to write a story. There was a building that looked like a castle that had always fascinated the Shrieking Violet, and made her think of a modern day Rapunzel, so she relocated to Central Library and sought inspiration in Grimm's Fairytales, charmingly illustrated by Walter Crane. This story was also written under the influence of the album The Power of True Love Knot by Shirley Collins, an English folk singer. Most of her love ballads do not have happy endings either.Castles in fairytales are usually magical, awe inspiring fortresses surrounded by cruel rocks and wild seas, over which the hero and heroine have to make their escape from the clutches of a dastardly step parent. The castle in this tale is rather less imposing. In fact, it’s not really a castle at all. The castles of folklore conjure up images of rugged grey buildings, in which every flint brick is enchanted. This one is red brick and grubby, and actually looks more like a prosaic Victorian warehouse to the casual observer. Instead of being protected by a moat or tumultuous sea, it stands amidst tall weeds and barbed wire on the bank of the Ashton Canal, a stretch of water that’s brown-green and impassive and breaks a ripple only in the windiest of weather. The only thing about the Ashton Canal which implies danger is the amount of rubbish floating in it, which suggests anyone who falls in will be struck down by some kind of horrible waterborne disease.

Those who choose to live their lives on the waterways usually have usually opted to live a slower pace of life, in the company of ducks and geese, and are the not the type of people whom excitement follows. It was a bargeman, however, making his leisurely way through the canals of North Manchester with plenty of time to develop an over active imagination, who noticed the building’s intriguing resemblance to a castle (or at least the type of stereotypical toy castle a child would make out of Lego). The building was a solid, impenetrable looking block flanked by strong towers topped with battlements in a sand coloured stone.

As his houseboat cruised by, the bargeman noticed a flickering light in one of the towers and an open window high up one of the walls. Otherwise, the building seemed to be deserted, like the rows of boarded up houses it rose up amongst, awaiting demolition. In common with the shells of warehouses around it, it was crumbling and its cracked windows laid it open to the elements.

After deciding to moor for the night, the bargeman became more and more intrigued. Seeing as there isn’t much in the way of entertainment on a houseboat, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. So, in the dead of night, he scrambled onto a muddy bank, strewn with rubble from warehouses that had already been knocked down to make way for regeneration of the area. He could see no way to scale the smooth walls of the castle to reach the only opening, a high up window, but the rather more ordinary building next door had several smashed windows through which it was possible to climb if he was careful not to cut himself.

It was pitch black when he dropped down inside, and he couldn’t see anything. His other senses overcompensated and he was overwhelmed by a cold mustiness that chilled him to the bone. When his eyes acclimatised, however, he started walking through huge rooms full of machinery. Out of nowhere, he heard the distant strains of a female singing, and was taken by surprise, at first thinking the building was inhabited and he would be caught trespassing. When his heart was still again, he decided to follow his ears in the direction of the eerie tune. His feet led him through corridor after corridor and room after room of cruel looking contraptions and stacks of boxes that were intriguingly labelled ‘blonde’, ‘brunette’ and ‘redhead’. Eventually, they all began to look the same. Panicking he wouldn’t be able to find his way out before daybreak, he left through an open window.

The next day, he went about his business as usual, preparing the barge to move further down the canal, back into the city and civilization. In daylight - it was a rare sunny day - he thought no more about the strange and beautiful song and the mysteries of the castle. He set off on foot exploring the area, but found nowhere that caught his imagination. However, night fell once more and he heard the song from outside the castle this time, louder and more insistent on second hearing. He gingerly crept onto the bank and back through the same open window he had climbed through the night before.

This time, he noticed there was a covered walkway in between the building he was exploring and the castle next door, and used a rickety iron staircase to access it, each footstep making a metallic clang as if in collaboration with his pounding heart. He saw there was a strange glow at the other end of the walkway and entered, his heart beating wildly for fear of detection. He emerged in the furthest tower, and was greeted by the sight of a beautiful maiden with hair down to her knees, gleaming the colour of the terracotta bricks from which the castle was made. She was pale and unblemished, as if she had been locked up in the tower all her life, and sat singing to herself by candlelight.

She was afraid of the man, and was about to call out, but he spoke to her, saying “Don’t be afraid” and asked why she was sitting in dim light in the tower. She had never seen a kind man before, only the factory owner and his clients, who kept her there in captivity as an incentive for her family to work harder. He asked if he may touch her beautiful red hair, and she was nervous but consented. When she realised how gentle he was, she asked if he would return with help and rescue her from the tower and take her away with him. Since she did not have the preconceptions of men that are learned in the wider world, she instinctively trusted him, and said she would let her hair down the side of the tower the following evening and he could climb up, thereby avoiding the roundabout route he had taken to get there. She also did not know that in these stories the gallant rescuer is generally rich, royal and handsome, none of which could be said to apply to the bargeman. However, the beautiful maiden, her mind finally at rest, fell asleep and the bargeman crept away to formulate plans for boating away to a place they could never be found.

The next evening, as the bargeman climbed onto the bank to ascend the rope of red hair that was camouflaged against the building, he saw a small, chubby, mean looking man in a black suit had beat him to it and was clambering inexpertly up the tower. He waited, and heard harsh words from the tower, followed by a strange buzzing sound that sounded like a gentleman’s razor. After a while, all was quiet and the hair appeared again. The bargeman was worried for the maiden in the tower but hoped the man had merely been having a shave in preparation for a night out, and had exited in a more conventional manner. He took a chance, and shinned up the surprisingly strong plait. On reaching the top, he looked around triumphantly, but got a shock when he realised he was looking into the squinty black eyes of the factory owner, who was dangling the hair over the side of the building. “Hahaha”, said the factory owner, “the hair does not belong to her, it is mine as the owner of this wig factory. Her hair has become long and strong enough, and now it will adorn the heads of rich old ladies who no longer have hair of their own”. Before, he could get over his shock, the bargeman had been pushed backwards and fell into the canal, where he lost consciousness and floated away.

This is the part of the story where the hero would usually come back to life, take the hand of the maiden and they would live happily ever after with beautiful children. However, we all know that’s not how life works. Boy meets girl, but boy doesn’t always fancy girl and anyway, beautiful maiden doesn’t always equate to interesting girlfriend material. Even of they did become lovers, it doesn’t always work out. It’s perfectly possible boy would get bored and find another maiden.

The bargeman was dead so he never got to find out what could have been. All the maiden was left with was a cropped head and memories of a kind man stroking her hair, and a new interest in breaking out of her tower to explore the world outside.