Tonic

Manchester is one of those places where I've changed trains far more often than anything else, but over the years I've been lured there once or twice a year by gigs, demos and latterly work. While I've been through Manchester several times during my so-called blipping life, yesterday and today are my first Manchester blips.

This means that it's a patchwork city to me. There are bits that I've been to time and again, mainly the vicinity of railway stations and up and down the Oxford Road, but I don't really know how the bits fit together. I've found the skyscrapers that have shot up over the past few years a unifying influence, as you can see them wherever you are, and that helps me to wander a bit more freely.

Today I was mostly in familiar parts wandering from the hotel down to the uni and then back over to Piccadilly, but I managed to throw in some diversions in the hope of small discoveries (plaques, drain covers, ghost signs, the usual stuff.)

While I did make some small discoveries, I've gone with an old favourite for my blip, Kerry Morrison's A Monument to Vimto. This sits on what I still think of as the UMIST campus, although UMIST is no more, next to the arches between Piccadilly and Oxford Road Stations. It marks the spot of where the first batch of Vimto was mixed by John Noel Nichols in 1908. I'm willing to admit that I'm more of a Dandelion & Burdock man, but I was impressed by an exhibition around the cultural history of Vimto that I saw in Lancaster in the early 90s which established it in my imagination as an icon of the North.

Easily my favourite piece of public art in Manchester, not that I've seen them all.

Yesterday, backblipped.