Kool Thing.

lil'cutie goes it alone, originally uploaded by mithering.

Not had the time/inclination to blog of late. Been doing other stuff. Out and about in the real world stuff, scanning and manipulating stuff, ripping and sharing stuff.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a Coot chick.

Up Against The Wall VIII: Slates, Slags Etc.

Up Against The Wall VIII: Slates, Slags Etc., originally uploaded by mithering.

"Slags go Prestwich! haha", back seat of The Village Bus.

Male slags...
In the cold nearly old ska Jamaican dawn
Dead publisher's sons
Material hardship pawns
The Beat, Wah! Heat
Male slags...

The first Village Bus of the day runs past the bottom of my street at 7.55, the last one leaves Shudehill Interchange at 17.27. A single fare is more expensive than a single fare on the other buses which get me home, or into town, but a day pass is notably cheaper. Ho, and also Hum, you say, but the good thing about The Village Bus is that there's only one an hour, which takes a lot of the randomness and pain out of journeys into and out of town. I have to be in the Interchange at a twenty-seven minutes past the hour, or waiting on Heywood Road at five-to. Previously, when I took the 135, "Bus of the Stars", I would turn up at a bus stop and wait, sometimes for up to twenty minutes, whereupon one, two or even three would turn up at the same time and stutter into town, picking up and dropping off at virtually every stop along the way.

In more recent times, before I discovered the mono-glory of The Village Bus, I had started getting the 137, the 135's shorter, less glamorous cousin, from a stop near Blackfriar's Bridge. This runs every twenty minutes, which was good for organising my life, but less good when it didn't turn up. Which was often.

Now, I take The Village Bus as far as the site of the old Boddies Brewery cross Great Ducie Street and head onto New Bridge Street to stare at wildlife from the runtish bridge which crosses The Irwell there. It's a fairly deserted spot - most of the activity along there comes from cars heading towards the crofts of car parks - and I've been lucky enough to watch an American Mink climb up and down the bankside vegetation, searching for something or other, herons fishing, fish-jumping and bizarrely, but weirdly appropriately, a moorhen chasing a rat.

Never Been In A Riot.

Never Been In A Riot., originally uploaded by mithering.

I've generally fought shy of posting Visual Arts related stuff here due to the nature of my job, but I've hit upon a compromise. From this point on I will only blog visual arts material which is, in some way, about birds. Might as well combine the two.

This piece is from a group drawing show at Bluecoat in Liverpool, entitled End of the Line: attitudes in drawing. Due to a prior commitment and my lazy nature I'd not managed to get up the stairs to this particular element of the show (having seen the rest of it earlier) until this past Friday. This was a shame, as this playful installation by Garrett Phelan, 'Battle for the Birds.' , 2008, takes the idea of an Avian Liberation Front and runs with it as a pre-Digital, wing-crafted, homage to Old School protest movements. There's also something of the uneasy glamour of vintage British war comics, with hand-drawn portraits of the various corvid military personnel central to The Struggle.

The show finishes in The Bluecoat on July 19th, but is touring to The Fruitmarket in Edinburgh later in the year.

Up Against The Wall VII.

Shannon Taylor Dose Not Suck Dick 2009., originally uploaded by mithering.

Shannon Taylor Dose Not Suck Dick 2009.

There's no such thing as bad publicity. Bus Shelter, Chapel Street, Salford.

It's A Good Day For A Parade

It's A Good Day For A Parade, originally uploaded by mithering.

I've generally not used this blog for promoting or pushing things as it's too easy to offend people by accidentally missing them out, particularly when you are as forgetful as I am. I'm going to make an exception for Jeremy Deller's Procession though, as it's such a wonderfully daft idea.

So, tomorrow, July 5th, 2pm, Deansgate, Manchester, there's going to be a Procession in the name of art. There are going to be ramblers, Happy Mondays fans, football mascots (here's hoping they all fall into the large holes currently dotting Deansgate while the gas mains are done up), and unrepentant smokers amongst other things. All ten boroughs of the thing they call Greater Manchester will be represented in some form or another, get down there and cheer on your favourites.

More information at http://www.manchesterprocession.com/

There will then be an exhibition documenting the process, and no doubt giving you some insight into previous processions, marches and parades around town (and beyond).

Also, while we're not plugging stuff, why not truck up to the newly-built 'Chips' building in Ancoats for the opening of Trade City, a cross-city launch event for Contemporary Art Manchester featuring some of the city's smaller-scale artists, curators, galleries and associated buccaneers.

That kicks off at 3pm and continues until July 19th.

More information at http://www.contemporaryartmanchester.org