So much to answer for
Dec. 5th, 2012 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistRe-reading Stuart Maconie's brilliant Pies & Prejudice I stopped halfway through the chapter on Manchester to go out last night, musing on what he said about the city's "monumental hubristic vanity."
Like most people who spend any time here, he's clearly fond of the city despite all its downsides, and like usual I struggle to figure out why. I think most of my friends like it here because they moved here to go to university, to get drunk and dance all night and try to pull pretty people, or they moved here to be with a partner, an exciting new life together.
While of course I fall into that second category, I didn't do it looking forward to domesticity and settling down; I moved here in the middle of the worst period in my life, amidst a haze of depression and guilt, and that bled out of me onto the city; there are parts of the city centre I don't frequent as much as I used to (and heaven forbid I go back to Blackley or Crumpsall again; it was weird enough that time my work sent me to North Manchester General Hospital one day) and just the sight of some of the buildings, the feeling of walking down the streets, throws me right back into that feeling of being so desperately out of my depth: homesick, confused and broke (or, as I was learning to call it, skint) all the time.
I'm a lot better now, and I like Manchester a lot better, but I started from such a trough that on my really good days I'm neutral about it, and it still only takes a few sunless days in a row for me to loathe and detest everything about it again.
So maybe I'm baffled just because I've never hung out in the right places with the right people at the right times to see Manchester's "empty boasting" (apart from Andrew telling me everything was invented here, from computers to atom smashers to Vimto). So I mused when I put down the book to go out last night and (after standing for ages in heavy rain waiting for a 192 to show up, fucking Manchester...) made the short walk from my bus stop toward Canal Street hearing a drunk singing "Manchester, we're the best!" Here it is, laid out before me, as unsubtle an example as you get in morality plays. "With a captial S-R-T-E-R!" (No, I don't know either. Told you he was drunk.) And just before I scuttled down Richmond Street and out of earshot, I heard him say, "I were right not to leave here!"
I suppose I can't argue with that. I still hate the weather but I'm less depressed, skint and lonely now. I've got such good friends here, a good job, a good husband. I still would love Manchester to tell me why it's so great -- I'd love to like it more, because it'd make me happier being here -- but I know more all the time about how the bits of Manchester immediately south of the city centre fit together and what their personalities are like, and I'm confident I live in the best one. However grudingly I have to admit that I were right not to leave here, too.
P.S. And today I pick up the book again to find that Stuart Maconie's walking down Canal Street too, saying "Manchester's Gay [sic*] Village is the biggest and maybe the most welcoming in Europe." He plays a little game, trying to guess from the names of the bars whether he's in "the gay quarter." AXM's ban on tracksuits and football shirts baffles him (thanks to stereotypes about gay men's fashion sense), as does what the letters could stand for. He seems to find Vanilla an ironic name. "Taurus? I like it. Masculine but not too obvious." Aw, bless him.
* One of the things I do like about Manchester is that it's just "the Village" to the people who usually talk about it. And while the bars themselves may be not be so welcoming to the B or T, I like that this is one place that "Gay" has bee taken out of something's name, even if it's for the benefits of circumspect vagueness as much as potential inclusion.
Like most people who spend any time here, he's clearly fond of the city despite all its downsides, and like usual I struggle to figure out why. I think most of my friends like it here because they moved here to go to university, to get drunk and dance all night and try to pull pretty people, or they moved here to be with a partner, an exciting new life together.
While of course I fall into that second category, I didn't do it looking forward to domesticity and settling down; I moved here in the middle of the worst period in my life, amidst a haze of depression and guilt, and that bled out of me onto the city; there are parts of the city centre I don't frequent as much as I used to (and heaven forbid I go back to Blackley or Crumpsall again; it was weird enough that time my work sent me to North Manchester General Hospital one day) and just the sight of some of the buildings, the feeling of walking down the streets, throws me right back into that feeling of being so desperately out of my depth: homesick, confused and broke (or, as I was learning to call it, skint) all the time.
I'm a lot better now, and I like Manchester a lot better, but I started from such a trough that on my really good days I'm neutral about it, and it still only takes a few sunless days in a row for me to loathe and detest everything about it again.
So maybe I'm baffled just because I've never hung out in the right places with the right people at the right times to see Manchester's "empty boasting" (apart from Andrew telling me everything was invented here, from computers to atom smashers to Vimto). So I mused when I put down the book to go out last night and (after standing for ages in heavy rain waiting for a 192 to show up, fucking Manchester...) made the short walk from my bus stop toward Canal Street hearing a drunk singing "Manchester, we're the best!" Here it is, laid out before me, as unsubtle an example as you get in morality plays. "With a captial S-R-T-E-R!" (No, I don't know either. Told you he was drunk.) And just before I scuttled down Richmond Street and out of earshot, I heard him say, "I were right not to leave here!"
I suppose I can't argue with that. I still hate the weather but I'm less depressed, skint and lonely now. I've got such good friends here, a good job, a good husband. I still would love Manchester to tell me why it's so great -- I'd love to like it more, because it'd make me happier being here -- but I know more all the time about how the bits of Manchester immediately south of the city centre fit together and what their personalities are like, and I'm confident I live in the best one. However grudingly I have to admit that I were right not to leave here, too.
P.S. And today I pick up the book again to find that Stuart Maconie's walking down Canal Street too, saying "Manchester's Gay [sic*] Village is the biggest and maybe the most welcoming in Europe." He plays a little game, trying to guess from the names of the bars whether he's in "the gay quarter." AXM's ban on tracksuits and football shirts baffles him (thanks to stereotypes about gay men's fashion sense), as does what the letters could stand for. He seems to find Vanilla an ironic name. "Taurus? I like it. Masculine but not too obvious." Aw, bless him.
* One of the things I do like about Manchester is that it's just "the Village" to the people who usually talk about it. And while the bars themselves may be not be so welcoming to the B or T, I like that this is one place that "Gay" has bee taken out of something's name, even if it's for the benefits of circumspect vagueness as much as potential inclusion.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 12:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 04:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 04:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 04:33 pm (UTC)Another problem is Andrew's immense and thorough dislike of football and its fans. Bad experiences have led him to see football as nothing more than an excuse for, and a magnet for, thuggish violence.
I did, rather half-assedly, follow Portsmouth when I was dating someone from there (just in time for their meteoric fall from FA Cup winners to laughinstocks who couldn't pay their players, went through coaches quicker than you could say "going into administration," and got relegated to, last I checked, mid-table obscurity in the Championship, so I felt right at home there!), and it really bothered Andrew that I wanted to associate myself with a sport and fans about which every single thing was awful and wrong. Things got a bit better, and I stopped being able to care about Pompey as that relationship went sour, and it hasn't been an issue since, but I'd never expect him to go to a game with me or anything.
And similarly, I don't have many friends that I'm aware of enjoying football, so I have no one to tag along with or learn from or celebrate/commiserate with. I like the sports my dad and grandpa liked because it was a social thing for us -- it still is; I get updates on Gopher football this time of year, and we bemoan the Twins in the summer. Liking something all by myself is hard for me, and less likely to make me feel a part of anything.
I'm very glad it's worked for you, though :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 09:17 pm (UTC)* local friends I can go watch things with, I hasten to add in case
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-07 03:04 am (UTC)*waves at fellow Leeds fan* - I've never lived there, but have a homely feeling about it too :) Ah, Elland Road.
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Date: 2012-12-07 09:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-06 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-05 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-08 04:22 pm (UTC)