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The Trouble With Trof

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February 21, 2012
Manchester
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In which we consider the increasing homogenisation of Manchester’s bar scene.

At the start of the year it was announced that Zecol, the company that operates the Trof chain, had taken over The Green Room and Albert Hall Brannigans, two sites that had fallen into disuse some months earlier. In an interview with Manchester Confidential, Zecol managing director Joel Wilkinson spoke of the company’s plans: “We need to decide on the look and feel we’re going to give the place, although it won’t be radically different to the rest of the Trof bars.”

Little over a month later, a similar story emerged. The success of Black Dog Ballroom has prompted the owners to take over the vacant Pure Space site on New Wakefield Street. Ross Mackenzie, one of the two men behind the Northern Quarter venue, has already suggested that the new venue will seek to replicate the original, with his long-term goal involving establishing the brand across North England.

These developments raise an interesting question: can this kind of homogeneity really be a good thing for the city?

The success of the likes of Trof and Black Dog strikes me as a double-edged sword. The fact that these businesses are expanding is good news for the city economically (and any development that helps create new jobs should be celebrated); however, as far as Manchester’s social scene is concerned it does nothing to improve choice: we simply get an almost identikit version of an established brand popping up in a new location. More of the same, in other words. The Northern Quarter Black Dog serves its purpose and its clientele just fine; is it really necessary to open another one just a 20 minute walk away?

Similarly, does the city centre really need FOUR Trof venues if each one is going to be utilising the same approach and aesthetic? Is it not in danger of becoming a Wetherspoon’s for the alternative set?

I’m aware than an argument could be made that these companies are taking over failed sites, revitalising venues that weren’t able to remain open in the current climate. Which is a perfectly fair point. However, Trof and Black Dog grew to thrive because they brought something new to the table, offering a different kind of night out and unique selling points that pack the punters in. The pair stand as proof that new ideas can succeed. If there’s room in the city’s social scene for popular outlets to expand, surely there’s room for original concepts to take off? In particular, the success of the likes of Black Dog and Port Street Beer House against a difficult economic backdrop suggests that there is.

The Green Room and Space are fantastic venues, and the news that both will soon be back in commission is most welcome indeed. Here’s hoping that Trof and Black Dog show a willingness to try something new and take a few risks, rather than simply resting on their laurels.

2012 in literature: January

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February 8, 2012
Literature, Manchester
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As is customary in January, I’ve found it hard to settle into a book for any significant amount of time, flitting from one piece of literature to another on whims, leaving a good few in progress even though I was enjoying them. Give it another month and maybe I’ll have found my focus.

I started the year finishing off Moneyball, Michael Lewis’s fantastic book about Billy Beane, the general manager who revolutionised baseball by focusing on approaches to talent spotting and team selection than no-one else put any stock in. His methods helped transform the Oakland Athletics from an unsuccessful outfit to regular playoff contenders; interestingly enough, the success of his methods – not to mention of Moneyball – led to other individuals adopting them wholesale, and in recent years Beane’s team has struggled.

The story that unfolds is far from a conventional sports narrative, however, and the way Lewis tells it is somewhat out of the ordinary too. Rather than following a linear path, Lewis jumps back and forth, sometimes without warning, and allows himself any number of diversions and meandering interludes, all the while crediting the reader with enough intelligence to keep up. Some of the most illuminating passages involve Beane’s new guard clashing against baseball’s old guard, be it coaching staff, scouts, or sportswriters, all of whom are strongly resistant to the new ideas of the upstarts. Prior knowledge of baseball is not necessary to enjoy Lewis’s account.

I also picked up Everything’s Fine, the promising debut from Manchester’s own Socrates Adams. Literature that is actually laugh-out-loud funny is a rare thing indeed, yet Adams delivers in spades on the humour front. Which is a good job, really, because the focus of the story – a man named Ian’s workplace-based woes and general failure to function as proper adults are expected to - does not allow for much light to filter in, his dream of a holiday to the French alps notwithstanding.

Adams seems to have found his particular milieu, marrying mundane slice of life material with surrealism and the odd shock tactic, as well as social commentary that may or may not be earnest. It’s an effective blend, and certainly a unique one – it seems safe to say I’ll read nothing quite like Everything’s Fine again this year. The simple conceit does become ever-so-slightly stretched at points, tasked with carrying an entire novel (well, novella might be more accurate), but that doesn’t detract too much. Given its subject matter, it’s likely that a good few of you will readily be able to relate to the trials and tribulations of Ian. If nothing else, it’s worth reading because it’s likely to be the only time you experience a narrative in which a length of pipe is the most sympathetic character.

I rounded off the month with Stephen King’s Misery, the tale of Paul Sheldon, a writer famous for a series of bestsellers starring Misery Chastain. When Paul suffers a car crash, he’s rescued from the wreckage by Annie Wilkes, who just so happens to be Misery’s biggest fan. Problem is, Paul killed her in his last novel, and Annie’s grasp on sanity is tenuous at best…

Misery is a gripping, ambitious tale, one that King uses to explore what it means to be an artist, how possessive and demanding fans can become, and whether or not releasing a work of art commercially means it belongs to the public as much as the person who created it. In one glorious passage, Sheldon ponders to himself:

“It was crazy. It was funny. It was also real. Millions might scoff, but only because they failed to realize how pervasive the influence of art – even of such a degenerate sort as popular fiction – could become. Housewives arranged their schedules around the afternoon soaps. If they went back into the workplace, they made buying a VCR a top priority so they could watch those same soap operas at night. When Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls, all of Victorian England rose as one and demanded him back. The tone of their protests had been Annie’s exactly – not bereavement but outrage. Doyle was berated by his own mother when he wrote and told her of his intention to do away with Holmes. Her indignant reply had come by return mail: ‘Kill that nice Mr Holmes? Foolishness! Don’t you dare!‘”

The passage continues, and is a wonderful, profound ode to the all-consuming effect art can have on us, how passionate a person can become over a fictional character, and why we’re willing to invest so much of ourselves into worlds that do not exist. As it turns out, it’s only easy to dismiss King as populist fare if you’ve never read one of his better novels. I’ll certainly be seeking out more.

Currently reading: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Jacobs Beach by Kevin Mitchell, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past by Simon Reynolds, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Next on the agenda: Finishing all of the above and reading The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai for February’s book club.

How goes the novel?: After a strong first week, things ground to a halt. It’s currently ‘on the shelf’ as I ‘concentrate on other projects.’

New Year, New Post

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January 28, 2012
Manchester

Okay, so given that we are in the home stretch of January it’s probably a bit late for us to be doing a ‘new year post,’ but considering that we’ve been less consistent than we’d have liked in updating our blog we figured that a catch up, ‘we’re back’ kinda post was in order.

The tail end of 2011 was a bit hectic, and in between various trips across the country, Christmas, work and the party season (and to be completely honest some general laziness) we lost our way as far as Onward, Manchester was concerned.

But new year, fresh start and all that. So in 2012 we hope to keep on writing about our Manchester-based exploits, the issues we care about and our day-to-day craic for anyone who cares to read about it. Rather than have ‘resolutions’ (if we’d had any we’d have given up on them by now anyway), we have things that we’d like to do in 2012, which coincidentally is the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

We want to continue the festival precedent that we set in 2011 by attending ATP in March and Primavera in May/June. Festival-type events are something this city has done really well in recent years; Eurocultured, Sounds From the Other City, Carefully Planned and FutureEverything are all on our 2012 to do list.

Over the winter it has been really cold and often we’ve found we’d rather be sat in with a boxset than out getting cold and wet. This seems to have had some positive effects on our respective bank balances as well as ensuring that we finally finished off The Sopranos (ending = awesome) and made a respectable start on The Wire, which has taken us a stupidly long time to get round to watching.

This year we want to continue with the box set drive, partly because we’re getting really bored of the bland Come Dine With Me repeats, Master Chef semi-finals and rubbernecking documentaries that seem to be the mainstay of all the major channels at the moment. Whilst TV definitely provides some thought-easing, head space of an evening, there’s no reason that space shouldn’t be filled with something that is both well crafted and entertaining. So we’ve got Mad Men, Deadwood, Homicide: Life on the Street, Bored to Death and 30 Rock on our list so far, but any other recommendations would be very welcome.

Eating well is also high on our list of priorities this year; both in terms of looking after ourselves through the food we eat (sounds boring I know) and also in eating lovely food out. We stumbled upon this Gold List of places to eat in Manchester so we plan to work our way through them as well as adding recommendations of our own. Hopefully it’ll be delicious and fun!

We both have things that we’d like to individually achieve (Sam: swim 5k for Marie Curie, get involved with feminism in Manchester; Kristian: write his first novel before the end of the year) but that’s all we can think of for now.

Happy (belated) New Year!

From Mancenion to Manchester: A tale told by Ford Madox Brown

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October 23, 2011
Art, Manchester

Though it was touched upon in our second A Long Weekender post, I felt that the Ford Madox Brown murals – which decorate a chamber on the first floor of Manchester Town Hall, and depict the history of our city in a series of twelve scenes – deserved a post all of their own.

As something of a history lover, I’ve often wondered what Manchester was like in the Middle Ages; there’s ample evidence of the city in the 19th century – you can’t help but notice all the mills and factories dotted about the place – and the Roman fort in Castlefield is testament to the city’s longstanding history. But what about all that time in between then and now?

If, like me, you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, then these murals provide a very concise introduction. Each is painted in the vaguely romantic style, which is technically a Hogarthian version of Pre-Raphaelite. Apparently.

The story begins with The Romans Building a Fort at Mancenion, with a Roman general and his wife inspecting the work being carried out (detail showing a solider inspecting the plans below).

The next image shows the baptism of the pagan King Edwin to Christianity. Though this took place in York the conversion brought Christianity to Manchester.

The Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester portrays Mancunians, rather than Saxon soldiers, expelling Danish invaders. From there we move on to The Trial of Wycliffe A.D. 1377, a man who is credited with brining non-conformism to the North of England.

Wycliffe was an unfortunate bloke who was tried for heresy in London in 1377; however, through his protector – John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster – he became linked to the origins of non-conformism. In the full scale image Chaucer is pictured taking notes. I liked the detail of these two gossiping in the foreground about the drama taking place behind them.

Detail from The Trail of Wyclif: Wyclif was an unfortunate bloke who was tried for heresy in London in 1377 but through his protector, a man named John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster he became linked to the origins of non-conformism in the North of England. In the full scale image Caucer is pictured taking notes. I liked the detail of these two gossiping about the drama taking place behind them.

Next, The Proclamation Regarding Weights and Measures A.D. 1556 shows that streamlining the system of general measurements was as unpopular in the 16th century as it was in 2000, when UK law compelled traders to sell in metric measurements.

Crabtree Watching the Transit of Venus A.D. 1639 depicts William Crabtree, from Broughton, observing the transit of Venus, before Chetham’s Life’s Dream A.D. 1640 shows the origins of the current Chetham’s School of Music.

Next, Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester A.D. 1642 presents a Manchester under siege as Royalist troops surround the town. This was the last murial to be completed before Brown died; having lost the use of his right hand after a stroke, he had to complete it with his left.

We then move on to more familiar times with John Kay, Inventor of the Fly Shuttle A.D. 1753. As Kay tests his invention rioters try to break into his workshop and break it. We stay with the origins of the Industrial Revolution with The Opening of the Bridgewater Canal A.D. 1761, before finally moving on to Dalton Collecting Marsh-Fire Gas, where we see Dalton collecting bubbles of gas from the water of a pond. His experimentation with gas led to the him developing atomic theory.

And there we have it; some of the key events that have help shaped Manchester history over the ages. I’m not really sure how accurate the murals are as a historical record, but regardless they are lovely to look at, and before we saw them as part of our Weekender events I had no idea they were even there.

If you would like to find out more from the comfort of your computer screen you can take a look at the Manchester Government website. Or you can go down to Manchester Town Hall Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.

Part four of a four part series in conjunction with All Points North, providing coverage of Manchester Weekender and other regional festivals.

Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band, part three

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October 9, 2011
Manchester, Music, Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band

“Things can only get better” – D:Ream, “Things Can Only Get Better”

Where were we? Oh yes, I remember: no fans, no record deal, no point. That’s where we stood at the end of 2007.

Of course, it can be difficult to let go sometimes, and we weren’t willing to do so just yet. Despite having experienced a complete lack of success, we still thought highly enough of ourselves and of the music we were making to keep working at it. What that meant, as always, was locking ourselves away in our practise room.

By this point we were rehearsing in a damn-near derelict old mill located on, appropriately enough, Old Mill Street in Ancoats, and I can say with some conviction that we were dedicated. We turned up there Christmas Eve morning, planning to put a full day in, only to find that for once the place had been properly locked up. To be honest, I was relieved; I’d just finished the last of my 10pm till 8am shifts as a temp at Toys R Us. Playing music was the last thing on my mind, given that the preceding two months had been an exercise in draining every last trace of joy out of my life. 50 hour weeks working unsociable shifts will do that to a person.

Anyway, one of our biggest problems was always a complete inability to self-promote. Other bands make creating buzz seem effortless (although it should be noted that many actually hire someone to do the work for them), but we laboured at it without success. You could be writing some of the greatest songs of all time, but if no-one gets the chance to hear them that doesn’t count for anything. “If a tree falls in the woods” and all that. Naturally, this in no way deterred us from spending money we couldn’t really afford on studio time.

Early in 2008 we entered the studio for the fourth time. The previous sessions had never gone that well. The first was a rush job, and involved getting down four tracks in an epic single session just so that we’d have something to shop ourselves around with. The second was slightly more relaxed, but we still weren’t all that happy with the results. In the immediate aftermath of both, we ended up writing much better songs, meaning that the recorded material was disowned. Still, we handcrafted a small amount of CDs and managed to sell them at our gigs, meaning that somewhere in this city a few copies must still be dotted around.

Alas, third time was not the charm. If things don’t click quickly in the studio, then it soon becomes a nightmare. A late start on the first day was followed by various complications and malfunctions. I had to play my parts again, and again, and again, until they had lost all meaning. As did everyone else. We became more and more dispirited and started losing all patience with one another, and in the end were just glad when it was over, regardless of how anything sounded. Months later, after I had finally quit the band, I had a habit of bumping into the guy who had helped engineer the session, and every time he would tell me how much he hated our lead guitarist’s vocals.

In comparison, then, the fourth session was a joy. The setup for the drums was perfect, and I banged out my parts with a minimum of fuss, and then happily disengaged my brain from the boredom of the process as everyone else laid down theirs. It went very well indeed, and we came out with two songs that were of “professional” quality. We were thrilled, and felt that this time, we could definitely find a label – local or otherwise – that would want to put them out.

We were wrong.

In part four: time to call it a day.

Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band, part two

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October 2, 2011
Manchester, Music, Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band

It’s pretty much a truism that every small-time indie band you could care to mention is going to be composed of three to five shy and awkward individuals who are in no way cut out to be placed upon a stage in front of other people. So to say that we were terrified on the day of our first gig seems redundant. Also, it’s a massive understatement: we were in a state of near-panic over all the things that could, and likely would, go wrong.

It didn’t help that by this point, we’d accumulated an ungodly amount of instruments and equipment. To compound the problem further, some of the drum machines and keyboards we had incorporated into our act were liable to stop working if you so much as brushed against them the wrong way. A recipe for disaster if ever there was one.

After a not entirely promising soundcheck, and with our nerves on a knife edge, we took to the stage, doing our very best to avoid eye contact with the audience; one bored or disinterested look would likely have destroyed us. Once you’re up there, there’s nothing to do but play…

It wasn’t a flawless performance by any stretch, but we carried it off well enough, and the folks who saw it seemed to enjoy it. It was a start, at any rate, one we quickly followed up on a month later with a much improved showing at Joshua Brooks. Everything went right for us, from the sound on the stage to the enthusiasm of those who’d showed up. The Manchester Music review was flattering to say the least; we were dubbed “one of Manchester’s most exciting newcomers for 2006.” High praise indeed, and there were still nine months of the year left to go.

We spent the year attempting to build on those kind words, by gigging whenever we could, wherever we could, and locking ourselves away in whatever spaces we could find to work on new and better songs. We closed out the year triumphantly enough, appearing on the High Voltage compilation, Full Charge, and felt poised to push on further.

Alas, 2007 was an exercise in standing still. We still received plenty of positive reviews, but our gigs were almost always populated by no more than a handful of people. We got some great support slots – with Subtle at the Bierkeller, with Danielson at the Levenshulme Bowling Social Club on a bill that also included Los Campesinos! – but even those made no difference to our fortunes, and with Twitter still in its formative stages, creating word of mouth seemed like the hardest thing in the world. No matter that we were “glitch ridden intelli pop of the highest order” (Subba-Cultcha’s words) with a “frail and fractured, dreamy and downbeat sound” (Is This Music?). We were going nowhere fast.

It isn’t difficult to remember rock bottom. Let me tell you, the Dry Bar basement is a lonely place to be when the band members outnumber the audience. It sends you into a spiral of “are we actually not very good?” doubt and despondency. If creating and sharing music is supposed to be fun, then performing live to a room of four people is the surest way of ruining that feeling. No-one wanted to come to our gigs, no-one wanted to put out our music. Sometimes it’s hard to carry on…

In part three: things fail to get better before getting worse.

The Manchester Tart

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September 29, 2011
Food, Manchester
4 Comments

Recently I’ve been wondering if it would be possible to exclusively eat Manchester-associated food for a whole day.

Think about it. We have the Manchester Egg, Eccles Cakes and Bury Black Pudding. There’s enough there to take you through until tea time, with Vimto (both hot and cold) to drink. And come evening you could round off your day with a Lancashire Hot Pot and a Manchester Tart.

But while yes, it would be possible,  it’s probably not practical. It is, however, entirely possible to make the Manchester Tart in the comfort of your own kitchen. I did it this evening, and pictured above and below are the results of my culinary endeavours.

Most of you will remember the Manchester Tart as a pudding mainstay of school dinner menus. Presented in an oblong steel tray with a wibbly coconut-sprinkled top, it was the natural choice when confronted with an alternative of a yellowing apple for desert.

I have fond memories of the jam-laden base topped with gooey bananas and smothered in custard. I found this easy to follow recipe from the BBC, but there are lots of more involved recipes available (for those with more time), and you have to assume they would produce better results.

My version involves a pre-made custard, because frankly making your own looks daunting and, when you factor in the vanilla pods, a touch costly too. I’ll also admit that the pastry is also pre-made; however, I feel toasting the coconut at the end went some way towards making up for this. Well, maybe not. Still, the results were delicious, and I doubt it will survive the evening in the fridge.

Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band, part one

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September 22, 2011
Manchester, Music, Tales of a Go-Nowhere Indie Band

It’s 2011, and Manchester has an absolutely thriving music scene. No matter what they tell you, though, it wasn’t always this way. I should know: after all, I was a small part of it during the first decade of the new century, playing drums in a band called, let’s say, The Found Navigation Chart. Throughout that time, this city’s music scene was as much characterised by audience indifference and dreadful bands as anything else. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

It started aged sixteen, when four friends asked me to learn to play the drums. For them, that was easier than having to recruit somebody by meeting new people. I wasn’t all that up for it – it sounded too much like hard work – but It’s hard to say no to friends, and soon enough I was buying drums, arranging lessons, and experiencing the cathartic joy of pounding away on a beautiful new kit.

This happened at the start of 2002. Naturally when it came to establishing the sound of the band, we aimed for Kid A and ended up with a slightly more angsty, less catchy version of Coldplay. Our practise room, for the most part, was a church hall we were allowed to use for free thanks to a rather generous reverend. Occasionally, garages and living rooms would suffice. With little else to do with our lives, we’d lock ourselves away for hours at a time, for days in a row, plotting a path towards indie stardom.

From those humble origins we soon found our feet, and became a little more ambitious. Not always with positive results; one song featured live drums, a drum machine, and a line sampled from Darren Aronofsky’s Pi that was shoehorned in in such a way that is was almost impossible to play around it. Alas, that was to become something of a theme for us – overcomplicating things to the point where actually just playing a song was almost more trouble than it was worth. Perhaps that’s why it took three years of practising before we finally played our first gig. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Over the course of those years, we honed our craft, developed an understanding as musicians, argued a hell of a lot, and – crucially – started listening to better music. Our songs improved massively as a result, and our collective egos had us convinced that we were one of the best bands in Manchester before we’d even played a note in front of an audience.

That wasn’t just arrogance on our part, though; as I’ve already alluded to, the city’s music scene wasn’t exactly in rude health back then. Too many bands were still in thrall to Joy Division, Stone Roses, Oasis et al, and as a result were producing derivative music that wasn’t worth listening to. A good few people – promoters and reviewers and the like – were trying to push things forward, but progress was slow. We honestly thought we could make a difference. How naive we were…

In part two: we start playing gigs and start recording our songs, and critical acclaim quickly follows. The fans, sadly, do not.

10 Tips For New Students in Manchester

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September 19, 2011
Manchester, Students

It’s getting towards the end of September, which means that a new crop of fresh-faced youngsters will have descended upon Manchester for their studies, completely changing the complexion of the city in the process. We think that’s a good thing, and so we’ve put together a few pointers for those of you who are new here. Some of it is simple advice we wish somebody had drilled into our heads before we started our degrees, some of it is common sense that so easily ends up forgotten. Hopefully, it’ll prove useful!

1. Don’t forget to put the work in…

You may have been led to believe that the first year of your course isn’t all that important; in most cases, it doesn’t contribute towards your final grade, and the 40% pass rate means that many are content to simply coast. Tempting though that option may be, it’s worth noting that the maxim “start as you mean to go on” applies: if you half-ass your way through the first year, it’s very difficult to get into the hard work mentality in time for the second year, particularly if you spend your summer doing nothing at all. You’d be surprised how many people engage autopilot from day one, and never manage to break free from that setting.

2. …and keep your eyes open for internships that will be beneficial to your career

Here’s the truth of the matter: these days, going to university and coming out with a 2:1 isn’t all that impressive. It’s a creditable result, but you’ll find that at least half the people on your course will achieve the same or higher. Which means that once you’ve graduated, when you find a job you’re interested in, you’ll need something to distinguish yourself from the other applicants. An internship can make all the difference; it’ll look great on your CV, and it’ll show that you’re committed to your chosen career.

3. Money

We know that the prospect of employment won’t sound that exciting to a first year student; after all, there is so much to do as a fresher. However, there’s every chance that your first loan instalment will last all of a month (indeed, Samantha’s somehow lasted less than this). If you’ve never had that much money all at once before, you may not know how to budget it. We’ve both been there, and that first Christmas in halls can be a bit of a nightmare if you’re completely penniless. It’s worth noting that there are plenty of agencies in Manchester that will take on students, particularly closer to December, which is a busy season for the hospitality industry.

Another great tip as far as the loan is concerned is to pop it into a high interest savings account and set up a direct debit to your current account. People who are far better with money than we are did this, and it really ended up benefitting them. Whatever you do, do not blow it all in the first few weeks.

4. Talk to everyone

Seriously, talk to everyone you can during your student life. Never judge a book by its cover: get to know everyone on your course, and everyone in the same halls as you, and folks in bars and clubs. During the first year, you’ll come into contact with a ridiculous number of new people. Granted, six months later you’ll look through your phone and wonder who the hell half the people are, and along the way you’ll likely pick up “friends” who would have been better left on the shelf. But that’s part of the experience, and along the way you’ll meet any number of wonderful individuals.

5. Break free of the Oxford Road corridor

As you’re first finding your way around the city, you’ll be more likely to stick to haunts close to your new digs. Which likely means you’ll be frequenting Oxford Road, and a few of the streets just off said road. That’s fine for the first couple of weeks, but don’t get stuck in a rhythm that lasts all year long, because Manchester has so much to offer. The Northern Quarter, Chorlton, and Didsbury are home to some great drinking establishments for those occasions when you don’t fancy just getting pissed; Salford Quays on a sunny day is a wonderful place to visit, with plenty of things to do; and FC United play up in Bury, if you’re a football fan whose interest extends beyond the mainstream. Put simply: don’t just end up in Fifth Avenue every single time you go out.

6. No musical instruments at social gatherings

By all means, bring your instrument with you, or buy one and learn to play: Manchester is a great city for music. Just make sure you leave it in your room when it’s time for the social craic to start up. You don’t want to turn into the individual who always brings their instrument with them. At best, people will think you are a somewhat talented show off; at worst, they will think you are a poor musician who only brought his guitar with him as a cheap ploy to appear sensitive and get laid for it. So many people fall into this trap: don’t become another victim. On a broader note, don’t resort to gimmicks in an attempt to win popularity. Let people get to know the real you. They’ll either like you or they won’t, leaving you free to either a) make friends with them or b) move on to the next individual.

7. Put some thought into your food and drink choices…

If you are in some kind of shared accommodation, talk to your housemates and see if you can agree to pool your resources and cook together. You will save a ton of cash and have a bigger budget with which to purchase your weekly shop. If you can’t get people to agree to do this, then make meals such as shepherd’s pie in bulk and pop a few portions in the freezer. Also, carry a drinks bottle filled up with squash in your bag. If you tot up all the times you pop into a shop for a fizzy drink during a week, you’ll be surprised at how much you spend.

8. …and your clothing purchases

Check out some of the independent clothes shops in the Northern Quarter, as you can sometimes negotiate on price and you’ll generally come away with something unique (rather than the same old Top Shop-Primark-H&M outfits everyone will be wearing). In addition, places like the Ram & Shackle and the Creative Corner Cafe hold sales events where people set up stalls to sell their wares or to help you modify existing items, which could be very helpful when you’re short of cash. Those of you on fashion courses will likely have an enterprise module, where you’ll be tasked with setting up your own mock-business, and such avenues will be helpful during your studies.

9. Avoid the easily avoidable pitfalls

Manchester is a great place to live, and a great place to go out; however, like any city, there are certain things that you should always steer clear of. Indeed, we could have written an entire post on this alone, but let’s keep it simple. Firstly, don’t put your drink down in a busy club; most people who’ve lived in here for any length of time will either have had their drink spiked or else know of someone who has. Secondly, avoid Manchester’s parks after dark; they’re fantastic during the day (as long as the weather holds out), but they’re not safe at night, and saving a few minutes of time just isn’t worth the risk. And thirdly, don’t buy drugs from people on the street or in clubs; chances are that all they’ll be selling you is lies, not to mention substances far more dangerous than what they purport to have for sale.

10. And remember: not everyone loves students 

We’re all for students; they contribute a huge amount to Manchester, financially, socially, and even culturally. Many of them (Samantha included) opt to stay on after university having fallen in love with the place. Most of our friends have at one time or another studied at MMU, UoM, or SU. So we’re definitely pro-student. However, by the same token a significant number of people find them really, really annoying as a rule. You can help not perpetuate negative stereotypes by being polite and respectful to individuals who work in the takeaways, shops, and bars that you frequent. Similarly, if you’re on the bus, be aware that not everyone wants to hear your personal conversation take place at ear-splitting volume. Basically, don’t act in a way that draws unnecessary attention to the fact that you’re a student.

Another few quick tips:

  • Photograph your room when you move in, especially anything that is damaged. Keep the photos, unaltered on your PC so you have a record of the date they were created. This is just in case the landlord tries to screw you over for existing damage when you move out.
  • If you’re in Student Village (or any kind of halls) make friends with the security staff. They’ll watch your back, and they’re the ones who conduct room inspections when you move out.
  • Get an NUS card. You can get a wider range of discounts than with your library card alone.
  • When looking for a house be aware that estate agents will describe Moss Side as “Rusholme”, and Whalley Range as “Chorlton.”
  • Even if you feel lonely at first, try not to go home at the weekends too often. Everyone feels like this from time to time, but that feeling will quickly pass. Simply get out of your room and go and do something!
  • Check out the special books collection on the fourth floor of the MMU All Saints Library. They have a really fantastic range of unique handmade books. It’ll provide you with an interesting few hours.
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