NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS 2015

1.       Make peace with my sister

2.       Spend more time with my family

3.       Finish editing my novel and get it sent off to agents

4.       Don’t watch any more bad films

5.       Less online time-wasting and more productive and political social media

6.       Attend more cultural things, but be discerning

7.       Work hard

8.       Try and get out of debt, whatever it takes

9.       Stop biting my nails, but really stop this time

10.    Banish anxiety:  to be aided by next two resolutions:

11.    Drink less

12.    Learn more yoga (and keep up my physio)

13.    Read only quality fiction

14.    Destroy capitalism

Manchester Pride: Pick of the best from the Fringe and beyond the Village

That’s right, there’s enough good stuff going on over this year’s Pride that it warrants a guide to the ‘best of’, and here it is. Between Pride’s Official Fringe, the Queer Alt Manchester collective and the Queer We Are takeover of Bangkok on Princess Street, here's everything amazing you want from this year’s Pride happening outside the Village enclave. This is how Pride should always be, and here’s where you need to be…

Hercules and Geryon by Maurice Vellekoop.

14 August–13 September...

Cockadoodle: The Erogenous Art of Maurice Vellekoop … 2022NQ hosts a delightfully titled exhibition of this eclectic Canadian illustrator of fantasy, humour and (homo)eroticism.; a coup for Manchester; it’s his first solo European show …

15 August–22 August...

Love: Music Exhibition … Men capture men as four Manchester photographers display images of musicians and dancers …

15 August...

Naked Boys Reading: does what it says on the tin, an array of body-positive not-at-all-shy gentlemen read from selected texts before an assembled audience willing to have their self-consciousness challenged …

16 August...
Got Lead: Drawing Sex, Arousal and Desire with Maurice Vellekoop ... get up close with the visiting artist as he shares his tips, methods and inspirations ...

19 August...

Coming Out: From Script to Screen … Legendary Corrie creator Tony Warren is joined by Jonathan Harvey and writers and actors from the soap to discuss the portrayal of gay characters on primetime telly …

22 August...

LGBT History Tour … A queer perspective on the People’s History Museum …

Pride, the Film: Cast Q&A … Meet the cast of a new movie chronicling the relationship between gay activists and striking miners in Thatcher’s crumbling Britain …

Mother’s Ruin: Roadhouse Rehab … Mother never brings a less than stellar line-up, and this Roadhouse bonanza follows suit with David Hoyle, Grace ‘The Face’ Oni Smith, Sheela Blige, The Niallist and more, all under JonJo’s watchful eye …

Bollox Is The New Black: Just guess the theme of this years’ Bollox Pride party at the Star & Garter …?

Grace Oni Smith by Lee Baxter.

23 August … 

Drunk At Vogue: The Boat Party / The Love Party … Two parties, one love, as Drunk At Vogue sail the Princess Katherine boat in the afternoon and disco hard at Kraak in the evening …

Rapture vs Black Angel:  Manchester’s premier women’s clubnight meets the original gay girls RnB party at an epic session for Queer We Are …

24 August … 

BANG! Yard Party Social: All-day full-on backstreet Northern Quarter party with local DJs and party people, all for FREE, outside Kraak …

Madonna Aid: 1984 Loft Party … Wall-to-wall Queen of Pop on the speakers and in the dress up box, all night long at Kraak …

HomoElectric owns (Paradise) Factory once again for three floors of intense partying, with special guests Little Boots and the Crazy P Soundsystem …

25 August … 

Queerchester Film Screenings showcases a diverse selection of DIY films from Manchester’s alt queer scene plus a slection of queer shorts …

The Queer Forum: Like the TED talks but for LGBTQI people, seven fascinating talks from all walks of queer life, plus music, short films and a chance to mingle…

Candlelit Vigil … Sackville Park is the setting for candlelit reflection for those lost to HIV/AIDS and those living with the diseases worldwide …

Related: Gay Icons

All new everything

You know The Circus Tavern, that teeny tiny pub on Portland Street? I don’t think I’ve ever been in there. I’ve definitely never eaten in The Rose Garden, which is a few hundred metres from my front door. Three quarters of Chinatown is a mystery to me. I’ve never been to Urmston Books or Cloud 23 or Trove in Levenshulme. It’s ridiculous. So, 2014 is all about things new (to me).

First stop, Lucha Libre at Great Northern Warehouse. We’d been to the Liverpool original and the one in Manchester proves equally fun, the veggie street food medley is such a top dish and there are too many tempting sides to go with. Drink a Michelada made of beer, lime, tabasco and sangrita all mixed up.

Obviously with the ‘all new’ policy some cheating has to happen. We head to Manchester Art Gallery to see the Jeremy Deller and Grayson Perry exhibitions. Venue, not new; content, new! Both are concerned with class and class mobility, the former curates various artefacts to chart threads of British working class culture from the Industrial Revolution on, the latter is a now-famous sequence of huge, gawdy and incredibly detailed tapestries that re-tell The Rake’s Progress with contemporary characters and multiple other allusions. The Deller is patchy, I think all his output is really, and oil paintings of the smelting process can’t compete with Brian Ferry’s family tree. The photograph of wrestler Adrian Street that advertises the exhibition had reached its zenith as the cover of Black Box Recorder’s England Made Me album (1998), which covers roughly the same territory as the Deller, only better.

Experienced with the Grayson Perry though, a good long think about the class system and its cultural ephemera is prompted. This dovetails nicely with the Alan Bennett passage I have just read regarding the word ‘common’ (his mother’s favoured put-down), the meaning of which I recognise immediately as both ‘something that everybody does and is therefore the lowest common denominator’, and conversely, ‘something that is not the done thing.’ Class. It’s complicated. I should know. I have working class parents, two degrees, no mortgage, no savings, no driving license and I was retweeted by Middle Class Problems this morning.

The next new thing is V Revolution on Oldham Street. This place is a godsend, serving honest-to-badness junk food that’s all vegan. The reason it’s a godsend is that in Melbourne we became addicted to a fast-food chain called Lord Of The Fries. They serve all vegetarian fast food. Burgers, fries, shakes, that kind of junk. I dreamed this place into existence, I know I did. And now we have our own version right there in the Northern Quarter. Chicken and cheeseburger and a coke float twice please and whatever he’s having. V Revolution serves truly scrummy food, laid back and completely chilled (someone was watching a penguin documentary while we were there). If that’s not your thing you can admire the amazing range of tattoos on the friendly staff instead. I have a feeling this place will count as ‘new’ for a good while yet …