I've been out and about all week gathering lots of inspiration from a wide variety of Manchestery cultural things. As well as the reading on tuesday I've been to the Cube gallery and the Whitworth. Not sure I can cope with all the excitement, I think I'm going to just keep my head under the duvet all weekend.

The Cube was yesterday, I went to the preview of their Capture Manchester exhibition. It was about 600 different people's views of Manchester. Naturally there were lots of images that were virtually the same, but there were also some amazing photos that made me want to find the part of town they're taken in. In the main part of the gallery as you walk in there's also an exhibition by John Davies of his spectacular landscape shots, including some around Manchester. Davies has convinced me that it actually is grim up north, but I still love it.

The Whitworth was the day before. I went with a photographer friend who wanted to visit the Subversive Spaces exhibition, I didn't really know what to expect but I was totally floored. It is really inspiring to look at the work of the surrealists and see how they focused their ideas into what they felt was the essence of what was important and then put that into their art. It really made me want to just sit down and think about what I'm doing with my writing and why. It features a really interesting piece by Gregor Schneider called Kinderzimmer which I don't want to say too much about because I think it's best experienced with no expectations. I loved it, my photographer friend hated it and the third person with us was somewhere in between. We all agreed that no matter if you liked it or not it really made you think.


Well it has been a busy week so now I'm off to relax with some Marxist literary theory and be lulled into a sense of gentle indignation about how bourgeois everything is, apparently even historical fiction.