Lunch at Mackie Mayor in Manchester

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The outside of Mackie Mayor, a food hall at the old Smithfield Market in Manchester

Last week was Christine’s birthday, and so we both took the day off work to spend the day in Manchester. For lunch, we went to Mackie Mayor – an old market hall which is now a food court.

Mackie Mayor is so-called because that’s what’s written in stone on the outside. It was one of several buildings that formed Manchester’s Smithfield Market, and was opened by a Mr Mackie, the then Mayor of Manchester, hence the name. The market closed in the 1970s, and whilst it received a Grade II listing, it fell out of use. Later, the building spent some time as a skate park in the 1990s, but by 2017 it was derelict.

Thankfully, it has been restored and re-opened to the public, and is home to several independent food vendors serving a variety of different food and drink. It’s located on the edge of Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter.

A wide-angle photo taken inside Mackie Mayor showing its glass roof

How to order food at Mackie Mayor

Inside are rows of tables and chairs. Find yourself a seat, and then once you’ve taken note of the table number, you can order your food and drink. You can go up to each counter and order that way, should you wish to.

But, you can also use a web app on your phone called Me&U. Scan the QR code, enter your table number, and you can then order food from any of the stands inside Mackie Mayor. You can even set up a tab for your table, and it’ll generate a separate QR code to allow your friends to order food on their phones and have it billed to your tab. As this was Christine’s birthday treat, I set up a tab and let Christine order whatever she wanted on her phone, with me paying for it at the end. When you set the tab up, you can set a maximum amount, which is then pre-authorised to your card.

My order of a chicken burger with waffle fries and a strawberry iced tea from Mummas at Mackie Mayor

Food at Mackie Mayor

I went for a chicken burger from Mumma’s, which came with seasoned waffle fries and a strawberry iced tea. Christine, meanwhile, went for Chicken Katsu from Chilli B, with a side order of prawn crackers. The food is brought to your table, and everything we ate was nice. Price-wise, it’s good considering the quality – not the cheapest, but nor was it too expensive either.

For dessert, we both had Creme Brulée Cookie Butter doughnuts, and I had a can of Steep Cola. Indeed, you’ll struggle to encounter big brand products here and even the soft drinks are from independent producers.

I suppose the big selling point of Mackie Mayor is the variety – if you’re visiting as a big group, everyone can get pretty much what they want. There’s no requirement for everyone to order the same cuisine, so it’s great if you have fussy eaters amongst your friend group. Vegetarian, Vegan and Gluten Free options are available from some of the stalls, and it’s okay to just visit for a drink and a snack, if that’s what you want. We went on a Tuesday lunchtime when it was relatively quiet, but I can see it being quite a loud place when it’s busy. And you’ll probably have to share your table with other people, since the tables are in long rows.

There is step free access across the building, with a lift up to the balcony area, and there are disabled toilets. There’s also a small children’s play area downstairs, well-behaved dogs are welcome, and free Wi-Fi is available. We certainly enjoyed our visit and I’m sure we’ll end up back there on a future visit to Manchester city centre.

Cliffe Castle Museum and Gardens

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A photo of the outside of Cliffe Castle Museum

On Bank Holiday Monday, we went to Cliffe Castle Museum and Gardens in Keighley, which is about a 40 minute drive due north from where we live in Sowerby Bridge. We’d been to the gardens before on Good Friday in 2024, but the museum itself was closed and so we went to nearby East Riddlesden Hall instead.

History

Like Penrhyn Castle, Cliffe Castle was never a defensive castle, nor is it all that old as castles go – it’ll be celebrating its 200th birthday in the next few years. Instead, it was originally a smaller country house called Cliffe Hall which was then bought and expanded by the Butterfield family in 1848, adopting its current name in 1878. The expanded building gained a ballroom and conservatories, along with a tower over the main entrance.

In 1949, the castle and its grounds passed into public ownership, with financial assistance from a local benefactor, Sir Bracewell Smith. Smith also funded the building of an octagonal art gallery on the side, and it opened to the public as a museum in 1955. This replaced the previous Keighley Museum at Victoria Hall, which is now used as an events space.

A wide angle photo of the Octagonal gallery at Cliffe Castle

Inside Cliffe Castle

Cliffe Castle is a typical ‘local authority museum’ (a bit like The World of Glass in St Helens) in that its exhibits are an eclectic mix of objects bequeathed to the local authority and its predecessor organisations. However, they are grouped together in themed galleries, so it’s not a complete hodgepodge, and most objects come with detailed descriptions.

On entering, there are several rooms set out from Cliffe Castle’s time as a stately home – namely the reception room and drawing room. These are full of period furniture and some musical instruments. You also get to see the lavish decorations on the walls and ceiling.

Whilst there’s no set route around the museum, we next went into the Working Landscapes gallery, which shows artefacts from local crafts and trades from the past such as weaving and clog-making. That led onto the Archaeology Gallery, which includes various hoards of coins and other artefacts excavated in the area. The most recent of which was the Riddlesden Hoard, found in 2014, consisting of over 100 Roman coins.

Next, we went into what was the Butterfield’s ballroom, but is now the Natural History Gallery. This is full of taxidermied animals, the vast majority of which are either native to the UK or are/were regular visitors. Some of these stuffed animals are quite old, and so are rather faded or just badly stuffed, presumably by someone not familiar with what the animal looked like when it was alive. But it’s a decent-sized collection.

The Airedale gallery tells the geological history of the area, including many fossils, and then there’s a mineral gallery with lots of gemstones and geodes – some of which are quite large.

Upstairs galleries

Upstairs, there’s a small gallery of stained glass windows that have been rescued from local churches and halls. The majority of these windows were designed by William Morris or people working for him.

Then there’s a gallery focussing on Keighley’s local history, with various objects on show, ending with a live beehive. The last bit that we went into was the octagonal art gallery that was added in the 1950s, which has two levels.

Exhibitions

When we visited, there were a couple of small exhibitions. One was about the Keighley Cougars, the local rugby league team which is approaching its 150th anniversary, and the other marks 80 years since the founding of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

Overall, we spent a little under two hours in the museum. This was mainly because we were going at the speed of our ten-year-old – I have no doubt that we could have spread it out to three hours or more if we’d had more time to engage with the exhibits. That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of things to keep kids entertained; there are various opportunities to dress up, or practice weaving, and there are trail guides that can be picked up in the entrance.

The gardens

Cliffe Castle’s gardens have undergone a relatively recent renovation. They are on a hillside, with some impressive water features at the bottom, a childrens’ playground in the middle and then a series of glasshouses and aviaries along the side. The aviaries are home to finches, budgies, cockatiels and, um, guinea pigs, with the glasshouses featuring more topical plants and succulents. There’s a wooded area at the very top, but we haven’t been into that.

Accessibility

The ground floor of the museum is all on one level with no steps, although wheelchair users will need to use a side entrance as the main entrance has a couple of steps. Sadly there’s no lift, although the majority of the exhibits are on the ground floor so those unable to use stairs can still see most of the museum. There is a disabled toilet; those needing a Changing Places toilet will need to go to Keighley Leisure Centre which isn’t too far away.

Entry is free, although a £3 per person donation is recommended. Normally the museum is closed on Mondays, but is open on some bank holidays.

There is a small car park on site, which is free. However, it has a maximum stay of three hours, probably because it’s so small. It was almost full when we got there, before the museum had opened. There is additional parking at the nearby Keighley Retail Park, but check the restrictions there too. The nearest electric car charger is at Keighley Leisure Centre, which is a rapid charger on the GeniePoint network.

Keighley railway station is a 20-25 minute walk from Cliffe Castle, with half-hourly trains to Leeds and Bradford and less frequent trains to Carlisle and Lancaster. Keighley bus station is a 15-20 minute walk; the 903 bus runs roughly hourly between 10am and 4pm Mondays-Saturdays and gets you much closer to Cliffe Castle.

Playlist of the month: Months

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A screenshot of the months playlist on Spotify

So this month’s playlist is about, well, months. Basically there are a couple of good songs about September that I like, and I just went from there. It’s 10 songs, and not all months are represented, but it’s a theme, right?

As usual, you can listen along on Spotify.

  • Green Day – “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. This was the fourth single from Green Day’s seventh (and in my opinion best) studio album, American Idiot.
  • Earth, Wind and Fire – “September”. A classic disco track that seems to be in about every third Tiktok video that I’ve come across this month.
  • U2 – “October”. This is an older U2 single from 1981, and was the title track from their second album. Unlike most well-known U2 tracks, this is a piano track with limited vocals.
  • Wyclef Jean – “Gone Till November”. I’ve included the ‘pop’ version as this is the one I remember from watching MTV in the 1990s when this came out. A more downbeat song from Wyclef’s other contemporaneous singles like “It Doesn’t Matter” and “Perfect Gentleman”.
  • Neck Deep – “December”. Note some spicy language in this one. I first came across this in December 2019, when I was going through a bit of a rough time (some job insecurity, problems with this blog and a bad general election result) and this song was, as they say, a ‘mood’.
  • Foo Fighters – “February Stars”. Into the new year; I couldn’t find anything interesting for January so here’s an album track from the Foo Fighters second album. It’s another slower track, which seems to inadvertently be something of a theme with songs named after months.
  • Delain – “April Rain”. This is the fourth time Delain has popped up on one of these playlists of the month, which isn’t a coincidence. We’ve seen them live twice in their original line-up and they used to be one of my favourite bands. April Rain was the first of their singles that I encountered and remains one of my favourites of theirs; it’s the first single from their second album.
  • BT – “Flaming June”. A big change of genre here as this is some trance from American musician Brian Transeau, better known as BT. This was a collaboration with German producer Paul van Dyk, and was a big hit at the time – it used to be a regular on Dave Pearce’s Dance Anthems show on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday nights.
  • Take That – “Sweet July”. The newest song on this playlist, having come out in, you guessed it, this July as the second single from Take That’s tenth album. It’s a funky pop song.
  • Taylor Swift – “August”. With Taylor Swift having released 12 studio albums in her 20 year career, it’s not surprising that I would find one of her songs to fit a theme. This is from her 2020 downbeat album Folklore.

Imperial War Museum North

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A photo of the outside of the Imperial War Museum North museum in Salford Quays in Manchester.

Last weekend, I took our ten-year-old to the Imperial War Museum North, in Salford Quays. I’m choosing to post about it today, for a reason that will become apparent if you read on.

The Imperial War Museum North is one of the five branches of the museum; the first was in London, opening in 1917 towards the end of the First World War. There’s also a branch in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, and the Imperial War Museum also cares for HMS Belfast and the Churchill War Rooms. I’ve been to the London museum once; I was very young and so my memories are vague, but the Queen Mother was also visiting on the same day, presumably to open something. And I’ve been on HMS Belfast, as a teenager, and the Churchill War Rooms in 2012 (which I apparently didn’t blog about).

Anyway, this was my first visit to the Imperial War Museum North. Which, considering it’ll be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year, is perhaps odd. There are very few free museums in the north of England reachable by public transport that I haven’t been to yet.

Inside the museum

Our visit was just in the afternoon, and so we only had time to browse the main exhibition space. There’s a temporary exhibition upstairs on at present, called Outrageous Women: Marriage, Religion and Culture, but we ran out of time to see that.

The main space is one large, open space split off into five zones. Each zone represents a period of history:

  • The First World War
  • The Inter-war years
  • The Second World War
  • The Cold War
  • Into a new century (1990 to now)

You can follow them chronologically – this is what we did – but you don’t have to.

Whilst you will see tanks, planes and artillery in the museum, this isn’t a military museum per se. It’s more about the history of war and conflict, primarily in the UK and Europe, and its impact on people. You therefore learn about the events that led up to wars breaking out, how people lived through them (both on the front lines and at home), and what happened when the fighting stopped.

The Big Picture

On the hour, the lights in the main exhibition space dim, and a short 5-10 minute show is projected onto the walls. The shows vary depending on the time; there are six currently in rotation, and we got to see two of them:

  • Ukraine: Our Ordinary Lives. This follows several young Ukrainians who have remained in their country since the war with Russia broke out in 2022. It shows them trying to live as normal life as possible – attending school, celebrating birthdays, graduating from university – whilst bombings take place around them, friends and family are killed and there are regular interruptions to water and electricity supplies. It’s a reminder of the reality of living in a war zone in the 21st Century, and the bravery and stoicism of young people facing a horrendous situation.
  • The Roads We Walked. This video marks the 80th anniversary of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, which took place at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall, Manchester, in October 1945. It’s delivered as a series of poems, but highlights the role that Manchester had in a number of African nations eventually achieving independence from the British Empire. I recognised some of the names mentioned: Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, who both have universities named after them in their now-independent home countries.
A mangled and rusty window frame from the ruins of the World Trade Centre in New York, on display at the Imperial War Museum North

September 11th

The final zone, which focusses on the present day, includes some exhibits from the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, included the mangled and rusty remains of a window pane from the World Trade Centre in New York. Today is 25 years since those attacks took place, and there is a focus on the resultant wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.

Also in this section is a huge doorway made up of hundreds of suitcases, representing those who have become refugees fleeing war. It’s a common theme throughout the museum, from the Kindertransport in 1938 and evacuations to the countryside in 1939, to the Homes for Ukraine Scheme in this decade.

It’s a good museum, and one that I’m sure we’ll re-visit. Whilst our ten-year-old is mature enough to handle the more difficult themes (and liked seeing the old children’s toys on display), they haven’t quite covered enough history at school to be able to appreciate everything just yet.

Accessibility

Being a new museum, accessibility is good – there are lifts and step-free access everywhere. There are disabled toilets with both left and right hand transfer; whilst there isn’t a Changing Places toilet, there are two within easy walking (or wheeling) distance at the Lowry Arts Centre and at MediaCity:UK. Wheelchairs are also available to borrow whilst visiting, and you can also borrow sensory backpacks. If you have sensory issues, particularly regarding bright or dim lights and loud noises, then you may wish to read their accessibility guide before going.

Entry to the museum is free, although you’re welcome to donate or buy a detailed guidebook. There is a café, but we didn’t eat there on this occasion. Free Wi-Fi is available, including on Eduroam.

Parking is available on site, but has to be paid for. I saw what looked like electric car chargers in the car park, but they’re not listed on any apps and so may not be available for the public to use. Instead, there’s parking at the nearby Quayside shopping centre which includes six Standard-Plus AC chargers on the Evyve network.

There are good public transport options – this, and it being free entry, were key reasons why we went. There is a Metrolink tram stop right outside, conveniently called Imperial War Museum, and this is on the Trafford Park line with trams from Manchester city centre and the Trafford Centre. Trams are typically every 12 minutes. It’s also only a short walk to the MediaCity:UK tram stop. The number 30 bus also stops right outside – this runs from Piccadilly Gardens to the Trafford Centre and seems quite frequent, even on Sundays.

A Bluetooth Dongle for Home Assistant

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A photo of a Krisnorey USB Bluetooth Dongle

Last weekend, I wrote about turning a Tuya device into a Bluetooth Proxy. But if all you want is a USB device that plugs directly into your Home Assistant appliance to add Bluetooth support, then consider this Krisnorey Bluetooth Dongle from Amazon (sponsored link).

If you’re running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, then your device will have Bluetooth support out of the box. But the official Home Assistant hardware, including my Home Assistant Green, doesn’t natively support Bluetooth. If you want Home Assistant to work with Bluetooth devices, then you’ll need a Bluetooth Dongle, or a Bluetooth Proxy.

A Bluetooth Proxy has a couple of advantages over a dongle:

  • If you run Home Assistant Container, or Home Assistant in a virtualised environment such as Proxmox, then you don’t have to bridge the USB Bluetooth Dongle through to Home Assistant.
  • Not all Bluetooth dongles are supported by Home Assistant, so there’s less risk of buying one that doesn’t work.

However, the distinct disadvantage of a Bluetooth Proxy is that it’s difficult to buy such a device ‘off the shelf’ – and not everyone wants to have to flash custom firmware onto a device.

By comparison, a Bluetooth dongle just plugs directly into your Home Assistant hardware. I picked out the Krisnorey Bluetooth Dongle specifically for the following reasons:

  • It supports Bluetooth 6.0. While it isn’t the latest version (which is 6.3 at the time of writing), it’s still a relatively new version of the standard.
  • It has a very long aerial, and so should be able to communicate with Bluetooth devices over a long range.
  • Someone else had previously left an Amazon review stating it worked with Home Assistant.

And indeed it does – I plugged it in, and it worked straight-away. Currently it’s selling for £17, or £15.33 if you have Amazon Prime (we don’t at the moment). There’s an older version which supports Bluetooth 5.4 which is cheaper, but I can’t confirm whether this will work with Home Assistant or not.

Biddulph Grange Garden

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A photo of the Chinese Garden at Biddulph Grange Garden

When I was writing up about our visit to the Plas Cadnant Hidden Garden in July, I realised that I’d forgotten to write about when we went to Biddulph Grange Garden in May. We went there on the May Day Bank Holiday Monday, which also happened to be our wedding anniversary. I assume I had intended to write up about the visit later that week, but then everything went wrong and that visit turned out to be the last bit of long distance driving that I would be doing until at least next year.

I’ve been to Biddulph Grange Garden many times. I have family in the area, and my aunt was a volunteer there for many years, so I went there a lot as a kid. This year’s visit was also the third time we’d been as a household; we first went in 2019, and again during lockdown in the summer of 2020, seeing as it’s mostly outdoors.

A quick history of Biddulph Grange

The National Trust has a more detailed history, but what we now know as Biddulph Grange and its garden first came into being in the mid 19th Century. This included a large house, part of which burnt down and was rebuilt in a different style in 1897.

In the 20th Century, the house was sold and became a hospital, first run by the “North Staffordshire Cripples Aid Society” and later by Lancashire County Council as a children’s orthopaedic hospital. This led to some of the garden’s glasshouses being demolished and replaced with modern hospital wards.

By 1991, the hospital had closed. The National Trust took over the garden, and at the time it was one of its biggest restoration projects ever undertaken. The house remained derelict for a while longer, but is now apartments and separate from the gardens, whilst the rest of the land passed to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and is now the Biddulph Country Park.

As it wasn’t opened to the public until May 1991, when I was seven years old, this probably explains why I remember visiting it so vividly.

The gardens

The garden at Biddulph Grange is split into several themed areas. My favourite is the Chinese Garden, pictured above, which underwent a restoration last year. The garden is home to a number of follies, including the Cheshire Cottage and the Egyptian Court, complete with sphinxes. A more recent addition (in so far as I don’t remember it being there when I was a child) is a woodland play area.

A small and curious indoor part of the garden is the Geological Gallery, a Victorian display of fossils laid out to follow the seven days of Genesis in the Bible. Originally, visitors to the garden would have entered the garden through this gallery, which at one time would have been bigger, but it was partly demolished during its time as a hospital.

I think there’s always a worry when, as an adult, you revisit places you enjoy as a kid to find that they’re not as good as you remember. I’m pleased that Biddulph Grange is a definite exception – it’s still just as fun following the winding paths into the different themed areas. If anything, the addition of the woodland play area makes it better than it was when I was young. It’s a really fun and beautiful place to explore.

Accessibility

Biddulph Grange isn’t flat, and not all areas of the garden have step-free access. However, there is a step-free route marked out on the map which lets you see most of the garden. A disabled toilet is available on site, but the nearest Changing Places toilet is at a Tesco in Kidsgrove, about 4 miles away.

There is a car park on site, but it can get full at busy times. Six ‘Standard-Plus’ electric car chargers are available on the RAW Power network. The nearest rapid chargers are in Congleton, which have hopefully been fixed since last summer’s visit to nearby Little Moreton Hall.

The nearest railway station is at Congleton, which is served by stopping services on the West Coast Main Line – from there, it’s about 2 ½ miles to Biddulph Grange. Alternatively, there’s the number 94 bus from Congleton to Newcastle-under-Lyme, which runs hourly Monday-Friday and two-hourly on Saturdays.

As National Trust entry prices go, Biddulph Grange is mid-tier, so expect to pay £14 each for adults if you’re not members of the National Trust like we are. The garden is big enough to spend half a day at, but it’s not quite a full day out. There is a café on site, which offers free Wi-Fi.

Turning a Tuya device into a Bluetooth Proxy

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A Tuya IR and RF bridge that has been flashed with new firmware using tuya-cloudconverter and can now act as a Bluetooth Proxy

A couple of years back, I bought an M5Stack Atom Lite to act as a Bluetooth Proxy for Home Assistant. Last month, an update to the ESPHome firmware meant that more devices could become a Bluetooth Proxy, including Tuya devices, and so I’ve now got another Bluetooth Proxy in my home.

The device in question is a Tuya Infrared and RF bridge, which I bought cheaply from AliExpress. This runs on a Beken BK7231N chip, which I’ve been running ESPHome on for some time having used Tuya-Cloudcutter to flash it. Since April, it has been running as an Infrared proxy in Home Assistant, but as yet I haven’t got it working as an RF proxy. Although, to be fair, I haven’t got any RF devices that I need to bridge into Home Assistant, so it’s not a priority.

BLE on more chips

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) hasn’t been supported by ESPHome on Beken devices until last month’s update. Indeed, back in January, BLE was fully removed from ESPHome on these devices to save RAM and storage, as it didn’t work at the time. So this is quite the turnaround.

It’s not just Beken chips that have gained BLE support. By making BLE in ESPHome generic, devices with Raspberry Pi Pico and Lightning LN882H chips can also become a Bluetooth Proxy as well, making it available across most of the chips supported by ESPHome.

Better Bluetooth Proxy performance

Something else that’s worth noting about ESPHome’s Bluetooth Proxy support is that there has been a lot of optimisation work over the years. When I first set up my m5Stack Atom Lite two years ago, if you tried to add anything else in ESPHome to the device, such as a web server, you would get a warning when compiling the firmware. This is despite the Atom Lite having an ESP32 chip, which is amongst the more powerful chips that ESPHome supports.

That’s not a problem nowadays, and so an ESPHome device can comfortably act as a Bluetooth Proxy and something else. That means my device can be both an Infrared Proxy and a Bluetooth Proxy – and potentially an RF Proxy as well if I get that working. That means it’ll be capable of doing more with the ESPHome firmware than with the stock Tuya firmware that it came with, as well as no longer being reliant on the cloud.

The Bluetooth Proxy YAML code

If you use a recent version of the ESPHome Device Builder, then you just need to add these Components to your device:

  • Bluetooth Proxy
  • BK72xx Bluetooth Low Energy Tracker Hub
  • BK72xx Bluetooth Low Energy

That’s it – you don’t even need to set any Advanced Settings as the defaults will work fine. However, if you’re old school and want the YAML code, here it is:

bluetooth_proxy:

bk72xx_ble_tracker:

bk72xx_ble:

Then all you need to do is recompile your device firmware, and once it has restarted, Home Assistant should recognise it as a Bluetooth Proxy.

I’ll be keeping my m5Stack Atom Lite for now, but having a second Bluetooth Proxy at home means wider coverage of the house. I may even be able to do things like track the approximate location of BLE devices, based on which proxy/dongle they are closest to. And it’s great to be able to take an existing device that I already own, and give it new features.

Theoretically, if you have other Tuya devices like smart light bulbs with a Beken chip, and can use Tuya-Cloudcutter to get ESPHome onto them, then you could also make these act as a Bluetooth Proxy as well as being a light bulb. It certainly opens up some interesting possibilities.

A return visit to the People’s History Museum

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A banner stating 'Murdoch is Bad News' encouraging people to boycott The Sun and The Times, at the People's History Museum in Manchester

Between returning from Wales, and our ten-year-old starting four weeks at summer holiday club, we had a fallow week where Christine and I took turns to look after them during the daytime. So, I took them for their first visit to the People’s History Museum in Manchester.

Christine and I have been before, back in 2013 before we got married, but neither of us have been since. The People’s History Museum was also in the news in June, as Andy Burnham, then newly-elected as the MP for Makerfield, essentially set out his vision for becoming Prime Minister. By the time we visited, he had indeed become Prime Minister.

Compared to 2013, the two main galleries remain similar. What has changed is the addition of some overlays, which give the experiences of recent migrants to the UK in relevant places. As part of my work in higher education, I found the section about migrants trying to get their professional qualifications recognised particularly interesting. Overall, the museum remains a very left-wing view of British history, with particular focus on the Labour Party, trade unions and the changing legislation to give different groups of people the vote. It’s a reminder of how far we have progressed over the years.

100 Years of Strikes and Solidarity

The current exhibition at the People’s History Museum is 100 Years of Strikes and Solidarity, which marks the 100th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike. As you would expect, the Miner’s Strike is a major focus but it includes more recent industrial action such as the Resident Doctors’ strikes and walkouts by Amazon workers. Indeed, until the end of this month, there’s a build-a-bot activity for kids where they can make their own paper model of a robot costume used by Amazon strikers that is on display in the exhibition.

Accessibility

The People’s History Museum is a model of good practice when it comes to accessibility, with lift access to all floors, more than one disabled toilet (offering a choice of left- or right-side transfer) and a Changing Places toilet. There are also Braille and large print guides to borrow and sensory packs.

It’s in Manchester city centre; we arrived by train and it was simply a case of walking out the main entrance to Manchester Victoria station and then following the River Irwell until we reached the museum, which took 15-20 minutes. It’s also not far from Manchester Piccadilly station either. I personally wouldn’t park in Manchester city centre and would instead recommend Park and Ride.

Entry to the museum is free, but a £10 donation is encouraged. There is free Wi-Fi if you ask for the password at reception, and there’s a café and gift shop.

Sliding into September

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We’re into the final third of the year. As I work at a university, September is a busy month as new students arrive to enrol and returning students come back after the long summer break, so campus is going to be busy again after a quiet few months. This month also sees my employer adopting a consistent hybrid working policy at long last, which means I’ll be working three days a week in the office from now on. Previously it was just two days a week in the office, but there were times when I would work an additional day in the office and so I’m not too fussed about the change.

I’m also off to visit one of the universities in Leeds this month for a meeting, as part of a collaborative project that I’m involved in across several northern universities. We normally meet online, so it’ll be the first time I’ve met some of these people in person, which is nice.

Schools

Our ten-year-old goes back to school this week, to start their final year at primary school. They’ve put on a growth spurt recently and so we’ve had to buy all new school uniform in recent weeks, even though they’ll only need it for a year.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be heading along to open evenings at the local secondary schools. Whilst all three of us are pretty sure which school will be their first choice, we’ll investigate the alternatives as well. The application has to be submitted by the end of next month, and then we find out the outcome in March next year.

Railcards and birthdays

My disabled person’s railcard is up for renewal this month; I’m hoping the renewal process is straightforward and I won’t have to provide evidence that my hearing hasn’t somehow magically improved. That being said, the fact that I have an epilepsy diagnosis and have been deemed medically unfit to drive are also valid eligibility criteria. I’ll be purchasing a three year railcard, as over three years it’s cheaper than a standard annual railcard. And as I can use it for commuting, it saves me quite a bit of money – especially with me being in the office more often now.

Christine has her birthday next week; as with last year, it’s not a round number, but we both have the day off work and so will probably go somewhere for a nice lunch.

Bathroom renovation

Following our new kitchen in 2022, the next big renovation project on our house is our upstairs bathroom. Work probably won’t start this month, but we have had the majority of the new bathroom furniture delivered. Indeed, there is currently a brand new bath sat in its packaging in our living room, and we had to move half a tonne of tiles into the house last week. I’ll post more when work starts; most likely in November but we’ll see.

Unblogged August

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A photo of a blue tit made out of interlocking plastic bricks (Lego, basically) at the RHS Garden Harlow Carr

August is my busiest month of the year at work, although this year I only had to work one weekend, rather than two. That was very much welcome and thanks to some changes with UCAS and some better planning on the part of our systems team at work.

Anyway, we’ve had some free time to do things and so here’s this month’s round-up of things we did that didn’t warrant a blog post of their own.

A return visit to Harlow Carr

We went to the RHS Garden at Harlow Carr in June, although it was a relatively short visit which also accommodated my parents and a member of Christine’s American family who was visiting. Following July’s trip to the RHS Bridgewater Garden, we decided to go back to Harlow Carr to do the bits we didn’t get to do last time, but also to do the Brick Explorers trail. As with Bridgewater, there are plastic brick models of flora and fauna all around the garden and so we followed the trail and ticked them all off. Today is the last day that the trail is running, so unless you can get there pronto, that’s it for this year, I’m afraid.

How to avoid private equity vets

We don’t have any pets, but if you do and you live in the US, Canada or the UK, then Private Equity Vets may help you to choose a veterinary practice that isn’t owned by a faceless corporation backed by private equity. Which is harder than it sounds, bearing in mind that many local veterinary practices retain their names when bought by these companies, rather than being rolled into a national brand. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority is investigating the vet sector, having identified a lack of competition with 6 large corporate groups owning the majority of practices. Here’s a quick YouTube video explaining what’s happening. Found thanks to this Bluesky post.

Backing The Guild: Ren Faire’d

I was one of the 45,000+ backers who helped to fund a feature-length edition of The Guild, Felicia Day’s web series about six characters who play a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) together. The series started 19 (!) years ago, and so the film is to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. Originally launched with a target of $1.5 million (the minimum amount needed to make a cut down version of the script), it went on to raise almost $6.8 million. That beat the Veronica Mars film‘s record of raising the most money for a crowdfunded film. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it goes into production soon, and that we’ll see the Knights of Good hitting a renaissance faire next year.

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