The Northern Quarter, Manchester

Originally the centre of the fashion / rag trade in Manchester which then started a decline in the 60's and 70's to become seedy back streets with quirky shops in the 80's and 90's (who remembers Afflecks Palace?).  Now completely re-invented as the Northern Quarter..  We went yesterday in 18-20 degrees sunshine and had a really good time..  Lots of street art, small exhibitions and plenty of interesting artisan shops.  Of course it is now more expensive but still full of interesting characters - my son explained that the fashion for blokes is still "lumberjack" with the full beard and looking as if you've just been on a logging trip to Canada - we saw plenty of those around...

Sorry this is a back-blip but I just had to watch the Eurovision Song Contest last night which was tremendous and I was so glad the Swedish song Heroes won.  

The UK (of course) came nowhere..  We just seemed to have lost the connection between our music and the people (bit like the Labour Party have lost their connection with the voters!)

Anyway the rest of the show was great, vibrant, zany and thoroughly enjoyable.