Not much. As far as I know the world is spinning still, nobody has sneakily changed the colour of the sky around here from grey (and blue on the occasion I'm stuck inside) to pink and the guy working down the chip shop still swears he's Elvis.

I'm waiting for a brainwave of what to write. I've been waiting 10 days, and finally bit the bullet. Result, 2 broken teeth.

Brainwaves, flashes of inspiration, that great idea, everybody around Manchester are having them except me.

Somebody yesterday had the bright idea to pay attention to the sign on the bus that said, 'for your own safety, remain seated until the bus stops.' Where'd paying attention to that sign get her? Half a mile down the road, that's where. On a bus full of scallies and students, the driver will barely stop long enough for anybody near the door to get off, let alone somebody on the top deck. Besides, people who travel on UK North buses should not expect safety on their journeys. Frankly, to reach the destination is pretty good going and to make it without the bus cutting up a cyclist, jumping a traffic light or the driver asking directions is an event worth marking in your diary (presuming somebody on the bus hasn't stolen it).

There are the moments at clarity that a number of girls I've been talking to at parties have had a few months before I'd met them - normally between going out with the dregs of the male barrel and discovering the fairer sex.

There is the genius who put up the road sign in Cheshire that reads 'Children Please Drive Carefully'. A whole town that doesn't mind joy-riders who can't see over the steering wheel but stop at zebra crossings.

I could say what a great idea it was to have a music of black origin awards and not feature blues or rock 'n' Roll acts. Can't it be the Music for Cruising Around In Your Blacked Out Honda Civic awards?

I have had a ringing in my ears for the past 3 years. No, not because I spent my nights in rock clubs and venues. It's because I work in the office location from hell. My office is perched about Exchange Square in Manchester. Exchange Square was meant to be the defining point in the regeneration of the rainy city. Sadly it went rather Pete Tong.

The square has rows of Coloseum-style seating running half the length of it. It was originally laid out as somewhere for people to sit and chat over lunch. However, if you put something that is stone, smooth and slightly sloped, it is only a matter of time before sk8ers arrive. Sitting in my office one could here the screech of plastic wheel on stone. Then the steps seemed to grow messages. Was the stone talking to us or were kids thinking that these nice new bits of stone would be perfect for a message board?

The council came in an used high pressure water on them (the writings, not the sk8ers, however it might have given them a wash for once) - more noise. To stop the Sk8ing, they nailed in metal bars every meter or so, now making it perfect for a resting tramp to lie on.

Running in front of the building where I work, The Old Corn Exchange, is a stream with lots of stepping stones over it and with a set of pipes feeding water in like bathroom taps. Originally it was a nice fun diversion. More recently, however, people are having competitions to do with how much soap or washing up liquid they can put in, covering the area with foam.

Only a year or two after the square was finished, the council saw fit to repave half the square and, as well as not doing a great job, made a lot of noise for a lot of weeks.

In this country and in this century, if you have seating it has to be pointing to a TV or a computer monitor, so they went and stuck a massive TV screen on the side of my building. More noise.

How can they improve on the noise? I know, knock down the Arndale Centre (or only the bit opposite my office) so more months of banging and shaking as the vast ugly building came down and another year or two as a new building has risen in its place.

And on the way home, I pass the teams repairing the roads that they have only just resurfaced (hmm a pot hole is forming exactly where a utility main has been accessed, hmm, poor workmanship??) and sit on an overcrowded bus with my feet going numb while a kid plays with a toy whistle. Yes mothers, here's an open invite. If you are going to bring you kids, hyped up on red bull and McDonald's, onto a rush hour public transport, buy one of them some kind of noisy plastic instrument (a 50p whistle will honestly help your child get onto X-factor any quicker) and get the other one a little toy car so that they can run up and down the isle of the top deck bashing it into all your fellow irritable travellers.

Tonight I am renting Michael Douglas's Falling Down - and making notes.

Ohh, Plugoramalama-ding-dong

• The Master Bluesman - 19^th October at Bowling Green
• Frank is Dead – 22^nd October at The Green Rooms
• Midland Railway – 25^th October at Night and Day
• Narcissus & Silent Quarter – Halloween Special – 31^st October at Soundgarden

Till next time

Peace (and maybe love and blues)

tjm

Mancunian Blues Archive

The_Jon_M

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