This
week I read The Violent Vol.1: Blood Like Tar, a gritty, urban
graphic novel that I picked up for a quid or 2 at a Golden Orbit
comic fair. It was worth it: it's entertaining, but hampered by a
badly cliched criminal-drug-user-going-clean story and numerous plot
holes (fingerprints not searched for, people not shot when lunging at
someone holding a gun on them, etc.) I bought more on the day- I'm
hoping they'll be better.
Went
out for a friend's birthday to the stunningly unique
Washhouse, a hidden bar disguised as
a laundrette. We had a table booked so arrived and dialled the phone
hung on the wall next to the 'washing machine' (actually a door to
the hidden bar). The receiver asks how many 'items-' we told them the
how many were in our group- and the door unlocked, allowing us
through to the moodily lit bar. The bar itself is a handful of
tables, and the serving area- there's no room for any more, but that
adds to the appeal.
The
cocktails are largely Manchester-themed, nodding to local musical
talent or public figures. The Alan Turing cocktail came with a
rainbow-coloured light-up display and padlock. Turing, renowned for
cracking the Enigma code but later convicted on charges of
homosexuality, is now regarded a hero in Manchester. His work
shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over
14 million lives (wiki), he has a statue in Sackville Park in
The Gay Village, and part of the Manchester inner ring road is named
after him.
I'm
paraphrasing, but with each cocktail the barman would give a short
speech about the concoction and its origins. Some contained pollen or
honey, indicative of the cotton mills in the city, of which there
were hundreds. The mills were compared to beehives, hubs of activity,
the mill workers like worker bees.
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