The Royal Mail’s 26-stamp, alphabetical journey around the UK concludes with the second part (M-Z) of its UK A-Z series and the launch of 14 new stamps, featuring iconic landmarks across all four countries. UK A-Z Part 2, issued on 10th April, celebrates some of the UK’s most famous tourist attractions. They range from the impressive Narrow Water Castle in Northern Ireland and the dramatic Urquhart castle in Scotland to the beautiful Portmeirion in Wales and our own Manchester Town Hall.

The First Class Manchester Town Hall

Manchester Town Hall was designed and built in 1877 by Alfred Waterhouse, and is the headquarters of Manchester City Council.

The original Manchester Town Hall was constructed between 1822-1825, but was quickly outgrown as Manchester enjoyed the boom years of its local textile industry.

Planning for a new town hall began in 1863, when the Manchester Corporation demanded a building ‘equal if not superior, to any similar building in the country at any cost, which may be reasonably required’. They were presented with a building in 1877 that is regarded to this day as one of the finest interpretations of neo-gothic architecture in the United Kingdom.

The town hall was granted Grade I Listed status in 1952.

Royal Mail has kindly let me offer you a complete set of the new set of 14 stamps of the UK A-Z Part 2 completely free.

Unfortunately there’s a small number of sets available.

To make this as fair as possible leave a comment here and I’ll put all comments into a draw. I’ll then ask the winners to email me their addresses and I’ll send off their set.

Happy commenting!

Following on from yesterday’s Christmas post on the flashmob at Tesco in Cheetham Hill the people involved kindly sent me a video of the whole thing. It’s a pity we didn’t get more shoppers looking gobsmacked, as I’m sure they were.

And of course it was for an extremely worthwhile cause: Raising awareness of the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland and of dementia during the festive season.

So enjoy the flashmob video and if you look up their site (see link on Manchester’s blog ) now you’re even more aware of dementia.

A Christmas flash mob choir zipped into my local Tesco today and at 1pm they started singing that old favourite “Jingle Bells.”

The choir in question is a 30 strong award winning ladies choir group, Crystal Chords.

The choir, supported by Tesco,  sang to raise awareness of the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland and of dementia during the festive season.

We’re being encouraged to sign up for an online advent calendar that carries daily tips and advice for enjoying and managing the festive season from celebrities, dementia support workers and others living with dementia.

A video of the flashmob can be viewed from 7pm, today at www.alzheimers-tesco.org.uk

The Tesco store manager (Andrew Brown) said: “Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland are our charity of the year and as a store we’ve been doing lots to fund raise for them this year, so we’re delighted to be hosting this fantastic event for such a worthwhile cause.”

Apparently the Alzheimer’s Society had a forty-three per cent increase in calls to the helpline in January from family members worried about a loved one.

Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive, Alzheimer’s Society says: “If you haven’t seen a relative for a while, you might be more aware of changes in their behaviour. If you do become concerned about a loved one’s memory then get in touch with a dementia helpline.”

The online advent also has three opportunities to win £200 of Tesco vouchers so you can get your festive shop for free this Christmas. So remember to sign up for the calendar at www.alzheimers-tesco.org.uk

The whole thing took 3 months of careful and secretive planning and rehearsing with only Tesco store manager Andrew Brown, Crystal Chords Musical Director Monica Funnell, and a couple of support staff from the Alzheimer’s Society and Tesco partnership teams in the know. The choir visited the shop individually when doing their weekly shops to plan the logistics and practised the song in secrecy at their regular venue.

I applaud Tesco and Crystal Chords for doing their bit for raising awareness of dementia which can be so worrying for people and their relatives.

Isn’t it strange? How suddenly you can get a few mushrooms or toadstools spring up.

I was in the garden the other day and I noticed quite a huge number of toadstools.

They were spread between two stepping log “stones” and also under the trampoline.

What was really quite surprising was that there appeared to be two varieties fruiting at the same time.

Interestingly I’ve never seen either of these varieties in our garden before.

And once sensitised to the appearance of these fungal visitors I started to see them elsewhere.

For instance, I saw a little clump of the toadstools shown in the photo at All Saints Church in Stand before the Remembrance Day service on Sunday.

And now of course I’m wondering whether they were toadstools or mushrooms and what their names are.

So if any fungi collector is reading please let me know and put me out of my misery!

Last Saturday we were privileged to have a visit from Paul Griffiths, who together with his wife Elaine, bought Gorton Monastery for £1 and then went on to bring it back to almost its original splendour. Paul told us that the 6 foot Franciscan saints statues that went round the top of the walls had been taken away for salvage and then put up for auction in Sotheby’s. The trust had managed to get them and then due to the state of the monastery the statues had to be put into storage for decades. Now he’s happy to report they’re out of storage and that they’re being carefully restored and will eventually return to their rightful places in the monastery.

Paul then went on to tell us about how slowly but surely they had managed to bring the monastery back from the brink of complete demolition to the magnificent building it is today.

To support the building running costs, and to make sure it remains a working building the monastery is open to commercial organisations for events and meetings and also puts on its own events, such as its Victorian Christmas lunches during Christmas.

We also have a Victorian Christmas experience, where Father Christmas arrives by horse drawn sleigh. Although the sleigh does look remarkably similar to a horse drawn cart the children love it.

Anyway, after Paul had left there was a lot to talk about. After all one of the things he’d asked was what was our 5 year plan. And in reality we knew we didn’t have one. We know what we’d like to do but we don’t have any plans for making the dreams a reality.

Although to give the original volunteers massive credit they’ve achieved a huge amount in renovating the interior of the hall and dressing it as a Victorian might have seen it. And reaching their goal which was to bring the Hall back to the community.

To see for yourself come to our next open day, 19th November, you’ll get a warm welcome and you can see a little slice of Victorian England in Manchester.

So here we are again. Clayton Hall Museum opens tomorrow (1 to 4pm) so people can look around and touch Victorian England in the various rooms of this well-loved Hall.

We were also open last Saturday under the English Heritage weekend scheme where people can get to see good quality and interesting places open for free, even places that don’t usually open.

Luckily we’re free!

The gift shoppe (which I’m still running for my sins) has got a brand new counter and a few more books and interesting gifts to browse through, and if something tickles your fancy to buy.

Remember that the money we make in the gift shop and the cafe goes straight into helping us improve the hall.

Hopefully, we’ll have good weather, although even if we don’t the hall is one of those places you can enjoy when the rain is bucketing down outside.

So come on down and enjoy what we have. We’re a friendly bunch and maybe you can show us the plans which have the secret passage to the church written on?

So the riots in Manchester have stopped.

The shame of these particular riots was that there was no valid reason for them. Nobody was protesting about an injustice, or about any rotten political machine.

It seems clear that the only reason was to break into shops and steal anything that wasn’t battened down. The small number of people involved were mainly young and seemed hell-bent on getting shops electrical stuff, designer gear, wine and crisps into their hot, greasy palms.

And of course the career criminals took full advantage of the chaos to spend their time to completely suck goods out of well protected shops.

How do parents of the children and young people who were involved in the whole shameful episode feel? Are they pleased, because their children showed a bit of spirit and anyway, “the insurance will cover shops losses?” And yet not every shop was insured. But of course if anyone taking part had even thought of it they would have blamed the shop owners for not being insured.

After all it’s clear that personal responsibility is something these children don’t appear to believe in.

However, we can be very proud of the way so many young people of Manchester rallied round and helped in the massive clean-up that started as soon as the rioters had started to drift homewards with their spoils. We can also be proud that the Greater Manchester police didn’t go over the top and try and beat up these silly misguided people, even though many of us were angry at the wanton destruction.

Some people might say that these riots were the same as the Moss Side ones in the 80′s. I was in Manchester then and I don’t believe these were anything like them.

Hopefully the sentences people are receiving will help to show that civilised society cannot tolerate this type of behaviour. Equally I’m quite sure we’ve learnt lessons that we need to apply to stop just blind greed causing a riot.

Ben and Jerry’s Sundae Festival caught our attention yesterday and we rolled up to the cordoned off part of Heaton Park with a lovely big Helter skelter inside. Once inside we discovered a lovely atmosphere with lots of space and apparently around 7,800 people in to take part in the activities. The first port of call was obviously to find and eat some of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Then wander off and listen to the bands on the main stage and the acoustic stage.

However, as we had the children with us we got distracted by fun events like toe-wrestling! And as we wandered round we collected more ice creams. Although remind me to get in training for when I get the children a smoothie next time as I had to cycle to power the smoothie liquidiser! Still the smoothie was yummy.

The toe wrestling was fun with grown men, and women, taking their shoes and socks off and intertwining their toes and an Americanised presenter whipping the crowd into a frenzy (of laughter).

Wythenshawe community farm was showing cows and sheep in the area near the entrance, which was great for the children to have a look at.

Meanwhile, back at the toe wrestling, once the winner was acclaimed we moved on to the Helter skelter where we queued excitedly, still finishing off our second ice-cream. I got the feeling we were a bit behind in the ice cream stakes.

Then the children got to zoom down the slide. Although it doesn’t got particularly fast there’s something fun about going down a helter skelter, especially on a lovely sunny day!

Eventually we decided to go down to the main stage and listen to the bands there. We saw Fun Lovin’ Criminals and a couple of others. Generally a good time was being had by all, lots of rugs spread out, a genial crowd, people having a great time and a serious number of people standing up and waving towards the stage.

If this show is publicised better next year it’ll be great to go as I’m sure the people who went this year will be back next year as well.

The general consensus after we tiredly walked home was that we’d all had plenty of ice cream and we’d had a good time too.

Clayton Hall museum opens for it’s monthly outing tomorrow (16th July) and is running a new craft workshop where children get to make a peg doll (for a small charge). The entry to the museum itself is free so don’t feel that you have to pay big to look around. In addition we have a guide in each room who can explain what’s what.

And as you can see from the picture children can get dressed up in Victorian clothing and get to touch the stuff!

Hopefully we’ll get the weather we’ve had for the last two days here in Manchester – sun and blue skies. Although as I write this I notice some clouds have suddenly appeared and are looking blacker than I like.

Still, there’s plenty to do inside and of course you can come into the cafe and have a nice piece of home-made cake and a beverage of your choice.

While you’re there, say hello to me as I’ll be manning the shop. And at the moment it’s stuffed with loads of things. My only problem is that my children (and me) are going to buy lots of the things we’re meant to be selling!

Anyway, it should be good. Come along and support a volunteer created museum and see how a Victorian family might have lived.

If you like ghosts apparently we have a few. Although to be honest I’ve never felt any sort of presence.

We open on the dot at 1pm and we are looking forward to seeing you there.

Manchester basking in the sunshine is always jokingly referred to as a once in a year experience. However, like I’ve said before Manchester definitely does attract some great weather. As an example look at the fine weather we’ve been having recently. Granted it’s actually raining as I type these words but that has not dampened my enthusiasm for the lovely weather that Manchester gets. And yes that sunshine does come more than once per year.

In fact over the weekend we were blessed with beautiful weather yet again and Kay, Sarah and Rachel went off to Clayton Hall to help with the visit of the Lord Lieutenant of Greater Manchester, Warren Smith.

The hall positively shone in the summer sun and with the nicely mown lawns looked very much a well-kept Victorian house.

Greater Manchester’s Lord Lieutenant was apparently very impressed with what is being achieved at Clayton Hall. Hopefully he’ll come again and see how much other people like it too.

When I turned up, after Mr Smith had departed, I discovered that the gift shop had been stuffed to the rafters with new and exciting toys, books and other goodies.

I can’t wait for the next open day because it’s great to get feedback about how people see the hall and to listen as they tell you their own experiences with the Hall itself, other Manchester Victorian experiences or Clayton and the immediate areas around Clayton when they were children.