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!

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.

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.

Naked Wines are an online wine retailer. And the end of this month they’re bringing 20 independent winemakers over to the UK. They’re putting on a series of wine tasting in 8 cities, including (lucky for us) Manchester!

They’re expected to show over 100 wines during the tour.

The tour also includes some pop-up tastings in people homes and offices, so that should help the working day go with the flow.

We’re the 6th stop on the tour and it’s at The Studio (51 Lever Street, Manchester, M1 1FN).  The wine tasting starts here on 30th June at 6:30pm, so quite a civilised hour.

Naked Wines are hosting the tasting with Stephen de Wet (Arabella wines), Matt and Sam (Plunkett Fowles wines), Jock Harvey (Brewery Hill wines), Benjamin Darnault (Darnault wines), Ryan O’Connell (O’Vineyards wines), Mario (Negreiros wines) and apparently other people too coming along! So if you want to taste good good wine and talk to people who actually grow the stuff come along.

It costs £10 per ticket but you get the cost of your ticket taken off any order you make on the night. Sounds like a fine wine deal to me. If you’d like to order tickets you can do go to Naked Wines and simply book on the tasting.

The competition

I wanted to keep the competition simple, so here it is:

To win 2 free tickets to the Manchester wine tasting leave a comment on this post to tell me “which country are the Brewery Hill wines made in?”

As usual the rules are straightforward:

1) The competition closes on midnight Sunday June 26th, 4 days before Naked wine arrive in Manchester.

2) Everyone who puts the country in as a comment on the this post will be put into a hat and one email will be drawn at random.That email will be used to request your and your own guest’s names so we can add you to the list.

3) If the email requesting names is not replied to within 24 hours, another will be sent and then if there is no reply within 24 hours another random draw will be held and this step repeated until a winner replies

4) The winner will be announced in the blog and a photo would be appreciated so we can post it with your name.

5) please make sure your comment is in on this post

6) This competition is only open to UK readers, who are able and willing to get to Manchester for the wine tasting

7) Manchester Blog editor (Jim Symcox) decision is final

8) Good luck

The Nissan Leaf competition we were running to win a sat/nav was won by Mary from Pinner. It’s a nice prize and I’m hoping we’ll be able to run a few more competitions in due course. Stay tuned!

It’s interesting to note that Manchester-blog reaches as far as Pinner. So I suspect she wasn’t able to take advantage of the test drive at Manchester Central.

I did though. And I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how roomy the Nissan Leaf is. Plus you can have a bit of fun as you try to drive as economically as possible. The Leaf grows a image of a fir tree on the dashboard to represent how you’re saving a tree by responsible eco-=friendly driving. My only worry is that the range of 109 miles wouldn’t be enough to get me to my parents (more than 200 miles away) and I’d have to hang around charging the car for around 30 minutes to complete the journey. Making a long journey much longer. Still for city driving this car has got to be a great investment.

So, well done Mary and thanks to the others who entered the competition. Keep reading and like I said, with a bit of luck and a following wind we’ll have a few more competitions.

As I mentioned in my previous post about the Nissan Leaf Manchester launch Nissan are launching their new electric car (The Nissan Leaf) on Monday 9th May. And to tie in with the launch they’ve kindly offered to sponsor this competition to win a Vexia econav 380 satnav because it ties in with the eco-friendly credentials of the Nissan Leaf by helping you save fuel.

So to the competition then!

It’s fairly straight forward. I want you to comment on the Nissan Leaf Manchester launch  post and say what Nissan claim the cruising range is for the Nissan Leaf. As a very slight hint you may find it if you go to the Nissan Facebook page I link to from the Nissan Leaf Manchester launch post and check one of the Facebook sidebar items.

I wish you all the best of luck and look forward to announcing the winner.

Rules: Simply, as follows:

1) The competition closes on midnight Sunday May 8th, just before the Manchester Nissan Leaf launch

2) Everyone who puts the correct cruising speed in as a comment on the Nissan Leaf Manchester launch  post will be put into a hat and one email will be drawn at random.That email will be used to request your name and address

3) If the email requesting name and address is not replied to within 24 hours, another will be sent and then if there is no reply within 3 days another random draw will be held and this step repeated until a winner replies

4) The winner will be announced in the blog and a photo would be appreciated so we can post it with your name.

5) Putting cruising speed comments into this post will not be counted so please make sure your comment is in Nissan Leaf Manchester launch!

6) In the interests of global warming and postal charges this competition is only open to UK readers, sorry we might get a more global prize another time

7) Manchester Blog editor (Jim Symcox) decision is final

8) Good luck