Pension lawyer meets world: Manchester weekend

As it turned out I picked a damp weekend in January to visit friends in Manchester. So what to do in the restricted daylight hours?

Saturday's outing was to Styal and the Quarry Bank mill. We passed by the village of workers cottages.

Then through the grounds and gardens to the Mill itself. A grey but not cold day so pleasant enough walking through the steep sided valley, and catching the very first flowers of the year.

Snowdrops out already

It is of course ironic that what was once a dark satanic mill would now be a prime site for conversion into desirable yuppie flats.

Inside however are not middle-class couples tucking into avocado on artisan bread, but a museum displaying both life in the early periods of the mill and working equipment. It was built in 1784, although much expanded over time - the owners were entrepreneurs over more than one generation.

This is a Spinning Jenny if you have never seen one

The equipment (still working and run in front of you by volunteers) is actually a lot later (and mostly American made), as the mill worked on into the 20th century with more modern machinery, although the stories on the boards all hark down to the more exciting times when children worked the looms. The fact is that for all the records they have, they have to make a lot of supposition as to what went on. They have a list of the children who died there (surprisingly few actually) but causes of death are not very illuminating. Most were of "decline", one of "apoplexy". Fatal accidents seemed very rare.

The power originally all came from a water wheel, very environmentally friendly. Unfortunately it is behind glass so not easy to photograph.

Anyway, the Mill is well worth a visit.

Sunday Hilary and I went for some culture and visited the Lowry Centre in Salford. The theatre is based there as well as the art gallery (devoted to the works of Lowry unsurprisingly). Externally it is pretty weird and not very attractive. Rather like some randomly thrown together geometric shapes from a kid's building toy.

But inside is a lot more cheerful.

Now normally (well invariably) when I go and see an exhibition devoted to one artist, it is a special exhibition and crowded, so even though no one physically ushers you through, frankly you don't linger. As the Lowry is a permanent exhibition, and it was a wet Sunday in February, there were no crowds, so I could immerse myself, if that doesn't sound to pretentious. I just mean I could contemplate the stuff a bit more than normal.

Rather like the Bridget Riley exhibition I went to the previous week, it was interesting seeing his figurative art school stuff, like from life-drawing classes. A million miles from his "matchstick men".

There was also tacked on an exhibition of modern art featuring the human body in weird ways (ie no actual paintings/drawings of a human body, just moulds of body parts, or photos of internal organs, or most pointlessly chandeliers with the "candles" made out of glass tubes filled with urine or blood).

It is all very "art school". People desperately trying to do something different and claim to be "saying something" . Frankly moulding a man's penis in glass or perspex is not saying very much. Possibly nothing more than "the artist can't draw or sculpt".

I had an hour to kill before catching my train on Monday morning, so I took some photos around St Peter's Square, the heart of Victorian civic Manchester.

This is the grand Manchester City Hall, taken with street level omitted, since it is covered in hoardings due to restoration works which will take a number of years.