Buy Art Fair & The Manchester Contemporary.

There is art you like and art you don't like, I reckon. I can't be doing with 'modern art is crap' as that dismisses an entire form based on it's point in time. I do think that the greatest creativity in a lot of art these days is the hype, the explanation or the concept rather than the piece itself but if someone's daft enough to spend £50k on anything that has only aesthetic function then that's up to Mr Saatchi himself. I'm content to spend £10 on a print if it gives me pleasure top look at and your rich collector is the same, it's all dependent on what you can afford. £50k would be better spent feeding the homeless wouldn't it? But then so would my tenner, so we're even.
Looking at something created by someone else that has no functional value and being moved in different ways is an odd thing. How can I spend 20 minutes at one stall, looking closely at every piece and then walk past another with a mere 'meh'? Some abstract pieces stopped me in my tracks, others barely raised a second glance. If I had the money, would I buy an original Lowry for £13k? Possibly. Would I buy the pieces described as a 'posthumous Warhol' for the same? No. The Banksy piece for sale ('Price On Application') was superb but would fit nowhere in my pokey terrace.
My absolute favourite painting (actually, there were 2 side by side, both by Mark Demsteader) was beyond my means financially and spatially. They are in front of me in the picture to the left and I spent ages waiting for the right moment to get the photo as it was a view that captured everything about the fair - there are about 4 different styles on display along the sides with my favourite works at the end. It was reasonably busy though (a good thing) so this was the clearest view I got and is terribly focused. I didn't have the £18k to buy either of the paintings so this pic will have to do me.

Some galleries showed works for sale by students (including 6th form students) and the quality was exceptional. I got so engrossed in looking at the art I completely forgot about the talks and was too late to catch Paul Stephenson's screening and Q&A on Warhol, which I regret. With the art cafe in the corner and practical hands on stands for adults and kids this was a great afternoon and I'll look forward to next year.
Weekend i

Anyway, I find i to be informative and well researched. I would say 'balanced' but it's left leaning so probably reports the world as I see it anyway. Good puzzle pages too.
Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole on the Audiobooks.com app
Two things to review here thanks to crimefiles.co.uk who included a link to a free download on their newsletter. Let's do the app first - it's free to download and you then pay for most of the books. There are quite a few freebies, usually read by amateurs and to be honest I struggled to listen in depth to many of them. Keep trying though, you'll find something free that suits you. If you are a regular audiobook listener then I'm not sure how useful the app will be. It's a subscription service - £7.99 per month gets you one download per month. That's a lot and is one book per month enough? More credits can be purchased but it seems like an expensive source of reading if you want to listen in the car on long journeys - I'd stick with CDs from the library. Those with visual impairments will find the service useful but again there must be a more reasonable way to meet the needs of those people? I'm sure they must get subsidised services - Derbyshire Libraries gives you free, time-limited downloads of e-books, e-zines and audiobooks, for example.The app is excellent though - easy to use and navigate through chapters, plus you can pick up quite easily where you left and if you use it to fall asleep to you can set it to turn of in 10, 20, 30 etc. minutes. Quite useful when the book you are listening to is over 17 hours long...
I've never read a Martina Cole before and I'm not sure I've ever seen a TV adaptation of one of her books. I've been missing out - this was a great listen. Imagine the Godfather set in the west End of London. Instead of Italian ancestry imagine Irish ancestry. Instead of a godfather, imagine a godmother.
The story starts with the birth of Maura Ryan in 1950, the youngest of a large family and the only daughter. dad is a drunken waster and the boys are a bad lot from an early age. Michael moves up from being a ne'er do well teen to becoming London's top geezer, feared by all. Maura, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to meet a nice chap and become a housewife and mum. She does meet a nice chap, but he's a copper innee?
No spoilers in my reviews - suffice it to say that Maura ends up as the top dog in Landun, dealing with the IRA, Yardies, other gangs, blaggers, construction bosses and her own employees in the clip joints she controls in Soho. It's an epic story that runs until the 1980s (the novel was first published in the early 90s) and sees Maura's rise amid the social history of post-war Britain. We see the rise of the IRA, the conversion of London's dockland to becoming the property capital of Thatcher's Britain, the changes from swinging London to yuppie London. It's an absolute belter with a sexy, strong and sensual lead character. If you don't want to download this version, get the printed one. if you saw the TV series in in the 1990s (which passed me by) then try it again, I think the plot was changed for that. I'll be seeking out more Martina Cole after this.
A word about the reading. Annie Aldington is the perfect choice - a Londoner herself (Sarf, I think, whereas Cole is Essex) she has the perfect voice for Maura Ryan and does credible differences for all the other characters. No mean feat considering the majority are all brothers from the same family. Aldington has a smoky voice, a London fog of a voice, that epitomises the atmosphere of the book. She can't do Irish, mind.
There's a lovely extra after the book has finished, a chat between Aldington and Martina Cole. If you thought Aldington's voice was smoky wait until you hear Cole's - you can almost chew it!
Hound of the Baskervilles - a farce by northern Rep.

With a brief interval of 20 mins for another pint (we all came back, no danger of doing otherwise!) they kept up this pace for almost 2 hours. For £12 that's incredible value and you don't have to be a genius to work out that with a capacity of about 18 they ain't gonna make a killing. I don't know how many others had free tickets but I hope they also put a fair amount into the jar on their way out. I may love a freebie but I'm not out to put real entertainment like this out of business. Honestly, if ever you get the chance, free or otherwise, see this show. Now to look up other Northern Rep stuff.
Thanks for reading this huge blog (if you made it this far). It's a hobby, nothing more. I like to write but lack the talent to make money from it. I like new experiences but lack the money to pay for all I want to see. This blog lets me pretend I;m doing both and with the money I do have I can still support the peripheries - a drink in the bar before the show, a coffee in the cafe, a small souvenir or programme. I really don't aim to take take take all the time, I do have fully paid for experiences I don't write about! Peace.