You're like Manchester, you've got strangeways

Over to Manchester for a day in a proper top 10 city. Went mainly to look at the Urbis collection of shots of the Hacienda, although perhaps eight pictures mounted on a wall before you get to the Urbis shop is pushing the definition of 'exhibition'. Even so, Urbis is an amazing space, and we mooched about the Level One photographs depicting modern China on the verge of its Olympicfacation. Then spent the afternoon making the inevitable comparisions between Hull and Manc while browsing through five floors of second-hand vintage at Afflecks Palace and finding a record shop that stocks new vinyl and not just tatty old copies of Queen reissues (Picadilly on Oldham Street). Then a desolate and gusty drive back over the M62 to the mean streets of 'Ull.