Manchester, so much to answer for…

(Sorry, I can never resist quoting the Smiths). Very unoriginal, I know.

Anyway, it isn't completely gratuitous. I went to Manchester today, for a Map Twats reunion: Jo, Cynical Ben, Neal and Dan. I went an hour early so that I could roam the back streets of that city looking for crack architecture. One of the advantages of being a proud Victorian industrial centre in which nobody's had a job since Charles Dickens asked an urchin to hold his horse is that the place is full of beautiful, abandoned industrial architecture: warehouses, factories, pubs and dosshouses. Many of the streets I wandered around were - two months ago - standing in for 1940s New York for the upcoming release of Captain America. You can see some excellent photos of the filming here, courtesy of fly-sycamore, many of them exactly the same shots I took.

Here are a few pictures - the rest are here, along with some of the Map Twats and a few shots from the Manchester Art Gallery, where we saw the Recorders special exhibition: cameras, heart monitors, microphones etc all responding to your touch. I rather childishly made a bank of pager screens say rude things about Clegg and Cameron.

For the rest of the day, we ate huge amounts of top quality cheese and meats, washed down with fine beers, while Ben regaled us with his Top Ten opinions.