Animals of October

A rare outing last night to have a substantial meal with some alcohol and a bit of time among some art. We took ourselves down to HOME, Manchester's latest arts hub success story, the evolution of the legendary Cornerhouse cinema. Usually a place buzzing like the proverbial Manchester bee, now just doing the best it can in spite of everything. They've managed to get their theatre and cinema programmes up and running again, and they have the luxury of a spacious restaurant and bar for their lockdown-approved food provision. We were there, predominantly, to scoot around their art gallery, which has reopened with a new exhibition this weekend. It is a triptych of three solo exhibitions united by their use of illustration and their themes relevant to the current situation : Mike S Redmond and Faye Coral Johnson's Bubbling Pitch - a series of feverish and lively dream-like sketches, Joy Yamusangie's Blue Glass Fortunes - a striking exploration of the Congolese diaspora in mo...

To see the true English countryside, follow a walk from an out-of-print guidebook published in the nineties in a part of the land less visited. We have such a book, bought from some charity shop, centred around the Pendle Hill area of Lancashire. Pendle is a haunted place, the Salem of England, famous for its history of witches. There is a 'Pendle way' signposted by cartoon witch silhouettes and pubs that lean hard into Halloween trade. There are plentiful public footpaths and interesting sights to see, but there is less glamour or preservation here than in the Lake District or the Yorkshire Dales. We're north of Burnley, west of Leeds, just shy of the Forest of Bowland, in a curious nook where its easy to sense how a monolithic hill imposed enough psychic force upon locals to convince them of supernatural goings-on.  The countryside here feels angry: we remark upon the sheer amount of signs telling us not to do things: no camping, no picnics, no straying off the path, no f...