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...

Content warning: a brief mention of pet death in here, as well as talk of various slightly yucky bodily medical things. This is Chuzzlewit. I suppose his first name must be Martin, but we never call him that. To us, he’s more often known as Chuzz, or Old Man, but we’ve been calling him the latter for about three years so he can’t have been particularly old when he first got that moniker. The wiry hair and the cigarette toned colours give him an old man vibe. Also, periodically, once every six weeks or so, Chuzz and I have a few words about ear wax. He’s one of our twelve rescue guinea pigs and he lives with his partner Princess Peach, and neighbour Daphne (after Du Maurier), in his lovely open-top cage here in my study. These three are collectively known as ‘the study pigs’ while the rest of our piggie gangs live in the second bedroom, just around the corner. We’ve had fuzzy Chuzz for a number of years and he’s a generally jolly little chap who never seems to want much out of life exce...