Northern Soul

2 weeks ago | northernsoul.me.uk | Helen Nugent

I moved house earlier this year. While my new place is what estate agents euphemistically refer to as ‘a fixer-upper’, in reality it’s a bungalow built in 1988 which has remained largely the same since its inception. While the untouched decor should scream 80s primary colours and funky furniture, what I actually have feels like a 70s throwback. When I saw the pull-down ceiling light in the dining room, I realised I was living in Abigail’s Party.

2 weeks ago | northernsoul.me.uk | Helen Nugent

When you move house, especially during winter, the garden is full of surprises. What is lurking beneath the soil? What will poke its head out in spring? Will there be summer colour? I’ll be honest, I wasn’t optimistic about my new northern plot. Much of it consists of lawn, trimmed with narrow borders that, back in February, looked lacklustre and unlikely to put on a show once summer came around. Months later, my initial synopsis has proved broadly accurate, but there have been a few revelations.

1 month ago | northernsoul.me.uk | Helen Nugent

Up beyond the old Lancashire mill towns of Nelson and Barrowford is a simple single-storey clubhouse. It is an extraordinary survivor, the last Clarion House of its kind in Britain, part of an important social movement which swept the North of England (and particularly Lancashire and Yorkshire) at the end of the 19th century. This was a time when working people had a new opportunity to escape their densely-packed towns and cities at weekends and get out to the countryside.

1 month ago | northernsoul.me.uk | Chris Wallis

When I was asked to review the 18th anniversary menu at Vermilion, self-styled as ‘Manchester’s most glamorous restaurant’, I thought two things: (a) after 18 years, why haven’t I heard of it? And (b) given Manchester’s propensity to bling, that’s quite a claim. I set off to investigate. Now I have the answers. I probably hadn’t heard of it because it’s a bit off the beaten track, in an industrial estate in Hulme Hall Lane, not far from the new Co-op Live arena.

1 month ago | northernsoul.me.uk | Chris Wallis

Well, that was fun. Emma Rice’s stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 movie from a script by Ernest Lehman is a pleasure from beginning to end. Even more so if you know the movie, because much of the pleasure is in watching how this intrepid team of actors tackle what would seem to be unstageable filmic set pieces. I give you the crop duster plane attack on Cary Grant in the middle of the prairie for one.