The vibes are off in Manchester

The vibes are off in Manchester like the vibes are off in New York. Are the vibes on anywhere? I wanted to go Mozambique to make some pretty friends but my Mum – the catastrophist – said there’s ISIS in Mozambique. I laughed in her face because Mozambique’s just beach huts, cool vibes, long nights of drums and palm wine. But apparently there is ISIS in Mozambique. I now admit some fears are founded.

In Australia, they’re ripping up the pavements over vaccine impositions. Italy’s historic cities are quiet without their tourists, but at least there’s no longer mask mandates on the street. No evidence of outdoor transmission ever but mask mandates on the street? Fascism must die hard, like any other love affair. I used to say I’d sell my soul for an hour in St Peter’s alone, but when I got there and the crowds were gone, my spirit didn’t climb the pillars and fly through the Duomo to heaven as per. I think it missed the American accents. My friend from the Netherlands is shocked no one’s wearing a mask in Manchester, and we’re all coughing.

When salt fell from the ceiling like acid rain in the Warehouse Project, I was sure life’s a movie, and we’re all going to make it. Two days later I had a fever and persistent cough. But you can’t catch a mind virus if you don’t take a test, and they can track me like an animal and trace my outline when I’m dead, so I think I’m fine.

There are now three natural wine bars in the Northern Quarter/Ancoats (four from Friday through Sunday) and last year there was one. Where does all the money come from? Boohoo man babies, tiny dogs, puffer jackets, Prada bags, linen blazers, Campari and white wine, small plates. Is there a Ted Kaczynski out there for Capital and Centric? Or those evil horny KFC adverts where people fuck the chicken with their mouths? The temptation’s there, as it is in all things, but I’d rather take another St Tropez in The Jane Eyre. Simply Lillet Rosé, Virtuous Raspberry, Maraschino, fizz. Truly the French Riviera in a glass. I sympathise with this drink, because I also consider myself a virtuous raspberry, except when I’m not.

Ten years ago, Manchester was a five-storey city with a few exceptions. Now there’s luxury skyscrapers everywhere, and most don’t even have balconies. A drag, certainly not for smokers. I once read that if you live on the ground floor of an apartment building or in a house, you have healthier gut bacteria than people who live in skyrises. You’re exposed to plant and animal bacteria that float in from the street. You breathe it in, and it becomes a part of you; the wing of a swallow in your stomach. Four to five floors up, you’re only breathing in human faecal matter and dead skin.

Manchester is a water city, like Venice or Amsterdam, but Ancoats Marina is one thing and Miles Platting is another. I prefer Miles Platting because my hipster friends worry we’ll get stabbed there. I insist that we won’t get stabbed, that the vibes may be off, but these freaks are just solid Mancs like me, not you new arrivals. Even if I grew up in Oldham, my grandparents were from Collyhurst, so I know what’s what. Saying that, my friend did see a guy kick the shit out of a pregnant woman there. And I once saw a woman in a pink dressing gown with a dwarf doppelgänger (also in a pink dressing gown) pushing a retarded looking dog together in a pram. But it’s fine. The vibes are off in a good way.

I say this earnestly because I know from experience that Miles Platting has its mages as well as its degenerates. I burnt a letter there for personal reasons, and this old guy with one eye shouted at me from across the street as the fiery letter curled: “There’s terrapins in the canal you know!” Alright, and? “Once they lived in somebody’s house, but they escaped down the drain, and now they’re free in the canal.” This was a metaphor, I’m certain. I know I am a terrapin in the canal. I didn’t see any at the time, but my friend sent me a picture two days later and there are real terrapins in the Rochdale canal, who are getting on with it, getting free. We can all gain something from this.

Ancoats Marina might have terrapins, but it doesn’t have mages. Sometimes kids drink beer there and play psytrance on a Soundsystem during the day, and I viscerally hate them, but only because of the psytrance. Any other type of music would be better, but drill would be ideal. Something to disquiet the unbearable whiteness of monied Manchester. Psytrance doesn’t do that.

The Marina’s amazing because property developers spent a lot of money to make every building look like a cardboard box wrapped in tinfoil. Like, “Here’s one I made earlier.” I hope that with climate change these modern boxes burn holes in the pavement as magnifying glasses do with ants. That’ll show us.

People like to sit on the Marina to smoke and drink wine with their friends and I can’t knock it, it’s a damn good time. A lot of people roll joints and there’s always a weed smell in the air. You don’t see the police at the Marina because what’s the point in nicking kids with bright futures? Better to stay where Ardwick meets town to stop and search black lads, to remind them that this city isn’t for them, although they grew up 10 mins from the action. 

I’ve been in fun-time groups at the Marina before but more often I go alone. I like to sit with the quiet cohort of middle-class fashionistas reading their books on picnic blankets, looking beautiful and salty. Sometimes the readers accidentally end up in a circle or a corner together on the grass, due to sheer magnetism. That’s happened to me; I’ve wound up in the reader’s corner. I’ve never spoken to the other readers, because people read in public places to be seen, not spoken to, and because no one’s reading anything good. It’s all Sally Rooney bourgeoise novels or – even worse – Florence Given libfem self-help. Maybe if someone was reading Tao Lin or anything from New York Tyrant or Dostoyevsky Wannabee, or a book about sadomasochism I’d say hi, because I’ve found a kindred spirit. Although I know that I’d be rude to me if I approached me, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The vibes are off in Manchester but everything’s alright. Some people are having a lot of sex and other people are having none, and neither of the groups are comfortable with their own dynamic. My friend’s being catfished by a “billionaire” on Hinge who she’s lining up to become my sugar daddy and take us all to Barbados to party and play forever and ever Amen. If I do get a billionaire sugar daddy, I’ll make this vibe check into a novel. A whole damn vibe check as a novel, and the vibes will be off, but in a good way. Always in a good way.