It always grows to fill all available mindspace (allowing, I suspect, for quite a lot of barren or barely fertile ground, only capable of sustaining freecell and minesweeper, and mindless sci-fi on tv - the shame of it) and then it's over and I feel relieved and faintly bereft.  Something has been taken away and I miss it, while still being pleased it isn't there for a while.

Yes, the Manchester Artists Book Fair for this year has been and gone.  I always feel a little too close to it to judge how things went, but I know that I had a good time, which must be worth something.  I even had table space for my books this year - Emma very kindly gave up a day and a half of her time to look after things for me and (I knew she would) did a fantastic job of selling things for me, as well as generally helping out with everything else.  I'd like to put it all down to the boundless energy reserves of youth, but she's also very very good with people - it's something of a gift.  

Meanwhile I talked a lot and counted a lot and photographed a lot and made a fair number of cups of tea and coffee as well.  And, um, I might have spent a lot too.  Mind you, I have some very lovely books to show for it.

So now what?  Well there's still the 20:20 looming (and I still haven't figured out when I'm going to finish the edition for that) and the sorting of it, and then - because Emma was so super-efficient at shifting my work - I'd better get making books (and prints) for the Volume fair at the shiny new Birmingham library in December.  It's definitely time for some new work. 

Nearly there.  Then  I can get back to thinking about everything else.  Do come along - go to www.manchesterartistsbookfair.com for more details.

I've just reread an earlier blog and realised that yes, in the end I missed the Norman Ackroyd exhibition at Atelier Rose and Gray.  I did actually try to organise a trip more than a week ago, but to be honest I couldn't work out where the hell the gallery actually was.  The website didn't help one iota.  And if you already don't have a lot of space in that particular day, the idea of spending hours searching the streets doesn't appeal.  I was going to ask people who'd already been, but time did that thing where suddenly you realise it's gone.  I blew it, didn't I?

Still time for the other show I was intending to visit, just.  I know exactly where it is, which is always a good start, but I can tell already that I'm going to be lucky to make it before that one, too, closes.  Time!  Sometimes it isn't as stretchy as it should be. 

As for talking about the Manchester Contemporary, too late, too late.  I'm not doing so very well just at the moment. 

I mentioned, not so very long ago, that HBP was taking part in the Manchester Weekender - so today two pairs of valiant souls, Claire and Rob, and Andy and Sam, are in charge of two Radical Print wandering workshops, wending their wobbly, windswept way(s?) along the Oxford Road corridor, either twittertyping or letterpressing for passers-by, and handing out ('here are some we made earlier') posters, flyers and leaflets with a more (or less) radical message.

I rather enjoyed producing stuff for it - nothing took too long and, because it was by far the quickest way to produce slightly 'arty' copies in reasonably large numbers, all were reproduced on the workshop risograph.

Have I mentioned before my unscientific theory that, on any motorway journey of, say, 4 hours or more, there will at some point always be cows ambling slowly over a bridge above the carriageway?  It was certainly true again today - I'm sure I'm right on this. 

Incidentally, on 'pm'  I heard a phrase guaranteed to go down as one of my favourites of the year - "In a post-crisis yacht market...".  Not terribly useful in everyday conversation, I know, but I still love it.  

This is another poster for this year's Manchester Artists' Book Fair - well, actually it'll be the catalogue cover, but I think it works nicely as a poster.  We distribute letterpressed bookmarks as flyers locally - set and mostly printed by Elizabeth Willow (letterpress artist, book artist, performance artist, probably everything-else artist too - she never seems to stop doing, yet still manages to look cool, calm and competent) - so the middle of the poster is a copy of this year's bookmark and the outside is a fabric pattern as printed (in burgundy) by our local risograph and eco-friendly printers marc.

Anyway, so I spent a good section of yesterday tramping round sections of Manchester leaving a trail of bookmarks wherever I thought they would be well received - hence the sore feet (better now, thanks for asking).  Plenty more to go, though.  They're often printed on discarded screenprints, resulting in a random range of designs - there have been a couple (or so) each year that I have failed to part with; the collection is coming along quite well.

And I managed to include a couple of exhibitions en route.  First was MMU Special Collection's The Language of Process: how new materials and technologies are changing product design ( Monday 23rd September - Friday 20th December; just ask on the ground floor of the library and they'll direct you).  I had bookmarks in mind, but (not surprisingly, on a saturday) the people I wanted weren't there to talk to.  The exhibition was there, however, so I had a good browse.  I thought it would be good - when I put it on the book fair site, I thought I should look up the named designers at least, and liked what I found - and it is good.  At first I wasn't quite sure just how good - the first few pieces are fine enough but not overly exciting - but then I reached the lit up section.  Remember, I don't approach this as a designer or even an artist - what I want is the 'ooo' factor, and for me the area with lights was where I first felt it.  I think my favourite piece of the show has to be the analog digital clock by Maarten Baas.  It looks just like a digital clock at first, but you don't have to watch for long before realising that something isn't... quite... right.  There are odd shadows.  Time changes surprisingly slowly.  What it turns out be instead is a film, 12 hours long, showing someone physically changing the time in front of your eyes by painting over and wiping off windows.  You can see them, moving about!  Isn't that great?  With the added little twist that back in the days of analogue only, 12 hours straight off just couldn't have been filmed.  Fantastic. I also thought My new flame by Moritz Waldmeyer for Ingo Maurer was rather brilliant - tall, slender, circuit board candles with digital flames at the top, but such wonderfully convincing flames.  I didn't blow at them, inspite of the urge, because I didn't want the disappointment of them not bending as I blew (and besides, what if they had done?  What if I 'blew' one out?  What then??).  There was, in fact, a shedload of excellent work there, and I'm not going to go through the lot because I think people should visit - so just a few more mentions.  The ripple tank table (Daniel O'Riordan) is a very understated but lovely item, a table with ripples on the surface - and you don't have to feed any fish.  I loved the idea of the chairfix by Ben Wilson - a simple design, made democratic by all being made from one sheet of many-ply wood, then made original again by the designs printed on it.  And Etive (Drummond Masterton) was a small metal cup (non-functional, as they described it) containing the topography of part of Glen Etive.  Most of the work, if not all of it, has computer design at the very heart of it - that is, after all, much of the point of the exhibition.

Later in the afternoon I made it to the John Rylands.  I had remembered that the Polari exhibition, organised by Jez Dolan and Joseph Richardson was on - Jez is a member of Hot Bed Press, so we were able to see some of the work being created.  I didn't want to miss the show, but it turns out that it's on till February, which is good because it was reasonably scattered and I'm sure I only found some of it on this visit.  I had forgotten, however, that the Boccaccio exhibition was showing too.  Lots of old, old books with dense type or script and with illuminated letters, plus a couple of cabinets full of artists' books made especially for the exhibition.  But I was really by now on the bookmark trail, so again a return visit is in order, and I have until December.  Though I must not wait that long!  I already have two exhibitions I'd like to see next week before they disappear.  It's too easy to think 'I still have time' until I don't.

I was going to talk about the Manchester Contemporary (already a week gone) as well, but maybe later. 

A gripe.  I don't indulge them all, but once in a while I treat myself.  This one is about roadworks.

I don't know if this is a national development, but locally something has changed.  In the past, when there were horrendous roadworks, liable to make your life a misery, or somewhere closed due to, I don't know, building a supermarket in the middle of a village crossroads, there used to be signs, signs that might apologise for any inconvenience caused or signs that might divert you around the problem.  Ok, so diversions can be a mixed blessing - by the time you get to a distant junction, you might well be faced by a handful of through-the-window shapes and have forgotten which one you should be following - but at least you felt that Powers somewhere were making an effort. 

Now?  Far too late to be of any use whatsoever you are informed that there will be 'long delays' and that you should 'find an alternative route'.  

Thanks.