Thursday, 18th May, 11am: TV interview on RT TV (Underground) 
Friday 19th May. 10.40pm Birmingham 02 Institute.
Saturday 20th May: Wake 5am arrive 9am Manchester Central The Cooperative. 
11.15am The Ambassador for member pioneers.
I speak 1.26.38.
The coop schools. 
Leftfield at Apollo live in Manchester. Ends on a song from me.
It’s the last gig (for me) of the tour.
Sunday 8am 21st May. Wake in My hotel, It’s my Birthday
11am a spa. #Birthday
1pm. El Gato Negro for cracking tapas.Birthday. 
Online artwork from Debbie. Look for signs of what’s to come. irst in this drawing.
7.30pm. King StTown house. My Birthday Party. Miz holds up the peace sign
Carla Yvonne and Yusra manchesters strongest sisters
Carla Henry and Yusra Warsama, Manchester’strongest.
.
Shobna Gulati. The wise one. Fun too. The best.
Ilyas Nagdee is the National Black Sudent Officer. Naa ACquah is the general secretary of THE student union in Manchester.
Anna Chojnicka: CEO of Reach for Change in Ethiopia.
Julie Hesmondhalgh with camera. She’s an incredible actor in front of the camera.
Shereen Ashton came straight from a performance tonight.
Tom Bloxham caught the creeping outer darkness.
All parties end. Subrina Kidd seems to know what’s coming.
All parties end: Shobna Gulati Charles Lauder and Clive Hunte 
All parties end: Kate and Paul Sapin.
Monday 22nd Manchester town hall. I attended an illustrious evening hosted by Leader of the council Sir Richard Leese and Vice Chancellor of University of Manchester Nancy Rothwelll at The Lord Mayors Parlour. It is a tribute to Maria Balshaw on her appointment to artistic director of The Tate.. Marie knows……..All parties end. 
All parties end.
23rd May, Tuesday Morning. Manchester. Eerily quiet. Victoria station is closed. Horror unfolds. I make my way to piccadilly train station. Armed police. Phone starts to ring: Agent calls. Sky news, Channel Four News, Newsnight, World Service, BBC, World at One. I say no. no. A sense of loss is compounding. I don’t understand what has happened. I catch my train. The people of my city converge on The Town Hall.
And a poet called Tony Walsh or Longfella galvanizes our city, the nation and the world with one poem. Thanks be to the poets.
I thought of you when I heard it happened in Manchester. The world is in mourning for those 22 souls. And the hundreds or thousands who had their innocence stolen that night.
the power of poetry shone a bright light amongst the sadness and sorrow.It helped us to let our tears fall,it gave hope to many.At a time where hate can so easily grow this poem gave me the strength to see goodness and pray for better days.Take care Dear lemnxx
He would be proud.
Good morning Lemn. Thank you for this. What a week! Your words and pictures remind us of the awful and beautiful contradictions of life. That we constantly have to hold competing view points and emotions – joy at your birthday held alongside sadness for those lost in the arena. Hope and despair sit together as well as love and hate. And as your morning tweets remind us darkness and light , day and night sit together and at one beautiful moment they merge into one. So this is the challenge for us going forward. Merging it all into something good. Love to you Lemn. X
Yes Audrey.
My younger son is a student in Manchester with finals starting this week. And my heart aches for this man (but boy in my heart) whose heart feels for others soooo much, in this city that is hurting so much this week. I think you and he are a lot alike in some ways. (((((hugs))))) to you and those close to you in Manchester Lemn.
Thanks Zoe
So many extremes.
Glad you had such a brilliant birthday gathering.
x
Thanks Rachel.
Hi Lemn,
When you wrote about seeing yourself reflected in the train window, meeting yourself coming back I thought of a poem by Ted Hughes, The Pan. And then when I read this today I thought of The Pan again.
The Pan
When he stopped at last in the long main street
Of the small town, after that hundred
And ninety miles, the five-o’clock, September
Brassy, low, wet Westcountry sun
Above the street’s far end, and when
He had extricated his stiffness
From the car crammed with books, carrier bags, cutlery and baby things,
And crossed the tilting street in that strange town
To buy a pan to heat milk and babyfood
The moment they arrived
Hours ahead of their furniture
Into their stripped new house, in their strange new life
He did not notice that the ironmonger’s
Where he bought the pan had been closed
And empty for two years. And returning
With the little pan he did not notice
A man on the pavement staring at him
His arm around a young woman who wore
A next-to-nothing long evening dress
Slashed to the hip, and a white, silk, open-work shawl
Round her naked shoulders, and leopard-claw ear-rings,
He did not recognise, nor did his wife
As he squeezed back weary beside her
Behind the wheel of the Morris Traveller,
That this man, barely two yards from them,
Staring at them both so fixedly,
The man so infinitely more alive
Than either of them there in the happy car
Was himself – knowing their whole future
And helpless to warn them.
Isn’t it the most uncanny, tilting, off-kilter, poem?! A ghost poem. I think of it often when I drive down the streets of my hometown imagining my younger self going about her life, oblivious. I imagine my older self looking at me now, so intently, willing me to see her. In times like these it’s good to hold on to images of our future selves, not necessarily happier but more alive. Our aliveness is our tribute.
And to remember our younger selves and to see how far we’ve come; and what a blessing it was, in fact to have had the privilege to keep on walking. And on we go into our forties, into our fifties… the lucky ones.
Thanks be to the poets.
beautiful