The first Saturday in ages that I haven’t bought a Guardian and I end up being featured in it! Well, by featured I mean a five-line mention in the Guide’s blog column - but it’s much better than nothing. I think I’ll continue not to buy it in the hope of further recognition.

So a warm welcome to my fellow Guardian readers - feel free to subscribe by email or leave a comment if you like the place. And regular Mancubist readers, check out the other sites to be blogrolled here.

Meanwhile, back to the usual Manchester miscellany: someone on urban exporation website 28dayslater.co.uk has done a recce of what they call ‘Manchester Underground’ - a series of air raid shelters under the city, accord to this poster:

There are 17 shelters in all and most of them have sub sections A. B. C etc… these are joined by one long corridor… there are numerous blocked up exits and stair wells… but the most jaw dropping feature was the toilets, the whole place was maze of small wonders…

Check out the rest of these excellent photos here.

I went for lunch with the re-Mancified Manchizzle this week. We had dim sum lunchboxes at Lotus on King Street (�6, with or without this voucher) and had good chat about Manchester blogs. She’d noticed that, for some reason, very few people had blogged about the Northern Quarter fire a fortnight ago.

I think it’s more a case that people have been unusually slow to react, however: Manchester Clubbing has found a few videos on YouTube, for example, and Mamucium is already talking about the aftermath - including looting and an inquiry into the blaze.

On If you’re sad and like beer, Kate posted a very personal first-hand account of that firey morning - and about not knowing what to do when your office is full of smoke. She’s followed it up too, with some of the confusing lines those involved are being fed:

Different degrees of destruction; the sprinklers went off, the fire spread, the smoke damaged, just looks like someone had a really good party, smells a bit, needs demolition, the chimney’s unstable, the roof might cave in. You’ll be let in next week, you won’t get in for a fortnight, closed for three months, you have half an hour to go in and grab your stuff. Dramatic access by torchlight up dark stairwells flanked by fire officers.

Morag over at Twangorama is appealing for help. The Basement on Lever Street avoided the fire but suffered smoke and flood damage from the sprinkler system.

Some of us were able to briefly go in and salvage important items; the scene that greeted us was grim but rather less apocalyptic than we first feared. There were puddles of water rather than the 2 metres we were warned about but many books, leaflets and art works are well beyond repair. Ceiling tiles have come down and we can not yet be sure how badly affected the IT hub and kitchen are.

They need any help on offer, including cleaning up the place and donations to cover an inevitable insurance shortfall. You can register your support on the Basement website.

CIDS continues to take a strong lead in the situation and has now published a list of temporary and permanently office space available for those displaced. I guess the mashup of Manchester’s wireless hotspots might come in hand right now too.

Mancubist’s favourite pioneering, investigative editor Stephen Kingston has been in touch again:

Peter Hook… on New Order, the anniversary of the Hac and the new Ian Curtis movie… by Nigel Pivaro
May Day Special: Guest writer Peggy Seeger on Ewan MacColl and his Salford anthem, Dirty Old Town
The sad plight of the rare Salford Butterfly… guess who’s trashing his home?
The great affordable homes scandal… read it with a brown paper bag by yer side
Living on the front line in Higher Broughton - as Salford Council is slammed and damned
Easter Special: the new ‘non faith’ academy… run by hardcore Christians

Plus…
Could you run the council better than this lot ? Try our great pre-election gameshow where you could win lottsa ����s and sad school kids…
The Suzuki Method… Lawrence Cassidy… the regen beauty contest in Langworthy… the miffed Mayor of Salford and loads more… a free 68 page bumper spring special!

A subscription of six issues costs �20 - and you get a free Salford Star tshirt too.

The magazine is now sponsorred by Private Eye and the Guardian, having recently won two awards and been longlisted for the Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism. Not bad for a magazine that started less than a year ago.

Mary Burns over at the Salford Star emailed to say that issue 3 - written and produced by Salfordians for Salfordians - is out now. This time it’s a bumper 64-page edition of 15,000 copies.

Last month Media Guardian profiled the community magazine, pointing out that co-editor Stephen Kington was nominated for the Paul Foot award for investigative journalism.

They also put together a fancy audio slideshow of The Lowry ’sting’ from the Star’s inaugural issue - have a look and a listen.

In response, comments on the Salford Star’s blog make for interesting reading - both for and against the article and magazine generally.

Robert Forster, the surviving half of the truly great Brisbane band The Go-Betweens, was awarded a prize for critical writing last week. No big news there, but I did notice this:

When the musician Robert Forster was approached to become the music critic for a new magazine, The Monthly, last year, his writer’s resume consisted of one entry: a column on hair care he penned for a Manchester fanzine called Debris in the late 1980s.

This piqued my interest, especially when I found a BBC Manchester interview with John Cooper, who runs the Cerysmatic Factory website mentioned in the last post, that included this quote:

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