Just a quick post to remind everyone that the Manchester Blog Awards take place tonight at Matt & Phreds Jazz Club, 64 Tib Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1LW (map). There’s more information on booking a ticket for this free event on the Manchester Literature Festival site.

You’ll find the shortlist of nominees over on Manchizzle. Good luck!

Like many other large cities in the UK, there are a series of air-raid shelters beneath the streets of Manchester. They’re usually sealed off (and we wouldn’t recommend gaining entrance yourself as that would probably be illegal and dangerous) and long ago forgotten.

Thankfully, my RSS reader doesn’t tend to forget so I came across an old post I’d originally missed over on Mancubist that points to a forum post where you can find photos of some of the shelters under our feet.

My favourite has to be this one showing a Manchester City Police poster with a list of rules for those using shelter.

Manchester Blog Stories is a project where readers can help determine the twists of plot in a work of blog based fiction or, as they explain:

“a fictional blog you can help to shape, set in real time Manchester. Each week readers can vote on future plot direction, choosing between three possible developments in the story’s next chapter. The final instalment will be performed live at the Manchester Blog Awards on Wednesday 10th October.”

The project is part of the Manchester Literature Festival, which takes place from the 4th to the 14th of October, and is written by author Elizabeth Baines and produced by one of our favourite Manchester bloggers, Kate Feld (Manchizzle).

Speaking of Manchizzle… she’s recently posted the shortlist for this year’s Manchester Blog Awards which take place on the 10th of October. Some are familar names from last year’s awards but many are new.

I had a great time at last year’s awards – meeting bloggers, talking blogs over a few pints and doing some interviews for 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs – and am in no doubt that this year’s event will be even better.

Sadly, I can’t attend this year because I’ll be on a business trip to a Networked Journalism event in New York but BBC Manchester’s Richard Fair is one of the judges and lots of people have already confirmed their attendance via the Facebook event page. Do try to make it if you can – it should be a lot of fun and is a great opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers.

So the student that put her feet on the train seat admitted to the error of her ways, went to court and got an absolute discharge. One can hope that the high profile of the case has made travelling a better place for us all. Yeah, right.

I was sat opposite an amoeba this morning on the train that, short of bringing his quilt and teddy with him, made himself very comfortable thank you very much, carefully placing his clean trainers under the adjoining seat while plonking his wet boots (containing his feet) onto the seat along with his bags.

We had the luxury of two ticket inspectors/guards, but not the luxury of enough seats for everyone. Neither of the guards asked the lad to remove his feet and neither did any of the standing passengers. So life goes on.

The trains are busy again because the summer holidays are over and the schools are back. And so too are the Blogs.

It’s always been a dilemma for me as to what to do with my Blog while I’m away. Do you just say nothing and not post for a couple of weeks at the risk losing all your regular readership? Perhaps a simple – Blog On Holiday – posting would suffice.

Well I’ve had a really great idea. Blog Sitters – a team of people who you employ to mimic your postings and live your life while you’re away. I could make a fortune – if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.

For a minute there I got really excited and then I popped ‘Blog Sitters’ into Google and got 2,550,000 results the first of which was blogsitter.net – world’s first blog sitting agency:

“Do you face some no-internet-days, holidays or something else that keeps you from updating your precious blog? And you know that a blog without daily updates dies very fast? Don’t worry any longer! Don’t worry any longer! blogsitter.net is the plattform for bloggers who need caring people to sit their blogs.” (Although I’d be a little worried that they can’t spell platform.)

I great idea, if only I’d had it five years ago. But hang on, why stop there? What about Life Sitters? People you can hire to take over your entire life while you pop off for a few weeks in Spain or Rhyl. They could Blog for you, work for you, ring your Mother for you and no one would ever know that it wasn’t you. How cool would that be?

Actually, how can we be sure that these virtual people don’t already exist?

I need more coffee in the mornings.

Unless you happen to be away on holiday, you may very well have noticed this morning’s earthquake in Manchester. Measuring 2.5 on the Richter Scale, the quake appears to have caused no damage or injuries – which is exactly the sort of earthquake you want if you’ve got to have one at all.

The BBC Manchester website is asking for your first hand accounts of all that moving and shaking.

Sambo reckons he didn’t feel or hear anything and unless we’re missing a whole bunch of posts about it, bloggers as a whole must not be very sensitive to things like the, uhhh, earth shaking rather a lot. If you’ve posted about the earthquake on your blog, myspace profile, etc by posting a comment here and we’ll update this post with a link to you.