Once upon a time there was a city called Manchester. Within Manchester there was a place called the Northern Quarter and within the Northern Quarter there lived a population of cool.
The people of the Northern Quarter were extremely interesting folk. They had a look of gentry, a keen eye for spectacles and larger than average feet. They were surrounded by devilish delights, roast dinners, and fine ales. They had full social calendars, drinks, dining and disco. They had festivals named after fat birds and childish games.
Despite all of this the people of the Northern Quarter were bored and unfulfilled. They lusted after something more refined, something new, something that reflected their creative minds. Years past and still they felt a gaping emptiness within themselves.
One wintery October, whilst the people of the Northern Quarter huddled around their mulled wine and sat sparking up their pipes, there came a sound they had never heard before. It started with a bang of a drum, a twang of a fiddle and a tinkle of a tambourine. The sound grew and grew and people started to twitch and stir and look alert. Soon the air was awash with millions of sounds and the air filled with colours and vibrations.
The people began to emerge from their drinking hole. Together they walked towards these wonderous sounds and colours. They were scared because these sounds were new and exciting. What they saw was nothing they could have ever imagined. The streets were filled with fun and frolics, the bars were stretched at the waste line with music of all types and tempos, the streets streamed with people of all shapes and sizes and postcodes. Dancers danced, poets eulogised, singers sung beneath the flowery tresses of artist’s dresses. The people of the Northern Quarter stood back and smiled. What they saw was Oxjam. Oxjam filled their empty stomachs their ears their eyes their very lives.
Oxjam was a festval fit for kings and musical wizards, made out of musical goodness. Oxjam was filled with the finest and freshest ingredients, whisked and churned and whipped and dipped. It was a frulee of delight fit for all tastes. It was madness, and joy and it happened on a Sunday….
