Gio-Goi Clothing: New Shop in Manchester AND a Lovely Homecoming Rave

Now obviously I am fully aware that, by and large, it pays to be forward-thinking and look to the future rather than the past. There is no point, for example, in lying in bed the morning after a night at Crazy Wendy's Thai karaoke restaurant, wondering whether it was really very wise to drink those six bottles of wine and then perform Hey Big Spender aloft someone else's table; equally, you are likely to achieve little by getting out those photos from university (in the days before you could approve every shot, remember) and thinking what very good legs you had when you were eighteen. It is in the past, and you cannot change it.

That said, every so often it can be enormous fun to give in to a little nostalgia, particularly if it is of the slightly fraudulent variety. In the late eighties, I was entering my early teens and therefore incapable of a/ forming opinions for myself and b/ going out late and doing exciting things (although I did once return a book to the school library very overdue indeed). Instead, I saw life through the filter of Smash Hits and Just Seventeen, the latter of which celebrated the arrival of acid house music by putting a very small smiley face on the cover, tucked away underneath a headline feature on how to win the hearts of any or all of Bros. By the time I came to Manchester, the Hacienda was in its end-of-days; once again, the girl from Somerset was just that fatal step behind the times.

That will not stop me, however, from celebrating the return to Manchester of the Gio-Goi clothing brand, and the homecoming rave that accompanies it. The brand was started in Manchester in the late eighties - no doubt at a time when I was still campaigning hard to be allowed a puff-ball skirt - by Anthony and Chris Donnelly, two enterprising brothers who began by selling clothes at Manchester clubs and raves, including the Hacienda; thus it is only right and proper that their first store in England should open in Manchester Arndale Centre tomorrow, Thursday 25th August.

Even better, they're having a party. Friday 2nd September sees the Donnellys hosting a one-off bash at Moho Live in the Northern Quarter, featuring - this is the exciting bit - a fleet of Hacienda legends, including Mike Pickering, John Da Silva and Graham Park (Mr Liz didn't recognise ANY of these names until further information prompted him to say that he HAD heard of M People *rolls eyes and takes someone else along*). If you want to go (and obviously, you do), visit the Gio-Goi website for details of how you can win tickets to go along and see two women who should know better dancing wildly to a bunch of DJs they would like to have seen the first time round, had they not been cruelly subjected to Tiffany and Debbie Gibson instead. Finally, this is our chance to be where we SHOULD have been all along...