Mary Lunan

We were all saddened by the death of Mary Lunan, known to many as “Mary the legs”, after a short illness in January 2018. Mary managed Concord with great dedication over many decades and was an influential and inspirational personality within the transgender community. A friend and support to so many, she is greatly missed.
Concord was never the same without Mary. As past members, friends and supporters of Concord, we remain determined to reflect Mary’s approach towards transgender community activities in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary’s Blog

Welcome to Mary’s blog. The weekly blog for over 10 years has now been moved over to our now website. We apologies for formatting errors & the poor quality of some images. Over time we will attempt to correct and improve this section of the site, which represents an important part of Manchester history.

Wednesday the 1st of June 2016

Early evening group

Kate

Melanie

As you can see we had a “RED DRESS” theme this evening and it proved to be one of the most popular colours as most people who came had at least part of their outfit in red. It was a lovely surprise to see Peta come in this evening as I had not seen her for many months. She tells me that even though she cannot make it very often, she keeps up with the website which enabled her to fit in with this evening’s theme. Welcome back Peta it was good to talk with you again. The red cupcakes shown below were the idea of Joanna who is on the left of the next picture. Thanks Joanna they were good.

Peta

Cupcakes

Joanna, Vanessa, Pauline & Sonia

Paula & Lynn

Hannah & Nikki

Vanessa & Frances

Nikki & Suzanne

Whitney

Kate, Heather, Lisa & Helen

Iris & Clarissa

Sadly we have to say “au revoir” to Whitney who has been coming regularly to the club once a month for quite a long time now. She came over from Belgium to conduct some business in this country but unfortunately that has now finished, so she wont have a reason to get over here any more. She also wont be able to make it for Sparkle this year so we are unlikely to see her again in the near future. It was fun to get to know you Whitney. We will be sorry to see you go but we would like to wish you all the best for the future.




Wednesday the 20th of April 2016

Lynn, Mica, Judith, Laura, Caitlin, Nikki, Carole, Milli, Sally, Mary

This week we had a Black and White theme which proved to be quite popular as can be seen by this picture. It was great to welcome Laura, in the middle of the picture, who was here for her very first outing looking really good and confident. It was also good to welcome Sally from Doncaster who had come a long way to take part in the evening.

Paula

As you can see here Paula was also in a little black and white number that she picked up a few weeks ago in Primark, as you do. I took both these pics just because the background in the first one was too light so the second one is better. She didn’t appear in the group picture because she had left to go walkabout before it was taken. Below are a few more of the black and whites for a better view.

Paula

Caitlin

Nikki

Mary

Milli

Carole, Laura & Judith

Frances

Julia

Heather

Tim

Dee

Gwen, Bev, Linda, Frances & Marieanne

Gwen

Dee, above, has been on the scene for longer than myself so it is always nice to see here continuing to support the club when she can. Early in the evening Frances came into the restaurant at Villaggios where some of us were already eating and said that she was waiting to meet up with Gwen and Linda who she had not seen for some time, but are friends of long standing. Later on I was again agreeably surprised to see Bev come in and she told me that she had arranged to meet up with Marieanne for a meal, so later on it became an evening for remembering days gone by. It was really good to see them all. Next week will be a normal club evening, but the following week, the 4th of May, we are holding a “STAR WARS” theme evening so we look forward to seeing what people come up with.




Wednesday the 22nd of June 2016

Jayde

Lynn

This week was the closest we could get to the longest day of the year so the committee thought that a WHITE DRESS theme would be appropriate for the warm weather. Sadly it didn’t work out like that as it was a fairly cold dull day, but even so, we did get a few white outfits and here they are. I still really like the white suit that I first had made over 20 years ago when I was quite a bit slimmer than I am now. Eventually I had to have it remade as I can no longer get into the original. I first saw this outfit being modeled by Naomi Campbell’s mother in a picture in the daily mail. I very quickly rang Judy Hardman, who was the dressmaker for many of the girls at the club and she saw it in the paper as well and agreed to make me a copy. It really was a work of art and this new one, made by Lorraine of Hide & Sleek in Scotland, is just as good.

Mary

Mica

Sarah

Sarah & Judith

Faye

Paula

Faye

Sonia, Pauline & Mel

Mel, shown on the left with Sonia and Pauline has been a loyal member of Manchester Cocord since we started in 2008. Since she first came she has transitioned and is now happily married and has been working in Cyprus for a few years. She recently returned to the UK and we had the pleasure of a visit this evening. Welcome back Mel, I hope you continue to enjoy your new life back here in England.




Wednesday the 25th of November 2015

This week we had a “Little Black Dress” theme and here are a couple of pictures taken early in the evening. It is always interesting to see what people come up with. But, what was really good was to see Millie back with us after such a long gap. She has been unwell as has her mother for whom she is a carer so this has kept her away. Also we will not see her again till well into the new year as she now has her op scheduled for the second week in January so we all wish her all the best and hope to see her again when she has recovered.

Millie

Milli & Elaine

Elaine

Mary & Elaine

It was lovely to Elaine, our ex membership secretary, coming back more often now as she used to be a regular member here.

Genevieve & Helena

Here we have Genevieve, who is our current membership secretary along with Helena, who used to be on our committee, but life has changed for her and now we only see her occasionally. Welcome Helena, it is always good to see you.

Busy evening

Lisa, Heather & Helen

Sarah & Vanessa

Clarissa

Paula & Millie

Hannah

Nikki & Suzanne

Joanna

Nikki & Suzanne, Spot the difference

Next wednesday we will hold a musical evening and then on Saturday the 5th we will have a christmas meal together her in Villaggios. Ther is still time to book if you wish to join us.




Wednesday the 25th of June 2014

The theme we had set for this week’s meeting was “MIDSUMMER MADNESS” so we had no idea what to expect.. These two large photos give a good idea of what we got. It was certainly a bit of fun and added significant colour to our evening. I think Michaela takes the biscuit with her yellow shorts, stripey top and sunglasses.

Michaela

Judith

Kira

Lynn

Genevieve

Nikki

Mary

Nancy, Jennifer, Rosie, Milli and Lynn

Lynn

Debbie, Denise and Amy

Julia

Genevieve, Linda, Vanessa, Frances, Tina and Millie

Millie

Paula

Milli

Nancy and Dee

Nancy, shown here with Dee had come along for the first time this evening and immediately joined the club, so welcome Nancy. She had been talking with Dee on the internet who later came in to meet her and then took her out for a first tour of the village. Tina, on the right, was happily showing off lots of bling this evening so a close up picture was called for. Later that evening, as we were leaving we came across some leaflet vouchers for half price tickets to see the Ladyboys show in Manchester which had its last night on saturday.

Tina

A few of us were talking about it later on in Paddy’s Goose and Nikki and I decided that we would go to the last show on saturday evening. The following day I went online and booked two seats for the show, but as I was doing this I could see that there were still 8 seats available on the next table along. I therefore decided to email all the club members to see if anyone else would like to join us and very quickly got replies asking for exactly 8 tickets so I bought these as well to make up a party of 10 people going to the show. We met up around 7 pm on the saturday at Villaggio’s where 7 of us had a meal and waited for the other three who came along later. We then all walked up to the venue in Oxford road as it was near enough not to be worth taking cars. It was a very enjoyable evening and below I have included a few pictures.

The first two are at Villaggio’s followed by three taken at the show, with the finale on the right but it does not photograph well. Finally the one at the bottom is taken on the stage with 4 of the ladyboys. The next two weeks are normal club nights leading up to the Sparkle weekend, after which we have some more special nights. See Coming Events on this website.

Previous week’s Blog »




Wednesday the 28th of October 2015

Genevieve, Ami, Tina, Linda, Mica, Judith, lynn & Irene

Halloween called for a different style of dress this week and as you can see some people entered into the “Spirit” of the evening.

Judith

Mica

I think Mica, on the left, gets top marks for originality as does the lady on the right, whoever she is.

Who?

Genevieve

Irene

Tina

Ami

Sadly most of the halloween outfits are very dark so it was good to see a bit of colour from the ladies shown below.

Nikki & New Girl

Linda

Julia

Joanna

Next week will be a normal club week but I believe we will have a visit from Louie Stafford, the LGBT Foundation’s new Trans co-ordinator, so come along and meet him. The menu for our Christmas meal at Villaggio’s is now up on the coming events page so please get your order in as soon as possible.




Wednesday the 12th of April 2017

This wednesday was our final evening at Villaggio’s. The members presented Mary, who has looked after us at Villaggio’s for the last four years, with a large bunch of flowers as a thank you present, plus two large boxes of chocolates for her to distribute to the staff. She is shown here with all the girls who happened to be in the club at that time, except for Joanna who was there taking the picture for us. Next week I hope we will see many more people come along to see our new home in Polari, below VIA. See directions on our home page, PS We are sorry to have to leave Villaggio’s as it has been an ideal venue for us, but the building has been sold and Villaggio’s is now closed.




Wednesday the 15 of October 2014

Dee, Linda, Carole, Lynn, Millie, Tina, Paula, Genevieve & Mary

This evening we had a Blue dress theme night and this just shows up how many different shades of blue there are. Michaela appeared later in the evening so was not included but she has managed to create a really fun outfit. Little Bo-peep springs to mind. Below are some individual photos that show off the colours better.

Michaela

Carole

Lynn

Mary

Genevieve

Millie

Linda

Tina

Joanne

Vaness & Sam

Dee

On the left we have Dee who visited us for the first time, coming all the way from Yorkshire and staying overnight to make the most of the day. She enjoyed her time with us and is hoping to be able to return again soon. We had a total of four new people with us this evening so it is difficult to keep track. Helen on the right was new and so was Prue who was visiting Manchester all the way from Germany on business. She knew we met in the village but had not realised we met here on Wednesday evenings, so was pleasantly surprised to find us here this evening. Welcome to you both and I hope you are able to return at some point. We told Prue about Sparkle and she may be able to return for that event.

Helen and Prue

Steff

Steff shown here all in blue to fit in with our theme, only managed to get here soon after 10pm but we introduced her to the girl on the right, whose name escapes me, and when we closed we went on to “The Goose” where they managed to have a long chat. Next week the 22nd of October we will hold a Quiz night and the week after that is our Haloween evening so I hope to see more of you all there.

Gillian