What Happened After God Created Manchester?

As the official members of the Rick and JP Fanclub, we took it upon ourselves to follow them up to Manchester for the weekend (they went up there for a wedding, actually they came back to Pommyland for the wedding). Of course, we also wanted to experience first hand a little Queer As Folk action on Canal Street so it was a win-win situation, or at least it appeared to be.

Let me just say, right off the bat, when it comes to buses in England, you get what you paid for. We paid for Megabus.com. £30 return for the two of us seemed like a good idea at the time. It is a pity that when you have good ideas they are not air conditioned, especially on hot summer days. Five hours in a Swedish sauna (that keeps stalling at the traffic lights) is not the best way to travel to Manchester.

Staying in a hotel in Manchester that has no air conditioning is not a good idea either. We ended up changing rooms but the new one had a Chinese water torture apparatus in the bathroom, which had been conveniently placed in the roof and situated to deliver its payload onto a bathmat in the reach-space between the toilet and the toilet paper.

Manchester, city of red bricks and empty boulevards; where heads are shaved and shirts are sleeveless.

Manchester has a completely different feel to London. Everyone is really friendly but they all look scary, and they all talk funny-like. The city is like a amalgamation of an Kalgoorlie and Darling Harbour. The IRA bombed the shit out of it a few years back and the new sections are well designed urban spaces, if not a little glitzy and glossy. The spaces are great but Manchester is still working on the urban living part. While we were wandering the BBC had set up a dance festival to enthuse the populous into enjoying the expressive quality of human movement. We watched the Spanish dance group Senza Tempo, which was intriguing but there was no simulated anal sex (S.A.S.) so it wasn't real art. There was very little appreciation going on, the small crowds that gathered looked more bewildered than impressed. I suppose you can drag a Manc to theatre but you can't make them think.

In the afternoon we popped down to Canal Street for some drinks. Lovely setting, lovely weather, lovely crowd, lovely food, ugly trannies. Ugly as a man, ugly as a woman, I suppose, but it was very sweet to see them walking hand in hand down the street. After some Thai and a long walk to a rather disturbing bar we felt that the weekend had caught up with us so we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep in preparation for the morning's journey (this time so air conditioned that I now have ten black toes and half a nose) and lunch with everyone down by the Thames.

There are more tales but you'll have to wait until JP sends me the photo of dear Nina chatting to the cute Italian boy.

Good times!

Tags: travel, Manchester, friends