Good title eh?
We'll start with Manchester. It IS a friendly place... most folks chatty enough and always engaging when you're trying to catch a few zzz at the back of the boat. I TRY and be patient with folks... I remember walking the canals just hoping a boater would chat to me before I lived aboard. Always hoping for an invitation to take a look around their floating homes.
THESE days however, folks are a lot more cheeky than I ever was - often starting a conversation with "How much did your boat cost mate?- I fancy living on one"... swiftly followed by "can I come in and have a look around please?... more often MISSING the 'please'. More often than not, I come up with an excuse along the lines of my mothers onboard asleep and is poorly... not a total lie given she's dead and you can't be much more poorly than dead can you?
I digress. So - mooring in Castlefield Basin (noting other boats moored in the 72 hour section)... We went to a wander up the canal as usual to the city centre proper planning on a game of pool and couple of drinks. This was Friday afternoon.
we're both rubbish and play 'reverse pool' - i.e.. you pot the black FIRST. THAT way a game doesn't end too quickly when if a ginger idiot pockets the black with his 3rd shot by mistake.
The plan had been best of 5 games but when we came to leave, the heavens had opened so we turned right back around and did best of 10... which meant more drinks consumed. After which, we ended up on a Friday afternoon pub-crawl in the gay village. When I was younger, I avoided the place with a passion. NOW I don't care what the pretty boys are thinking of me... I'm fabulous anyways so they can kiss my wobbly ginger bum lol. We decided by about 6pm we'd drunk enough and were hungry so started looking for a take-away. Oh my lord... Chinese sprung to mind and so it was decreed we'd have a chicken chow mien each (yeah I know not very exciting)... £13.90 per portion! You can shove that thank you very much Manchesterford centre... The result being sausages and chips each from the chippy near the basin and even that was 15 quid... even cheap food is now expensive. I remember when I passed my driving test, I'd be sent to Bedale to get 3 times, 2 peas and a curry sauce and it came in at £4.50.
Cheaper times.
Anyways - still fancying a Chinese, that was put on the back burner until we get somewhere better value.
Saturday came and I had to take a train to Stone to collect a prescription ... I'd forgotten to change my nominated pharmacy to one closer. NOT a good time to be trying to use trains as damage had been done to the overhead cables in Manchester meaning utter chaos. Luckily I could use a diesel powered cho cho and I managed the journey there and back (via a change at Stoke) by lunchtime. This was a relief as we'd arranged a visit from a mate who was in Manchester for the weekend with some mates who were running the Marathon. The 4 of them turned up in the afternoon (with their own beer) and we chatted rubbish whilst crammed into 'Ellis' - they all being over 6ft 4, making the boat feel tiny. Also, them being land lubbers, drinking beer meant the toilet got a lot of use - I could feel myself getting narked by it... silly really.
When they went - we were a little tiddly so decided to chug off to Stretford and get a cheaper take-away... we moored not far from the Marina (stopping to top up with water and getting excited of Jean or Steve's double adaptor lol
simple things...
Anyways - 2 chow mein came in at 16.90 which whilst still expensive, didn't seem quite as extortionate.
Whilst tied up eating out tea, we heard the dreaded "duck raping" commotion I hate this time of year, when the lady ducks that didn't pair up become a target of the frustrated single males. If you're not familiar with it, its basically a 4 or 5 drakes gangbang of a poor female - often to the death as they often drown during the process. IT's savage it really is. Last year, Dob saw it for the first time and was distraught. We were in Chester then and tried to buy a catapult to intercept them. Sadly, you can't buy black widows or Barnet diablos any more... we had to settle for a water pistol. Of course THAT did no good whatsoever... LITERALLTY, water off a duck's back!
Sunday we had a wander up to Lidl to get some bread etc. only to come across the Manchester Marathon. Literally thousands of idiots trying to kill themselves. committed runners.
The stream of
masochists runners literally went on for about 4 hours - by then we were back at the boat and heading towards Pennington Flash to continue with the roof painting.
Yesterday (Monday) we set ourselves up to mark the roof out ready to apply the non-slip sand) and I notice a missed call from CRT... shortly followed up by an email confirming they had cancelled our booking to go into Liverpool... that really ruined our day AND the customer due to arrive for the trip too.
Needless to say, painting was paused and trip re-routing began... I've given him 3 options all with a train service linking him to Liverpool where he planned to spend a few days after the trip with us. It's SUCH A pain in the bum and makes me question (yet again) WHY I pay for a business licence when it's impossible to run a business on their network.
Yours grumpily, until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment