As usual, my stupid internal alarm clock woke me up at 6:30 AM, regardless of it being both a Saturday and a long bank holiday weekend. And as usual, I refused to accept being awake so early, so I laid in bed playing with my phone and re-reading the 3rd Outlander book, Voyager, until after 10:00 AM. I'm obsessed with Outlander, and finishing all 8 books, re-reading 3 of them so far, and watching each STARZ TV episode 3+ times does not assuage the obsession. The morning was cold, rainy and dreary anyways, so motivation to get out of bed was low. My continuously rumbling stomach is what finally made me get up and go downstairs to make breakfast. After treating myself to some eggs, streaky bacon, coffee and a jam-covered crumpet (I normally just have a yogurt or something quick and easy for breakfast), I took care of a couple of financial things and bills, which gave me an excuse to continue being lazy in my pajamas for a few more hours. If I hadn't made plans with a friend, I honestly might not have showered or gotten out of my PJs at all. However, plans I had made, so after 1:00 PM, I finally hopped in the shower, made myself presentable, grabbed my umbrella and caught the 2:31 PM tram into the city centre.
I knew when I rented this house that it was close to the train station, but living here, I have truly come to love the proximity, as much as I loved living walking distance to the MARTA station when I lived in Decatur, Georgia. From locking my door to getting on the tram (including time to buy a ticket from the machine) takes me 8 minutes or 10 minutes maximum. It is so convenient, especially since the trams run every 12 minutes, and an offpeak return fare is only £4.60. I'm at Altrincham Station, and it's 11 stops or ~25 minutes to get to St. Peter's Square in the city centre. So total trip time is 35 to 40 minutes, and I don't have to worry about traffic, parking, if my car will get broken into or stolen or (perhaps most importantly) how many pints I consume. :-)
St. Peter's Square is currently the scene of a small homeless protest, which involves perhaps a dozen people camping out together. They were outside the city hall, were forced to move, and have now set up camp outside the public library. I've been searching my heart to try to find any drop of interest or compassion for the "plight" of these people who feel they are not being given enough that was taken out of the pockets of working people, and I keep coming up dry.
This afternoon I was meeting up with a new friend, M, whom I met a couple of weeks ago chatting in a pub. I had to laugh at myself with my big umbrella compared to him, a proper Manc with no umbrella and just a tweed newsboy cap on his head. The subject of the homeless protest was best not discussed, since he is an openly avowed socialist who works for the government in the delivery of social services, and I think it's safe to say our opinions on the matter diverge.
A potentially less contentious subject was that morning's Royal Birth. I do not have strong opinions one way or the other on the British monarchy, my own ancestors having successfully rebelled and thrown off the chains of kings 232 years ago. I enjoy some casual Royal Family watching (it's quaint), and I think it would be difficult for anyone not to find joy in the safe birth of a healthy baby. My friend unsurprisingly is anti-Royal (quite right, as any good socialist should be!), but even he could find no fault with celebrating the birth of the princess. And, as I pointed out, it's not like people are still living under King George III, that "old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King". The Royal Family today are largely symbolic, and I'm not sure they do (or can do) any real harm.
Ironically, we were having this discussion just around the corner from the site of the infamous Peterloo Massacre, the event which inspired Percy Bysshe Shelly's famous poem, England in 1819.
St. Peter's and politics behind us, we started at the Manchester Art Gallery, a smallish but quite varied and interesting public art museum just off St. Peter's Square. Some of the 18th and 19th c English art and portraiture was average, but in all fairness, anything would seem average after the mind-blowing Late Rembrandt exhibit I had just seen at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last Monday. Their special East Asian Craft and Design exhibit of Japanese and Chinese arts and crafts was very well done and fascinating. They also had a wonderful special exhibit called "Emily Allchurch In the Footsteps of a Master", juxtaposing 19th c. Japanese printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige landscape prints with modern interpretations of those scenes, made by Emily Allchurch using digital photograph collages and backlit in lightboxes. Truly beautiful work.
My favorite experience, though, was seeing two famous paintings that I know very well and recognized immediately, although I had had no idea that they were located in the Manchester museum. Stumbling across them so unexpectedly and then being able to enjoy them in person instead of just a printed photograph on a page in a book was a thrill. The first one was John William Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs.
Then I turned and looked across the room right into the sad, depressed eyes of Auguste Charles Mengin's Sappho, getting ready to jump off a cliff. She has graced the cover of a recent novel; some of my friends may recognize her.
I enjoyed the entire museum, but seeing those two paintings alone made the entire excursion worthwhile to me.
After the museum, we walked over to Brewdog Manchester for a pint. The place was doing lively business, but we were able to find two stools sharing a table with some other people. One of their guest taps was a Stone Ruination IPA, which M tried, so I told him all about the beautiful Stone brewery in San Diego, California, which I visited a number of years ago. It's wonderful to see some American craft breweries becoming more prevalent and popular over here in the UK. M had suggested maybe trying out a stand-up comedy club for our next activity. Along the way, we stopped at a lovely heritage pub, The Briton's Protection, for a quick half-pint before proceeding to The Comedy Store at the Deansgate Locks for their 7:00 PM show.
I actually love stand-up comedy, and I think it has been more than 4 years since I've been to a show. It was a blast. There were 4 acts - an American from San Francisco, a Canadian, and then two local Englishmen. They all got some belly-laughs out of me, but the last two were definitely the best overall. I just about died when the last comedian (a local chap from Warrington) joked about Americans trying to adjust to the English attitude towards customer service. Then he role-played an American customer service interaction as it would play out in the USA versus how things would go with a Brit in the UK. I laughed so hard I could hardly breathe, because it was spot-on. Customer service over here generally does not exist, and where it does exist, it is barely a notch above "sod off". Even though my previous travel experiences had somewhat prepared me for the lack of customer service that is common in European countries, it has still been a big adjustment, and seeing his take on it was hysterical.
The show ended at 9:00 PM, and with a 40 minute journey home, I figured it was time to call it an evening. Besides, things in the Deansgate area were already starting to turn into a stereotypical Saturday night out in a northern England city centre, which means that the hard core party was well-underway, and the shit storm of drunken debauchery with public pissing and vomiting was imminent. I've seen it in Leeds; I've seen it in Liverpool; I am disinclined to witness it in Manchester, too, not unless someday it is actually my own hen party (unlikely in any event).
I bid farewell to my friend and hopped on the tram at the Deansgate Metrolink station just up the stairs there for the short ride home. It was a good night.
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