A Weekend in Manchester

Well, spent the weekend of the 18th Down in Manchester for a friend's birthday. On the way down I finally reached the end of my Ikea saga. To explain, Ikea used to sell linen fabric, bleached and unbleached which was fantastic for lower class reenactment. As I'm in the process (or will be once I manage to get myself into gear) of revamping my reenactment kit (and I do tend to veer towards the lower social orders) I decided that I needed some sturdy unbleached linen. However, Ikea was now only stocking the unbleached linen in specific stores, ie. Warrington and Manchester, both of which are not exactly local. Now this was not quite the insurmountable problem it seemed since I've been nipping up and down the country for various folk dancing and reenactment events all year and I have periodically detoured into Warrington to play hunt the Ikea. Sadly, the Ikea turned out to be very well hidden and I would continue on my merry way linenless. This time though, I was organised! I actually got directions to Ikea from the AA Routefinder and managed to drive straight there with no getting lost at all. This was sadly not the case inside the Ikea store (which I'm convinced is built by the same people who make Tardises!) but, I eventually got my linen (after trying and failing not to use the self service scanner as a ray gun!) and set off to find the restaurant for the party. Sadly, while I found the street that had been reccommended for parking, I managed to park at th wrong end (It turned out to be a somewhat long street) and, to add insult to injury, I could neither remember the name of the street the restaurant nor the name of the restaurant itself. In my defence I could remember exactly where the note was with all this information on it. It was on the burrow's kitchen table top back in Edinburgh. Anyway, I employed my tried and trusted method for finding my way to places and started wandering around aimlessly looking for names that would ring bells. Surprisingly, this worked and I was only 5 minutes late.
Had a very nice dinner before returning to Jon and Ann's to be introduced to the Wii and something called Rabid Rabbits. Found out once again that my coordination in computer games bears no relationship to my coordination in real life pursuits and didn't do well at all, however, watching other people playing was hilarious and could have kept me entertained for hours.

On Saturday, we watched The BBC Christmas Sessions on the i-player. Bellowhead were great and so were the Unthanks (although wasn't sure about their version of Bleak Midwinter it has grown on me since), loved Jim Moray's Emmanuel and discovered Balshazzar's Feast who I have not heard of before but will be looking out for in the future.
We also watched the final of Strictly Come dancing. Haven't watched the rest of this but agreed that, while the dancers who came second were technically better dancers, the couple that won were far more entertaining dancers, which, in an entertainment show, would seem to be the more important factor.

We were supposed to go and watch Morris Dancing on Sunday and did, in fact set out, but the heavy snow over the weekend had made the roads so dicey that we gave up very quickly and I set off for home.
The journey back up North was interesting. The roads were horrible up till the turn off to Blackpool were everything cleared up and I relaxed. Then I hit the lake District and found that it had all been waiting for me there. I had planned to go up to Glasgow and take the M8 across to Edinburgh but instinct took over and I automatically turned on to the Biggar Road. It didn't look to bad so I thought, oh well, will give it a go, only for a bloody blizzard to kick in. Within minutes I was reduced to driving at 20mph at the most thanks to, not just the newly slippy roads, but the reduced visibility caused by the fact that it was dark and I was driving into heavy oncoming snow which reflected my lights back at me. No matter, I spent a good many years driving on snowy country roads in Northumberland so was not really that worried and just happily ambled along trying not to use my brakes. This was thwarted slightly by the drivers behind who, protected from the oncoming snow by the fact that they were practically in Roger's boot, and having a guide in the snow in my rear lights obviously thought I should be going faster and kept overtaking only to discover just why I was going the speed I was and to slam on the brakes right in front of me! Suddenly became very grateful for the lessons in managing skids that my mam gave me just after I'd passed my test that meant I stayed on the road and avoided hitting anyone else when I had to miss them. Even more annoying, having caused all this chaos, the overtaking drivers then hovered until I passed them and then slotted right back in behind me again. Really wanted to explain to them about stopping distances and how they are not decreased by snow! Still, my fault for taking the Biggar Road I suppose. Anyhow, reached Edinburgh in one piece (and discovered I am far happier driving in the county in the snow than I am in the town!) and got back to my nice chilly burrow.

Was lovely to see everyone down in Manchester again and I did have a very good weekend despite the snow.