Life Less Literary

My night in Manchester..

I didn’t manage to keep it a secret from Gill until the day - she’d started
booking house viewings for the Saturday afternoon; when I told her to cancel
them I had to let slip a little more of the plan. But it did at least reassure
her that Rowan and Lola were being taken care of. I met her at Sheffield Station,
1.30pm Saturday, and we caught the train 40 minutes later. Chilled on first
class, reading the papers, looking at the Pennines, and got off all excited
at Manchester Piccadilly.

We followed the Manchester A-Z (one of my many bits of "preparation"
was buying the map) along Canal Street, Manchester’s Gay Village, to the Somerset
Atrium. Found our apartment (after two trips back to reception - the first room
was locked initially and turned out to have only a single bed, the second was
much nicer) and freshened up.

I got in extra supplies from a crap Sainsbury’s Local, whose only redeeming
feature was that it was local. I circled it three or four times looking for
sparkling wine and ice cream, before finally discovering tiny quantities of
both. The local Boots (not a Boots Local) was crap too.

Our evening meal was at Simply Heathcotes - very speedy service and pretty excellent
food - I had a "terrine of waldorf salad in goat’s cheese" - amazing
crunchy bits of apple encased in cheese, with walnuts sprinkled in a sweet vinegary
sauce, while Gill had a mezze including the tastiest ever hummus and pesto.
Next I had linguine - a rugby ball-shaped basket-weave of gorgeous fresh pasta, with
smoked salmon, asparagus tips and a huge puddle of buttery sauce or saucy butter.
Gill had duck - pink oozing red. And for dessert I had vanilla bean ice cream
drizzled with sherry, and Gill had… oh, I don’t remember. It was delicious
anyway.

Our meal was perfectly timed for our arrival at the Library Theatre, where we
took our seats for the Good Soldier Schweik. The play was good… though I prefer
the book. I recognised the plot from the novel initially - "they’ve assisinated
our Ferdinand" being changed to something about an attempt on the life
of Adolf ("which Adolf, I know two…"), but soon the script departed.
The action was watched over by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, played larger-than-life
with scary papier-maché faces. The play was a little long - 105 minutes
for the first half along - and a little warm in the theatre, so I was quite
glad to get out by the end.

And then we went back to the hotel. And drank Cava. And ate ice-cream (actually,
I bought rasberry sorbet by accident <sigh>)

And the next day, we got up vary lazy and late, went to a nearby arts centre
for some amazing fried pizzas, and watched the pennines again on the way home.
We couldn’t find a film in Sheffield on soon enough to prolong our return home.
So we returned home.