Outgribe.com TraveloguesManchester, Sept 13, MondayH and I go into town today and wander about. It's mostly sunny, occasionally windy, and with a bit of drizzle at one point. I'm glad I brought my ski jacket and gloves. I don't need them all the time as the temperature varies quite a bit, the day starting out chill but warming considerably toward lunch. When we exit the Internet café around 6 it's cold again. We are well prepared for this changeable English weather – dressed in layers, carrying umbrellas. The locals walk about in all manner of things – coats or skimpy tops in the cold, with umbrellas or without in the rain. Less than half of pedestrians use umbrellas in moderate rain, and in drizzle it's less than a quarter. It is mysterious. But then many of them smoke, so why not also walk in the rain with no umbrella. First we go to the Bohemian northern quarter, where H buys a cute tie-dyed tank-top, then have lunch at Yang Sing in Chinatown. The food's not bad but this place is pretty fancy and too expensive. Tall, fine-looking folks take their time here, ordering assorted dim sum and even champagne with their lunch. Then we stop at the Chinese bakery next door, where it's much cheaper. Only Chinese come here, though in the restaurant few of the customers were Chinese. Evidently the Chinese know where to get a better deal. We see the canals in SW Manchester. It's strange – there's a canal, with good bit of water in it, stairs or an old slanted cobbled road leading down, seemingly a place where people had some business, but it disappears under a big bridge and doesn't come out the other side – it's all flat street surface up there on the other side. A smaller side canal joins the bigger one nearby and it also disappears under a tall brick wall. It's the sort of thing that inspires one to study history. We have little of this sort of thing back home to inspire us. Returning to the center we see a wonderful tall red thing down an alley. It turns out to be a deep-drilling rig. H is fascinated and shoots a several-second video of it in action on her digital camera. Its action is really pretty cool – the corkscrew drill is lowered far into the earth and then spun quickly, then retracted, moved over and shaken to get the dirt out of it, then lowered again. There's also a big yellow crane operating nearby and several little orange tractors, all on a leveld block, evidently building something big. Later we walk back east and visit the biggest Waterstone's in the UK, where we buy a UK atlas, a guide to Paris, a guide to Manchester, and a guide to shopping in Manchester. Then we go to the Internet café and then to the Tesco on Market Street to pick up groceries. We get steaks, salad, veggies, hummus, and cheese. There's a disproportionate number of young folks shopping, picking up a few things after work. After dinner J and I watch The Navigator, a British Medieval fantasy/science fiction movie from the video rental store, about peasants with visions of miraculous salvation from the plague involving erecting a cross atop a cathedral on the other side of the world. It's difficult to understand because they speak with probably Scottish accents, to simulate Medieval English. But J is pretty good at parsing munged speech and translates the confusing bits for me. There's no gruesome plague shots, which I looked forward to, but it's nice enough. They have some strange ideas about how plague works – apparently you look down one day and see big boils and then you know you have it. While it's plausible that peasants hardly ever remove their clothes, and are in general pretty wretched, you'd think nevertheless they'd get some hint, like feeling unusually wretched. But it's unsurprising a third of the English perished, given the way the English take care of themselves. When we finish the movie we turn to the TV. At 11 pm, there's two shows on – the plastic surgery show and the naked men photographer show. J hides under his blanket during the facelift operations but emerges when they're done and turn to discussing the trend of surgery to restore young women to proper pre-marital status, apparently practiced in some chauvinist countries. Then we watch the show about the buzz-cut older lady who photographs real men in the nude. One of the photographs, the photographer says, is of a science fiction author and she particularly likes the mystical quality – he's sitting down holding a staff, heavily bearded and looking intense and perfectly decent behind his big belly. J recognizes him as Michael Moorcock. In 10 minutes, J says, he's seen both male and female full frontal nudity on TV – they don't do that in the US. What he gets out of the photographer show is that big potbellies look really bad and he'll have to keep exercising. But I agree with the photographer and kind of like that photo too, and think his belly adds to the druidy effect. And I almost forgot – when we stopped at the little grocery in Gatley today on the way to the train I found black currants! What a good town. Mmm, black currants. H and J don't like them though. Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie. |