Our wet weather holiday continued yesterday with a trip to Manchester (OK not exactly the best place to avoid rain). But there was certainly a hint of spring with the unexpected appearance of Morris dancers outside the Royal Exchange Theatre. Whilst this quintessentially English tradition looks fine outside an idyllic pub on a hot sunny day there was something intrinsically wrong in an edgy city centre with Big Issue sellers on every corner and I felt that the dancers should have been whacking each other's heads with the sticks to be more appropriate to the setting.
Lunch was at Harvey Nick's Brasserie. Very "Ab Fab" and "ladies who lunch" I know but a great view, entertaining people watching (Chris Bisson who plays Kash in Shameless was in there although I doubt he'll be mentioning that he saw us)and most of all, extremely good food.Strongly recommended. We always used to eat at one of Selfridge's food bars but this is much better and not that much more expensive. Marion's credit crunching continued with a visit to the much hyped M&S penny bazaar which turned out to have sold out before ten o'clock. The lady on the counter told us that there was nothing worth buying anyway and people were queueing around the block at 9 am.
The main purpose of our Manchester visit was "Haunted" at the Royal Exchange Theatre. It looked like we hit on the SAGA performance as almost everyone in the matinee audience was over fifty. This near geriatric audience enjoyed the play with gusto and hearty laughter rang around the auditorium even when it seemed inappropriate. The play which touched on infidelity, illness, childlessness and growing old was truly haunting and left both of us looking for tissues as it reached its heartbreaking end.To quote Guardian critic Alfred Hickling "Niall Buggy is an affecting, dewy-eyed Mr Berry, whose poetic soul is altogether too large for the compass of suburbia. Beth Cooke is delightfully demure as the impeccably spoken Hazel, who seems to have been taught to chew on her consonants 40 times before spitting them out. Brenda Blethyn gives an over-ripe peach of a performance as Mrs Berry" I certainly could not have put it better.
Blog reader Jim Westbrook of Coffee Plus kindly sent me this photo of an Instanta boiler looking good in The Glasgow Silverburn Yo Sushi. When people ask us why we invested so much in design and styling for our boilers, here is the answer. A square box (which was all that was on offer before we brought design to the market)would have been as inappropriate as some of yesterday's laughter.
Oh look! The sun is shining. Marion is in the garden. Which reminds me of this song from Allan Sherman.
Lunch was at Harvey Nick's Brasserie. Very "Ab Fab" and "ladies who lunch" I know but a great view, entertaining people watching (Chris Bisson who plays Kash in Shameless was in there although I doubt he'll be mentioning that he saw us)and most of all, extremely good food.Strongly recommended. We always used to eat at one of Selfridge's food bars but this is much better and not that much more expensive. Marion's credit crunching continued with a visit to the much hyped M&S penny bazaar which turned out to have sold out before ten o'clock. The lady on the counter told us that there was nothing worth buying anyway and people were queueing around the block at 9 am.
The main purpose of our Manchester visit was "Haunted" at the Royal Exchange Theatre. It looked like we hit on the SAGA performance as almost everyone in the matinee audience was over fifty. This near geriatric audience enjoyed the play with gusto and hearty laughter rang around the auditorium even when it seemed inappropriate. The play which touched on infidelity, illness, childlessness and growing old was truly haunting and left both of us looking for tissues as it reached its heartbreaking end.To quote Guardian critic Alfred Hickling "Niall Buggy is an affecting, dewy-eyed Mr Berry, whose poetic soul is altogether too large for the compass of suburbia. Beth Cooke is delightfully demure as the impeccably spoken Hazel, who seems to have been taught to chew on her consonants 40 times before spitting them out. Brenda Blethyn gives an over-ripe peach of a performance as Mrs Berry" I certainly could not have put it better.
Blog reader Jim Westbrook of Coffee Plus kindly sent me this photo of an Instanta boiler looking good in The Glasgow Silverburn Yo Sushi. When people ask us why we invested so much in design and styling for our boilers, here is the answer. A square box (which was all that was on offer before we brought design to the market)would have been as inappropriate as some of yesterday's laughter.
Oh look! The sun is shining. Marion is in the garden. Which reminds me of this song from Allan Sherman.
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