Can Manchester Really Be That Bad Part 1?

On the Wednesday we were off to see
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at the Manchester Apollo. In these modern times , and being used to the civilised venues in Newcastle such as The Sage , City Hall , Tyne Theatre and even The Metro Arena we expected a pleasant area with onsite or nearby parking.

Wrong!!!

The Apollo is a great old Auditorium that has definitely seen better days , and is in an inner city wasteland, with no car parks obvious . Luckily the local chemist directed us to Grafton Street NHS car park , which is multi story , manned 24 hours and 15 minutes walk from the Apollo, and at the time of writing not marked on multimap.

There's a few pubs on Grafton street , the Bowling Green was most pleasant and served some of the most exotic burgers I've seen on sale anywhere including Reindeer!!!

Practically Peaking

Just returned from a week in the Peaks so to speak, and a rather nice part of the country it is. On the Sunday it was pouring down and we listened as Leicester , Sheffield Wednesday, Coventry City and Southampton tried to avoid the drop from the Championship, and Stoke and West Brom easily went the other way.

The week's only blackspot was getting caught returning from the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss gig at the Manchester Apollo by speed cameras in some suburban backwater, however if a letter comes through I'll be challenging it as apparently you have to have well lit warnings. More information on how to challenge courtesy of the Sunday Mirror here

Buxton , Bakewell , Manchester and the scenery are all excellent and this is an area well worth visiting , plus some funny tourist moments such as in the Monsal Head pub when the guy asked if the Cod on the menu was "local" ...... Hmmmmm

An excellent part of the country to visit and here's a list of cottages in the area just in case you fancy it.

The one that we stayed in was Barn End Cottage in Blackwell in the Peak and you can check it out here

It's The Tyne Wear Derby

..and absolutely nothing hangs on on it!! . At the start of the season hopes were , in Toon, that this would be the match where Newcastle put Sunderland down. The Mackems dont look like they're going anywhere , and until three weeks back there talk of relegation in Toon.

Anyway, there's nowt riding on this bar pride (which is very important, as Ruud Gullit found out to his cost. Hopefully we'll see a lot of goals and given so I'll just have a punt of four or more goals in the match or maybe both teams to score.

Have a bet here if you fancy it:



As an addendum to this I had to tke a trip down Clayton Street, and had to weave my way through the overspill from Thr Black Garter and The Clock , very scary indeed. On Derby Days it's a good idea to avoid areas like Clayton Street , in fact it's a good idea to avoid any day!!

See the Toon won 2-0, keeping another clean sheet and ruining my bets (though I also had Owen to score so not all was lost).

As It Was

I've posted lots of photos of the house as the garden gas been developed though there isnt any of what it was like. So here's the front:

And then we have a couple images of the "wild" back garden , which was not too bad really!! We didn't really know what to do with it but the planning guy came up with some great ideas for front and back and applied the transformations that you see documented in the rest of the blog. Apparently we can put video up here as well but I've not got that far but we'll see what we can do!!







Another thing today , PG Tips have a great promotion featuring a PG Tips "Munky" T-Towel and DVD , so get yerself down to you local supermarket and get yourself one!!! Watch it here

Back To Front

The house is coming on slowly (or it seems slowly) however the front , driveway and garden is now complete . The back just needs tidying , but the front now looks quite presentable , and a lot more manageable than it was before. Also the wall between us and next door will stop the postie from skipping over what was there before. It's brilliant not to have to take a run up to get the car over the 3 inch concrete lip that was there before, and feel your car exhaust is not going to be taken off every time you leave.



One of the selling points on this was the lifetime guarantee , and annual maintenance which will save us doing it. A house further up the street had theirs done , and is now the possessor of two rather obvious grooves where their car goes!!!. Anyway here's a couple of pictures of what the drive is like now.

The Drinks Display From Hell!!

Short one this. The cash machine wasnt working so went to the Post Office Counter which has the drinks cabinet adjacent. THIS DRINKS CABINET:



Three types of Lambrini , Both White Lightning and White Strike Cider , augmented by Stryke lager and Blue Nun wine, it's a veritable Charver Harrods!!

Needless to say I left after getting the photograph!!

Seven Days (Waiting For) Grass

We now have grass and a water feature (looking like the monolith from 2001) and lots of plants in our back garden. It's almost there!!!


A couple of views , firstly from an inebriates perspective, on virtually on the floor:

Then we have our relocated holly bush:



And the patio corner with monolith!!


And another view of the garden:

And the front looks far nicer now as well!!




And thats it for today, time for a drink methinks!!