A break for the border

Gah! stupid new blogger... thanks to a silly new shortcut when writing posts, I lost mondays post about the weekend in manchester. Needless to say it was a typically witty and wry comment on our activities will a strong narrative thrust and an eye to satire on the world at large- ho hum, I'll just have to paraphrase.
After an initial inconvenience involving an indian reserving us the wrong tickets, and gill engaging in a bout of telephone jousting with stupid british rail, we headed for manchester at around nine on friday last. It was like going out back home again- in sheffield you couldn't really go anywhere after 10 for a good night, but the lady weren't onstage to 12 so that was cool. The place was a bit like the underground bit in the casbah (for those lucky few who have been out with me in sheff) but smaller and with an infinitely more diverse and attractive population of goths and metallers that I'm used to. Even the barstaff had nicer tats. The gig was kick ass. The lady ruled the night, but I think the crowd was a shitload better than the dribbling necrophiliacs we're used to standing shoulder to shoulder with in steel city, which helped a lot. Anyways, they were playing with a band who's name eludes me for the moment, but these guys were up in front with us while the lady did there thing, and were so impressed with what they saw that the boys were cordially invited to a stage invasion for the last song. This other band were really good- but theres no band that can't be improved with the addition of three fully grown men in purple body socks and no faces jumping up and down on their equipment. I was talking to a pissed skinhead just as the other band were coming on, he appreciated the lady's lyrical content, but objected to the costumes somewhat (s'bit fookin' poncey...). I told him it was because they're all ugly bastards underneath. He said 'ah'.
Anyhoo. Gill met up with big gay paul (as opposed to little straight paul, who we were stopping with) in the club, she used to be his fag-hag when he lived in sheffield, and he introduced her to her replacement. BG paul is a club promoter, and we went back to his flat for a little after show. His flat was the fucking shit... like new york penthouse shit, even if it was filled with boho muso homos at the time. We hung out there for a bit and then sallied forth to didsbury where we drank, smoked and played mario kart double dash until well after daybreak. The next day me and gill were totally fried, and if paul and ruth were too, then they carried it off better than we could (Ruth isn't anything like as debauched as us lot), but we headed into manc anyway and looked round some shops. Even the shops there are better! You could fit sheffields forbidden planet into Manc's FP's counter area! Maybe it's just the shock of the new, but this, I thought, is what cities should be like.
Getting back to Shef was no fun either. Warm day + train + hangover= sad monster. It was to get sadder, though because this was no ordinary saturday- no- this was Eurovision saturday, and just because we couldn't shift our carcasses the extra two miles to Marybeth and Jonno's to watch it didn't mean we couldn't 'enjoy' all the mirth, ineptness and casual prejudice in the comfort of our own flat. Actually, the only reason I'm not going to say I actually quite enjoyed it is that Gill will then have something in writing, and I'll never have the choice to not watch again.
Anyway. That was uz weekend, and if you wonder why I don't go in to such detail after a night on the piss in sheff, well... so do I, actually.
It almost goes without saying that this week has been a fairly dull one aside from all that. This videogame club thing is on the cusp of going tits up if I don't get the stuff for it soon. Lesley's back at work (phased return) which will be good, because frankly, the place is a bit of a dump without her there.
Toodles