Manchester One Year On

... looks just the same as when we left. Hardly surprising; I didn't expect it to have changed beyond recognition or anything, but it felt nice to be back again, driving on familiar roads - it really did feel like we'd never been away. We drove up from Southampton on Friday and went round to take Rob's family out for a meal, then drove into the city centre to our hotel.

On Saturday I met Catherine from old work and she gave me some pointers about preparing for a wedding - she's marrying Ben next April and was surprised that I hadn't given any thought to a dress, or even bought a bridal magazine, yet. It was great to catch up on all her news - and to get a much-needed kick up the backside where the wedding is concerned. More of that in a later post.

I left Catherine and went for lunch with Nikki, Helen and Clare from another old work. I showed off my ring, Helen showed off her little boy Sam who's now 2, Nikki showed off her growing bump (due at the end of September) and Clare introduced us to Harry, who's now 11 weeks old and gorgeous. We didn't stop talking for at least half an hour after we got there - the waiter kept coming over to take our order and we kept telling him we hadn't opened our menus yet. In the end he just told us to shout him when we were ready to order ;).


I went back to the hotel to find Rob surrounded by a bunch of shopping bags - he'd taken advantage of the fact that Manchester is far superior to Southampton for shopping and bought some clothes to fit his ever-slimming frame. There was just time to get changed before going out to meet Rob's old work colleagues at the cinema. We saw The Dark Knight, which was brilliant, if a bit long - nearly 3 hours including trailers - then we went to Wagamama for a meal and to Kro in Piccadilly for a drink. The weather was great so we sat outside - not something you do very often in the UK. Here's (from left) Aleksa, Marc, Drew, Ani, Patrick, Jan, Rob and Yalitsa.


Today we went to see Grandma and Grandad, where Grandma had put on one of her famous buffets, then drove up to the Lake District for a week's holiday.