I've booked a couple of days' leave and quite deliberately made no plans to do anything remotely constructive with them. And so I am delighted when, just as I am about to leave the house, the postman brings what amounts to a patent toolkit for an impromptu Monday off. To whit, not one but two packages. The first contains the latest edition of When Saturday Comes, the 'Half Decent Football Magazine' that I subscribe to. The second is from Our Friend In The North Bonny David, co-creator of Poppklubb, Tyneside's premier semi-Scandinavian indiepop social- inside is the playlist for their latest, typically eclectic compilation CD, featuring tracks from artists as diverse as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Crystals, and Les Coxs (Sportifs), who specialise in instant three-minute classics about North Eastern Pastry Chefs and who will, if there is any justice in the world, shortly take over from Sting's lot as the most celebrated musical trio to emanate, in whole or in part, from the banks of the Tyne.
Five minutes later I'm standing on Levenshulme station, where the illicit thrill of a Monday off work (I mean, it's all above board and everything, but there is something about being out in the open while your colleagues slave away over spreadsheets that reminds you of that time in Lower Sixth when instead of going to double History a couple of you huddled in the recesses of the Adventure Playground, expecting at any minute to be apprehended by the Truancy Inspector and hauled before the Head) is causing me to feel almost unbearably light-headed. So much so, in fact, that when the swirling opening chords of Morrissey's 'Wrap My Arms Around Paris' come blasting through the headphones it's all I can do to stop myself twirling around the platform clutching an imaginary bunch of chysanthemums and surprising the clutch of slept-in commuters with kisses full on the lips. As it is, I content myself with gazing enigmatically over the railings down onto Albert Road and finding poetic qualities in the changing electronic destination display of a stationary 168 bus, as it flickers between reading 'Droylsden' and 'Belle Vue'.
The 10:12 rumbles into Piccadilly to the strains of 'Then He Kissed Me', and, pausing only to brandish my day-return in the general direction of a begloved Asian rail functionary, I emerge blinking into the big city and try to remember the contents of the resolutely non-taxing to-do list that I had permitted myself to write (although only in my head, obviously) while waiting for the postman. There is something about spending a two-year-old £15 Debenhams token, something else about getting some photos developed (or whatever it is you do nowadays with photos), and - no, that's it.
By mid-afternoon the items on the non-taxing to do list (which between them took approximately 30 minutes to complete) have been ticked off, and I'm esconced in the downstairs bar of the Cornerhouse, nursing a pint of European-style lager. The other four or so hours of my impromptu Monday off have been spent- well actually I'm not sure how all that time can be accounted for, other than that the entire contents of When Saturday Comes have been thoroughly digested (even the scholarly articles concerning alleged corruption in the Greek lower divisions). Oh, and there was a more leisurely than usual rice-and-three lunch in the Northern Quarter's 'This and That' cafe, and a ride on one of those free shuttle buses which was intended as a short hop in the general direction of Oxford Road but ended up quite unaccountably taking in a three-quarter circuit of the city centre and dispatching me unceremoniously in a backstreet behind Shudehill Exchange.
By the time I made it to Oxford Road it was too late to do anything about the vague notion I had started to entertain during the lengthy rice and three lunch of adding a cultural item to the day's slender itinerary in the form of a 42 bus ride up to the Manchester Museum to admire the stuffed King Penguin and watch the live lizards going about their business. But I didn't really mind. After all the King Penguin and the lizards (well, certainly the King Penguin) aren't going anywhere any time soon, whereas a whistlestop three-quarter circuit of the city centre, alighting somewhere in a backstreet behind Shudehill Exchange, is the sort of once-in-a-lifetime experience you won't read about in the guidebooks, and for good reason.
It is with reflections of this kind that I entertain myself while nursing that mid-afternoon pint of European-style lager. But just to prove to you that I didn't spend all day in the pub (or for that matter the adventure playground) you will find attached to this post a selection of photos of biccycles, tulips pinned to lamposts outside of arthouse cafes, and other Manchester Monday ephemera. A day well-spent, I am sure you will agree.
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