Round 13 of the 2024 AFL Season kicked off for us at 10:20am this morning with the live stream of the Carlton v Essendon match at the ‘G. Of course Emily was never gonna leave home without her AFL lifeline – her AFL Live subscription. Kerry and I caught the tram over to Chorlton but missed the opening bounce by a few minutes. All the messages on the Smith Family WhatsApp group chap made us feel much more connected to this important match happening on the other side of the world. The Blues has got off to a good start – promising. I plugged Emily’s computer into her TV (she’ll be able to enjoy the rest of the season watching it on the big screen now) and we sat back with nerves jangling. Instead of a meat pie and a beer at half time Emily made us bacon and eggs for a late breakfast. The Bombers hit back hard in the third quarter and things became very tense again, although Kerry was never really confident her boys would go on with it. A four goal burst at the start of the fourth quarter took the Blues out to a match-high 41 point lead but I was never 100% confident until we reached the “Leigh Matthews” point in the match – if there’s more minutes left in the game than the goal difference then you’re still a chance. The final result was Carlton 15.6.96 def Essendon 9.16.70.
With the Club song and the post-match reviews and interviews done we headed into Manchester with Emily as our tour guide. By the time we got to St. Peter’s Square the drizzle had become well established. First port of call was Emily’s office building so we can get a proper mental picture of where she goes each. Manchester is quite a maze of streets and squares and lanes. There is no order to it like the order of the Hoddle grid in Melbourne or the Col. William Light designed streets of Adelaide. I suppose that’s normal for such an old city that just grew over the centuries when, where and as required. Signs of the Industrial Revolution that made Manchester are everywhere – the countess steel, arched railway bridges, the stone arched bridges, the canals and basins with the red-brick warehouses along their banks. According to a number of independent opinions we’ve heard over the last couple of months when telling folks that we’re going to Manchester, the unanimous opinion is that it’s a city that’s going places - it’s the place to be in the UK these days. There’s evidence of this everywhere as more and more modern steel and glass buildings for both business and housing become intermingled with the city’s ancient Industrial Revolution landscape. There is much renovation, either completed or ongoing, of many of the ancient structures breathing new life into what might otherwise have become decrepit eyesores in the street. Instead they now add colour and life to pockets of the city as they perform new functions for which the original designers would never have imagined.
Through the “mizzle” (a combination of mist and drizzle, I once heard a Mancunian cricket commentator call it) we walked to the weekly Sunday market where a few street stalls had set up to sell a mixture of handmade things and other junk. Nothing of interest for anyone there. Around the corner, however, was a record store (remember them?!) that sold really old and rare vinyl and CDs. Emily and browsed through there for a while. Had I not been travelling I would have picked up a couple of rare Prog rock albums. Because she wasn’t, Emily bought a couple of old records! Kerry waited outside. From here we walked through the streets past the place where Emily first stayed when visiting Manchester in 2017 and then where she stayed when she first arrived this time, down by one of the canals. Along the canals we walked for a good thirty minutes or more where one could get a bit of a feel for what the city might have been like a couple of hundred years ago, popping up just near the Briton Protection pub, another classic little pub with a tiny front bar with a décor that was unchanged since the day it was built – well that was their claim, at least. The little pub is fighting for its life against the developer’s hammer. I hope it survives. The day was getting on but you wouldn’t know it because at this time of year up here it’s still light enough to not need street lights until after 10:00pm. Emily took us to a food hall in one of the aforementioned renovated buildings that sold Indian street food. It was really busy as we sat with others on long trestle tables and enjoyed a very tasty meal what I’m not quite sure. Some things were recognisable but suffice to say it wasn’t your classic Indian menu. Probably the food we daren’t eat from streets when we were in India last year but safe to eat here.
To end a great day we took the tram home but not without a last challenge. Our tram got a far as Old Trafford (yes, the famous cricket ground) and stopped. An incident at our stop further down the line prevent any further travel. So we, like many other patrons, stood outside Old Trafford in the rain trying to workout how to get home. We and a few others hoofed it 500m up to the next major road to hopefully catch a bus (no chance of that very late on a Sunday evening) where Kerry was on the ball and managed to hail the first cab that came by. We scrambled in and 20 minutes later we were delivered to our front door in Wood Rd.
Oh! BTW, I must mention that Manchester has adopted the bee as the symbol of the city. It can be seen absolutely everywhere - on public buildings, on buses and truck, on lamp posts and bins and park benches, on cups and tee shirts and shop window fronts and restaurant menus. The places you'll find it is unending. Event the public transport system is called the Bee Network. It's great, giving Mancunian's a strong sense of togetherness and unity.
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