Have you ever been run over by a vehicle from the early 1900’s? It’s really quite a surreal experience. However, whilst negotiating a tram crossing whilst trying to find a station for the blasted things this is exactly what happened. Thus I survived the first of Manchester’s attempts to kill me, and it wasn’t even at the hands of a Manchunian.

Trudging through Manchester on a Saturday morning I was strangely thankful for the wake up call of being nearly flattened by a large part-train, part-bus, part-relentless bulldozing killing machine. Having spent the night in a peculiar hotel staffed entirely by people not from Manchester I was now rudely awakened to the fact that I was “not in Kansas any more”. The hotel itself had been heated to the level of a small blast furnace, and I spent the evening sweating what was left of the cider I’d drunk on…