You go to Manchester

You travel on the kind of train where stitching recalcitrant children into their seats ought to be mandatory.

You drink in a studenty bar, Font. You're twenty years older and five stone fatter than anyone else but nobody's bothered. You down Brodie's Citra at a rate that suggests imminent Armageddon can only be avoided by your capacity and voracity for drinking. You pair a salt beef bagel with a bottle of Brooklyn East India Pale Ale and find the combination of gherkins and Centennial to be mildy erotic.

You sit in the Marble Arch with a pint of, um, Pint. You take your glasses off, ignore your phone and spend several hours blundering through a crossword with occasional interruptions for Dark Star Saison and Marble Ginger. You are surprised to see Dave Bailey from Hardknott. You check Twitter and find that he messaged you three hours ago. Asking you to look out for an American brewer he was meeting. Said brewer has been sat opposite you for several hours. You buy a bottle of Old Manchester, the Fuller's / Marble collaboration beer. You promise to yourself not to drink it on the train.

You walk into the Unicorn Hotel and meet the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers. What happens upstairs in the Unicorn stays upstairs in the Unicorn. Suffice to say you laugh hard, eat excellent pork pie and drink far too much delectable, nutty, spritzy-bitterish Bass.

You forget to check the time. You break your cardinal rule about not catching a train later than the 2020 off Picadilly. You try not to fall asleep on the train. You're glad that the Derby-bound train terminates at Derby so you don't miss your stop. You feel like an arse for making your wife come pick you up from the station at gone midnight.


You wake up the next day and think: Manchester. Bloody hell!