Manchester, Cambridge, Worthing and Brighton

Its been a while since I posted anything, but I have been out and about seeing the countryside.

I spent 3 days in Manchester, two of which we were spent handbag shopping, drinking too much and recovering from drinking too much. But on the Monday I checked out the cathedral and John Rylands library before getting the train back to York. The cathedral was apparently bombed during WW2, but the only noticeable modern features were the stained glass windows. The decorations are mainly carved  from wood and feature some pretty bizarre scenes like rabbits cooking a hunter. The library was very impressive. Mrs Rylands was an extremely wealthy lady after her husband left her several million pounds (in the 1880's) and so she decided to build a library to remember him by. Its a really interesting building with some really old documents in the collections but unfortunately a couple of the rooms were closed for electrical work so I didn't get to go into the reading rooms.

Stained glass window in the military chapel

Manchester Cathedral.

John Rylands Library - I have no decent piccies of the inside as the lighting wasn't so great for photo taking.

The next weekend I went to Cambridge for three days to meet up with another friend. Although the weather was pretty rubbish we managed to have a picnic, visit some friends of hers, see a movie and go on a half price punting tour (in the rain!), all in 3 days. We were hoping the weather would be fine enough to hire our own punt, but that didn't happen. The tour was interesting, we learned about Prince Charles during his time at Trinity College (apparently his bodyguard sat the same exams and got better grades... oops). The scenery was nice, but it would have been better if we could have eaten our strawberries in the sunshine and not under an umbrella in the pouring rain.

Bridge of Sighs with some interestingly dressed people in a boat.

The "grasshopper" clock. Looks like someone took an ugly deep sea fish head and stuck it on top of a grasshopper. I think it is Kings College reflected on the glass.

Unconscious drag queen ken, aka salt and pepper stand in a cambridge cafe.

Last Thursday I went down to the south coast. I had a job interview in Worthing on the Friday afternoon and decided since it was going to cost me a fortune I would stay for the weekend. Finally I was treated to some sunshine! Three days in a row, I was beginning to think that was impossible for this country. The south coast is really nice. Worthing was fairly quiet but nice. I stayed in a really nice B&B that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone heading in that direction - Camelot House. I had a very impressive range of very tasty food to choose from at breakfast and I was picked up and dropped off at the train station. I decided to go to Brighton for the day on Saturday and was highly amused at the recommendation of an elderly couple at breakfast that I go and see the Ladyboys of Bangkok. They put on a cabaret in Brighton every year apparently and look prettier than most ladies (so I was told!). Sadly they only perform at night so I missed out on that one. But since it was festival and fringe there was plenty of other performances to keep me entertained. Live music, street theatre, markets and the oddball locals (lady pushing a couple of pugs around in a pram etc.) The best was a guy who managed to get 5 men to put silly hats on, dance the YMCA (with man number 5 the exclamation point), pelvic thrust, do forward rolls and generally make fools of themselves. I also managed ice cream on the beach, but I didn't feel the need to pay 2 pound to hire a striped chair.

Worthing from the Pier.

Brighton Pavilion.

So that was me for the last few weeks. I'm back in York now, for another week at least.