tredford01

For the past few weeks I have been looking forward to a formal reception to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a charity which I am involved in. Well, the reception was on Friday night and I can truly say that it was a let down. Aside from the fact that I hardly knew anyone there, I managed to add some drama to the evening by fainting. Mostly as a result of having not been able to sit down for over an hour I began to feel a bit dizzy and, after leaving the main hall, I blacked out in a corridor and narrowly missing hitting my head on a stone step.

It was quite an odd experience. I can't recall anything about falling over, but I found myself lying on the floor, with one of the guards from the front door trying to wake me. The only pain involved was from the fall. I ended up with carpet burns to my face, courtesy of the industrial strength carpets, and a few bruises from where I fell. The guards had called an ambulance, which seemed to me at the time as a bit unnecessary, but thinking back, I would probably have done the same if someone had collapsed on the floor.

Possibly one of the contributing factors was the general feeling of excitement that I had, as a result of successfully renting a flat in Manchester. I have found a really nice unfurnished one-bedroom flat, so I'm going to spend the weekend in Ikea finding cheap furniture and then attempting to put it up. It'll be nice in September when term starts again not to have to share a flat with people I don't like, and not to have to put up with things like this happening on my doorstep all the time. The picture in the article is of a pub literally across the road from my hall of residence.

BBC News story

I'm now in the penultimate week of term (translation: one week to go before Easter break) and I was thinking how it has been, adapting to life in Manchester. For a start, there is the natives strange insistency on calling bread rolls "Barm Cakes". Putting aside bread related differences, there are other things that have been really strange. To totally further a stereotype, there is Wilmslow Road as it passes through Rusholme. Along the stretch known as Curry Mile, there is a definite hint of the sub-continent. The smell of curry, the traffic chaos, and the general atmosphere, all shout Asia. Then, before you know it, you are in utterly middle-class Didsbury, with its poulterers, fishmongers and provision merchants. I suppose the real difference is the diversity in everything. Edinburgh has diversity, but not like Manchester.

The other main difference that I've noticed, is the relationship that most Mancunians seem to have with their cars. The way that people would walk along a footpath in Edinburgh, is the way that Mancunians drive. It is not uncommon to have to dodge out of the way of a car as it mounts the pavement so that the owner can park and go to the ATM, or buy a hot-dog. It gets worse if you happen to want to cycle anywhere. Then you have to contend with the busses. There is this thing in Manchester called the 'bus wars'. Basically, in the name of free trade and capitalism, the bus service is highly unregulated. Therefore all of the bus companies in the city are engaged in trying to outdo each other in terms of cheap fares and frequency of service. Sounds good? It is not. The result is Oxford Roads status as the busiest bus route in the whole of Europe, and very lax standards in training and safety from the operators. One company was recently taken off the roads because one of their poorly trained drivers knocked a man out of a cherry-picker on a pavement. Even without that company, the standards of driving are very, very poor. A couple of days ago, I was cycling through Rusholme, and a bus stopped on my right hand side to let passengers off. As a result, I had to sit there, unable to move on, as all of the passengers tried to leave the bus and walk around me. No trained driver should act like that.

But to leave the rant behind, I have only one week and two assessments between me and a three week holiday. As usual, I have offered to do some volunteering work in the first week of the break, so I'm looking forward to that. I think it will be leafleting and other campaigning stuff for the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May. I should also, all going well, be embarking on a week long placement at the Scottish Executive, in the Scotland-Malawi Development Team.

Speaking of international issues, my blog has now had visitors from fourteen different countries. Most of it was sparked by my number one position on Yahoo! Search for the Cumbria train derailment, so I doubt it will mean repeat visitors, but the dots on my visitor map of the world are building up. Still no one from South America or Africa has visited, but hopefully it is just a matter of time!

Its official. I now live in Manchester. I have moved into a surprisingly comfortable, en suite room. The halls are arranged in groups of three rooms forming a flat, and sharing a kitchen/living room. So far, I have got all my stuff moved in, and most stuff unpacked. Unfortunately, I have no Internet access until Monday, so I have had to use a cafe that provides free Wi-Fi access to post this.

It was surprisingly un-stressful moving in. The university staff are obviously very experienced with moving people into halls. After parking the car, I was able to use the fast-track que to collect a chit to get the key for my room. Then I went to the reception for the halls and collected a welcome pack and my keys.

Before moving in, I was really worried that the room might be really unpleasant, but it isn't. I had to do a bit of cleaning, and my mum vacuumed the floor, but apart from that, the room has been really nice. I'm still missing the Internet though!

Unfortunately, the student area is mixed in with some not very nice council housing, and my room looks out onto a large block of flats. The area is strange. The road outside the front of the building is quite nice and civilised, but the area at the back is like something you would expect to find in Sighthill or the Inch (both unsavoury parts of Edinburgh).

Anyway, on the whole, I like my new home for the next year. I have even figured out how to use the telephone! (it has a complicated PIN system).