Pure Magic

Yesterday, as the plane flew over the Wirral towards Liverpool, it made a couple of attempts at landing at John Lennon Airport. At times it felt as if we would land on the mud flats of the Mersey, but land safely we did. Glyn met us off the plane and we then drove north to their delightful village not too far from Southport. This is country living at its English best.
This morning, Glyn showed us his commute into Manchester, down the M6, which was packed with traffic. It never fails to surprise me how busy the motorways are in Britain. This road is a short step from gridlock because one small incident would have meant hours of waiting for hundreds of cars. The UK government has prevaricated for years, but still collects the car road tax, and will have to deal with an enormous problem in the not too distant future.
One thing that Manchester has in abundance, that we lack in this part of France, is big shops, and Jan is now in her element. After dropping Glyn off at work we head towards the Trafford Centre. This place is huge, you want shops, they got shops, hundreds of em and some very appealing, like John Lewis! We spent a few hours checking out what we needed, before buying it, and then headed over to Manchester centre to find Printworks. Printworks because Glyn had told us that we could eat at Wagamama. They have several places in London, at which we liked to eat, so it was good news that they had opened one in t'north. I can't remember what we ate but Jan's white chocolate and ginger cheesecake and my wild berry sorbet were just excellent. Recommended.
Later this afternoon we had to meet up with Glyn and Gill and we had rather stupidly forgotten that England were playing Sweden, so finding a quiet, pleasant bar proved to be quite difficult. Until we chanced across 'Puremagic'. Why was this bar empty, smoke free and very appealing? The cynic in me thought that maybe it was too upmarket and smoke free for the typical football crowd. The real reason was that they had no television, smoking was not allowed but more interesting of all, it was a magic bar. The PureMagic Bar, The Printworks, Withy Grove, Manchester 0161 819 7770 was great fun and an excellent place to while away a couple of hours. Magic tricks, performed at the bar or at your table made it an excellent oasis, prior to us all walking over to the Manchester Evening News Arena, to see The Eagles in concert. If you are an Eagles fan you will understand how good they were (click on the link and navigate to hear their music), if you have yet to hear them you'd better hurry up because they all looked bloody old to me.