Monday 27th November Day 128
Today we decided to head to Manchester on the train. It’s a bit of a faff as we are at Stone at the moment so have to jump on a train to Stoke on Trent which takes 8 mins and then change for Manchester. I don’t think we have ever visited Manchester and one of the reasons for visiting was to check out the canals and see if this is somewhere we will visit next year.
I loved the canal area, it has sort of a sadness to it of times gone by and you can visualise how busy it must have been at the height of it’s popularity. It has that edge to it now as graffiti covers a lot of the dark tunnels and areas but it still has a majestic nod to its history and pride to times gone by.Standing next to the canal as water dripped from the busy train bridges; which ultimately replaced the dominance of the canals and it seems like a hidden world.
We did the usual wander around the Christmas markets and a visit the science museum but what we really love to do is wander down the side streets. Look for the non-tourist areas if you like, completely avoiding all the usual shops as neither of us enjoy shopping. It’s a bit like in London, you can be on Oxford Street, probably one of the busiest streets in the world and if you just walk onto a street parallel it’s almost a ghost town and it’s amazing how many blue plaques there are which have info of someone famous/important who has lived there. That for me, is what visiting a new place is all about.Brilliant day out and cannot wait to visit on the boat, who knows it might be first on the list next year.
As a consequence, I didn’t get any word count at all ((Call yourself a writer!)) I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to reach 50k and I’ve made my peace with it. I’m still going to be over 30k so that’s not bad in a month and since we will be in the marina soon, I’m going to have to knuckle down to get my jersey novel as complete as I can so I know exactly what I want to look at when I visit at the end of next month. This novel has to go back to my publisher for editing mid Jan so I do need to get a move on. It currently sits at just short of 46k and I think my original plan was approx. 70k although my publisher hasn’t put an exact wordcount on it so we will see! ((Oh only another 23k then you can manage that in a month!)) of course I can. I need one of my special writing days where I write 5-7k in one sitting!Until tomorrow… x
((Notice how Peachy doesn’t put the wordcount total at the end??))
C.L. Peache 