Manchester

Well I could give a report on The Annual Conference of the Association of Pension Lawyers 2010, but for you non-pension lawyers out there, there is a problem. While I might find what you do for a living interesting, if I try to explain what I do I need medical assistance at hand to resucitate you from the catatonic state I will have just induced. So in the absence of a nearby St John's ambulanceman with defibrillator, I will just say it was probably the strongest card in the years I have been going, and the gala dinner in the Town Hall was very nice. Even worth getting dressed up in the old dinner jacket, although I wasn't thinking that on Wednesday afternoon while running for a train wheeling case behind me and flapping DJ in other hand.

The town hall is a great venue, a fine example of Victorian gothic medievalism. Strange this style was so derided only a few decades ago. TheVictorians were so much better at medievalsim than pepole were in the middle ages, imbuing it with romance and fine industrial craftsmanship, rather than the brutish poverty-stricken reality of the original.
(Somewhat less impressed that the grand front entrance was blocked by a vast Father Christmas, but then I do belong to the bah humbug school of Christmas celebrations)

So the only other remark I will make of the conference is to pass on the best joke. (Pension lawyers are really nowhere near as dull as one might expect).(I have not asked Ian Pittaway's permission to use this abbreviated version, but am sure my attribution is sufficient to waive any copyright issues)

"My wife went to a clairvoyant.

"I am terribly sorry to have to tell you this, but I am afraid I see your husband dying a horrible violent death in the coming year"

"Oh" the wife replies. "Will I be acquitted?"


Well I liked it, and Ian told it better than me.


So then onto staying with a friend in Manchester, or rather Didsbury. Now one might say Didsbury is not real Manchester, like many London "villages" are not the real London. It is a village expanded to deal with posh Victorians and then swallowed by the City. But it is very gentile and utterly lacking the gritty realism of a Northern city. Thankfully.

Saturday afternoon, we (myself, mother and proudly self-proclaimed 4 3/4 year old daughter (how long ago since you last considered your age in fractions of a year) pottered off to Quarry Bank Mill, to get a bit of Northern grittiness in the guise of an old textile mill. Actually this is a brilliant museum in the old water-mill, even if it doesn't sound the ideal afternoon out for an under-5. Its really interesting as social history, or engineering history, or econmoic history. It has lots of working macinery, lots of big story boards and just enough interactive stuff for kids of pretty much any age. I suppose I like the social stuff more, the photos of the village football team from 1925, or the wages of the various workers, or the stuff about the kids working from 8am to 8pm, from age 8 to 18. What I hadn't appreciated was that the mill effectively took over the orphanage. Instead of kids being the responsibility of the parish, they were apprenticed at the mill which had plenty of work for little hands to do, and an incentive to feed and clothe them in what would have been at the time a good manner, although the porridge-rich diet might not go down well with modern youngsters. But one surmises less of a problem with childhood obesity. Although more with rickets.

I was also left musing on how much better run all the ruins, houses, sites, etc I had seen in the Middle- East would have been if run by the National Trust like Quarry Bank. Just so well and thoughfully presented, and so much better conserved. And such nice tea-rooms and toilets. Could the National Trust really be our leading export to the world? And so nice just to have one shop selling you over-priced tat in a very English non-presurised way. Ah well.

Now I have come to the conclusion that by and large I like kids. But unfortunately, am seen as a bad influence. Take dinner time when said 4 year-old, having mixed cream into her apple-puree, announced to the table "It looks like sick." Sorry I did the only thing I could do instinctively and laughed, to be rebuked by mother "Don't encourage her Mark." What did I do? And then compounded, on her taking her first spoonful by "It doesn't taste like sick." Sorry I tried to keep a straight face. I really did. But  I am only flesh and blood.

And then I was passed seemlessly like a men's 4x100m realy baton change (ok bad analogy in light of recent championships) to further friends in Cheshire on Sunday. Didn't really do a great deal, lunch, tea, down to pub with Dave at night, played board games with the kids in the afternoon. And I loved it. Really love their kids (15 and 11, give or take a year) because they are just such fun. And having known them both since they were babies, they just treat me with no respect whatsoever. But who really wants respect from kids (ok outside parents and teachers)? Much prefer to be laughed at. I will take any audience.