Weekly Musings

2018 - Week Twenty Six

'Like confetti.That's how you throw love. You worry about the mess tomorrow.'
(Lauren Eden)

This week has been another I very fortunately had off work. The beautiful weather hasn't stopped yet, so I spent Monday chilling on the boat and did a bit of outdoor yoga, before having a big scary meeting with my boss. By this I mean a casual discussion that I organised to address the future of my role and a potential payrise, which ended up being not scary at all, but in fact, very beneficial and highly rewarding (yay!). That coupled with the fact that I finally exchanged on my house on the same day, meant that the week got off to an absolutely stonking start.

On Tuesday I had both doggies for the day, so Emily and I went to John Leigh Park in Altrincham for a few hours with a little picnic and to let them run off some steam. Most of the rest of my week during the days was spent frantically trying (and failing) to start packing for moving, which has been fixed for July 7th/8th. I did take the afternoon and evening off on Wednesday though, to go into Manchester with my parents and Jasmine to watch Chic. We started with a cocktail on Deansgate Locks at El Diablo, which is another reincarnation of every other bar on there, with cocktails that are always two for one and pretty much all taste the same.

It was my first gig at the Castlefield Bowl, and I think it is up there with my favourites in the city, when the weather is decent anyway. I also approved of the addition of prosecco to the bar menu, albeit only a 500ml bottle. The band were incredible, playing all their old classics (Le Freak, Everybody Dance, Dance Dance Dance, Good Times) as well as an ode to the late great David Bowie, and the Nile Rogers hit with Daft Punk and Pharrell, Get Lucky. The atmosphere was electric, and it was so lovely to spend an evening as a family all together drinking and dancing, 10/10!

On Friday night I went out for a few drinks with Amanda, who was over from Paris for the weekend. We started in 20 Stories, which has been on my go-to list for a while. It has a rooftop bar with great views of the city and is pretty swanky, so there were the usual pretentious wankers to deal with, but the majority of the clientele were very friendly, and the cocktails I had were tip top.

We then downgraded to The Botanist for some bubbling smoking cocktails that were slightly more on budget, and then had a couple in Guilty in the Northern Quarter. It's a good job I checked my last train home, as I discovered it was over an hour later than I thought, so we could fit in a margarita or two in El Capo, bonus!

Yesterday and today I have been helping Chris with his stall at Holistic Manchester, a yoga and wellbeing festival at Victoria Baths, a venue I adore. I managed to sneak away to a couple of classes over the two days, a kundalini one which was super intense but amazing: we had to hug everyone in the room and shake our bodies like crazy things, and do salute to the sun sequences as fast as we could, it was mad! The second I did today was a bit more conventional but still challenging. Chris was absolutely chocka with people paying to have mini treatments and we sold some chakra stone sets and gave away lots of business cards so it was a successful venture.

Last night we rushed back and got ready to go to Smeed's 30th birthday, a Mexican themed house party where La Casita from Chorlton were doing the catering. It was a fun night with tasty food and a beautiful cake as per by Emily; it was nice to unwind with a margarita after a hectic and very hot day!

I also got a poem up on Instagram on Thursday, read it here, and my track for this week above HAD to be Florence - the queen has returned!