So after about a month of chatting to someone online, and getting to know them, we thought it was time that I got my gigantic arse out of this chair and up to Manchester, where hopefully I would meet her and come home again without getting my Southern head kicked in.
Things did not start well. I got to Victoria and found that I had missed my train. The train had left FOUR MINUTES EARLY. When does that ever happen? I went to the ticket office to see if they would let me get a later train but they were having none of it. I wonder where you go to find management jobs where you are allowed to send the trains out at any time apart from the time it is meant to go out at?
I had two option: I could fork out another £58 for another train ticket or I could get a coach up there for £16.50. I opted for the coach, purely because I didn’t want whoever owns the train service to get more of my money – very much a small moral victory for me.
I had to tell her that I would not be in till 4pm.
I fell asleep on the coach and when I woke up everyone else was doing exactly the same as me, taking advantage of having two seats each and sleeping. That was weird seeing the entire coach doing the same thing (yeah, obviously not the driver). Had the driver secretly pumped sleeping gas through the air conditioning system to stop anyone asking if we can stop for food?
My instructions when I got off the coach were simple: Go to Manchester Piccadilly station and find the 43 bus to St Luke’s Church. Sounds pretty simple in theory.
I found the station without any trouble but, unlike London bus stops, there was no information or maps to help find the right bus stops. So I had to keep walking around for an hour til I found it by accident. Well at least I’m on the bus now, should be plain sailing now right?
No.
I saw a church and got off the bus thinking that it would be it. It wasn’t and I soon found out that Manchester seems to have a church for every fucker who lives in that city!
I still did not give up hope. I’ve done it before, I’ll just walk the bus route, how far away can it be? The answer is FUCKING MILES AWAY. After around 2 hours I was still walking the bus route and she was upset and thinking I wasn’t in Manchester at all.
It was 7pm before I finally got back on the bus, got off at the right stop, and met her.
We had a really nice time. We went to her friend’s place, had some drinks and then went on a pub crawl with her mate and her mate’s bloke. He was a top bloke despite not liking football and freaking me out by not being on Facebook. I mean, even my mate Reiss has a Facebook account!
