An interesting day in Manchester

Today was Russian visa day.

I had a slow start, enjoying one of Premier Inns' wonderful beds followed by breakfast.

I met Julie at Peter House, a multi storey modern building near major road works. I had anticipated a place where our bags would be searched and all would be regimented. The reality is that the visa application centre is one tiny office with 2 desks and 8 chairs. You sit and wait while others go ahead of you.

We were invited to go forward together because we are travelling together. First thing was that Julie's passport sustained water damage when she was in Thailand a few years ago. The official wanted to know exactly what happened. J had to sign a form to certify that the damage was caused prior to her handing over her passport.

I noticed she had not stuck her photo onto the form. No problem; the very nice man did it for her.

Then we came unstuck. The letter of invitation provided by the travel firm had two passport numbers on that did not match our passports. The doc is in Russian and I had not realised.

I will not bore you with what happened, but I had to phone our travel company and they had to phone Russia.

While a new doc was prepared and emailed, we went to the Art Gallery to see an exhibition of Vogue photographs.

To be continued. I am falling asleep as I type!

Awake again. I have just corrected a load of errors from last night's account!

There were 2 exhibitions. The first "Fashion and Freedom" http://www.fashionandfreedom.org/
was inspired by women in WWI. Famous designers were involved but I loved the work of the art students and the video where they described their thinking.

"Fashion is often dismissed as a frivolous thing, but it is interwoven into our social and political history” Caroline Rush, British Fashion Council.

The Vogue exhibition, "Vogue 100 - A Century of Style" was also free to enter and is beautifully curated. I saw this in London but enjoyed it so much more here. It is well worth a visit.

We finally heard that the vital document had been emailed, so enjoyed lunch at the gallery before returning to see the helpful Russians at the visa centre. They waved us off with "Enjoy your holiday".

Now we wait to see if our visas are granted. We will hear on 19th of this month.

We still had the afternoon to fill in. There was tea and cake (to revive me because I was tired by now) in the Sculpture Hall of the Town Hall. "We close in 20 minutes" was the greeting we received, the only unfriendly response in the whole day. People were otherwise delightful. We made those minutes last.

A wedding party had moved on to the reception, so we were able to visit the Great Hall and see the murals by Ford Maddox Brown. Another treat.

Our leisurely stroll to Picadilly took us via Canal Street purely by chance. Here the local LGBT community socialise. It was already very busy at 4.30 and the atmosphere was warm and friendly. The bar tender who served our drinks wore a tee shirt with the logo, "Don't ask my gender, just ask my name. Let's get it right". Good advice.

My blip is street art by Stewy with one of the happy drinkers.

Our train home was busy. We attempted an easy crossword!

Maureen and Brian were the stars if the day, collecting us by car from Carlisle. I drove home from Haltwhistle and Mum and I chatted over a cuppa before I fell asleep over my first attempt to write this.

What a day!