Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours
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Sandwich job

16/5/2010

21 Comments

 
You sometimes wonder about the paths which life takes you along. When I was eighteen dreaming about changing the world, did I ever think I'd one day be judging the Stockport Sandwich Competition?

This happened on Saturday. I was invited as the editor of Manchester Confidential. There were 26 entries, veggie and meat in Stockport Market. About 16 were inedible. Two were the scrapings from a sewer.

The two winners were from the same shop.

Favourite moment was when a passerby asked if he could have 'that meat one'. Help yourself I said. "Great," he said, "I've not had meat for two days."

The Stockport broadcast media were represented by two lovely old chaps, one in a wheelchair and one with a Santa beard. They were going to do a community blog interviewing me. The wheelchair guy was the straight act, trying to wrestle the interview back from the cheery chappie with the beard. Sweet.
21 Comments

Busy two weeks

15/5/2010

4 Comments

 
Oh lord where to begin. Architecture tours. Tunnel tours. Coaching my son's team to glorious Cup Final victory. Eating. Drinking. Staying up for the Election results in the Town Hall. Wondering how time doth fly by too quickly. Buying a new bicycle which seems mysteriously to be largely pink. Saving a bee just now with cup and paper from the kitchen. Contemplating my diary. One morning I took out twelve Swedes from their government. One reminded me that he'd been on my tour in 2005. It was the day of the General Election, we were doing a coach tour. I asked if they wanted to watch me vote, so all these Swedes had trooped into St John's Church Hall and watched me do my stuff. The locals looked on bemused. The Swedes had looked like UN observers. Curious how I'd completely forgotten that.

Last Friday I took out Grant Thornton accountants on a pub walk. One girl, of maybe 23, said, "I never come into old pubs like this. They can be really fun can't they?" Yes, love, they bloody well can. You can talk, drink great local beer and eat decent food. We went into a couple of great central Salford pubs, The Kings Arms and The Black Lion.

Then on the Saturday it was Manchester Confidential readers on an architecture tour for a whole afternoon with a meal at the Mark Addy. We were looking at Modern Architecture in the city or rather architecture from Modernism onwards. We all ended up in the appropriately named Modern drinking cocktails. Or rather wine in my case.

On Sunday it was the Tunnel Tours under the Great Northern in town. Around 300 people with four guides which I'd coordinated.  The primal scream therapy we introduce briefly in the tunnels is a right laugh.

Mind you we get some odd enquiries as guides. This is me writing in my Sleuth persona on ManchesterConfidential.com.

'Confidential has been doing tours of the tunnels under Manchester for readers. Sleuth got this email from one the other day. 'Will it be dark?' they wrote. 'Hope so,' replied Sleuth. There was a pause in communication for an hour or so, then the same person wrote again. 'Will the tunnels be underground?' 'Preferably,' replied Sleuth. Intriguing notion though - overground tunnels. 'Are there many tunnels in the city?' people might ask. 'Yes,' locals could reply and point down Market Street or Deansgate, 'we have one of the most extensive networks of overground tunnels in the country, although these are also called streets.'
4 Comments

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