The rough part of Manchester
Posted by Lee Kyle on Tuesday, May 24, 2011
I was in Manchester the other day, the gig was lovely, the city is stupid.
I was waiting for a bus and a man came to talk to me, it was late so I assumed he wanted to steal my swanky new phone. It is a good phone, one well worth stealing. He didn't though, he wanted to know whether it was worth going to hospital because he had severe back pain and brokem fingers.
To me, this is a good time to go to hospital.
Also, he was a tramp.
It's not the done thing to say tramp these days is it? If I was one though, I would rather be called a tramp than be called homeless, tramp has almost romantic overtones of treading the streets while homeless fixates on the worst aspect of their life, the lack of home.
This isn't some tedious anti-PC rant though, it's just that I always assumed I would end up as a tramp one day so I've thought about this.
Anyway, he kept touching my back and rubbing it and that in order to show me where the pain was. I didn't want to ask him to stop (Because I was scared not because I was horny.) so I didn't. Then, when the bus came he asked me sit opposite him and shield him from the driver so he could drink. It seems worth mentioning that he stunk of piss.
Then he pointed out a woman who he termed 'a bit odd'. He was right.
She stood up and gave a long speech about organised police brutality ON THE BUS. It seemed to be the type of speech that was eloquent until you listened to the substance and noticed it was jibberish. She handed out some hand-made leaflets which were covered in pictures of her face. I tried to read one but this could not be done.
The thing is...Nobody seemed to think any of this was odd.
I had to catch a train at 5:30am, so, on arrival at my hostel at midnight I wanted to head to sleep. I reckoned without a Serbian bodybuilder with a full-back skull tattoo deciding he needed the light on to read a magazine. I weighed up the idea of turning the light off until I realised he was a Serbian bodybuilder. Perhaps his mind had been warped by Arkan's reign of terror during his childhood. I had no way of knowing.
That is what Manchester is like.
I was waiting for a bus and a man came to talk to me, it was late so I assumed he wanted to steal my swanky new phone. It is a good phone, one well worth stealing. He didn't though, he wanted to know whether it was worth going to hospital because he had severe back pain and brokem fingers.
To me, this is a good time to go to hospital.
Also, he was a tramp.
It's not the done thing to say tramp these days is it? If I was one though, I would rather be called a tramp than be called homeless, tramp has almost romantic overtones of treading the streets while homeless fixates on the worst aspect of their life, the lack of home.
This isn't some tedious anti-PC rant though, it's just that I always assumed I would end up as a tramp one day so I've thought about this.
Anyway, he kept touching my back and rubbing it and that in order to show me where the pain was. I didn't want to ask him to stop (Because I was scared not because I was horny.) so I didn't. Then, when the bus came he asked me sit opposite him and shield him from the driver so he could drink. It seems worth mentioning that he stunk of piss.
Then he pointed out a woman who he termed 'a bit odd'. He was right.
She stood up and gave a long speech about organised police brutality ON THE BUS. It seemed to be the type of speech that was eloquent until you listened to the substance and noticed it was jibberish. She handed out some hand-made leaflets which were covered in pictures of her face. I tried to read one but this could not be done.
The thing is...Nobody seemed to think any of this was odd.
I had to catch a train at 5:30am, so, on arrival at my hostel at midnight I wanted to head to sleep. I reckoned without a Serbian bodybuilder with a full-back skull tattoo deciding he needed the light on to read a magazine. I weighed up the idea of turning the light off until I realised he was a Serbian bodybuilder. Perhaps his mind had been warped by Arkan's reign of terror during his childhood. I had no way of knowing.
That is what Manchester is like.