Friday Five!

1. We had a fabulous week in Manchester with our son. Great weather Tuesday and Wednesday, light rain most of the day on Thursday so it was Manchester Art Museum and the Ryland Library plus a reminder of our past with lunch at Popeyes, eating some Louisiana style fried chicken. The other days we went further afield and visited the Imperial War Museum North, The Lowry Art gallery and the Manchester Library. While wandering through the city I spotted a statue of Abraham Lincoln which I went over to take a photo of.  I knew the story behind why his statue was there with a copy of the letter he wrote to the working people of Manchester who came out on an extended strike and refused to process the cotton coming in from the Confederate States of America in support of the fight against slavery.
The story is here: (hope you can open it)
https://ilovemanchester.com/why-manchester-abraham-lincoln-statue-square


2. We had some other wonderful eating experiences this week, with Japanese, Korean, Armenian and Christmas market street food. On the Tuesday we went to see the musical "Singing in the Rain" which was exceptionally good. It was our son's choice and it turned out to be a good one.


3. Traveled back from Manchester this morning.  Trains all on time and daughter picked us from Saltburn as planned. The weather was back to being lovely. We wandered out from the hotel to have breakfast, then back to the hotel to finish packing and checkout at 10. Short walk up to the train station.  What a great week.

4. Unpacked and read the mail for the week, then walked to the corner shop to pick up some fresh fruit and milk to have with our evening meal of shrimp stir fry, made with some of the fresh vegetables that were delivered today.  Daughter had already divided up the box for which she pays a third.

5. It is now 7pm and it has started raining so time to watch some of my TV programmes that I recorded while we were away.

That sounds like a splendid trip! I miss being able to just hop a train. They are starting one on the Metro line from Albany, which we're not too far from, that'll go straight down into NYC, but it's like $100 and only is going to run twice a day. Not good for us.

My 5

1) It's cold. As in really cold. It was 2F on the balcony (saith the weather monitor - I think that's like around -17C) when I woke up this morning. The TV news was saying -1F. I am thankful I put plastic sheeting up over the windows, as there was condensation even on the side inside the house.  It's up to, according to my weather station's monitor out on the balcony, a whopping 26F now. A veritable heatwave.

2) It's pretty out - on and off clouds, snow on everything that's not roadway. We got somewhere between 8 and 10 inches.  Looks pretty on the branches of the trees. Had some little birds show up on the balcony. I assume they remembered that we had put seeds out there every year for them. No seeds this year, though. Landlord not pleased with bird feeders. Felt really bad for them, too (the birds, not the landlord). They looked miserable.  Found an old package of dried mealworms in a box in the hall cupboard - might bundle up and sneak out and sprinkle a few over the balcony railing.

3) Speaking of cold, I have to bundle up for real, and mask up, and head over to the grocery store in a bit. Have some excellent coupons for discounts that I don't want to waste. Plus, we're almost out of milk. They are doing a lot of "loss leaders" on things like sausage, milk, butter, and cheese, and I can't pass that up.

4) Back to the cold - there's a scene in Dr. Zhivago where they are out in the country, living in part of an estate, surrounded by glistening white snow as far as the eye can see. I can relate. All that is missing is the sound of the wolves howling at night. (And Omar Sharif.)

5) We're off to the city on our field trip this weekend. Going to go to the Art Museum, which apparently has a good Egyptian exhibit. And general shopping and people watching. It's supposed to be 40F there....