This Charming Man.

I love The Smiths. They're amazing. 'This Charming Man' has to be my favourite song of theirs, because it's so good to dance to and it's in 'The History Boys' ... The Smiths formed in Manchester in the 80's and the people here seem quite proud of it - there's Morrissey stuff everywhere! It's great. I'm totally okay with seeing this face everywhere I go ...

Babe. Shame he doesn't look like this anymore...

The floors of my hostel are all named after different singers or bands from the greater Manchester area. I am on the fifth floor - New Order. This is cool, because New Order are great! But really, really uncool because every time I go to my room I have to hike up five flights of stairs! I'd prefer to be on the first floor. Then I'd only have to climb one set of stairs, and I'd be on the Morrissey floor :)

Manchester is a cool city. The people here are SO friendly, they've been my favourite thing about it. Everyone greets you with "Alright, love?" and I mean everyone, even the teenage boys. And they all have amazing accents ... for my first two days I had to say "Sorry, what?" every time someone spoke to me. I felt pretty bad about that, but as I said, they're all so friendly anyway it didn't matter. I have been wondering though, what do you call a person from Manchester? A Manchesturian? Cos that sounds kinda silly.

I didn't think that Manchester would be a very nice city to look at, with its industrial history and all. But it really is quite pretty. There are a bunch of grade one listed buildings here - The Town Hall, John Rylands Library and the cathedral are just a couple and they're all lovely! I forgot my gloves the day I went to the library and the cathedral, and it was too cold to take my hands out of my pockets - so no photos were taken... The town hall, as I said, is lovely - but I think the giant Santa Claus really adds to it ... don't you?

Speaking of grade listed buildings - I have a story about a building we saw in Edinburgh. A few years ago Microsoft bought the building that used to be home to the main post office in Edinburgh ... at least, I'm pretty sure it was the post office ... anyway, they then drew up all these plans to knock down the building and then build a shiny new one. Unfortunately for them, it was a grade two listed building, so they weren't allowed to alter the exterior at all. So what did they do? They ripped out the insides and built a shiny building INSIDE the old one ... it was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Then, they decided that they didn't really like it after all, so they left. The building, not surprisingly, has been empty ever since.

The Christmas Markets have just started here. It's so cool - the Brits have Christmas markets and ice rinks etc in every city leading up to December 25th. How amazing is that? I love festivities!

So for the whole time I've been here I've basically just walked around and looked at stuff. I went into the Manchester Art Gallery and the People's History Museum, but I didn't last long. I'm still all museum-ed out from Europe! I walked all through the gay district and down Canal Street. Anyone who's seen Russell T Davies' 'Queer As Folk' will know why that's cool. All in all I've had a pretty good time, despite being a bit down and lonely.

My loneliness will be coming to an end tomorrow though! As you all know I spent a few months in Kenya last year living and volunteering with a bunch of other young people from around the world. I made some great friends while doing this, mainly from the UK. Tomorrow I'm going to stay with my lovely friend Gemma in Cambridge and we will be joined on Saturday by Alison! I am so excited!

That's all for now,

Love to you all xx