B is for.......

.....Bloody Brilliant Blipmeet!

There have been lots of 'B' moments today, but the best was meeting up with Beewriter in Manchester city centre.

She brought along her spare camera for me to have a play with, along with a telephoto lens. She gave me some really helpful hints on how to use it and off we set snapping. I took my compact camera along too, but didn't really use it much.

Fortunately for us, there was plenty to snap as there was a TUC protest march in the centre. Bee's mission was to get a photo of an angry man with no teeth; she managed the latter! There were apparently over 100,000 people in the march; I can believe it as there were people everywhere. However, none of them were particularly angry, I reckon the weather helped to lighten their mood.

Unfortunately for us, the march meant that alot of the centre was cordoned off; it was like a maze trying to traverse the streets to find a way out. In the end, there was nothing else to do except mingle with the marchers in order to cross the street. It will be our luck to have been caught on BBC news - if you spot us on News at Ten we weren't protesting, honest!

B is also for beautiful, what great weather we had. The sun shone all day and it was quite warm too.

We did some walking today; I checked my pedometer app when we finally sat down and we'd done 10,500 steps. By the time we'd said our goodbyes and I'd walked to the car, I was up to 14,109. I'm glad I wore comfy shoes.

Lunch was a late one; we went to a place called 'Propertea' which is just behind the cathedral and owned by ghosthunter and former Blue Peter star, Yvette Fielding.

I though the guy on the next table looked  familiar, but when he spoke I knew for sure that he was Dave Myers of The Hairy Bikers fame.
He was with his family having afternoon tea and it was funny to hear him critiquing the food! I'd alerted Bee to our 'neighbour' and we debated whether or not we should ask for a photo, but ultimately it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Bee bravely spoke out and asked for a photo and at first he seemed baffled and I thought 'oh no, it's not him', but when she told him we were fans, he beamed and told us about his new show which had been filmed at the cathedral this week.

Despite getting some great shots of the march with Bee's camera (which incidentally, I bought off her at the end of our meet, yay!), this was taken with my trusty compact and just had to be today's blip, even if it is a blipsnap with Bee.

We almost did a bit of extra 'papping' as Bee had parked near to the Lowry hotel. There was a huge swarm of girls there, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the One Direction boys who are playing at the Arena tonight. We hung around for a few minutes, before agreeing we were far happier to have seen a hairy biker than a one directioner! I wonder if she might have sneaked back without me though!


I've been buzzing ever since I got home, I had such a great day. Thanks Bee for the expert camera tuition and tour of Manchester, I can't wait for the next time :-)