People

It has been a day of meeting people. A day of art. A day of laughing. A day of chatting. A day of fun.

Jude sent a text to see if I wanted to go to Newton Heath to a craft/Food/Vintage Market. I've never been to Newton Heath so I thought 'what the heck' let's go on an adventure. It didn't quite pan out how we planned. We flailed around Failsworth and then found nowt in Newton! We parked up and asked a man where the market was and he gestured towards where we had parked and said this was where the market was usually set up. So we had a detour through Manchester and on towards the Lowry.

We had a little snackette in Cafe Rouge where we met Hussain. He was our waiter and he was such a nice man. Jude kept practising her French on him and then was asking him about France....to which he replied, "I'm actually Turkish!"

After a good laugh we wandered over to Media City as there was an exhibition of photography and art by Salford University students. This was where we met Demi and Nathan. They graduate next week and we had an interesting chat with them about their work and the course. Demi is designing tattoos for a Danish guy she is going into business with. Body art is big business at the moment.

Nathan had painted this weird creation and he was happy to pose by it for a photo. There were lots of people about as there was a big orienteering competition on so there were runners all over the Quays. There was quite a holiday mood feeling and the sun was shining despite the awful forecast.

There is a day of dragon boat racing at the Quays tomorrow and a Chinese festival. We met Jenny who was handing out programmes. We had a good chat with her and I said I would definitely go down tomorrow. Then we went for a little mooch around Booth's supermarket. I bought a few things and whilst we were paying we met Dan. It was a quiet moment in the shop and we told him about the arts we had seen and he had a look at the brochure we had from the exhibition. Suddenly he realised that a large queue had built up and they were all watching us flicking through the brochure and chatting. "That's what makes our shopping experience here so good," I said, "It is the personal touch."

A lovely mix of great people today.