Just got back from two days in Manchester for work. Lots of talking to people, lots of standing (in heals), lots of wearing suits and lots of socialising.
I got a nice modern hotel room unlike Nadia who got the old chinzy un-refurbished look, despite having booked everyone's rooms.
It will be a memorable trip for many reasons:
* I conquered my fear of speaking at the Manchester reception and did a speech in front of 150 people without getting nervous for two hours before.
* Lisa had a huge room complete with a glass-walled bathroom. Yep if you went for a bath or pee or worse, there was no privacy. Hannibal-Lector-in-prison style. There were wooden venetian blinds on the outside of most walls but not the door. So, if you did have the blinds down a) your room companion could raise them on a whim and b) the door had no modesty screening so made having blinds covering the rest of the walls pretty pointless. You'd need to be pretty secure and uninhibited in your relationship to feel comfortable spending a night in this room.
* A prostitute propositioned Adrian in the street by grabbing his crotch but it was in fact a diversion technique while she lifted his wallet. When he reported the theft to the police, they thought he might be the bloke who'd earlier that evening been reported as harrassing women in the area, and were quite frosty towards him. And, to top it all, the hotel very kindly put a note on his account so that staff would know he'd not be able to settle his bill having no cards or cash, unfortunately this meant that when he switched on his TV to view his bill it came up with the message:
'Wallet stolen by prostitute', just in case he'd forgotten and the staff who didn't know the full circumstances needed help in drawing their own conclusions as to the sort of person he is...
So overall an interesting couple of days.