The Archive

Steel yourself

I have returned from the North.

Amusingly, I met a large number of people at the show. Each of them told me what they did.

"I make ingots of aluminium"
"We manufacture girders"
"We're an engineering firm specialising in couplings" (yes, I made a great joke about the sitcome Coupling, which the woman had never heard of, so that went well)
"We make steel. British Steel." (Pug, it was indeed the Corus of disapproval. I told them you said it was grim in Wales. They concurred)

I'm such an idiot that it was only at lunchtime that I realised I was in Sheffield. Of course!

Anyway, it was actually rather fun (unlike the rest of them, which are painfully tedious).

Unlike the previous evening. Instead of being located in the heart of a thriving Northern City with all the associated distrations and shiny things, I managed to book a hotel in the foothills of Rotheram.

You know the opening credits of Coronation Street? It was a bit like that, only for horrible Victorian terraces, imagine horrible seventies houses.

Although one enterprising resident did try to brighten up the place by putting a life-sized model gorilla on their roof.

?

I can only apologise for not having got a picture of this oddity. Sorry.

Anyway, I found a pub hoping to meet a lovely, friendly lady or two to chat to. Which I did.

Well, not exactly 'lovely' so much as 'insane'. And more 'fishwife' than lady. But friendly. So very frightingly friendly.

Then again, beer was £1.55 a pint, so I could easily drink until she became Kate Moss.

But, and I'm going to shock you here, I didn't. Instead I returned to the hotel to watch football in my pants.

For the first half anyway. Then the bar manager asked me to go to my room as I was putting the other guests off their drinks.

Still, good night though.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:19 AM