I will *never* drive to Manchester ever _again_

First, the good stuff.
Saturday
Picked up robinbloke and made good time on our journey with an hour of lunch break in between. We arrived at the hotel shortly after the planned ETA of 3pm, waited for davywavy to arrive, dropped our stuff in our room and had a walk around Manchester, including the multi-storey shop of things. I was good and only bought a Fun Lovin' Criminals CD and not the SDL top as they didn't have it in my size.
We were joined by the cryx and later by puddingcat and hardwired. Quickly back to the hotel to get changed and then to a pub where boog, vulgarcriminal and Philip (LJ?) were waiting. After a drink, we wandered in search of food, the Chinese banquet was closed, the Mexican didn't have enough room for us so we ended up at a huge, rather posh Chinese place for Dim Sum. The food was excellent, only the staff slightly screwed up our order or rather failed to tell us that the first lot of Dim Sum wasn't for the 6 people sharing one...
On our way to the club afterwards, we ran into Gryff(?), one of David's old chums. And then the highlight of the evening: puddingcat pulling two random lesbians. ;o)

Jilly's was great, I spent most of the time in the Classic Rock room, mainly because it was the coolest and also because it was far too hot in the goth room and they didn't play much I liked. Good fun and definitely worth the travel.
puddingcat and hardwired left early as the latter didn't feel too well. As it turned out, both had ... some discomfort this morning. :o(
After chuckout, we said good-bye to cryx (who went back to BiCon) and vulgarcriminal and Philip and walked back to the hotel. Good thing it was all reasonably close together.
Showered and crashed out.

Sunday
Had late breakfast just before closing (no more eggs), packed and headed off homewards, dropping davywavy off at Stately Wade Manor for a drink and a swing, then carried on into the depths of Rutland to deliver robinbloke at the_mendicant's where I had a short chat and some lovely tea before carrying on home in torrential rain. Not quite the hardest rain I've driven in but close.

And then, between Huntington and Cambridge, I wanted to shift down and realised the engine was still revving and wouldn't stop as if the accelerator pedal was stuck (it wasn't). Managed to pull into the next service station and get the car to stop without crashing. It was raining cats and dogs at the time so I called the AA. A friendly man arrived an hour later during full sunshine and fixed the problem in 30 seconds. Bah! Oh well, only lost an hour and that's what I pay my membership fee for.
This is the third time I've had car trouble coming back from Manchester, I think it's cursed.

Dinner now, then downloading photos, relax in front of TV and have an early night.

Photos

Andy's Birthday Do
Manchester
(the one of the full moon sadly didn't come out at all, I only had a dim shot of the pavement for some reason...)