Manchester

So the first part of my few weeks of english-bliss started in Manchester. I met my (ex)boyfriend, in the train station at Picadilly. (Grr.. my landlady is on the phone next door and is nattering away really loudly in her irritating voice, i can't concentrate like this!)
We met on the windswept platform, like in a Tolstoy novel. I think windswept freezing train platforms are a good place for dramatic happenings and significant meetings.
He was wearing a silly furry hat with earflaps, furry coat and glasses with useless plastic frames in. It was pleasant to see him, and i had to quickly shove away niggling doubts:
"where is the spark of heart-pumping, butterfly-churning excitement one should feel at seeing one's lover from whom one has been separated?" I asked myself.
 Does it die after a certain period of relationship security and monotony? I began to doubt it ever existed. Except perhaps on our initial date which was a spontaneous midnight rendez-vous. I sneaked out of my house into the dark, lamplit streets, unbeknownst to my sleeping parents. I didn't know a thing about the boy who i was off to meet, not even his real name, and my heart pumped with anxiety and an eagerness to impress while appearing calm and natural. I remember it was raining and puddles glittered on the pavement like black ice. We had a cigarette in a bus stop and under the yellow light stole glances at each others faces shyly. His was pretty and made up like a girl's. I never really felt that intense stab of attraction, but i thought he was a beautiful thing- like a fine cat, a snow leopard perhaps. Just as one should never kill as snow leopard to make a luxurious coat, one should never seek to possess another person- and yet it seems to be human nature to want to do so.
That evening in Manchester, however, stumbling under the weight of my heavy backpack, we walked to Salford, a simple hop over a bridge to cross a slow-moving river and you're in a different city. We ate a delicious indian takeaway while sat cross-legged opposite one another on the bed in quiet contemplation and silly chatter, but my eagerness to go for a midnight wander was swiftly quashed by his steadfast reluctance.
His room smelled of damp washing, since he had just returned to the house that night, after an exhausting early-morning schedule of setting up christmas market stalls in various cities' shopping centres.
The following afternoon, we strolled around the city centre of Manchester, myself shivering and drenched in the rain, him quite gleeful albeit a little stressed, taking multiple phone calls from his boss (his best friend's father)
We sampled the delights of the German market, sipping mulled wine in a draughty shed, and then went to dry off in the local Wetherspoons. The clientele was an interesting mixed-bunch, but upon leaving we found a middleaged man with what i might describe as "serial killer eyes" standing in the doorway muttering to himself. Since my boyfriend passes his days smoking endless cigarettes and chatting with people he doesn't know (utterly convinced that he's doing them a favour with the gift of his company), he broke into conversation with the man.
It turned out that he had been on a date with a rent boy, who, when sent to the bar with a crisp twenty pound note, had taken it and scarpered. I didn't blame him. My (ex)boyfriend then went on to ask the man whether it was easy to find  that sort of paid company in Manchester, and he assured us, with a sort of misplaced pride, that indeed it was a piece of piss, but only if one knew of the right places to go. Cigarette lit, we stepped back out into the freezing lashing rain.
But at least Manchester, for all it's puddles, was sparkly and embracing. We were embraced by a shisha bar on the curry mile, and by a cute little cubby-hole of a bar that sold hot lemonade with whisky in it.
That night, i arrived back in Sheffield to find all the fairy lights at the Peace Gardens completely extinguished, and the city centre almost devoid of life. Manchester, I suppose has bustle and hustle- whatever those things are, it is the bright lights towards which i am perhaps headed- who knows? The rest of my holidays however, reinforced my adoration for my beloved Sheffield. But that chronicle shall follow.