10.

so, monday night was my first night away from home ever. it was a really strange experience but i had a really great time. the gig was fantastic, the only problem was that i couldn't move around much and my knee buckled at the end of the night so walking around manchester was a real problem. i was surprised by how rude a lot of the people were though. i know the rules of society change at a gig, but me and my friends weren't stood right at the front (we were near one of the stairways so we were involved, but out of the way) and a lot of people would just shove you for absolutely no reason. i was honestly ready to start smashing skulls because there was no need in it. we weren't stood tightly packed together so anyone could have easily walked through. out of the thirty or so people that shoved me that night, only one said excuse me. if people can't even say excuse me what the hell is the world coming to? i wasn't stood being unmoved because i'm boring. it was more a case of knowing jumping around could cause my joint to rip in half. something like that anyhow. but the whole experience was a very different one. when we'd been in newcastle or anywhere else really, people you didn't even know would help you up if you fell in a mosh pit, or would gently try to get passed you. i guess manchester didn't get that memo because not only did i have a really, very obese girl stand on my foot (how it hasn't bruised, i don't know) multiple times, a few of my friends got hit by people with cameras. the show was full of strobe lighting. how the hell do you expect to get a good photo of STROBE LIGHTING? it was a very, very different experience to normal, friendly gigs. i think in all honesty in future i'd look at going somewhere else and use manchester as a final resort. i like the city, i genuinely do, but out of the ten or so people we spoke to, only two of them were actually nice. both of them called me 'darling' a concerning amount, which amused my friends to no end, but other than that. the receptionist at the hotel glared at us every time we went passed. i asked for extra towels. in a room for two people, we had one human sized towel and one midget of a towel. so the receptionist handed me SIX towels. when i asked how long it'd take to get to the apollo from where we were, without looking at me and without any amount of friendliness, he just snapped '5 minutes in a taxi'. no offer of getting us one or giving us a phone number. i'm not a princess or anything but my accent especially is extremely broad and very obviously northern. well more 'northern' than manchester. why the hell would any of us know any taxis? me and jon ended up finding one outside because somebody had pulled up to pick someone else from the hotel up. the taxi driver was amazing. the security guards at the gig were power crazed arseholes who seemed to think nothing of man-handling people for no actual reason. they kept pushing people away from the stairs and back into the crowd without saying a word. yeah i get that it's your job but there's no need to be rude about it. then after the gig we ended up in the only takeaway that seemed open in the entirety of manchester (though, we're talking at about 11pm here). lauren got a chicken pizza which has mentally scarred all of us a little bit. the chicken was all dark meat, but the outside of it was this really bright, vivid red colour. a lot like chinese seasoning. and the pizza was also covered in sweetcorn. we left it in the hotel, abandoned and half eaten. to be fair, the hotel rooms were a complete mess when we left. sean's room was covered in a deck of cards, abandoned takeaway boxes, forks in the bath, soap on the tv and all sorts of other, worse criminal damage. then jon's was left with pizza boxes on the floor, a half eaten kitkat and bedding all stuffed under the bed and everything. mine and lauren's was fine apart from the teacup filled with make-up wipes, the flooded bathroom (not our fault their shower flooded when we used it) and a spilled cup of tea on the floor (this is what happens when you trip while putting your shoes on and knock the little desk with the cuppa on it).
other than that i pretty much updated everything as i went along in a sort of running commentary on my twitter. peace and cheesecake.