Had been excited to go to this event ever since I first heard of it, and I had sought permission and booked a room well in advance. The night before I realised I had booked a room with no windows in the Britannia which has terrible reviews, but had gone with a flex booking, so cancelled and got one at the Mecure opposite.
I purposely missed my Wakefield social/support group on the Thursday night, so I had more time to pack, but I still ended up rushing around like a lunatic on the morning getting ready. I had paid for 10am check-in, as one of my Insta friends was also going early. In the end I didn't get there until 11:30am, so was lunch time before in my room and unpacked. I had travelled over dressed, I did put some men's jeans and a t-shirt in a bag in the car, but they were really only for emergencies e.g. car breakdown, and didn't get used at all, and stayed in the car. The car park was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel.
A man sitting in his car called me over while I was walking to the hotel as he couldn't work out how to put a space into his sat nav ! - this was quite amusing, anyway managed to sort it for him, all part of the free trans tech support service.
Met up with Ann outside my hotel, and she unfortunately had to tell me she that she had just had a call from her wife who had just received some bad news, and would have to abandon the weekend and go home. But she was going to stay for lunch and a drink then go back later.
It was a bit of a subdued lunch, but it was still nice, and we had a good chat. We did some photo's outside the New Union, they have some angel wings on the wall - I love angel wing photo opportunities.
We had a drink outside there, but then it was time for her to get on the road, so we walked back up to the Hilton end of Canal street and said our goodbyes.
I was feeling a bit sad at that point, as I had envisaged that a lot of the day time adventures would have been with her. But after a brief visit back to the room to plan what to do, I decided to head out and find the art gallery.
I did so, and spend a pleasant hour or so wandering around, they had some lovely Lowry's , and some nice sculptures - I didn't find any peacocks to torment my friend with though.
After this I had a bit of a wander, and stumbled across the library, so though I would go and have a look around that for a bit. I was nice, big circular reading room with a glass dome at the top. Didn't get a photo though. Walked back via china town, and headed to the hotel to research where best to eat. I'm not actually that fussed about Chinese food, I just liked the arch.
I settled on a Lebanese place that looked really nice online, and was back towards canal street, so not too far away. It wasn't that great really, I had a shish kebab with some olives to start. I think it was meant to come with bread but it didn't. The salad with the kebab was pretty poor. Portion size wasn't great, I didn't bother staying for a desert.
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What I should
have worn |
Headed back to the hotel as was intending to change my outfit and head out for a few quiet drinks that night. The hotel I had chosen is not far from canal street, but you did have to cross a busy road with lots of people walking up and down, and walk down a few streets to get there. I did have a nice purple sort of satin-ish dress to wear and got as far as putting it on, but my confidence failed me and I didn't want to walk out amongst the dressed down masses like that.
So instead I put on another Seasalt one that I had worn to the sculpture park - I did change to the platinum blue fade wig though, and put on my block heels, so it looked a little bit more dressy I suppose.
Anyway it was OK and it got me out of the hotel, and got to canal street again, and started to walk down, looking out for a friendly face. I had hoped to inflict myself on someone I vaguely knew. The plan sort of worked in that I bumped into Gaby one of the shining stars of the social scene, who is always dressed to kill, and also knew where everyone would be meeting up. I hadn't been in touch we these girls really.
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Gaby, social butterfly
extrovert extraordinaire |
Anyway one drink led to another, and I ended up on the dance floor at one pub, and continued to boogie for much of the night.
My lack of self confidence, and skill with dancing had led to me being sat on a corner guarding the bags on previous occasions, and I don't think it really enabled me to try and properly integrate with the group, and made it seem like I wasn't having fun.
So it sort of meant to great deal to me to finally get the courage to do it - although (as with far too many things of late), social lubricant was required - although I was on shandy's to ensure I got to the end of the night with a functional memory.
I did dancing on a stage (with others), danced with a number of random lovely CIS females. A gay guy - who will feature in a future post (nothing saucy).
It was a really good night, fantastic Madonna tribute act in Via, who to me sounded as good as the original, and her dancing was off the chart. We did a lot of bars on canal street, and New York New York which is a few streets back.
One of the girls in Via late in the night did tell me to not be so shy, we did some sort of Irish dancing with her with the spinning and arm linking thing which was fun.
My feet were killing by that point, the block heels that I got were really cheap, and bought more for the look. I had previous hurt my feet in them at several events - I will get some lower ones, or at least some with more padding on the ball of the foot.
I decided to call it a night, but it was before midnight and one of the CIS wife's of one of the girls told me I wasn't allowed, so we did some more dancing, and it got to 12:30 ish and I did manage to get permission to go to bed :)
I did drink some water before going to bed, but was still a bit hungover in the morning. Just headachy, and a delicate, but not really nauseous.
All in all, a really good night, and the participation in the dancing was a real achievement for me.
I didn't do any of the event in the park though, apparently there were things on - but having fun was the aim, and much fun was had.
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