Life in a northern town.

Yesterday I took Tracy to a forensics conference at Manchester metropolitan uni’, we gave a lift to one of the younger students at St Martin’s. His friend died in a car crash last week. It must be difficult to come to terms with your own mortality at such a young age. Whilst Tracy was in the conference I visited my dad at Christie's, he’s just had a stem cell transplant and is currently in isolation. He’s past the sickness stage and is getting better. I was walking round Stockport later, thinking about fate, bad luck, call it what you will, but I was pondering why some people make it and some don’t.

One of the things I noticed during my wander around Stockport town centre was the number of cheap book shops; I thought it was a Cumbrian phenomenon. I got “Blue moon rising” for £1.99 to add to my City collection. I used to wag school in Stockport, and I couldn’t believe how much it has changed, for the worse in my opinion. No Victoria café, no co-op, no Spynx’s pie shop and none of that lovely hot weetabix smell from Robbie’s brewery. In fact the only thing that hasn’t changed are the planes flying right down the middle of the Mersey way. It’s characterless and could be any town in the UK.

Tracy’s conference was all about computer crime and how the police can find out what people have been doing by analysing their PC. Shipman was one of the examples used, it’s fascinating stuff. I may well go along to the next one, it’s got to better than wandering around faceless town centres.