This week I caught up with an old uni mate here in Manchester! Steve Black was making a brief trip down from Glasgow for a change of scenery, before meeting up with his parents for a meal in the Lake District. So on Tuesday he make a visit to the Trafford Centre to do some shopping, and I headed over there to meet him, and we grabbed a burger at ‘Five Guys’ (expensive but nice!) where we chatted for a bit, and then I left him so he could look round the shops properly!
Steve (and my dinner).
He was staying at a Premier Inn in Sale, so in the evening we went out to a pub just a couple of miles away – The March Hare – and it was actually really nice! I’d not been there before, but it’s definitely on my list of good places to eat at! It was good to catch up with Steve – we hadn’t spoken so in depth for a pretty long time, and I don’t think I’ve actually seen him since 2017. The next morning we went for a short walk around Sale Water Park (which I don’t think I’ve ever done before), and it’s quite nice around there. We walked around the main lake, and also along a bit of the Mersey, before heading back towards our starting point, stopping off at the cafe for a coffee and a bacon sandwich!
Steve and Me at Sale Water Park.
Also, a couple of weekends ago, I went down to Leek with Lee to shoot some footage of one of Gag Reflex’s outdoor comedy events they’ve been doing since Covid. There was quite a decent crowd in the end – it wasn’t the warmest of evenings, but it did stay dry which was good!
The line up was hosted by Lou Conran (who I saw perform in Edinburgh), with sets from Eddy Brimson, Ignacio Lopez, and Tom Binns (performing in character as both psychic Ian D Montfort, and hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury). They were all really good, and the audience seemed to really enjoy it. The only issue was that as it got dark, the only light was only really from the stage, so it was hard to film the audience reactions after a certain point. Apparently at previous event’s Gag have done, there’s been additional lighting around the audience, mainly because it was already at the locations, but here we were in a field next to the cricket club, and there wasn’t any extra lighting to see anything! Luckily I brought a small light with me in my camera bag and I was able to rig it up backstage in the ‘green room’ area (ie gazebo behind the van!) because we realised you couldn’t see anything there!
‘A Lark In Leek’.
Tom Binns, Eddy Brimson, Lou Conran and Ignacio Lopez.
It was a pretty late finish – the stage needed to be de-rigged and the actual canopy is a blow-up structure, so it takes a bit of work to get all the air out to roll it up, but we were done by about 1.30am, and I was so glad that Lee was driving back and not me!