Hold your nose, we're going in...

I missioned to Manchester last night with Ilkley Hannah. On a vague invitation from a couple of friends there, we did a bleary-eyed train ride to Picadilly to find Janey and Rosheen. We got festively merry with their jolly band of Manchestrians and Irishrians.

The evening culminated in an extended session of dancing around Janey’s living room to the greatest hits of Prince with a brand new (as yet unnamed) small yapper type dog.

I woke this morning to a pleasantly warm radiator, a cat on my legs, a cup of coffee in my hands, a bacon butty in my mouth and a fog in my head.

We powered on through and got ourselves out of doors before midday to begin something of a sitcom of a day in North Manchester.

We missed our bus. We were late. We walked to the other bus stop and got on a bus. The driver looked totally unfazed by the sight of four bedraggled hippies with a small unnamed and untamed dog and us clutching only a twenty pound note. After much faffing, general banter and holding up of the bus, we got on and it got moving again.

We got off the bus in Smithfield and walked towards the market. Soon after hitting the pavement, we all began to wince a little. What can only be described as evil filled our nostrils. A stench of the foulest order was attacking us and our olfactory senses. A solid smell wave of guff was upon us. We continued to walk, hoping that we’d perhaps just missed the sight of a dead animal.

As we reached the gates of the market, immediately to our right was an enormous refuse heap; a huge gaping hill of shit, smouldering in the December chill. A layer of mist, hanging over the reeking crest.

Presumably this smell greets each and every lucky patron of market throughout the year.

I held my breath and felt my wobbly stomach turn. This Holocaust of the senses somehow sets the tone of the place.

I was immediately aware of a large group of people crowding around some live entertainment. A fat man with a large radio mic clipped to his face was dropping large quantities of meat into a plastic bag and making some lovely banter with the crowd.

“Is it eleven yet? Ok, let’s go mad! Two for seven. Three for ten. Pork chops. Delicious! Let’s go crazy. We need to speed this up. Let’s go. Who’s next? You there. Thankyou. Six for five.”

It’s a witty business the meat trade. Never thought I’d read myself write that.

High up on his meat wagon with his fast-paced motivational speaking, he set the bar quite high for the proceedings. I could only be quietly disappointed by the remaining market. Shabby tables displaying a dizzying world of tat.

I continued to wander open-mouthed. What did I see?

Violin-shaped clocks with strips of neon.

Wooden picture frames inlaid with carvings of fish.

Porcelain ballerinas on revolving plastic housing.

Biscuits.

Stacks of mobile sim cards.

Large remote-controlled cars (whose prices were slashed before my eyes – the drama of the market).

Shiny watches.

Batteries. Lots of batteries.

Wonder Knife demonstration. Another mic-ed up tubber delivering his can’t quite be arsed banter about the cutting capabilities of this particularly sharp implement.

My interest in butchers was directly proportional to the amount of electrical equipment involved in their set up. No mic, no interest. What a sad thing to admit. Sucker for a clip-on.

I trudged through the endless aisles of stuff and consumer left overs. One particular shop was an unashamed junk shop.

Piles and piles of painted mirrors.

VHS copies of The Full Monty.

Used computers.

Watercolours of pets.

Stacks of old records and tapes.

Rusting bicycles.

A whole varied bunch of those fascinating specimens from Manchester picking their way through the chaos in the bored hope that they might stumble across a tenner stashed in a second hand purse (it was empty).

The people at the market were spectacular.

Tall thin men in tight light blue jeans, sporting glorious golden mullets.

Entire fat families creating clouds of sportswear and cigarettes and cups of tea and burgers.

Old ladies with rugged pale complexions, doing a tat balancing act in their trusty brown shopper.

Foreign peoples of every discernable half breed.

Black Asians.

Albino Arabs.

Ginger Orientals.

All dressed in the shapeless tasteless fashions of the day.

The four of us laden with more tat than I have belongings missed the bus by seconds.

We waited in the freezing cold, thankfully out of reach of the death smell. An hour of nonsense and jumping up and down passed before our bus arrived. I got on, a little confused because we were on a different bus route but we had the same driver as our first bus of the day. He seemed positively withered to encounter our like again.

Rosheen had bought a fucked up bicycle without a chain (to be restored) and had to make space for it in the buggy compartment at the front. Han, Janey and the unnamed mutt stumbled on with their many bags of unofficial Kylie Minogue calendars, Hawaiian wedding music LPs and assorted meat, making a right hysterical noise as they did so. Laughter and general chaos. I can imagine what kind of helpless gypsies we must have seemed to the passing eye.

A friendly blind man got on and sat down next to the piles of junk. Then a mean old woman got on, mumbling to herself. She made the blind man move seats to accommodate her arse. He tried to shake her hand and she was having nothing of it. Starting mumbling rude things about our unnamed furry dog and her dredlocked owner. Then, instead of pressing the button, she shouted to the bus driver to stop, and when he didn't, she got up and started cursing him and waddled off the bus.

Myself and Han parted from the team and took another bus to the train station. The bus had an eerily similar death smell. We were sure that we were just smelling each, that we had brought this morbid funk onto the bus. Nope, it was the bus. Definitely.

Christmas now init. Lovely stuff. Love all that. Christmas. Wicked. Have a merry one.