Manchester Alternative Pride / White Ven Men

This weekend just gone was pretty good. On Friday night I cooked dinner and watched The Blackening with V and E, which was very silly. It's the first time in a while we've all been able to sit down and watch something together, and it was very cosy. Gym as usual on Saturday morning with cosmolinguist, except we picked up a friend who's just moved to the neighbourhood to give them a lift with us. It was nice to chat with them.

On Saturday afternoon we went to Manchester Alternative Pride, organised by Queer Roots Collective. It was at the Platt Fields market garden - the old bowling greens have been taken over and turned into a cool community garden growing edible food, but there's also space for a marquee and lots of little nooks and crannies. Again it was great that all three of us could go. We saw friends from a bunch of different places, enjoyed music and food, V got to do some lino printing of beetle patterns. After a little while I took V home due to tiredness, and came back for more drinks with E and friends. We got squiffy, talked an awful lot of nonsense with queer friends, and got crappy takeout on the way home, it was great.

On Sunday, me and E rented a van and drove to Merseyside, to help V's nephew clean out his late Mum's house. This had been planned previously but fallen through, so it was a bit more urgent now. It was a terrible, rainy day, and the house was dusty and its contents sticky. It was a horrible sensory experience for me, but E did a great job of ploughing through the kitchen, and between us we helped him make a big dent in the remaining stuff, including a trip to the tip. It was an exhausting day but I'm glad I could help out family. We came home to dinner cooked by angelofthenorth, chatted with a visiting friend and then collapsed in bed.