diffrentcolours | Conversational White-Water Rafting

The last Bank Holiday Monday was fun. cosmolinguist's Canadian friend Bill was in the UK, and we haven't seen him for over a decade. Incompatibilities with Bill's idiosyncratic approach to communication technologies meant that I had to be the go-between and secretary, and for a while we weren't sure whether he had received any messages from us. But he got back to us on Monday morning and we made plans, meeting him in the city centre at lunchtime.

I did my tour guide bit, showing him the still-bescaffolded Town Hall, Lincoln Square, the John Rylands Library on Deansgate. Apparently he'd been to the latter before, but didn't know it was one of the first places in Manchester to have air filters installed during the Industrial Revolution, to stop soot and sulphur in the air from contaminating the library books. We doubled back along Peter Street and the former Free Trade Hall, and ended up at Society, down by the Bridgewater Hall, where Bill and I enjoyed pizza and E had veggie quesadillas. After that we took in the lovely tiled Peveril of the Peak, the punky former-toilet Temple of Convenience where we chatted international politics with a lefty Polish bartender, and headed up to the Village to the Molly House.

Talking to Bill is a bit like white water rafting - he says what's on his mind at any given time, and he's massively knowledgeable and fearsomely intelligent, so the conversation flows fast from topic to topic and really all you can do is cling on for dear life and hope to occasionally nudge things.

It was great fun. So much so that we managed to do it again the following Friday - this time we hit the Northern Quarter, starting in Bar Fringe talking about creativity and art. Later in Terrace we got talking to some students who bummed cigarettes off Bill, which ended up in some bizarrely deep and meaningful conversations. Eventually E and I staggered off for the last train and Bill walked with us, then went to check out the Piccadilly Tap.

He'll be back next year. I'm looking forward to it already.