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This morning we visited Manchester Science Museum which was definitely sponsored by the good people of Manchester. There was a great deal on the machines used in the weaving industry of which of course Manchester was famous. There was also quite a lot about Richard Arkwright who was born in Preston but whose mill was on the other side of the Pennies in Cromford but this was not mentioned anywhere. And as anyone who has read "It Will Never Catch On" (still available from Amazon, order your copy now) the first modern computer was designed and built at Bletchley Park in order to decode German messages. Alan Turing who worked at Bletchley returned to Manchester University after the war and worked on the second computer.

Another exhibition took visitors through the human digestive system, you enter the mouth and exit via the bum, a bit shitty really. It was very well done, enough farts and poos to excite children and enough real information for old farts like us.

Of course the Lucas curse hit us, the big hall in the museum is closed whilst they upgrade it, perhaps in there are machines that were not "invented in Manchester" but somehow I doubt it.

The afternoon was spent in Manchester Art Gallery which has some interesting paintings, although the captions were a little too political for my liking. I like to make my own mind up about what a painting means, not have someone else's prejudices inflicted on me.

Last night we ate in a smashing West Indian restaurant. Plenty of rum punch and spicy food in slightly scruffy surroundings with very loud music, just like the Caribbean.

To compensate for all the foreign food we have had so far (Indian, African & West Indian) today we ate in Mr Thomas's Chop house where I can confirm the lamb chops are very good.

I could not resist taking a picture of the chap taking his cat to the art gallery, perhaps he took it to see a famous Landseer painting of a lion!