I slept in the front room. They have a timer for their hot water which ticks quite relentlessly, but I didn't bother turning it off, because I knew I'd get to sleep pretty easily. When I woke up this morning, I heard snoring. That was slighly odd, because there was no-one else in the room. It sounded kinda like it was coming from the fireplace. I worked out eventually that it was the timer as well. It really does sound a lot like someone snoring, gently but consistently. We don't know what we're doing today yet, but we've already had porridge, so it's shaping up nicely.


* * *

We headed for the peak district in the end, towards Castleton, but we'd all been there before and Adrian suggested we go to Buxton, so we did. We stopped for lunch at a pub on the outskirts, which was good, but I didn't really want to be eating out. It was looking to be a bit of a let-down, as the roads to the town centre were blocked, but we ascertained that this was because there was a carnival on, which was rather unexpected, so we parked a bit outside and walked in. The carnival was a bit strange. There were rather a lot of people by the road, more than I would have expected. There were floats with random people in them, the local clubs and so forth half-heartedly dancing, which I suppose was to be expected, but occasionally, a superfluous-looking vehicle (one of the type that carries volatile liquids - what are they called?) would slowly drive by without a hint of explanantion. And there were men dressed as, get this, ladies; not men at all! There were also about a million girls in flowing, nasty-looking (to my mind) pearly-type dresses, sitting in, or on, cars being a [beautiful] spectacle. There were a good many water-pistols, and whistles and things. People threw money, ostensibly to donate to whatever the people on the floats were collecting for, and it usually ended up being grabbed by small children from the street.

After that, we wandered around for a bit and didn't do too much. I bought a pear and it was quite good. Emma gazed longingly into a travel agents' window and we had a little look around a record shop. No beefheart, but a goodly quantity of Zappa. However, we found a little bookshop which availed me, for the princely sum of £1.99, How to Solve a Crossword. This means that I now have some idea of how cryptic crosswords work. Quite exciting. Adrian and I are a bit keen to have a go at one now, whereas Emma is by turns bewildered and contemptuous of the whole affair, especially the puns.

After getting back to Manchester, we lazed for a little while, and the watched Hulk at a cinema. Ang Lee was the wrong person for the job, but they (I'd assume it's a man, but I know not) did have some good ideas. Byb far the worst thing about the film is the laboured attempt to make it seem scientific, and psychologically compelling. It spends a long, tedious time detailing the ridiculous premise in order to get us to suspend our disbelief, but my disbelief went to sleep a long time before it finished. After a while though, it got okay, and accelerated into reasonably engaging territory. Had they axed the first hour of it,m it would have been a watchable film. In this manner it resembles Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.