You'd better look out below.

Miraculously, I made my way to Victoria coach station without fuss on Saturday morning (although I did have a mini meltdown when the tube stopped at Westminster for more than ten minutes). Delighted that for once I had made the right bus at the right time, I was content to sit back quietly and read my book all the way to Manchester. Sadly it was not to be. Somehow, I had not banked on the alternative megabus conundrum: the uncooperative neighbour. My travel companion for the five and a bit hours that ensued was a boy from Pakistan, who was studying English in Manchester. He seemed nice enough and for a while I was perfectly happy to talk (with inexperience) about football and Lollywood movies and the places I had visited when I was in Pakistan five years ago. That was all very well and good. However, when the conversation turned persistently to co-founding an import-export business together and marital visas and running away to Paris in the Spring, Shudehill bus station could not come about quick enough.

After an hour of disorientation and a Christmas Market vs. heavy bag debacle, my family found me crouched on a wall, eating Swiss macaroni with a plastic spork. We ate a hasty pizza dinner before heading to the GMEX to watch two hours of Devandra Banhart (♥ "hey there little snapping turtle, snapping at at shell") and Arcade Fire (expecting every next song to be Wake Up). I am amazed that in a crowd predominately made up of eighteen-thirty year olds, I was knocked over time and time again by a group of middle-aged bald men, attempting to start a mosh pit. Oh the youth grown ups of today.