Manchester Pride 2008
The long awaited and long time coming event of the year that is Manchester Pride kicks off tomorrow evening. I’m off work from this evening and for ten days until Monday 1st September, so Pride and the week that follows it represents a very welcome break for both myself and H, as we’re both absolutely knackered after the events and work of the past three months. That said, we’re both working over the Pride “big weekend“; H is DJing on Friday night, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night, while I am doing a shift at a health club that’s run by one of our friends on Friday night (because he’s short staffed) and then helping to run a club night on Sunday night, run by some other of our friends. It’s for these reasons why we’ve taken some time off afterwards because we’re unlikely to get the rest that we need during the weekend itself!
We will be enjoying ourselves too though, of course. The village is closed at about 6.00pm on Friday (cordoned off), at which point only Big Weekend ticketholders are allowed in, heralding the start of the weekend. The Friday evening in the village always has a good atmosphere so we’ll go and join in with that and have a few drinks before we go to our respective jobs. Then on Saturday afternoon is the main parade through the city, which we’re both taking part in, after which we’ll go home and get some sleep before the really massive Pride club party on Saturday evening, Uni Challenge, which is this giant event held at the students’ union complex, incorporating five different nightclubs (including Federation and Trade) and a funfair all in one place. Various afterparties will no doubt follow that, either public or private.
On Monday afternoon, after some more sleep, Heather Small is headlining on the main stage in the car park and then in the evening it’s the annual HIV Candlelit Vigil, which is always a touching and emotional affair and a nice way to finish off the Big Weekend, that is, before the closing party at Essential, which we may or may not go to because, despite promises of a refit, Essential is a fucking awful, awful venue and the whole community is very, very tired of it. Really the sensible thing to do would have been to refit it in time for Pride, not afterwards, but hey, what do I know?
Next week we plan to take it easy. There is a chance that H may have to go in to work on the Friday and possibly the Thursday too, however. This is because he started at new job at the soon to be opened Crowne Plaza hotel this week, and he’s supposed to be a member of a team of three, and the other two team members never showed up for their first day and still haven’t shown up, so it’s up to H to do most of the required maintenance in the 220 room hotel before they open on 1st September. Although this’ll certainly make him the golden boy amongst the hotel’s management it does rather have the potential to throw a spanner in the works with regards to our week “off”. Never mind, needs must.