In Manchester yesterday.

As we seem to have been leaving our adaptor plugs all over the place, we decided we needed to buy some new ones. So, as I was in Manchester yesterday, I popped into Boots to see what they had in their travel section. There was no sign of such a section on the ground floor. I began to think that they had given up on holiday stuff, on the grounds that nobody goes on holiday at this time of the year. So eventually I sought assistance. Upstairs was the answer. So upstairs I went. 

Still no sign, so I sought assistance again. I was directed to the other side of a display with baby milk on it. And sure enough, on the other side it said, in large letters, TRAVEL. And that was all there was, apart from a lot of empty shelves, all nicely labelled with a variety of travellers's needs. When I pointed this out, the assistant I spoke to told me that the stuff had been removed so that they could put up their Christmas display! Yes, their Christmas display! In the middle of September! Then she invited me to go downstairs and sit by her counter, which turned out to be one of the cosmetics counters, while she went to investigate where the travel stuff had gone. 

A fairly long time afterwards, she returned with the relevant information. In compensation for my waiting around so long, she offered me a free beauty consultation on which would be the ideal foundation for me. I thanked her but politely declined as I rarely use foundation. I wonder what compensation would have been offered to a male customer. 

 The main purpose of my visit to Manchester was not shopping, although shopping did go on. No, the plan was to meet some friends and former colleagues and go to Home, the big cinema/theatre/entertainments complex, to watch the new documentary film about the Beatles in their touring years. 

Before the film they were showing all the famous folk turning up to the world premiere of the film in Leicester Square In London. My friend and I had thought about sitting that out, planning instead to have a drink and a chat in the sunshine outside Home. In the event, when she went to pick up our pre-booked tickets, she was advised to go and find seats at about 5.30 as the cinema was fully booked and late arrivers might have difficulty finding seats together. And so, when a couple of other friends turned up, we left them to their pints and went off to find seats for the four of us. Just as well, for it was already filling up. 

And in the end the link to London was quite interesting. They interviewed briefly the interesting people who arrived, those who had been close friends of the fab four, and ignored the rest, just kind of letting the camera linger on them momentarily. Perhaps the most interesting was Dr Kitty Oliver, now a historian but then a young black girl who had never had much to do with white people until the Beatles refused to perform in her southern town if the audiences had to be segregated. 

"I think that the action The Beatles took was such a spontaneous thing that there was probably more of a delayed response to it," Oliver claimed. "The idea that they would come and challenge something [like that] was quite startling to some people, I think. Certainly, for people like me, what they did, opened the door to experiences that I had never had before and perhaps wouldn't have had at that particular moment. It was taking a step, at a moment in time, that ended up having [positive] ramifications." 

 After that first incident, they had it written into their contracts with American organisations that there was to be no segregation in their audiences. Amazing stuff. The film was excellent. The music was, of course, splendid. The Beatles were very YOUNG! Were they really that young? I suppose we all were. A fair proportion of the audience in the cinema were, I suppose, their contemporaries but there were a lot of younger people too. 

At one point they showed an interview with the a tress Sigourney Weaver, who had been at one of the concerts. When they were researching the film, looking at old footage, someone spotted a young girl in the audience and asked, "Is that not Sigourney Weaver?" And, lo and behold, it was . What were the chances of her being caught on film like that. A great evening. 

We all enjoyed every bit of it. Then an old friend of mine, run into unexpectedly at the film showing, commented that he had especially enjoyed the shots of the Beatles' visit to Australia, in particular Adelaide. He and his friends had been in a car just ahead of the Beatles' car as it drove through Adelaide. 

 Little moments of nostalgia!