MANCHESTER DIARIES-PART 2- JULY 2024

As I had mentioned earlier the weather in England is unpredictable at the best. It rained pretty much the whole time during my first few days… it was cold and windy and along with the rain quite miserable. But then the Gods obviously felt sorry for me and things brightened up. We have even seen the sun on a couple of days so we are making the most of it.

It was Vinay’s birthday on the 5th July ( we planned our trip very strategically!) so Hemu baked her delicious lemon drizzle cake and we started the day with the birthday boy cutting the cake. Jijajee had booked a restaurant called Northcote Manor for lunch and this is a lovely old English manor which has 1 Michelin star and also has a few rooms for people to stay. This is near Clitheroe which is about 75 mins drive from Manchester so we drove there quite comfortably. We had an absolutely delicious lunch which lasted over 4 hours which just flew by. I had a lovely nap on the way home which was probably due to the overindulgence of both food and wine!! All in all it was a lovely day which we both will cherish for years to come.

This trip has coincided with two great sporting events… the football European Championship and Wimbledon so we have been watching both of these with great interest. It was the quarter final of the EC in which England were playing Switzerland so my eldest Chacha , Uncle Bhim, invited us to watch the match together at his grandsons house followed by dinner out. We had a lovely afternoon and evening meeting up with my Chacha, my cousin brothers and their better halves and the children and little grandchildren. It is such a pleasure when we all meet. I have seen my nephews and nieces when they were born and now I am so happy to see their babies too. We spent the whole day laughing, joking and remembering old times. You never get tired of going over old stories and being reminded of stupid things we did together when we were young. I remember one year when I was just young I had gone on a holiday with Uncle Bhim and Chachi to Butlins holiday camp. When you think about it now these places are cringeworthy but we thought we were in a seven star hotel and enjoyed every minute of our holiday. We used to get a daily allowance there and we would spend hours trying to decide if we should buy sweets or play on the penny machines!! Such innocence!!

Another evening was spent with my other cousin brother and his family and we started with drinks at his beautiful home followed by dinner at Yara which is a Lebanese restaurant which I mentioned earlier is one of my ‘ must visit ‘ restaurants n Manchester. It is not so posh but the food is amazing and that is the most important. We remembered when Raju visited India after his A levels and he insisted on traversing India on trains and only travelled 3rd class. He stayed in some very shady places and used to go and have brunch in a five star hotel once a week and would eat enough to last him for the full week. He dropped in unannounced to Vinay’s office and the first thing Vinay did was to bring him home to have a shower… I don’t think he’d showered for a week! Now of course Raju enjoys all the luxuries possible and is also a wine connoisseur… how times fly!

Another day we walked to the park and fed the ducks. Vinay had seen some children doing this on one of our previous visits so he was determined to do this too… I think it was just an excuse to keep me busy and away from the shops… but it brought back lots of memories of when the children were small and loved going to the park to play on the swings and feed the ducks.

When I am together with all my family I feel truly blessed and grateful that I have such a good strong and emotional support system. We all only want the best for each other, we love each other and even though I only get to meet them about once a year we just take up from where we left off. The stories never get old and the love never diminishes. I have nothing but gratitude to my father’s foresight for bringing his brothers and their families to England and settling them all down here. He was truly an awesome father and brother.