Uneven Ground

Anyone who has lived in Manchester will know the fun that it is trying to navigate some of the pavements there - at least without falling over once (or doing that whole 'trip-that-turns-into-a-run' thing that Peter Kay was going on about!). Hell, in Stockport they even had people from a public health firm swarming around the town centre with clipboards asking anyone and everyone if they had injured themselves on the rickety pavements as they were intending to get them compensation from the council. I'm not wholly sure if i agree with the intent of the latter - after all, the more money that gets sucked from the council, the less they have to potentially spend on sorting out the problems.

Anyway, that's by the by for today. Having been here a few months now, i can now assure people that Manchester had nothing much to worry about - especially when you compare it to Charleston. It seems that the challenge in Charleston is to find a pavement (sorry, sidewalk - gotta speak American!) that WON'T leave you with an injury of some kind. Of course, being so tall also has the disadvantage that it's a long way to your feet and so not always easy to avoid these things (that's my excuse at least). Thus, i have stubbed my toes at least twice a week since i arrived (this usually gets lots of good ol' British cursing out of me) and nearly fallen over a couple of times (when the path has dropped away suddenly and rather sharply than i expected). Whenever there's a bump in the road, it seems that they just decided to pave over it without flattening the thing first! So much for American efficiency, eh?