More Manchester
Yesterday I provided details of "Marc Bolan" and the Market Street Mincer as well as a list of Galaxy 102's top nutters.

I've just remembered some more.

There is a Stagecoach bus driver who during the summer likes to go down to the large beer garden near a couple of the pubs off Exchange Square (Old Wellington, Sinclairs) and serenade people with a tambourine and a child's plastic microphone. We're not talking quality music here, imagine a bright green plastic microphone, a song book, and a set of offensive lyrics about the people around him. From a huge black guy who has just got off from working on the buses. I quite like him actually, he's harmless and just up for fun.

Then there is the pregnant man. Not seen for a while, but definitely about between Manchester and Stockport on the buses and trains - a 30-40 year old man dressed as a pregnant woman wearing a headscarf, bad makeup, glasses, quite often some stubble, ancient charity shop dresses and who "accidentally" drops things and requires assistance from nearby male passengers. I've been hassled by this guy three times in the last 4 years. This is not the same as "pregnant tits" woman - a black woman whose breasts are so large at first you think she's pregant or perhaps overweight, then realise... they are her breasts... down there... she isn't mad, but everybody in town seems to have seen her at some point. She should get medical help before her back breaks.

There has been a big uprise recently in religious nutters as well. Piccadilly Gardens and Market Street are big areas for evangelists on a Saturday afternoon these days, fighting with Bolan and the guy with the busker with the amp and tape recorder for business. Last year there was a Buddhist in full orange robes mucking around down there too - my favourite was the guy handing out cards as if they were free, then chasing after you demanding payment for them.

Then there are the usual drunks: the little, short, old guy who is drunk at 8am and hangs around Manchester Metropolitan University and sometimes UMIST, often swearing at people or mimicing their walk when they go by; the guy who goes around the pubs trying to sell his "last" Big Issue but when you give him a quid he asks if he can keep it anyway; the moping drinker who can be seen looking miserable in bars around the South City Centre, always on his own, always depressed, sometimes talking to himself. They're all here.

Great city this. :-)
(The Mad Mr Wiggy, Fri 17 Sep 2004, 11:22, Reply)