Wednesday, 30 September

Tuesday’s lunchtime flight to Heathrow left on time, so we had that day’s afternoon as well as Wednesday morning to kill before our first long-haul hop to Singapore. While she went to see a show I installed myself in a local pub, the Royal Exchange on Sale Street, just around the corner from our digs. It wasn’t exactly buzzing on a Tuesday night but that was fine, just a dozen punters inside and a table of older gents outside smoking weed and nursing small lagers. Everyone was on first-name terms with one another, just locals in their village boozer, me the only tourist.

Wednesday morning brought a long walk across town to the Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons, where we goggled at hundreds of exhibits in jars of formaldehyde, including many human foetuses and a whole shelf of pickled dicks.