Monday 12 November

Cotton prices up so celebrate with some warming ales at the New Union, just down the road on Canal Street. Quite a gay atmosphere – drinking partners include a strapping young farmer, jolly firewatcher (in uniform), soldier on leave and that cowboy Briggs, from Oldham. We end up dancing on beer barrels until Dainty Derek, the barmaid, tells us where to go (home, or in Briggs’s case the YMCA).