The X-ray Crystallographers

We’re just back from a wee trip to Manchester. The practical reason for our journey was to transport David’s desk chair and various other of his possessions including crockery to his and Chanel’s new flat in Eccles. The fun reason was to spend time with our young Mancunians. 

I was very impressed with their new flat; it’s bright, modern and spacious, and decorated very smartly. It’s close to Eccles train station which is very handy for travelling into the centre of the city and to David’s workplace. On our first evening we went to my favourite Manchester restaurant, Puccini’s, which Davie and Chanel first took me to on a previous visit. As usual the food was excellent and the staff were good-humoured and attentive. It was James’ first visit and he really liked it too. 

The next morning Storm Eunice was raging around the south-west and Cornwall, and the weather forecast predicted high winds and rain for Manchester too, so we planned indoor activities in the city centre. First we went to the Museum of Science and Industry which had a very nice cafe on the ground floor where we had breakfast. When I say “we” I mean James, Davie and I; it was Chanel’s last day at school before her February holiday week. Then we perused the exhibits; the upper floor was very child-centred, I preferred the textile industry area on the ground floor and the sad but interesting cancer exhibition downstairs in the basement. There are parts of the museum that are currently closed so it all seemed a little sparse to me. We then walked about 20 minutes to Escape Hunt (Davie and I had already visited it in December) where we had booked the “Four Samurai” room. Oh dear oh dear oh dear! It was really difficult - much harder than the Pirate room that we went to last time. We did our best but in the end we disgraced ourselves by not escaping! Oh the shame! I have to say that David was much better at figuring out the clues than James and me, but in the end we ran out of time. It was still quite fun though. 

However the highlight of the day was The Crystal Maze in the evening. Chanel had now joined us and after an early dinner in a pleasant nearby pub, we arrived feeling very excited. The Crystal Maze was a very popular television game show in the first half of the 1990s and was originally presented by Richard O’Brien. It was often repeated so our three boys watched it too, and there has been a recent revival of it. A team of up to eight members of the public visit four areas in the Maze (Aztec, Medieval, Industrial, and Future) which each have a number of rooms, containing Physical, Mental, Skills and Mystery tasks, where, if successful, you can win a crystal. Anyone who has seen the programme will be very familiar with the format. When our little team of four signed in, Davie was proclaimed leader and Chanel was second in command, and they came up with our team name, the X-Ray Crystallographers. What amazed me about our Crystal Maze experience was that it really did feel as if we were in the television show! We were running along corridors and up and down staircases in between games just like in the show, and when it was your turn to be shut into a room the pressure was on! The challenges were all very different and such fun, and our games master “Hermes” was excellent; very funny and full of enthusiasm. There were windows in each room through which the rest of the team could shout encouragement, it was brilliant. After we had earned an impressive ten crystals we arrived at the iconic Crystal Dome, where we had fifty seconds (five seconds for each crystal) to grab as many golden tokens as possible while they swirled around us and the music played. It was very exciting and afterwards we discussed it all again in the pub.