‘Oh my God you guys it was awesome!’

I was sat in the dining hall with Katie and Victoria on Sunday evening, having only just got back from Manchester a few hours ago. My Aunt had some business to attend to but she said she would join us pretty soon.

‘Here, this was my room while I was there.’ I said as I scrolled through photos I took of the apartment my Aunt had bought. My room there was absolutely huge and had a big en-suite bathroom with it also. The bed was massive too and super comfy to boot. Auntie M really had gone to town on getting some really nice furniture, that was probably super expensive and everything was decorated to a high standard. She’d get the best return on renting the place out if everything was perfect.

I showed my friends some more photos I had taken around Manchester. The place was full of history and I always thought it was the forgotten gem in England, because tourists from abroad always made London their main destination; mainly due to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben’s tower and of course with it being England’s capital. But Manchester was a cool place and more friendly than London. And I got a tonne of shopping while I was there too.

‘See this is the statue of Alan Turing in Sackville Gardens in the Gay Village and this…’ I spun my phone round to show a better photo. ‘… is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square.’

I explained a few things regarding these statues and why they’re in Manchester. How Alan Turing worked at Manchester University and worked on developing early computer programs for the University’s first computer and also, for an electronics firm based in my families home town. The Abe Lincoln statue was there to commemorate the support Manchester gave him and the Union during the Civil War, because Manchester was a cotton town and depended on cotton imports from America. But the workers of the cotton mills acted in solidarity with Lincoln and the Union and their antislavery sentiments. I had no idea Manchester had as much random history like this, it made me want to find out more. Which I did.

‘And this is Chetham’s Library, is where Karl Mark and Freidrich Engels worked and studied during their time in Manchester. They went on to write the Communist Manifesto.’

I continued bombarding my friends with random facts about what I was now calling, the greatest city in the UK. Then presented them with some Manchester related gifts I found, in one of the many gift shops dotted around the city. I had bought us all new mugs for our dorm room as the ones we had been using were getting a bit battered. So I bought Katie and Victoria mugs featuring song lyrics from some of Manchester’s biggest bands, like Oasis and The Smiths. I however had bought myself a mug featuring the quote, “You’re twisting my melon man” said by none other that Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays. Katie chose the Wonderwall” quote mug and Victoria chose the mug with “I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear” on it.

Our discussion went to how the mugs were of a decent size and could carry a good amount of tea in them, as well as having a large opening which would be optimal for dunking biscuits in; without having to bite a chunk off first to make the biscuit fit. But the discussion was soon cut short as Francesca flounced in with her posse. Francesca had turned herself in to some sort of living martyr, after the whole kidnapping situation and was using it all as some kind of ploy, to get even more attention than she already got.

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I had felt sorry for her at the time, I mean she had been kidnapped by the psychotic Bruce who was planning on feeding her to a horrible demon. But my best friends had been kidnapped also AND had been allowed to remember a lot more of what happened than what Francesca did and with a bit of therapy here and there, they were doing so well coping with it all. Francesca was abominable at times though, most of the students and faculty here knew that when she wanted to; she would throw a wobbler just to get out of doing something. She had done something similar a few years ago, when she had to have her appendix removed and she got out of doing P.E. for ages after she came back to school. She would whinge and moan saying stuff was too heavy for her to carry and doing whatever made her belly hurt. Everybody caught on after a while or just gave up caring, so in the end Francesca didn’t get all her own way and she soon stopped when people weren’t paying her attention.

But here right now, her minions were mollycoddling her; laying sympathetic arms around her shoulders as she looked crestfallen, like some melancholy period drama damsel who’s betrothed had done her a mischief. If you timed it right, you could see the exact moment when Francesca’s facade would drop for the briefest of moments; to see how utterly bored she seemed by the whole thing. Like she was bored of her own whole tirade. Hopefully she would tire herself out with this as it was obvious quite a few people had give over bothering with her now.

‘I see Little Miss Nasty is still up to her old tricks.’

We all looked up to see my Auntie M walking round the table to a free seat with a tray in her hands. She was in her comfy Sunday clothes; dark jeans, trainers and a black pullover DC hoodie that I bought her for Christmas which she had on whenever she had the chance. We all said hi to her as she sat down and began moving her food around her plate.

‘Hey girls. Looking forward to a new school week?’ She asked with a grin. We just groaned as our reply.

‘Ugh absolutely not.’ Katie mumbled. ‘Most of our teachers are trying to get us to finish stuff before the half term starts.’

‘Hey it’s a good idea. You want to have fun on your half term, not spend it catching up on work.’ Said Auntie M, she made a really good point. ‘Oh and that reminds me Maddie, we got a last minute meeting in a little while.’

‘Oh, anything come up?’ I asked. We weren’t scheduled for a coven meeting tonight so I wondered if something was the matter.

‘Not entirely sure to be honest. It happens from time to time we get a summons from higher up to meet, so… we meet.’

‘Coven meetings. That’s just, so cool.’ Victoria sighed with a dreamy smile on her face. Katie was nodding in agreement with her.

‘I think it would be awesome being a proper witch. I mean it really is so cool.’ Katie continued nodding.

‘Well girls, there’s a bit of magic in everyone. May not end up in you being a witch, but there’s plenty of other things that magic and spiritual talent is involved in. Clairvoyance, mediumship, that sort of thing. Witches are just able to do a lot of these spiritually based things from the get-go.’

Even I was learning stuff right now. Funny thing was, I hadn’t actually ready my copy of My First Coven handbook from cover to cover yet, mainly because; I couldn’t actually read it from cover to cover. And believe me I’ve tried several times. Turns out, the handbook itself was actually magic which added to my frustration; but my Aunt told me to consult the book when I needed to and only when I needed to. It would let me know the exact information I was after. Of course when I first got the thing I had a barrage of questions that needed answering, so it was like freely skipping through a book just to get the general gist of it. No wonder everyone told me to check it out when I had a moment. It was weirdly on hand when I needed it and somehow, give me a basic answer, idea or rundown on whatever question or query I had. Except bonding with Vampires, it never told me what I needed or wanted to know about that.

My train of thought was interrupted my Victoria. She poked me in the shoulder a few times, signalling for us to go and have a look at what deserts we could have. I had hoped there was a peach pie with vanilla ice cream or something.