A mate was up visiting from London last month and as we queued up for a beer, he mentioned something.
"I paid £7 for a pint in London the other day".
Now I lived in London for five or so years back in the day, so I know what it can be like down there. But £7? That's new.
Anyway I assumed that this was one of those mega-hipster, juicy IPAs with funky can art and an alcohol percentage of approx 6.5%. Or at some Covent Garden cocktail bar tourist trap, or at a gig where they shove it at you warm in a sticky plastic cup.
One of the above, surely?
"No, just at a run-of-the-mill after work pub."
And the beer in question? The unquestionably average, inoffensive, perfectly-fine Birra Moretti. And apparently pints go all the way up to £8 in the capital now.
Now Mancunians are no strangers these days to a £5-or-so pint, and of course it goes a bit north of that for the fancier craft stuff. There's also no doubt that the hospitality industry have had it tough ever since Covid and that was always going to bounce back to the consumer eventually.
But my mate, The Londoner, said he took the £7 charge "not too badly". He adds: "Normal is probably £6.50 there. I got over it quite quickly." But it has been haunting me these last few weeks.
Remember those joyous nights out when you just had £10 or £15 in your pocket and could make it last the night? Are these nights consigned to the past for good?
Enter: The £2.10 pint
This is where Manchester Evening News journalist Damon Wilkinson comes in.
He was good enough to raise his hand and volunteer himself for the assignment of finding Greater Manchester's cheapest Wetherspoons pub this week - which happens to be The Robert Shaw pub in Westhoughton, Bolton.
Within this hallowed ground, he found lager such as Bud Light and Carlsberg priced at just £2.10 a pint, as was Stowford Press cider.
Ruddles Best Bitter was £1.59 a pint. Crikey.
"We've been coming here for a couple of years," one punter told Damon.
"The garden out back is gorgeous. In the summer we sit out there and have a few cocktails. My only bug bear is that they don't put the horse racing on."
I'd like to think for £7 for a pint of Moretti, they'd put the horse racing on for my mate. You can read Damon's full piece here.
'My love for my husband turned to HATE because our baby wouldn't sleep'
Our features writer Paige Oldfield has spoken this week to Nicole Ratcliffe from Wythenshawe, who has opened up on the strain being a new mum put on her marriage.
“She just wouldn’t go to sleep,” Nicole said. “I was feeding her, rocking her and singing to her; she was screaming for two hours.
“I started banging on the bed. I felt if I didn’t let this frustration out, it would be dangerous for the baby.
“It was that fear factor that I could end up lobbing her across the room. You can’t describe it – sleep deprivation is a form of torture; it completely messes with you. If you don’t get the right help, you can really spiral.”
She admits that it pushed Nicole and her husband to the brink of divorce.
“They tell you new-born babies sleep but mine didn’t at all. Nothing was what I was told it would be,” Nicole continued.
“I’d always intended to have four children and I was very confident that I was going to be a great mum, being extremely maternal, having read loads of books and attended antenatal classes. The truth is, I wasn’t prepared at all for the reality of motherhood.
“As months passed with no improvement in her sleep patterns, I became even more exhausted. To others, I pretended everything was fine, but I was struggling with extreme sleep deprivation and my mental health was suffering.
“I was experiencing feelings of high anxiety and rage and my marriage was at breaking point. Everything was a challenge from day one.”
You can read the full interview here.
My favourite kind of solution
With energy prices rocketing, experts have warned that the mere act of turning on an oven to cook a Sunday roast at home will cost £5.88.
And more to the point: Sundays are for relaxing... and not for confronting a mountain of dirty dishes and oven trays after a meal.
Thankfully this week our What's On Editor Jenna Campbell stumbled across Frenchie's Kitchen & Grill in Stockport. The good folk there allow you to build your own Sunday roast into a foil tray and have it delivered to your door, with prices for meat, vegetables and gravy each individually priced at 70p a serving.
This allowed her to have a roast delivered to the door for £5 (pictured below on the right, yum!) and a slightly bulkier offering pictured on the left for £8.69. So with no washing up and a pretty cheap Sunday meal delivered to your door they're offering my favourite kind of solution: a lazy one .
But what was her snap verdict?
"It has to be said for less than a fiver - or less than a tenner if you want to go all out - this roast isn't half bad. Sure, it's not quite the level of restaurants and pubs in town, but as we all know, in the current climate, it's not always feasible to be spending upwards of £15 on a roast dinner.
"You can also tell a lot of preparation and effort had been put into the final product, a consideration that extended to the unexpected addition of a two cake slices thrown in for free. Though I was stuffed at this point, I made space for the delicate piece of sponge cake with raspberry filling - it would have been rude not to.
"When it comes down to it, a roast dinner is the ultimate comfort meal, and Frenchie's has put a lot of effort and time into serving up their own interpretation of this Sunday staple, and at a fraction of the cost of city centre options.
"Stuffed to the brim, and thoroughly impressed with what Toyah has pulled off for less than a fiver, I might just be returning to the 24-hour gym in Stockport sooner than anticipated." You can read the full piece here.
Have a lovely weekend.
