There are a number of eateries in Levenshulme. But when it comes to Sunday breakfast my firm favourite is Friends Café on Stockport Road. It’s particularly good if you have guests staying and don’t feel like serving up a mountain of toast. Or (and this is probably just me) for when the cat has peed in the toaster.

Like many establishments in Levenshulme the decor is eclectic. This is what I love most about it. You’ll find no showy abstracts here. Instead the walls are adorned with black and while photos of a bygone Levenshulme. These are unusually interspersed with African masks and wooden ornaments.

The tables don’t quite match but they’re clean and well tended by affable staff. Along one side of the room there’s a breakfast bar with modern, shiny stools. It’s strange how they don’t clash with the old fashioned glass fridge over in the corner. But somehow it all seems to work. Even the flowers are a quirky mixture of those long curly stems and carnations.

The food is good, the portions generous and the prices fair. And when your tea arrives it is served in a cup and not a glass.

And best of all, there’s not a three-wheel trolley in sight.

We went to bed on Sunday night, read for a little while (ooh read The Book Thief by by Markus Zusak, it’s narrated by death and is a really good read) and then dozed off. We were jolted awake at midnight by the burglar alarm going off. Not something you want to hear in the middle of the night in Levenshulme. I tried to turn the lamp on and realised that it was another power cut. This is the second one in the last few months.

The problem is that when the power cuts out there’s no way to turn off the alarm without removing the fuse. So for the next 40 minutes we (well, Lord Levy) fiddled around in the cellar trying to turn the thing off. I sat in the back room with Tori (who was whipped up into a state of excitement at the impromptu night goings-on) and Blos who had just received her flea treatment and just wanted a kip.

Finally we got back into bed but I couldn’t sleep with all the alarms going off and Lord Levy snoring like a broken bagpipe. It was not a lighthearted Monday morning.

This postcard was doing the rounds a little while ago.  It came to me courtesy of DJ Spiderman.

I was gutted when Bobby Dazzler closed.  No more kitsch ornaments – the funniest one I saw was an Olympic Torch, complete with moving fabric flame   There’s a brand new pound shop in its place, complete with shiny windows and new shelves but it’s not the same, somehow.  Oh well.

This is from a take-away menu that was pushed through our letterbox the other day.  The thing that cracks me up is the offer of a packet of cigarettes with every order over £15.  Not sure what this says about the food.  And just to put the top hat on it, the offer has been crossed out, as if to say, ‘This is what you could’ve won’.