The Melon Farm

Intro: Welcome to the internet home of spacemanmelonfarmer. Spaceman lives in his home town of Manchester and has been space-farming melons for several years now (honest). Increased sales in space-farmed melons have enabled spaceman to spend an increased amount of time on developing this website (not that you'd notice). If you have any suggestions for improvement, or have any other comments, please feel free to email me (sorry, finally updated the defunct email address!).

Pub crawls: Spaceman moved to the outskirts of Manchester in 2009 and (eventually, in 2012) decided to go pub crawl-reporting again. The Toad replaced barney (needs must) and the Heatons replaced the centre of Manchester, and off we went once more. This is slowly expanding across Greater Manchester, moving next into Stockport and then Woodhouses (including Failsworth), before returning to Stockport for another go. This has culminated in the Suburban Manchester Pub Crawls page. Barney and spaceman have also revisited the original pub crawl.

Football: Euro 2012 was covered in a unique fashion by spaceman, with due assistance from Brunginho.

Interests: Spaceman's primary enjoyments (besides melons and their farming) are music, sport, beer, TV & films, computers and eating out, amongst other things. And there are pages covering most (and eventually all) of these. The newly added (in June 2008 anyway) update log to the right should give an indication of how often the website is updated, and with what.

Curries: The most recent updates are generally to the Curry House Review, which has received a long-needed revamp. Slowly but surely, all the old individual review pages have been transferred and new restaurants

Games: There has also been a concerted effort to update PS3 corner, attempting to categorise all games into a number of genres. It's not easy. And it's currently unfinished.

Films: Before all the beer-related links appear with reckless abandon, you may like to hear the ramblings of four madmen: spaceman, crespie, d2h3 and farahpants. They are no film experts, but that's not going to stop 'em, in film corner. Well, apart from crespie's decision to move to Canada. See Scribblings From A Far Away Place for more details.

Beer: But yes, on to beer. The current main feature of this website is the definitive Manchester pub A to Z, which is the main reference point for all pubs in central Manchester, linking to the pub guide (unsurprisingly a guide to pubs in the Manchester area), the picture-and-diary driven pub stagger (that's right - spaceman and barney are back in action!), and ye olde central Manchester slow pub crawl.

Original pub crawls: The slow pub crawl, which took in every single pub in the centre of Manchester (subject to some constraints) over a period of two and a half years, from October 2002 to April 2005, has now been put on hold for now (in light of the new pub stagger). In the end, 233 Manchester pubs were visited by self-confessed beer addicts spaceman and barney (who now has a personal website too - it's not updated much, though).

Boozing: Back in 2005, the pub crawl was on hold for a short while, however, due to spaceman's contradictory Month Without Alcohol.

Other: Two other features, which were put together in early 2006, are the Lessons In Cookery, a comprehensive guide to cooking, containing many interesting and useful recipés (honest), and Our Man In... Nigeria, a diary giving us access to what it was like for spaceman's friend Eddie to work in Nigeria.

Old stuff: Other features of this website are a guide to the happy hours in and around Manchester city centre (which could do with an update given the information gleaned from the pub crawl, but that will probably never happen) and reviews of restaurants in Manchester. Those with eating and drinking habits will appreciate the socialising section. A past feature, which has now been discontinued, was the Tipsy 100 alcohol index, which charted spaceman's alcohol consumption for the latter half of 2002.

Music: In the world of music, some of spaceman's favourites are Radiohead, The Charlatans, The Stone Roses, Spiritualized, The Beta Band, and Ash (although, to date, two of those bands no longer exist). Newer bands are clearly good too, like Kings Of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, We Are Scientists, Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park and Kaiser Chiefs. Click here for more musical musings (unfortunately, many of the individual band pages have yet to be completed - spaceman will get round to them).

Sport: Like most people, spaceman's sporting interests are based on round objects. Spaceman has a keen liking for football, not put off by being an Oldham Athletic supporter, and a casual desire for cricket, not put off by being a Lancashire fan. The cricket page charts the cricketing highs and lows of England and Lancashire.

Entertainment: Spaceman's other methods of filling time include watching TV and films, and playing Playstation 2 and PC games. Oh and developing this website. Accordingly, there is an entertainment page.

Thanks to: Spaceman's big thanks for help with this website go to operation_good_guys, a very old friend of his.

Contact: Finally, if anyone wishes to link this website to theirs, please email spaceman, who will be happy to put a reciprocal link on this page.

Update log

August 2021:

In-person Curry Nights are back on after a couple of virtual events during the pandemic!

October 2017:

Slow pub crawl reprise

October 2014:

Stockport pub crawl II

and back to Lal Qila, aka Imli

March 2014:

Woodhouses Pub Crawl

February 2014:

The new Spice Lounge reviewed