The Melon Farm

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 at spacemanmelonfarmer@yahoo.co.uk.

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.

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. But crespie's decision to move to Canada did. See Scribblings From A Far Away Place for more details.

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.

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).

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

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.

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), reviews of curry houses along the curry mile in Rusholme 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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

Bits and bobs

Willow on leather

Emulate the latest successes of the England cricket team by playing Stick Cricket

Rock kittens

Amusing website on which rather good kittens perform rock and pop favourites

It's all a tremor!

Manchester hit by earthquakes galore - seems so long ago now

Sporting achievements of recent (ish) years:

Chaddy the Owl wins the Mascot Grand National 2002 (by a country mile) and repeats the feat in 2003 - only runner up in 2004, though