Sales model, Macclesfield

Macc seems to have a more upright attitude to window displays compared with Manchester.

It's bleak and cold here today but shoppers are still out in force.

In WHSmith something even more alarming catcheds my eye Fred Dibnah, the magazine!!!!!!!!. For those of you unfamiliar with Fred, he is a northern steeplejack with an enthusiasm for steam trains.

There is something genetically programmed into the northern male to adopt an enthusiasm for anything steam related once they hit 40, a kind of northern mid life crisis. Whilst forty-something men in the south are busy chasing totty half their age, northerners are standing on station platforms waiting for a Victorian hunk of metal to trundle past.