The looby-Kirsty clan, being unable to get together at Easter due to the youngest being subject to French term times -- she's in Brittany doing an eight-month long bar survey, with a cover story about doing a French degree -- so we arranged Not Easter for last weekend. At the bus stop in Bristol, I made an innocent remark to a man about the bus times, and he asked me if I was a Jehovah's Witness.
Almost as soon as the train had left Temple Meads, the guard invited me to sit in first class. It's astonishing how some staff remember me despite me leaving that particular train company over ten years ago. On the last leg up, from Manchester to Lancaster, even the excellent locally-brewed beer was free.
I had a boozy afternoon with Wendy, Kitty, Helen, and Wendy's charming, unassuming auntie. I met Wendy by herself the day before. She has lost none of her lustre, and I felt some of the old headiness of being close to her.
She said that there'd been a bit of a diplomatic incident with Helen, who was insisting on bringing this man whose head is an empty as it is big, whom none of us like. "So just be prepared tomorrow." She said that Kitty had done her level best, but Helen can be froward when opposed. He wasn't there, but a work colleague of Kitty's, whom I find a bit intense without much substance behind it, was. We all enjoyed ourselves, although I think us older group of friends collectively realised that the brakes couldn't quite come off.
On Sunday we went en famille to Morecambe. In a charity shop, amidst the notices about homeless cats and dogs, there was a notice, with photographs, advertising "snails looking for homes".
The eldest announced that a friend was coming round to cut her hair. Yet another lesbian. On the way back from a walk to the brewery, some of us went into the local "community" centre, and walked in on Queer Crafts Club. The premises used to house a pub -- i.e., a community centre -- but the dwindling numbers of working class people who live in the area now have been slowly evicted from what was their pub by a combination of refugee language lessons, reiki classes, and speculators only interested in renting to students.
I took myself off to The Old Shipbuilder's Arms, where I could relax into pints of bitter at £2.60, the horseracing on the telly, and bumping into my old school friend -- the hairdresser who once said, when we were alone, that it was a good job her and her husband had to go, "because otherwise I'd have to take you home and fuck you."
I was asked at work if I would like to spend a few hours representing the catering department of Transport that Fails at a reception and naming ceremony of the first of a new set of train which will be running around Wales. The Minister for Transport, Members of the Senedd, and various other high-ups were to be present.
I leapt at the chance -- first because my manager said "it should be over by about half twelve", but also because I imagined being in a posh hotel with some decent food.
Instead, we welcomed our esteemed guests, amongst which was a party of senior engineers from Switzerland who had had a big hand in designing and building the trains, to a windswept station up in the valleys, and stood everyone under a rusting tin roof which was pouring rainwater onto the tracks. Our coffee machine couldn't be plugged in, so our culinary offering consisted of flapjacks, oranges, and water.
As we were leaving, the ticket office supervisor at the station wouldn't let me use the station toilets, "because of the money." Which thwarted my carefully-laid plan to steal a hundred pounds or so from my employer that morning.
