aha! back from our visit. which, turned out not to be in bristol, (as i am an addle-brained idiot), but arundel.

since j does the driving, and has absolutely no god-given sense of direction (the man still gets lost going to the grocery store – sadly, i’m not joking) on our excursions, j is the designated chauffeur, and I am the designated navigator. my geography may be piss-poor, but i can read a map like nobody’s business. it’s a strange, but useful gift.

on these outings, the uk map always proves to be an endless source of entertainment. there are towns named cuckfields, twatt (2 actually – the town so nice, they named it twice), fingeringhoe, westward ho! (with exclamation point), beer, wetwang, dykehead, little snoring, giggleswick, penistone, pease pottage, lickey end, and ugley. sometimes i am just a 12 year old boy, trapped in a 32 year old woman’s body.

i’ve also decided that i cannot go anywhere in wales which i cannot pronounce. which pretty much limits me to cardiff.

there are also, on our map, designated tourist attractions. for example, one may want to detour past the pixie kiln and gnome reserve, blazes fire museum, dingles steam village, cheddar showcaves, fairytale land and splendour of the orient, hollin hall sewing centre, the needle museum, the tollbooth museum, tam o’shanter experience, bachelor’s club, cup and ring marks, old town jail, scone palace, world of whiskey, scotland’s larder, house of dun, tropiquaria, forgotten world, colour museum, buttertubs pass, the rum story, world of james herriot, boggle hole, the shoe museum, bob hunter home of the wren, and my favourite, bentley wildfowl and motor museum (?!?)

this provides endless hours of amusement. so, you are probably asking yourself given the amount of time I have spent staring at the map of the uk, how could i not know a) where bristol was and b) we weren’t headed anywhere near there? to my credit, i did figure it out about an hour into the trip.

it was all very lovely. we rocked up in the afternoon, and j reunited with his friends catharine and lester, who he hasn’t seen in about 4 years. we all had a beer together, then (as proprietors of a hotel are very busy) entertained ourselves walking around arundel for a while. saw the castle and the big church. enjoyed the quaintness, pictured the picturesqueness. had a late lunch. and then walked around some more. called the cows and chased the baby ducks.

got back to the hotel (free room, natch) and chilled out until dinner time. though, i have to say i wasn’t really hungry only just having eaten lunch. but we *had* to eat, as lester is the head chef. i was going to have to suck it up and pretend. when the plates arrived, i knew I was a goner – enough to feed a family of four on one plate. i mustered my courage and started in, but 15 minutes later, despite not even having made a dent, was mentally noting the distance to the nearest toilet in case my poor distended stomach decided to revolt in protest.

we had a few more beers as we waited for last orders, (and tried to digest as quietly as possible) so that cath and les could sit down and catch up properly. apparently some bbc presenter was only a few tables away, so that was the source of much hushed gossip. when they’d finally shooed the last people out the door, we all sat and began drinking in earnest, j and l & c reminiscing about the wild party days back when they all worked at the puzzle in balham, and used to go for days on end from work to party to work, without sleeping. that, of course, called for tequila “for old times sake”, which lead to more tequila, and yet more tequila, and we all enjoyed jabbering on and getting wasted until after 3. catharine, despite her demure appearance, is quite an instigator. 3 beers, 3 vodka drinks, 4 tequilas, and one ill-advised sambuca later, we stumbled upstairs to our room, only to have to get up and move the car at 7, still pretty smashed.

a restorative fry up was waiting for us at 10, after which, we decided to get going – l & c were already back at work behind the counters and in the kitchen, and we’d seen the entirety of arundel. but first, we drove to chichester (a mere 10 miles away) to buy a thank you bottle of wine, and a replacement bottle of tequila. it was the least we could do.

coming back in the car, we listened to old mixed cds – a cheery kind of wistfulness, when certain songs and the particular slant of the light can bring you back to a time and place in memory that you remember with a bit of sad fondness. it’s a comforting kind of thing.

back in tooting, where the sun is out, and there’s still nearly a full day to enjoy, so i’m heading off to soak in it. photos later.

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