Wherein we slightly miss the point of Easter and see a fuck of a lot of sheep
On the road from Cambridge to Wales: “Why are you driving so fast? You’re going to kill us.”
“That’s OK – it’s Good Friday. We’ll be all right again in a couple of days.”
“Good point. Carry on.”
SiC and I left London Thursday evening, eerily encountering almost no traffic (is the avian flu already decimating England’s population, like 28 Days Later except with birds and not monkeys? Because that would be cool!) and arriving at SiC’s friend TB’s house on the outskirts of Cambridge just in time to get back in the car and go see a gig in Peterborough.
Upon arrival we wedged ourselves into the Fiddler’s Elbow, the world’s smallest venue, and tried not to spill beer on anyone who didn’t deserve it. TB’s band Godfather played a fucking great set, which was kind of mean of them since they brutally showed up everyone else who went anywhere near the stage that night, including the sweet, nervous kid who dedicated his first acoustic ballad to some friend of his who had taught him “a lot of guitar”, forcing us all to ponder the relative meaning of the term “a lot”. On the upside, the beer was cheap, and I wasn’t paying.
We got back to TB’s house around midnight and hit the bottle hard to celebrate Easter! or old friends! or the fact that we have legs! or whatever! and there was much air guitar, and disco dancing, and Alan Partridge, and it was good.
The next morning, it was not so good. When I finally ventured downstairs, feeling a bit wobbly, the first thing I encountered was TB casually opening the front door and letting off an air horn. My agonised cries of “AAAUUUGH! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” met with no satisfactory response. Then fried food made everything better again and we set off for Wales.
You know what Wales has? Sheep. And you know what sheep have? Lambs! Wee, precious little lambs! Sometimes in black! Sometimes in pairs! (Sometimes in packs! Sometimes on stairs! Help, I’ve turned into Doctor Seuss!) I squealed “Look! Lambs!” every two minutes until SiC gave me a look that threatened to instantaneously reduce me to a chop.
We arrived at SiC’s dad’s house in time to bask in the last few hours of Wales’s yearly allotment of sunshine. The house is a converted stone farmhouse on an isolated patch of rolling pasture, for all intents and purposes on a different planet than London. Saturday morning I actually awoke to the sound of a crowing rooster, believe it or not (I’ve been living in London long enough that my initial confused reaction was “Oh my God, who’s screaming?”). We amused ourselves all weekend doing Country Folk things like leaning on fences and going for muddy walks and watching dogs chase cows and getting really drunk. It was spiritually rejuvenating.
Sunday afternoon we headed back to London by way of Cambridge, where we stopped in to compare hangovers with TB and the rest of Godfather. The boys played a pathetic game of Frisbee that mostly involved staring placidly as the Frisbee sailed under parked cars and into hedges and then arguing about who was going to retrieve it; and I sat on the fence (literally) and made fun of them because obviously I could do so much better, having as I do the agility and hand-eye coordination of a paperweight.
Then we made the rest of the drive home, by which I mean of course the Powers, where we were greeted like prodigal sons (two of them!) and hugged a lot. Then we got drunk! And it was good.