And welcome to the beginning.
Yes, this most humble offering constitutes the very first blog post of my 52nd year clinging to the surface of this rapidly spinning ball of rock and showing the odd sign of life.
And the transition between the years of my ever-increasing age has been quite eventful.
The Train Strain
It wasn’t planned as such, but my partner par excellence, Tina, and I had a long-standing plan to go and meet friends (Dez & Lucy) who live in Derbyshire, some sixty miles away and, due to the vagaries of finance and opportunity coupled with the couple we were set to meet up with actually having social lives (how very dare they) the date for this meet up kept getting shoved further and further back until it nudged the big day itself.
Not that it should have.
No, we were due to spend the seventh and eighth away from home and then travel back on the ninth, thus leaving the whole of the Tenth (my birthday) to recuperate and celebrate.
Unfortunately the rail service had other ideas.
Egg-cellence
There were planned works occurring on the Sunday. Works that would essentially cut the journey short in either Sheffield or Chesterfield, and required hopping on a bus for a few hours to complete what should have been a ninety-or-so minute journey. Something that sounded much, much less than ideal.
And so, as the alternatives before us shrank away, we plumped for another night in the Premier Inn, Ripley. It turns out this was an excellent decision.
The family room we were assigned (all accessible rooms having been booked up) was spacious, pleasant, and had a bath I felt comfortable using. The pre-paid breakfast, served in an adjoining pub, was a definite notch or two above our previous experiences with the chain—an identical offering of cooked and cold foods from cereals to fried eggs, but each element just that little bit better. In fact, I could have sworn my fried eggs had a little bit of runny yolk still left in them.
But, of course, we hadn’t gone all that way for fried eggs. No, we were there to visit good friends, and visit we did.
Pub Quiz
The first night was spent in said friend's luxurious back garden on a lovely summer’s evening. The alcohol flowed, thanks to the generosity of mein host and mein hostess, and a delivery of fish and chips appeared at one point too. It’s even possible we made new friends in the shape of the couple from next door, something I thought was a statistical impossibility north of the big 5-0.
The next day, the Saturday, Tina was feeling a little unwell, something I’m absolutely certain had nothing to do with alcohol, so I did my husbandly duty and swiftly abandoned her to meet Dez at the pub.
Ripley, where we were based, is a small town, but its main street has a dazzling array of hostelries. I think I counted at least five within a quarter-mile (or less) walk but, guided by those with better local knowledge, we settled on two for the afternoon and were soon joined by the ladies and our new friends, who may or may not have had their arms twisted the night before.
And that, after a call in at the local Sainsbury’s for some of those foodstuffs that always seem such a good idea in those circumstances, was it.
Day three, the Sunday, was a quieter affair.
Fully Booked
After a Sunday lunch/carvery, Tina and I walked back to the street of pubs and settled in a beer garden for a few scoops. I even changed up my usual bourbon and cokes for a nice IPA as the sun was shining and a change is, allegedly, as good as a rest. Dez & Lucy had plans, but they swooped by to drop off the remnants of Friday’s bourbon as well as some moonshine and a couple of books we’d been discussing.
And that, apart from the packing and a gloriously uneventful journey home, was that for Ripley.
It was a very, very good weekend with amazing company, both old and new, lashings of inebriation, and the novelty of different air and a change to the old routine. In fact, with our holiday to Turkey only a matter of weeks away, it was almost like a pre-holiday holiday. A taster of what’s to come that made us hungry for more.
And that, apart from the packing and a gloriously uneventful journey home, was that for Ripley.
It was a very, very good weekend with amazing company, both old and new, lashings of inebriation, and the novelty of different air and a change to the old routine. In fact, with our holiday to Turkey only a matter of weeks away, it was almost like a pre-holiday holiday. A taster of what’s to come that made us hungry for more.
Of course there’s the remainder of my birthday week to celebrate first (who’d stick with a day?), but as the memories start to fade, so too does the countdown commence.
Until next time!
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Hey, there! If you enjoyed reading any of the above, why not take a look at some of my published work? Below you’ll find links to a number of short stories I’m lucky enough to have included in anthologies. I’d love to know what you think. My debut novel, The Heart That Died, is available now as both paperback, E-book, and on Kindle Unlimited, so I’m adding the link to that, too.
Oh, and if you like what you look-see, a nice, positive review would also be most welcome.
The Heart That Died
New Tales Of Old
Death Ship
Pestilence: Drabbles 1
Reaperman: Drabbles 3
The Musketeers Vs Cthulhu
Eldritch Investigations
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