Mab of Dream

Greatness happened on Saturday morning - OUR GLASTONBURY TICKETS TURNED UP! *happy dances*

I spent most of the morning catching up on Witchgrove e-mails, just as I'd spent the night before dealing with all the off-list messages. I think that between 5.30pm on Friday and 3pm on Saturday (excluding sleeping, eating and having a bath), I worked my way through over 2000 e-mails.

FT Kate came to pick me up and we drove up to Ellesmere Port. Everyone was in all weekend. To clarify this, Eric lives in a two-bedroomed flat. In this flat (two bedrooms, one kitchen, one small hallway, one lounge and an airing cupboard) live Eric, his ex-girlfriend Delma, their sons Richard and Adam (both adults), and Richard's girlfriend, Kara. Plus Adam's friend, Anthony, is often there too. It's quite usual for them to have the telly, music and a computer game all on simultaneously, in the same room; but even without that, I can hardly hear in there, because of all of the people. I generally take it as read that I'm completely deaf from the second I walk in there until the second I walk out, unless Kate has been bolshy enough to get them to turn everyone off and talk one person at a time. I do worry that they think we just come in and take over, but I think that even Eric forgets that I'm hard of hearing.

We nipped out to the shop and I went in the back, but didn't lean backwards quick enough, so the front seat going back hit me right on the bridge of my nose! It doesn't seem to have caused any permanent damage. The day afterwards, I got hit in the head with a cruc lock and eaten by midges, so I'm surprised I didn't come back anymore battered than I did!

The Port itself is toxic. An Old People's Home was refused planning permission there a couple of years back, because the air was too dangerous. As Kate and I approached, we could see an orange glow to the sky over the Port, just like a sunset... but this was about half 4 in the afternoon!

It's probably nothing whatsoever to do with this:



which is the view from Eric's window (over the playing field and the motorway).

Eric, Kate and I spent some time in the Gunners pub, catching up on all of the gossip (he didn't know that I had a new job and had been in a car accident or that Kate had had an operation and won Best Actress award), then returned to the same pub later on, with Richard and Kara. Kara and I are equally matched at pool (ie we're both shit at it), so our game went on for ages. She eventually won, but it was very close.

It was after that that we decided a meander through Stanney Woods would be nice, and that ended up lasting all night. I LOVED IT!

We arrived back at Eric's at around 8am and that's when disaster struck - Kate got a migraine. I say disaster, because she needed silence and a dark room, but there is no way that that was going to happen there. Even with the best intentions, there were just too many people there. Still, it was reasonably quiet, until one of the flatmates got up and just couldn't seem to get it into her head that silence meant not making noise. She talked incessantly and loudly, she tidied up around us, she put the washing machine on, she rustled bags.

If it hadn't been for the fact that I'd been up all night, I'd have driven Kate home (we were in her car) as soon as the migraine hit, but I was dead on my feet and she couldn't have made it without vomitting. I managed a grand total of two and a half hours sleep, before this flatmate woke three of us up and kept us awake with her chattering and housework, with Kate in the room with us.

It didn't take long then for me to proclaim myself awake enough and offer to drive that car.

In the event, it was still a few hours on, when Kate was feeling a bit better, before we went. Kate drove and we had a brilliant deep and meaningful cant all the way home. She was at my house until about 10, and it was really good.

yours
Mab
xxxxx