I am on the side of a mountain somewhere in Wales.
Also, I am a bit intoxicated.
I do not exactly know where I am, because in order to get here we simply followed the directions on my mobile phone, having given it a postcode.
We did not even come directly here. We went to Birmingham first. Hence all of the things by which a person might normally orientate themselves, such as signposts pointing to York or moss on the other side of trees, ceased to have relevance.
There is moss on the trees here. It is at the end of a very long road which seems to go nowhere but here. Also there are two curious horses on the other side of a gate next to the camper van. When we arrived they were engaged in opening the gate. The plan seemed to be to shove it a little way, leap in the air with surprise at the clanking noise and run away, followed by returning cautiously, and shoving the gate a little further.
Mark gave them some of the grass from this side of the gate, because clearly it tasted better, and then jammed the latch closed, because we thought that probably the horses were not supposed to be on this side of it. This side of the gate is my sister’s garden. She likes horses, but probably not when they are eating her pot plants.
We had gone to Birmingham to collect Oliver’s new drum kit. This turns out to be massive and potentially very noisy indeed. There is a lot of it. Some of the drums would barely fit through the camper van door.
We dismantled it all and jammed it all on to Oliver’s bunk bed. I am quite sure that we will manage to reassemble it when we get home, although I do wish we had taken a photograph. There are several cymbals and an assortment of drums and a stool.
We liked Birmingham. Actually I thought that perhaps I might like Birmingham very much, and have been doing it an injustice in my thoughts for all of my life so far. This is partly because when I was at college there was a boy in my year who had a strong Birmingham accent and who was exceptionally dopey. He had glasses and a thick fringe and dead pot plants on his windowsill.
Today I realised that for all of my life so far my impressions of Birmingham have been coloured by this single cultural representative, and that actually Birmingham looks like rather a splendid place to be.
There is a thrilling city centre, ringed about with interesting houses and lots of trees. Blocks of flats from the nineteen sixties shared leafy avenues with sandstone Victorian neighbours. We admired it all very much, and thought that we would visit it again, perhaps, when Lucy comes to Northamptonshire to become a resident of the Midlands.
Once we were loaded with percussion we navigated our way slowly out of the city and along some interestingly narrow byways to the Welsh mountainside where my sister lives with my nephew and niece.
It is so long since I have seen them that I was I not sure, when a child appeared, which he was. This was because in my head they were not teenagers, they were still in nappies. Obviously I knew in theory that this would be the case, but the actuality came as something of a surprise.
It turns out that they are tall and articulate with all sorts of interesting ideas. I liked them very much, and was sorry when they went to bed. They had to go to bed because of school in the morning, of course most households do not run on the stay-up-all-night-bed-until-lunchtime timetable that ours does.
My sister had cooked dinner for us, which was rather splendid, any cooking done by somebody else is good, and good cooking is better, especially when eaten in good company. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
We ate too much, and then drank too much as well.
It is ages since I have seen my sister, and so there as a great deal of catching up to do. She is planning a thrilling sounding holiday to Florida, which prompted all sorts of reminiscences about the glorious, never-to-be-forgotten one that we had, once.
It was good to have this to talk about, because she is a doctor, and so I always have to be careful not to talk about my ailments. This is getting increasingly difficult as I get older and they get more interesting, but if you are a doctor then everybody thinks that you will be interested in their spots and swellings, which frankly, you are not. Therefore caution is necessary if I am not to become insufferably dull.
I thought that I managed this moderately well, even after three glasses of wine, although I might not have done as well as I would have liked, because eventually she was yawning pointedly and looking hopefully at the door. This was because she will be getting up in the morning when we will be fast asleep in the camper van in her garden.
We are preparing for that even as I write. Mark is in the shower and I am in bed.
It has been a busy day.
I have forgotten to take a picture. Have one of the Library Gardens.
