Alcoholiversary

I am so happy.

I am so completely filled with happy loveliness that I couldn’t be any more contented and happy and full of happiness.

The world is a lovely place and I am feeling lovely.

I might also have been drinking a bit, in case you hadn’t guessed.

We don’t drink very much because of oil rigs and taxi driving, neither of which are terribly compatible with alcohol, but tonight we have been drinking.

We have been drinking lots.

It is our wedding anniversary.

Actually, it isn’t. Actually yesterday was our wedding anniversary but we were working. Hence today is our wedding anniversary celebration, and we have been married for years and years and years.

We thought that we would go out. Actually Mark thought that we would go out because I thought it would just be too difficult to manage, but he was terribly organised and booked us an anniversary dinner at Porto, which is a smart restaurant in Bowness.

He was working all day mending trailers, and of course it is Clean Sheets Day so I was busy as well, and we reconvened at five.

We showered and I flapped about worrying about what to wear, and he fussed because he thought his shoes needed waxing again, but in the end we managed to dress ourselves in a sufficiently respectable style not to be hoofed out of anywhere. You have got to be pretty awful to be hoofed out of Bowness anyway, but I did not want to look fat and Mark did not want to look less than immaculately polished, and we thought that in the end we managed it, more or less.

It was the best, best possible evening, the best, best ever.

We got Czaba to take us down to Bowness in his taxi and had to argue very hard to be allowed to pay for it, because he wanted to give us a present. In the end he only accepted a tenner because Mark pretended he was going to kiss him and then dropped it on the seat whilst he was yelling and trying to wriggle out of the way.

After that we went for a cocktail in a wine bar called the Fizzy Tarte. These were utterly divine. I had a peanut butter and whisky cocktail, if you have never tried one then really you should. I can hardly imagine anything lovelier, except possibly Mark’s cocktail which had so much cream on the top he wondered about asking for a spoon.

We have never been in the Fizzy Tarte. My whole experience of the place has been related to taking people home who generally have stuck on white square fingernails and leopardskin minidresses, and so we have never bothered, but I can tell you that on a Monday night in March when nobody else is there it might be the very best place in the world to go and drink cocktails. We sat outside underneath some huge heaters and thought how wonderful life was.

After that we went to a restaurant called Porto, and ate enormous chunks of lamb in some alcoholic-tasting gravy. We made a huge fuss about taking the bones home for the dogs, and wrapped them up in tin trays especially, but then we were so intoxicated we forgot all about them and left them on the table, drink is a marvellous thing.

Porto was ace. We had chocolate cheesecake and a bottle of Beaujolais, and laughed about being married for such a long time and having such rascally children. Number One Son-In-Law is not exactly our children but we laughed about him and his rascally deeds as well.

After that we went back to the Fizzy Tarte where they brought us another cocktail and wouldn’t hear of us paying for it because of our wedding anniversary. They were the kindest, loveliest people and made us feel humbled and glad.

We had spent all of our money by then anyway and wanted to call at a cash machine on our way home but Czaba wouldn’t take us. He insisted on taking us home for nothing and told us it was a present.

We are home now and on our way to bed, but it has been the loveliest, happiest time. I am feeling squiffy and merry and utterly flattened by the kindliness and generosity of people.

People are so wonderful.

It is an amazing, beautiful world.

Drink is a marvellous thing.

People are even better.