I am having absolutely the best, most wonderful time.
I mean really, really brilliant.
We got up in Guildford, which is rather a nice start to any day, because Guildford is jolly nice.
Up until now the only thing I knew about Guildford was that it had once been the home of the bass player from the Vapors. These gentlemen formed the rock band which excited my teenage passions, and still inspire mildly nostalgic foot-tapping when I hear them.
Guildford was also, somewhat later, close to the home of Number One Daughter, who was stationed in Woking for a while.
Today we had a bit of an amble around it. I mean Guildford, not Number One Daughter’s old house, obviously, and it is very full of the sort of shops that middle class people visit and that people from Windermere only read about in Sunday newspaper colour supplements. There was a Jo Malone, and a Rigby and Peller, and a shop full of nylon things that Number One Daughter likes,called Lululemon.
We did not go into any of the shops, because of not needing nylon things or scented candles, but they were nice to look at.
We also discovered the hotel’s swimming pool, which was outdoors, and fortunately empty, because it was cramped even with me and Mark, we had to be very polite whilst swimming past one another.
There was a massive jacuzzi and a cold plunge pool and a sauna. I did not bother about the plunge pool, although Mark was braver, and we loafed about until we got bored with it, which did not take very long really. I like the idea of luxurious loafing about in steaming hot water but when I am actually doing it it is dull after a minute or two.
Eventually we were steamed and peeled and soaked to our hearts’ content, and chugged away from Guildford along the country roads to our final destination, and we are here now.
It is an hotel called Trading Boundaries, nowhere near anywhere I have noticed so far. There are statues of elephants in the car park and a vague whiff of incense.
My friend was right. It is Quirky.
Odd would also be a good word, but it is actually rather splendid.
We are in a little hut with a tall sloping roof and a bed covered with an embroidered Indian throw. The heavy wooden door opens onto a large courtyard with a fountain in the middle.
It is very like India. All that is missing is the scent of elephant dung and also human dung. There was quite a bit of this when we were there.
The evocatively Indian feeling is helped along by the dry aridity of the south at the moment. It is a dust bowl, albeit a very grey one at the moment. Little gusts of wind are creating spiralling twists of dust, and everybody thinks that the monsoon is almost upon us.
I am not particularly looking forward to this, although everybody else is.
Our courtyard is hot and dry with clumps of browned grasses and small Indian statues. Our friends had gone shopping when we arrived, and so we settled ourselves at the table beside our door with cups of tea, our sun hats and glasses and our books.
This was wonderful. It is not very often that we get an opportunity to be unashamedly idle, and we truly felt that we were on holiday.
Our friends arrived not long afterwards, and the afternoon melted away in the enormous pleasures of chat and more tea.
It is so warm here.
We went out this evening.
We went to join in a pub quiz.
I have never done this before, and it was jolly good fun.
First we ate an enormous dinner. The dinner was excellent, and was washed down with two bottles of Malbec, which was also excellent.
Then there was the quiz.
There were lots of mug shots of unrecognisable strangers and we had to guess who they were. Our friends were better at this than we were.
There was a Geography section and a General Knowledge section and a topical Hot Things section, and we acquitted ourselves moderately creditably, by which I mean that we finished about halfway down the room.
I would not have cared if we had been last, I was having such a good time, and also the wine was swilling along very pleasantly, but we were spared that embarrassment, and finished the evening with a last cup of tea in the Indian courtyard.
I am feeling very contented indeed. There is no feeling better than good weather and good friends, good food and good wine.
Glyndebourne tomorrow.
