A somewhat misleading title perhaps, but then my boss did ask recently when I was going on holiday. 'Oh, I've just been in London for a couple of days,' I explained, 'and I'm going to Armagh for two days for a wedding.'
'Yes,' she replied, 'but when are you going on holiday?' I resisted the temptation to reply that if I was paid a living wage then maybe I could afford to swan off to the Bahamas and bit my tongue.
Anyway, London was a sort of holiday, in that I managed to do remarkably little. On Wednesday it was Sam's birthday so I met her after my conference, admired her new flat (actually not that new, but the first time I'd seen it) and we got a bus to Clapham and my favouritist tapas bar in the world, El Rincon Latino. Lovely Freddo remembered me even when I worked out it was two and a half years since my last visit. Not many people can be as addicted to cheesy patatas bravas as me.
Sam's boyfriend Andrew and my old flatmate Damian met us for dinner and what turned into rather a lot of drinks. The guys were getting up early to travel to a stag do in France and Damian was concerned that he wouldn't be able to get his portable car fridge across London on the tube. How was he going to keep his beer cold?
Luckily I was beyond such concerns, being able to enjoy a lovely lie in in Sam's spare room while the boys left and Sam went to to work the next day. I spent the day shopping, in a leisurely sort of way. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I couldn't find anything I wanted to buy except a pair of shoes which I spotted in Next in Edinburgh. All this bright eighties style stuff really doesn't do it for me. But I had a very pleasant wander round the Kings Road before it even occurred to me that I should have gone to an exhibition or something 'cultural'. For a moment I felt guilty. Then I though 'sod that'. My new tactic of not doing things I don't want to do is paying off. (For example, upon my return Al invited me to the cinema to watch an hour-long documentary on mountain biking. 'No thanks,' I cheerily replied. And I regret it not a whit.)
As it happened, Jenny was changing trains in London after an interview so we met for a quick drink before I headed back to Sam's for takeaway and a cheesy girlie movie. The film in question featured a bloke who was cheating on his wife so she seduced him on the phone and when he was blindfolded. So he thought he was having an affair when actually he was with his wife. Who then left him. Oh, and ended up with his strong, silent, Scottish friend after she ran after his train and he pressed the emergency stop button. All very predictable, and so lacking in merit that I can't even remember what it was called. The silent Scot was Dougray Scott though, and he was very nice.
I headed down to Brighton the next day after lunch with Sam near her work in Farringdon. There's a direct train and I was at the seaside in little more than an hour. I duly met Carla at the pub where, along with most of the other teachers from her primary school, she was having an end-of-week drink. It still simultaneously amuses and terrifies me that my generation is allowed to be in charge of young minds.
We met Emma for a quick drink at another pub (equipped with outdoor heating in preparation for the smoking ban - surely the electricity used by those things is bad for the environment?). She revealed that her dad was soon to retire so the three of us decided that all of our dads should get together for a regular weekly pub night.
Then it was pizza and a night out with Carla's pals. I met her new boyfriend, who seemed lovely, and spent far too long talking about DIY and gardening. Or not actually - I happen to like talking about DIY and gardening. So there.
I persuaded the parents to meet us for lunch on Saturday and we had a scenic drive back past the downs. They'd arranged a special meal of lamb shanks to be accompanied by the bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape I bought them a while back, though M ended up preparing it under strict supervision as D had hurt his thumb and was all bandaged up. It was delicious, although, after the champagne and strawberry dessert, I was tiddly enough to let slip how much the wine had cost...it was still really good though!
A trip to Tesco in the morning resulted in more purchases than the whole of the Kings Road, as I picked up a long brown cardigan for £12. I wish my local Sainsbury's sold clothes.
And I would have been home in good time, had one passenger inexplicably been unable to find the gate so we had to wait half an hour while they tried to find either him or his bag. Eventually he turned up, by which point most people on the plane were ready to strangle him. But one particularly unpleasant passenger actually did harangue him so unnecessarily that our (or at least my) sympathies ended up being with the latecomer.
It was good to be back in Edinburgh, though.
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