Away this last weekend with assorted miscreants, misanthropes and misfits to a camping barn bunkouse thing of a place near Ilfracombe. Got there early as learned from the website that there were small rooms and one eight-bed room and didn't fancy the latter. Got there just in time to avoid being put in the swingers' room (there was no choice, if you arrived late, you had to do sex to everyone else in there whether you liked it or not. I think. I mean I wasn't in there).
Friday night was Claire's quiz night where she got to carry on being a secondary school teacher except with her friends. I got told off lots of times for no reason at all, except like all the teachers at real school when I was younger she targeted me unfairly for no reason. Unlike real school though I had had a beer or two and so talked back. Unlike her current real school, Claire could use swear words and fight back using politically incorrect put downs. No one was harmed though, and my team even won the quiz. I say won, but it was only because we sort of cheated, but only sort of, our advantage was in fact due to another team sending spies over who we then cunningly managed to corrupt into giving us their answers. The hunter became the hunted, as it were, and we won champagne.
Saturday, anyone with leg muscles and any lung capacity went walking along a disused railway line to Ilfracombe then on towards Mortehoe and Woolacombe. One minute rain, the next sun, just like April. Very pretty views and countryside, a standing stone, lemon-yellow gorse, bluebells, dramatic skies, churned seas, and so on. Found a really nice pub in a place called Lee, a place like you only see on BBC Sunday evening dramas about village jam-making murders, where we had a hearty lunch, then the people with really proper walking ability went onwards to Mortehoe and Woolacombe. Quite a trek in the end - having left camp at 1030am with an hour or so for lunch didn't get back to the barn till nearly 8pm, feeling a little tired but in a good way.
Saturday evening involved Claire making use once again of the rare opportunity to carry on being a secondary school teacher except with her friends. This time with Bingo. By that point I had a nasty headache probably brought on by having drunk little more than two pints at lunchtime despite having been on a 10 hour walk in the sun and wind. So I drank several plastic cups of water and retreated to my wipe-clean plastic bunk bed with my zombie comic book.
Following a scuff about the beach at Woolacombe the next day, headed home.
Well now it's Monday and we've just sent off another email to recruit, remind and invite people to the wedding and wedding reception. It's been fairly hard deciding who to come to which but our secret criteria have worked in the end. Tomorrow we're going to see Bob Dylan, that's right, the real Bob Dylan. In a massive arena, from near the back probably. Looking forward to it, though concerned I might not be enough of a massive Bob Dylan fan to appreciate it fully. Hope it's not like when we went to Haight-Ashbury hoping for a rainbow freak out and all we found was bong shops. Nah, it'll be grand. The man's a living legend after all - up there with Bob Marley, John Lennon and Vanilla Ice.
Got quite a bit done on my piece of write up I've been asked to do, where I explain and justify and describe my interim thoughts about methods and analysis. Sometimes I wonder though whether I'm just trying to convince myself and others that what I'm doing makes sense, or whether I really believe it does. Maybe there isn't a difference. To read most sociology I don't think so.
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