Venturing out

Such excitement: last weekend we got on an inter-city train and went to Birmingham, travelling 106 miles from home! That’s the furthest we’ve been in nearly a year. We stayed in a hotel for the first time since last March and I was feeling both excited and nervous about the whole thing. It had been so long I couldn’t remember how it was all done. What on earth was I supposed to pack? What time should we arrive at the train station without looking embarrassingly keen or rudely late?  How do you drink station coffee through a mask?

I used to be a very orderly packer (there I go again, disorderly I am not). I would go through a typical day in my head, thinking of everything I’d need and packing as I went, starting in the morning with toothbrush and deodorant, all the way through the day to an extra jumper for a chilly evening and ending with dental floss. But last weekend I just couldn’t sort out my brain. Images of toothbrushes, socks, coats, water bottles and charging cables danced through my head (there may well have been visions of sugar plums there too – it was all so crowded, it’s hard to be sure), but I couldn’t wrestle them into any sort of order. In the end, I stuffed a suitcase full of everything that was closest to hand and hoped for the best.

It’s not just travellers who are out of practice. By coincidence we stayed in the same hotel that we had stayed in last March, but it was a very different experience this time. We walked into a stiflingly hot bedroom and couldn’t make it any cooler, no matter which buttons we pressed on the thermostat. And we tried them all. The next morning we asked the very charming and accommodating reception staff if they could make our room cooler and they certainly did. That night it was like an icebox. The following morning I woke up to a dripping sound and discovered a leak in the ceiling (fortunately not over the bed). We put the bin underneath and called reception. A smartly dressed young man quickly appeared with a ladder and some sort of drip-stopping tool, and he did seem to have fixed it. However, when we came back from breakfast it was dripping again. We put the bin back underneath and I’m afraid I don’t know the end of the story because we checked out that morning. It might be dripping still.

Despite everything I’ve just said, we loved it all. We didn’t care about the heat, the cold or the dripping water, it was just so lovely to be away from home and staying in a hotel. Everywhere we went it was the same – every café, every restaurant, every shop – the staff were beaming, so happy to be open and welcoming visitors. We ate Sunday lunch at Ju Ju’s Café, which is in a perfect spot overlooking a canal and our favourite restaurant in Birmingham. The owner couldn’t stop smiling (neither could we, but the prosecco might have had something to do with it). She said that the night before they’d re-opened, she’d been so excited she couldn’t sleep. Just like Christmas Eve. It did feel a bit like Christmas, but a sunnier, less hectic version.

Our next venture is Pirate Day in Hastings. Packing for that is going to be even more challenging. The cutlass will need to be kept separate from everything else for a start.