The Last Weekend (and mad shoes)

It was our last weekend here and by heck it was a good one. James had his first ever sleepover (at school) on Friday night. So, while the child is away, the mice will play….. My dear friend Jane came down from London and met us at Woods (where else?). Gins were drunk. Wine followed. Food was fabulous. I was being careful though so what happened next was all Jane’s fault. She decided that she wanted an extra glass of wine for the road. Paddy, the owner of Woods, is a bit of a wine buff and prides himself on his cellar (the wonder of Woods is that you can pick any wine and just have a glass if you want)… So he bustled over to ascertain what kind of wine she fancied, vanished for a bit and then came back brandishing a bottle of Crozes Hermitage, insisting it was on the house. Jane had a glass. I said ‘No thank you’. Paddy poured Adrian one but he was drinking beer of course. Now, what do you do, faced with a full glass of something very nice. How rude would it have been to have ignored it? So I drank it and very lovely it was. At which point, someone (possibly me, I confess) asked what Paddy was drinking. ‘Champagne and pastis,’ he said with a bit of a wink. ‘Now that’s what you want if you’re having a party. Drink a few of those and you don’t know who you are.’ And off he went, chuckling, only to come back with three champagne flutes and a couple of bottles.
‘Nooooo,’ we said. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. Evil Paddy.

Jane drank hers. Adrian took a sip and put his down. I drank mine even though I don’t like aniseed-flavoured things one little bit. I think that was the point at which I brought up about the night when Jane, eighteen, got off with the chemistry master from the boys’ school (not sure why I said that, but Paddy thought it was funny and Jane didn’t – particularly because she was also having a hot flush at that precise moment).
Then our cab came. I got up and noticed Adrian’s untouched glass and said (why, oh why?) ‘Can’t waste it. I’ll take it with me.’
Paddy laughed merrily.

So there I was, in a mini-cab, thinking I was wildly sober, sipping something totally disgusting. It was only when I got into bed and tried to read my book (Glass Books of the Dream Eaters) with one eye shut and the other squinting, desperately trying to focus, that I realised that I had overdone it. By a long way.

The next day was hell. Truly madly deeply hungover and without the option of lying in bed groaning. Had to whiz around Devon and Somerset to pick up James, go to osteopath, go shopping, pick up cars etc etc etc. Jane and I kept trying the food cure: bacon sarnies didn’t do it so we tried toasted tea-cakes (Jane swore by them – wrong, so wrong) and when they didn’t work we went back to town and had mad Welsh rarebit (which as children we always called rabbit). Opposite the tea-rooms is a very upmarket shoe shop. When it opened last year there was much muttering about ‘London prices for Londoners’ and truly I don’t see how you could get around here wearing a pair of purple satin pointy-heeled knee-high boots, lovely though they were.
Jane and I were a little hysterical by this point though and so had fun trying on mad shoes. She decided to buy a pair of very tasty and tasteful black slingbacks. Then she decided that I ought to try on the maddest shoes in the entire shop.
‘Slapper shoes,’ said I, perching in them and howling with laughter.
The owner looked a little affronted. ‘They were in Vogue, you know.’
So? Anyhow, Jane decided that they were so outrageous (and half-price because no-one on Exmoor was mad enough to buy them) that she would get them for me as a housewarming present.
And she did.
I’m not sure I have the guts to wear them to Speech Day on Friday. I’m not really sure I will ever have the guts to wear them anywhere (unless I’m invited to any brothels in the near future). But I think I might just get me one of those Perspex boxes and put them on display as an ormanent.

Sunday we lazed around for the morning, reading papers and then had a pre-prandial drink at the usual place before coming back for a vast roast beef and Yorkshire (yes, I know in June – but hey, not exactly barbecue weather, is it?) The rain held off for a bit and we played (attempted) cricket and then cranked the music up waaay high (for the last time) and danced our little hearts out on our hill. Ah but it was fabulous.
Then, as we were sitting down polishing off a nice Gigondas, the deer came. Four stags, their heads magnificent, came virtually up to the house and stood watching us.
‘They’re saying goodbye,’ said Adrian. It felt just like that, like a benediction somehow. They stayed like that for ages, just watching. Then slowly, so slowly, bowed their heads and walked down the hill.