Out and About
It is exactly 25 days until pub gardens open. 25 long, endless, days. Oh to sit in a beer garden and sip a cool, freshly poured draught beer in the company of equally thirsty friends.
Swiftly followed by lashings of ham, egg and chips, steak and ale pie, fish and chips, pub stalwarts. Even a packet of crisps. The laughter, the banter, the winding up, the shared stories, it is part of what we are, a beer on the sofa doesn’t even come close. And toilets.
Real toilets, inside an actual building, with heaters and towels and mirrors and all, even hand cream, oh joy.
Not that I’m desperate or anything but I have booked myself an outside table at the Hare & Hounds in Lansdown on the very first day they open, April 12.
Tomorrow it will be 24 days, next week it will be 17.
My table is booked for 12.45pm, I will be early.
The shops
Bet it was a man who decided hairdressers and beauty salons are non essential.
To my mind they are more important than garden centres, DIY stores and all night petrol stations put together.
My hair is now a mossy combination of black roots, grey sideburns and drably yellowing previously ash blonde highlights.
It used to be my crowning glory. In desperation many of my friends have taken the scissors to their own locks, don’t be tempted, the results are not good, not good at all.
But when the men decide our non essential hairdressers can come back to work I will be first in line.
If Sweeney Todd himself wanted a go at my protruding roots I’d say name your date.
We look forward to having you back, you trusty, great and oh so essential of workers.
Mud Bath
Can you believe the amount of mud on the fields around Bath? It really is not funny.
So many people out walking the fields are full of it, and it is not just any old mud.
Oh no, the mud on the slopes of Bath has a rare quality to it, it is the thick, greasy variety, the kind that sticks to your boots and slides with you, it is like a stiff, chocolately slime.
You hit it like a rip tide, you just have to go with it as to resist is to end up on your tail end, legs akimbo and covered in the thick, dark stuff.
I did a Bridget Jones style somersault into the muck no less than three times this week, I have the bruises and scars and some very sore parts to show for it, not to mention the permanent mud stains on my new Stella Mccartney coat.
I’m not happy.
Coffee and Cake
Have you tasted the cakes in the Fine Cheese Company in Walcot Street? I mean have you really tasted them? Mouthful by glorious mouthful? It has become one of my big treats this lockdown to get dressed up (I know, sad), walk down to Waitrose for my shopping then across the road to the Fine Cheese Company for takeaway coffee and cake.
The cakes are superb, really soft and juicy, our own Mary Berry couldn’t do better.
It is a rare treat to sit or stand outside (I sometimes sneak across to the tables outside the Pig and Fiddle
but don’t tell anyone) and dip a gooey orange polenta cake into my creamy cappuchino.
Because I’m worth it.
Mother’s Day
On Mother’s Day I went on a walk which did not involve mud.
I did that rare thing and walked on the streets in normal Adidas trainers, not huge hiking boots covered in caked mud.
It was bliss.
I walked from Bathwick Hill across town to Julian Road, it was lovely walking down Milsom Street even though the shops are all closed.
The council in all its wisdom has put wooden seating with flowers outside the Ivy in Milsom St and across the road outside Waterstones. Sheer genius.
I like to grab a coffee at the great Chandos Deli in George St and sit on the wooden seats and watch the world not pass by.
Sad to see everything closed though.
As I sat there I thought of previous Sunday mornings in Bath, the bustle of people chatting noisily outside coffee shops, the chance meetings with friends, tourists walking around nonchalantly, cameras in hand, looking in wonder at our wonderful architecture.
Not long now, it’s all coming back, just 25 sleeps.
But who’s counting?