Beers with Robin and Charlotte

Friday and a sense of a little mental space opening up. Caught up with some correspondence including a long overdue reply to Sarah Barnsley, a note to my accountant and so on. Sonia here today, and said she is going to Bulgaria in June. We will have to find another person to clean for us, but more importantly I will miss her making me laugh with her no-nonsense perspective. 

Wrapped up agains all possible weathers, I sauntered down to London Road in my sunglasses, and hopped on a train to Lewes to meet Robin. Lewes under threatening dark skies however.

 Lovely to see Robin IRL (in real life), and it was great to just have a beer and shoot the breeze. It made a change from the purposeful stuff to do with the podcast, although there was a wee bit of that.  Threaded through town and went to The Gardeners, somewhere I went to with Matty boy and Graeme many years ago, and also have since visited with Mark Hartley. We were outside in the little alleyway, but I had a pint of Harvey's as it seemed rude not to. Then we threaded through the streets off to the back garden of The Dorset, where after being rained on a bit, we found ourselves under an awning. There we were joined by Charlotte making her first visit to a pub garden. Just very brilliant to be in the company of poets. Having poet allies is brilliant, and makes me feel seen and understood.

Nick came to have a cheeky half and drive Robin home. He was good enough to demonstrate the expression he pulls while looking at his new Organists iPad. As organists must use all available hands and feet they need page turners to sit with them. However, with this new technology, he can look at the screen and grimace slightly on one side of his mouth, to make the next page slide into view, the opposite side and you go back a page. His regular page turner not so happy with this technological breakthrough.  

Home and we had a Friday night curry I collected from the Red Chillies. They were hella busy and collectors of phoned in orders had to mill about outside.

Lorraine tired, but very happy to have reached three days off. 

Charlotte's snap of her, me and Robin. And a picture of the La Gann I snapped while walking back from the pub through the backstreets with her.