Catching up with old friends

When you haven't got a birth family to turn to if something goes wrong having a network of multi-talented friends becomes vital. Our friendship group is widespread and we work hard to stay in regular contact with them all.

Last weekend Ella and I drove a lot of miles, saw a lot of our friends and had a good time. Our husbands looked after Alice (mine) and Nicola (Ella's) and they too seem to have had lots of fun.

We started off by driving to Church Stretton via Ludlow. We had coffee and a cake with Commune1and her half-sister Yalelock. A bit later Commune2 and Airhead joined the four of us for a brief stroll round this small town. Airhead has very important exams this summer and I'm sure that all the blog readers wish her well.

We then drove up the A49 to Shrewsbury where we met Helena P, Simple not Simon and Paul F. We made a silly mistake when making the arrangements for this meeting. I forgot that Paul F had never met the other two and so he didn't recognise them when they were all waiting in the supermarket café for us to arrive - 10 minutes late! We had a light lunch that Paul F kindly paid for.

Then on to Montgomery, in theory, to see Abigail and Zulu. Zulu got delayed at work so we had to make do with a brief phone chat with him. This was the first time we had met Abigail so it was nice to put a face to the name and the voice. Abigail doesn't do Facebook because of people in her past she would rather not have contact with.

We stayed with Lulu Big Tits in Birmingham for the night. This was brilliant even though Ella managed to spill her Chinese take-away meal all over herself when she pulled rather too energetically at the lid!

On Sunday we drove down to Dunchurch to see AaBbCc on his narrow-boat. Miss Peanut is nominally based in Hull but has friends in Birmingham so stayed overnight with them and then met up with AaBbCc and us for a drink and a natter.

Then we drove home! This always feels strange and a bit of an anti-climax and we are already plotting and planning our next trip.

Of course we didn't see everybody we would liked to see but there never seemed to be a date when everybody was available so we had to settle for seeing as many folk as possible. Birdwatcher (from Wem) was just a bit too far off any sensible route and Wendy C (from Telford) is currently car-less and so she couldn't easily get to Shrewsbury.