Running away to the south

There were a few purposes to this weekend;

1. See my cousin and reconnect after a ridiculously long time apart
2. See some old friends
3. Have fun
4. Running away

All 4 outcomes were successfully achieved. If they were written on a list I would have ticked them all off and I’d be feeling a warm glow of satisfaction. (I kind of now wish I had actually written a list. Is it ok to write and list post-event?)

I know running away doesn’t solve anything and you have to face your problems sooner or later but sometimes you can over-think issues and I am most definitely bordering on that at the moment. Sometimes you have to just remove yourself completely from a situation just to give your brain a rest and that was most definitely accomplished.

It would be boring to recount the whole weekend’s activities and there aren’t many photos I can show you. I mean there were plenty of photos taken but very few blog appropriate ones :)

At times like this you need a list to briefly and snappily run through things so here we go:

Friday
- Picked up from train station by cousin, made lovely meal, sit down to have nice civilised meal with cousin, one of her housemates and other friend. A polite game of Cranium is mentioned.
- Someone else mentions going to the pub down the road for a couple of drinks
- 4 bottles of wine at the pub later we roll back down to the house, causing minor disruption to the incredibly sleepy village of Coombeinteignhead. (Apologies to any residents who may come across this blog in the future. Especially the guy whose Landrover the other girls tried to climb on whilst I took photos.)
- Somehow end up with the 19 year old barman back at the house (who clearly thought his luck was in with 4 drunk older women. You have to admire him for trying.)
- Break table, trying to dance on it
- Kick barman out after having made him strip down to his boxers (don’t ask why)
- Get to bed about 4.30/5.00am

Saturday
- Wake up at 8.30 feeling surprisingly chipper, get up and get changed, feeling full of the joys of spring
- Retrace steps back to the pub to try and find my phone which had mysteriously disappeared
- Realise that I was still drunk and slowly sink into the hangover from hell in front of Saturday Kitchen.
- Have cup of tea and feel spirits rallying
- Find phone behind cushion. Have no idea why I wouldn’t have looked there in the first place, a clear indication of the effects of excessive alcohol on the brain.
- Discover that we somehow managed to get through 10 bottles of wine amongst the 4 of us.
- Ponder why we aren’t all in acute liver failure.
- Get ourselves to Paignton Zoo at lunchtime, looking and behaving like two Witches of Eastwick, hissing at all children who made too much noise or got in our way (we’re normally very nice girls)
- Laugh at the lemurs, stroke some goats and decide that the baboons are our favourites.

- Powernap back at home
- Dinner at Coombe Cellars which was so beautiful I couldn’t even capture it properly in a photograph, although I kept trying.

Sunday
- Back to Coombe Cellars to meet up with an old friend of mine plus husband, plus child.
- Lament the fact that we only have an hour before I have to catch my stupid train back home.
- Laugh and coo over friend’s child (see, told you I was a nice girl normally, just not with a hangover)
- Dash to Newton Abbot train station to begin epic journey back to Hull involving 3 trains and a bus. Ridiculous.
- Realise I’ve got a grand total of about 8 hours sleep over the weekend and will most likely die at work on Monday.

So in summary:

Laughing so much you choke + many bottles of wine + zoo + good friends = Quality Weekend

Did reality hit me like a sucker punch to the gut when I came home? It certainly did. But with this many things to reminisce about I can put off thinking about things for a while longer yet.