Oh ma godd, it wasn't a dream...

By the time I’d been back at work for an hour, I was already really bored. And kicking myself that I didn’t bring any of my Easter eggs to work. A nice piece of chocolate would have gone down a treat right now. Anything to pass the time really.

Anyway, it was Easter break, which meant four days off work. My mum wanted me to go up to hers on Thursday night but I went on Saturday afternoon instead. I really didn’t want to go. Waking up on Saturday with the sun pouring in the window, I just wanted to stay in bed and hug N lots. On Friday night we went out and drank lots of red wine and I was a silly drunk. It was fun (very very fun actually, with lovely people) until I became too silly and then I cried. Damn wine. I’m not a good drunk.

Anyway, on Saturday morning everything was just so perfect that I didn’t want to leave, and I could have quite happily not gone to my parent’s house and faced her wrath… well, not quite. She can be quite fierce. So I went back to mine and packed a bag and then went to get the train. Of course it was bank holiday and they were doing engineering works, so what should have been quite a simple journey became far more complex than I would have liked and I didn’t get to my parent’s house until quite late. My dad showed me around all the new barns and asked me lots of questions about what I’d been up to, but I couldn’t really think of anything to say. In the end my mum told him that I didn’t want to tell him what I’d been doing, and that he wouldn’t understand what I do with my free time. That quite suited me. I went to bed quite early simply because I was absolutely freezing, and slept in a tiny ball with my head under the duvet.

On Sunday morning I woke up reasonably early and pottered around for a while. It was a nice day so I took some pictures of the house and the barns because I didn’t have any photos of the barn before. My mum and me left after lunch and set out for the countryside (even more countryside than where we were already). It took about two hours or so to get to the other side of Suffolk, where we went to see my little brother. He was on a music course that I used to go on when I was his age. I hated it so much but both my brothers enjoyed it. We had a cup of tea and my brother introduced me to his friends while my mum chatted to the guy in charge of the course, who I dislike immensely. Apparently he had to leave the school where he was teaching because he got done for sexual discrimination (I always said he was a pervert). He asked what I was doing now, and I told him I was working in London (to which he replied: “yes, like everybody else”, which I thought was a bit bloody rude seeing as he didn’t ask what I was working as or anything).

We said goodbye to my brother and drove to the youth hostel where we were staying. I’ve never stayed in a youth hostel before, but my mum has stayed there loads of times. The man in charge was this super keen hostelling enthusiast, who recognised my mum and chatted away about which hostel was better than which other hostel and other fascinating things like that. I wandered off to see the place, and was instantly struck by the other people staying there. For a start, the word “youth” (as in “youth hostel”) is completely misleading, as most of the people were quite old. Indeed, there were two cycling groups, all over the age of 50. Now, I have nothing against old people… but I don’t like seeing 60-year-old men in cycling shorts. It wasn’t pleasant.

We had supper at the hostel and then drove to Aldeburgh to see the sea. It was dark but it looked amazing- so many shades of blue. We walked for a bit along the high street and looked in all the shop windows. It was nothing like London, which I suppose shouldn’t have come as too much of a shock, but it just seemed so (and I hate this word, it’s just the only thing I could come up with) quaint. I suppose it’s nice to get out of the city, and certainly the colours in the fields were beautiful (spring is always the best time to see the country). It’s just not really for me.

We had a drink in a pub before heading back to the hostel, where I wished I had a cigarette with me. As we were sharing a room with four others, I put my pyjamas on (so as not to disturb anyone later on- why I was so considerate I don’t know, given the events of the night) and went to the TV room. I spoke to N for a while and then curled up on a sofa and read a magazine. I noticed that I’d trodden on a drawing pin several hours before, and had to pull it out of the sole of my foot, which was both an unsettling and vaguely interesting experience. I contemplated sleeping on the sofa, as I was pretty comfortable, but decided I would get too cold, and went back to the room when I got too sleepy. Inside the room it was pitch black and I had difficulty seeing where the ladder for the bunk bed was (yes, bunk bed… the first time I’ve slept on one of those in a very long time) so I had to sort of catapult myself at the bed and scramble up, hoping that I wouldn’t inadvertently kick the woman below.

There began a very long night. Just as I had settled down (which was no mean feat in itself as I am not used to sleeping in a single bed (or indeed by myself anymore) and especially not one up a ladder), someone started snoring. At first it was quite funny. Then someone else joined in. then another. Including the woman below me, which meant the entire bed frame was reverberating with the snores. Even with the duvet over my head, I could still hear it, and it took me two hours to fall asleep.

In the morning one of the snorers clearly decided that she hadn’t been quite annoying enough during the night, and she got up an hour before everyone else and rustled her plastic bag for a good 45 minutes, as well as opening and shutting the (squeaky) door several hundred times (or so it felt like anyway). If I hadn’t have been so tired, I would have sat up and said something, but instead I waited until breakfast time to give evil looks to all and sundry. Then I had a very long shower (the shower at my parents house is nowhere near passable as washing devices go- you hardly get wet at all- so the hostel shower was a relative luxury… I bet that’s something that isn’t said all that often, especially as the quality design of the thing flooded the entire bathroom).

We drove to Snape Maltings, which was only a couple of miles from the hostel. It used to be some sort of beer making factory type thing (hence “maltings”) but there is now a concert hall and some shops (handmade furniture and the like), as well as some rather interesting sculptures. My mum said something about the place being bought by Benjamin Britten, which I don’t know is true, but sounds plausible. When I was on the music course that my brother just went on (so, five years ago) they took us in a mini-bus to Benjamin Britten’s house, where we looked around and supposedly gained inspiration. I don’t recall having any epiphanies or owt, but I do recall the guide pointing out a sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace and saying that that was where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears used to sit, which of course made us snigger. Ah, the simple things that amuse the immature minds of sixteen year olds.

After a look around, and some prime photo opportunities, we went on to Leiston, where my brother’s course was being held. Now, Leiston is a horrible town, famous only for its high level of heroin abuse. The course is held at Leiston Abbey, a mile or so outside the town. It’s a proper old abbey, with a couple of new buildings so that the musicians have somewhere to sleep, practice, perform, and all that. The concert was being held in a renovated barn, which I absolutely hate because it is as cold as a crypt. Anyway, we saw my brother play (Debussy and Ravel- the Ravel was better but he played very well in both) and some other pieces as well. Some of them were rubbish and I don’t know what they were doing on the course, but others were very good. It was very odd being back at Leiston after all this time. There was a big fuss when I was there because a bottle of whiskey was found in the grounds of the abbey, and I was blamed for it, along with cigarette ends and some roaches. I denied it, of course, not least because they weren’t roaches, they were filters for rollies. My mum asked me whether the alcohol was actually mine, and I told that of course it was, but I was hardly likely to admit it then (being sixteen at the time, and not allowed to drink by either the law or the rules of the music course). To be honest, it wasn’t solely mine, but I didn’t want to get the only two friends I had there in trouble.

Anyway, a complete digression… After the concert, my mum and I drove to Aldeburgh again where we walked along the sea in the blazing sunshine and had an ice cream at a proper old school ice cream parlour. We saw a queue for fish and chips that snaked down the road. It must have been a good half hour wait to get to the front.

We went back to Leiston to see the end of the second concert. Only it was raining, so I stayed in the car, planning to read a bit of my book and wait for the rain to subside, but I fell asleep and woke up once the concert had ended (and the rain had stopped). I blame the snoring the night before. Once we’d got my brother and all his belongings, we set off for home. He was pretty tired and I don’t know how happy he was. He looked a lot thinner than he did at Christmas, and I wondered whether he was stressed about his exams. He fell asleep in the back of the car, though he woke up when we stopped at a Little Chef to drink pots of tea and eat garlic mayonnaise. There, he proceeded to tell me that he didn’t like my hair and that I should alternate my shampoo. I told him I only used baby shampoo and he suggested that I used L’Oreal but not Pantene. How he has picked up this sort of valuable information, I don’t know, but I am considering installing him in my house.

On the way back to my parent’s I played ROADKILL, a fun-for-all-the-family kinda game, where you count how many dead animals you pass. Here’s my final tally:

Deer - 3
Duck - 2
Rabbit - 7
Pigeon – 5
Hare - 1
Crow - 3
Badger - 1
Indiscriminate rat type weaselly thing - 3

I was a bit rubbish at the game because I couldn’t tell what the different animals were and my mum had to keep telling me. At one point I nearly mistook a plastic bag for a bird. Clearly I am a proper city girl. My mum wasn’t really helping by pointing out live animals (along the lines of: “Look, a cow!” “Yes mum, it’s in a field, even I can see that”), though we did pass some pig farms, which were pretty cool if only for the piglets running around.

Anyhow, we got back and drank some more tea, and then I went to get the train back to London. The journey was pretty uneventful apart from a couple of things. My little brother hugged me so tight it hurt my neck. At Kings Cross I noticed that there was a man asleep on the train, so I went to wake him up, as the train was going to go back in the direction it had come from and that would be a pretty rubbish thing to wake up to. I tapped him on the shoulder, and then didn’t know what to say. What do you say? In the end I said “excuse me” but I thought it sounded lame so I tried “hello” and “wake up” as well. He woke up and told me that I was an angel, to which I didn’t know what to respond and scuttled off. Going through the gates at the tube station my suitcase toppled over and no one helped me- in fact one man nearly kicked my bag. Unimpressed. I had to take a very long route back to Elephant thanks to some cock up on the tube, but finally got back there and took a bus, where a girl was asleep and her two friends were holding her up so nicely.

The best bit of the whole journey was getting back to Peckham and hugging N. I was so so tired and after a cup of tea all I wanted to do was sleep, but then I kept smiling and laughing because I was glad to be back. This morning I laughed even more because it was gloriously sunny and N dropped the alarm under the bed and it didn’t even matter (although normally the alarm would have been intensely annoying) because of the sun and having N next to me, and only having four more days before the weekend and two days before my birthday.

Speaking of my birthday, I am having drinks on Friday night but I don’t know where. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know, as I am pretty clueless when it comes to these sorts of things. Yay for the last few days of being 21!!