I am just back from a night out. We spent the night in a hotel, only ten miles down the road, after going out for a meal last night. I wasn’t sure how I’d be for an internet connection but in the end it turned out okay, and I posted my Song Lyric Sunday choice a few hours ago. It was quite weird, though, because the one thing I couldn’t do was to listen to anything, because I didn’t want to wake my sleeping wife. But I’ve just got home and caught up with a half-dozen other people’s choices. As it happens, most everyone picked the same song as me.

Did I ever mention that my wife sang in a choir? It is no great shakes, we call them community choirs in the UK, somebody organises it, and the same-ish group of people turn up each week to practise. Then, they do performances etc. on top of the practising. I think my wife’s choir, there are probably forty or so of them. There was no audition to get in – as long as someone pays their subs each week, everybody is welcome! Consequently the choir is not very good, but my wife enjoys it. It is all very secular, and actually the person running the choir can make a decent living from it. It is not really any different to here – we all pay our subs to WordPress, and thereafter we enjoy life on here, and it is the same for my wife.

Last night was their annual award ceremony. There weren’t particularly any awards – I think there might have been one for the person who looks like they most deserve an award, but in general an excuse for a drunken night out. It was held in a local hotel in Salisbury, and my wife asked if I’d like to go with her, as a treat.

I’m full of self-control these days, so had one pint of beer, then water. You know how you generally avoid places at christmastime because the quality drops? Because they’re catering for so many people, there’s always another customer around the corner, so they tend not to care whether you’re happy with your experience or not? Well, this was a pleasant surprise. It was mainly traditional christmas fare. My wife chose a cut of beef (she avoids turkey for that exact reason – it is usually not very good) and I stayed veggie. We both enjoyed a delicious three-course meal, followed by a very comfortable stay at the hotel. So, hats off to the White Hart in Salisbury.

It’s funny because I generally consider myself quite reserved, quite introvert, and many people who sing in choirs are quite extrovert. Many people who sing in this choir are very extrovert! So I had a very interesting time just observing people. Lots of them did not have a great deal to say, but they said it loudly in any case. So it was fun just to see how these people behaved toward each other, although I was a bit of a fish out of water. My wife is not particularly extrovert – if she was, we wouldn’t have ended up together – but she has made friends there, there are some people with whom she gets on very well and she enjoys the overall experience. Insmuch as I had anything to do with anything, I encouraged her to join the choir because especially after the stroke, I didn’t want her world just to revolve around me. We didn’t really know how anything would turn out at that stage, as it happens I can now live perfectly independently anyway.

I met a lovely old boy there who was eighty-one. Apparently he had once worked professionally in showbiz, but of course was retired now and just sang in his local choir because he enjoyed the craic. I ended up sitting next to him for dinner and we found lots to chat about.

We got to the end of the meal and the woman who runs the show started making a speech. I’m not much sure what it was about – I’d just had a meal, plus is was a good hour past my normal bedtime in any case, so had but one thing on my mind! But my wife seemed to be happy, and to generally have had a good time.

I come with so much baggage these days, when I go away somewhere I always forget at least one thing. This time, I remembered all my meds, nut forgot my testing kit. Never mind, with just the one night away, I survived just on gut instinct. I can understand why a lot of people don’t bother going away. At least at home, I have everything I need, I know where it all is, I don’t have to worry about an unfamiliar bath, say, where the grab-rails might not be where I need them to be, or where there might not be grab-rails at all. Am I just getting old?