Henley-on-Thames at lunchtime

This is not where I’m staying. I’m near Maidstone, Kent, with friend D on a coach holiday.

Here are some extracts from WhatsApp messages I wrote to a friend earlier. All of this is 100% true:

The hotel near Maidstone is a huge corporate place next to a retail park. D has not been granted a room with an accessible shower. They’ve already been allocated to other people on our tour. I’ve tried to kick ass for him but been told that he can use the one shower in the gym instead. He has to walk what is for him about ten minutes’ walk, including through the lobby, to reach the gym. D has threatened to walk through the lobby flashing his man boobs. There are steps, with no handrail, down to the bar in the main area, and no ramp. They really haven’t thought this through.

Talk at dinner was of purgatory, limbo, Lenin, Sylvia Pankhurst, a mother who died durning CoVid but not OF Covid, and someone’s large Teddy bear collection.

I have to get away from the woman with teddy bears and a dead mother, and I don’t want to keep rescuing a lonely widowed woman, so instead I get cornered and interrogated about Chomskyian linguistics. I am surprised to hear that Chomsky is still alive, because I’d momentarily confused him with Trotsky, who is not.

This is going to be such a good radio play! D is being all hole-and-corner about his previous employment, and keeps saying ‘where I used to work’ and looking shady. Little does he realise that he only need to say ‘when I was a civil servant’ and everyone will immediately stop listening.

I am now in the bath. The toiletries are chained to the wall. For this reason, it is impossible to use the liquid soap whilst sitting in the bath. There is no bubble bath so I use a whole sachet recklessly from my Personal Posh collection. It’s actually shampoo but hey, it’s all bubbles to me.

I am planning a secret early morning swim in the pool, but haven’t told anyone in case they try to meet me there, and question me as to what I think about the lyrics of Puff the magic dragon.

Sleep will bring great relief.