I was up very late on Tuesday morning, and in the end we were one of the last groups to leave, as I wanted to male sure my blood cells outnumbered the alcohol. I had switched to softer drinks after midnight, just to be sure, but I waited until noon and they were actually kicking us off the site. The traffic had dropped considerably by then, so we were soon out of Shrewsbury and on the A49 heading towards the Shropshire Hills. The day before had been, as the cliché goes, one to remember, but I suspected it might just have been erased from some people’s memories.
Thompson had been even better than I remembered, with an inspired rhythm section of drums and bass. It struck me that, despite all the comment about him being miserable, that wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t sad or downcast, but bloody angry. There was a real twinkle of humour there, especially when he did his party piece shifting guitar styles from Django Reinhardt through Hank Marvin and almost up to date, but he came most brilliantly to life when he snarled ‘Put it there, pal!’ or an incredible performance of ‘Can’t Win’, and then shattered that mood with his encore, a heartbreakingly beautiful solo acoustic rendition of ‘Beeswing’ that even left Ish moist in the eyes.
We were still sitting there long after the well-deserved standing ovation, and I simply shook my head at our boy.
“Sorry, Dad?”
“Record tent, son. We’ve already got all of his albums. Any word from your lot, Clara?”
She waved her phone.
“Yeah! Nana says it was just what she needed, and Rachel says Emma and Maisie were up with Nana and dancing to a lot of it”
I have been to many gigs, and some of them are a clock watch, where the thoughts are about when I’ll be able to go home. Others are neatly satisfying, where I leave the venue, musical itch fully scratched. This was one of the rare ones, not just in its ‘Where the hell did ninety minutes go?’ but also with a clear complaint of ‘He can’t stop now!’.
We all spent tome time recovering, in various ways, from a performance that had left us as drained as the musicians. People drifted away in smaller groups, seeking their own last supplies from the catering stands, as Jan and Bill prepared some boxes of salad and cold meats, as well as a prodigious quantity of tea. The littlest ones were already asking why there was no play group, as several of us tried to explain about the end of the event. Little Tone was insistent.
“Can we camp at home, Mums?”
Elaine was the calm one that time.
“Your Aunty Sar is coming over in a couple of weeks, and she’ll be staying with your Uncle Arwel. I’ll ask her if she fancies a tent in the garden, aye?”
“Bendigedig!”
I will gloss over large parts of the evening that followed Thompson, because it had been almost chaotic. Three different tune sessions were playing away in different parts of the room, while the people who ran the 'wine bar' in an old Routemaster double-decker had manhandled their upright piano on board, driven the bus carefully over to the Berwick Bar, where the piano had been transferred to the bar, where Ish and I were effectively taken hostage for a singaround. I caught odd glimpses of my friends as they went for it with their instruments, in the case of Annie and Steph going rather further than most people suspected was conceivable. Enfys had her harp, Alys a borhran, Eric a banjo, and among all the others, LC had a shaky-egg rattle thing, and I suspect she was having her own 'in the music' revelation before Shan's Mums took the four littlest off to bed, which is where my memory becomes a little less reliable. Not because of the alcohol, as I was heading for the soft stuff, but more because of the mass of stimulus coming from all directions. I had just carried on singing.
We were finally off, all embraces given and promises shared, the three girls lining the Vauxhall’s back seat while Ish rode shotgun with me for the rather short drive to Wenlock, where we cleared our heads with a stroll along part of the Edge. I really didn’t care how many miles we put into the day, as long as they held quality. I had done a lot of research, and so we had a late lunch/afternoon tea at the spectacular old ‘feathers’ pub in Ludlow, the whole family amazed at the details of the building, and that thought brought another close behind.
Clara was, in a way, and for the moment, part of the family. Keep that mood, Rhodes.
We passed Leominster and bypassed Hereford, finally arriving at Ross on Wye which had a campsite where I had reserved two tent spaces, so close to the river it had a rowing club..
“Why are we stopping here, Dad?”
“Because it’s not that far from the best bit of the Wye Valley, son. Two nights here, with tomorrow spent along the Wye. Town to explore, as well”
He had his phone out, tapping away as usual, and Clara laughed.
“So, Mr Rhodes: your choice wasn’t in any way influenced by what looks like four nearby pubs?”
“You wound me, girl. We need somewhere to eat, don’t we?”
The rest of the afternoon was more than adequately filled by a walk along the riverbank followed bu a gentle amble around the old town, LC by then riding on my shoulders, before deciding on a curry for our evening meal, which was followed by a quiet pint in one of the pubs Clara had spotted, rather undermining my excuse for choosing the site. It felt odd not to be up and down for music, but it was still a lovely day, and even without the ales at the Berwick Bar, I slept so soundly Maz had to shake me up in time for our breakfast, cooked by two teenagers with the well-meant assistance of a laughing little girl.
She was coming on well, but there was one thing she lacked, compared to other children of her age, and that was what is sometimes referred to as ‘tears before bedtime’. She had come out with that phrase, how crying didn’t help, just once, but it had struck me as nastily as her comments about axes, which Maz still refused to explain properly. To be honest, given the hints she had dropped about tradition, I had what was probably a very good idea of what was involved, but no: I needed no more detail.
We spent the day as a mixture of walking and driving, because there were things I knew Maz wanted to see, as well as things she didn’t yet know she wanted to. Symonds Yat was one of the former, as were Tintern Abbey and the old Severn bridge, but she hadn’t picked up on Chepstow or Monmouth, much to my surprise. Her focus on birds was proving to be even narrower than I had suspected, which proved itself when she decided exactly where we were going to stop for our rather late lunch, a pub called The Boat in Chepstow. Now, call me man=minded, or just old-fashioned, but if I choose somewhere to eat off a mapping website, I start with the reviews. Maz simply saw the satellite picture, and that was enough.
It turned out to be rather good, with decent food (I obviously avoided the ale), but what had attracted Maz to the place became clear after we had parked. Across a quiet back road, right on the riverbank, was an outdoor eating area, and the tide was out.
“Mud, Mike! See the waders? Oh, and is that chalk over there?”
I shook my head, peering at the white cliff.
“Not round here, love. That’s limestone. Ish?”
“Dad?”
“Could you pop in, see if they serve out here, and if they do, grab some menus? Oh, grab this, and mine’s a pot of tea”
I handed him a couple of tenners before settling myself next to a wife already adorned with a pair of binoculars.
“Admit it: this is all for your benefit, this stop”
She turned to grin at me before trying a silly voice for “Don’t you want me to be hap pee?”, but couldn’t sustain it. I straddled the bench so that she could lean back against me.
“Are you happy, love?”
“Darling, as that Ginny would say, fuck, yeah. It’s taking a while---no, not you and the boy. It’s just that we, Carolyn and myself, we have to unlearn some reflexes”
“I heard her laughing this morning”
“Oh, so did I! She’s learning that she can be herself, without risking a slap. Have you noticed how she is spending less time talking to her bear? No, not that love. Not tired of it. She just realises she can talk directly to real people. Goosander”
“And how is it going for you, love?”
She paused for a few seconds, and I wondered whether it was avian distraction before she started again, her voice softer.
“When the soldiers brought me out of that hole, love, I was bloody terrified. They’d just grabbed Carolyn, while I was still blindfolded, and I wondered whether all the shouts about armed police were just another gang, on a rip-off of some kind, then they were carrying me up that ladder, and I just knew I was going to get shot. Then I saw Bobby, and those stab vest things Di and her friends were wearing, and there YOU were, and that was when I knew it was over. It’s funny… Yes, it is actually almost amusing. Keith and Pen talk about That Place, and it’s like those horror films, they tell me, where if you Speak The Name too many times, the demon comes for you, or maybe that cop-out in Dallas”
“Sorry?”
“The old TV show, love. A whole season’s worth of plot about a major character being shot, ending up with ‘Oh, it was all a bad dream!’ and then carrying on from before that whole thing started. It gets me like that, sometimes, but the other way round. I’ll go to sleep, and when I wake up there, this, all this, will turn out to be a dream. It’s why I like to wake up before you. No dream could be that realistic, especially with the snoring and those little farts you let out”
“I don’t snore that badly, do I?”
“No, darling; you’re a world-class snorer, and the way you can say ‘pop-pop-pop’ without moving your lips is quite sweet”
I laughed, and she wriggled closer against me.
“See? My reality. I know that we are on holiday, here, and that we will be going back to work, but at the moment I feel like each day is a gift, and I believe it will stay that way when we return”
I bent forward to kiss her cheek, just as LC asked if she could have crunchy fish. The three emissaries were back, with menus and a ‘specials’ list, which Ish handed to me.
“Yes, we can eat out here, but they say we can’t run a tab unless we sit inside”
“Makes sense to me. Tea?”
“On its way. Proper pot, with two cups for you. Elsie and Kawan are on coke again, and I managed to persuade the barman to make LLBs for us two. As Clar has already downed half of hers, I suspect she likes it”
“Oh, it was so funny, Mr Rhodes! Ish asked if they had any bitters, so the man pointed to a row of beer pumps, while Ish is pointing to a little bottle, all wrapped in paper, with a yellow top, and then explaining what to do. It’s nice!”
She looked over the rail, frowning slightly.
“Tide’s out, though. Pity”
Maz chuckled.
“Nope! Part of the plan. No mud, no wading birds. Curlew”
LC got her crunchy fish, with chips as well as mushy peas, while the rest of us had a proper roast lamb dinner before heading back up the Severn by way of Lydney and the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, along with several stops on the riverbank as Maz spotted some cluster of dots out on the mud.
We walked along to the Pavilion that evening, a restaurant set right on the bank of the Wye, for a lovely meal, before decamping to the Hope and Anchor, the next door pub, which also had a large outdoor area, smack on the river bank. There was definitely a theme in my wife’s suggestions.
That evening, once again, I had the joy of simply lying beside her, LC to her other side, warm, safe and reunited.