All good holidays start the day before you go. You finish doing whatever it is you do, in my case not a lot, and you’re in holiday mode. Being a Sunday it was bound to be good, even though one day is the same as another to me, weekends are when things happen.

I awoke before sunrise and was horrified as I looked out of my window to see the house down by the allotment gates already had the Christmas lights up. It was the last day of November for fucks sake. A visit to the rather wonderful Village Cafe confirmed my suspicions. The world was going prematurely mad. The Christmas decorations were up, making the place look like some kind of Turkish Santa’s Grotto. Instead of the usual Match Of The Day re-run on the telly, Christmas songs were blasting out. Can you stop the cavalry? Can you stop this un-seasonal nonsense more like. At least there were no charity songs by tax avoiding multi-millionaire pop stars who fly in to record on separate private jets and who think nothing of spending a few thousand pounds on a pair of designer sun glasses whilst spouting offensive lyrics about there being no Christmas in Africa because of Ebola and expecting us poor hard up slobs to cough up our hard earned pennies to download a copy. My, that was a long sentence. As you can tell, I am full of Christmas spirit. There are three unsolved mysteries in life. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? And why is Bob Geldof such a cunt?

I has left my phone indoors and only remembered when I sat down to eat in the cafe. To be incommunicado is a mortal sin nowadays, people think you are ignoring them. When I got back home I checked the phone for messages and found my Geordie brother Dave had been trying to reach me by text to let me know he was going digging on the allotment we share, had walked past my gaff and seen the car there and assumed I was skiving in bed. Bang on the door marra next time! You’ll get no answer there either but that’s beside the point.

I joined him at a mutual friend’s house in the next road where we dug up their fig tree, with their permission and knowledge of course, to transplant it onto our own allotment plot. It felt good to be doing some honest graft for once although I have to be careful as I have another diabetic ulcer on my foot and we only just saved my big toe the last time. Whatever happened to that young slim good looking man who used to be able to drink, take drugs and party all night with no ill effect? Answer, He got married one too many times, lost his fortune along with his house and pension and gained diabetes and mental issues along the way.Good innit?

Dave planted the fig tree in our orchard while I dug up the last of this year’s potatoes. Reunited with my phone it chimed to announce a text message from the Divine Ms.B. “Roast dinner at mine 6 o clock?” with a smiley face. How could I say no? These potatoes will come in handy then. We already had plans to go out that night but being fed beforehand is a temptation no man can resist. As the phone chimed the bells on the nearby Catholic Church did likewise, proclaiming midday or as the Geordie legend put it, “Pub time marra”. We promptly downed tools and headed off in a pubwards direction. They say a camel can go all week without drinking but a Geordie can drink all week without working. It’s true, I’ve seen him do it. Being half Geordie I can get away with saying such things.

We walked the short distance to our local, the best pub in the village, The Harefield. I live halfway between the pub and the allotment, about a thirty second walk to each. I actually moved house about half a mile to be nearer the pub but then within a year gave up drinking. Wise move eh? Still I love it where I am now. Still in our work boots and muddy clothes we joined the drinkers in their Sunday best and families dining out. Bearing gifts of potatoes for the landlord, our apparel was excused. Even though I’ve been teetotal now for over two years I still enjoy the Sunday lunchtime session, the crack with the lads and the buying of rounds. Drinking about ten pints of orange squash in an afternoon probably isn’t sensible but then again necking a dozen pints of cider like I used to wasn’t too clever either.

Some of the boys were mucking around with the specials chalk board, doing infantile things like changing stew to spew and soup to soap. One of them erased the zero from ten pounds so it read that the beer battered cod was only one pound. Then Smudger went outside for a smoke and phoned the pub pretending to be a German and asking to book a table for twelve to take advantage of the special offer on cod. Poor Tiffany the barmaid was already suffering from a hangover and she was wandering around the pub, cordless phone pressed to her ear and pointing at the specials board as if her caller could see what she was pointing at whilst trying to explain that it was all a mistake and the fish was really ten pounds. “Look!” she was saying, “The writing’s smudged”. “Smudge?” asked Smudge, “Who iz zees Smudge?”. We stifled guffaws as he walked back into the pub and Tiffany proceeded to tell him about the German caller. Of course we couldn’t let it rest there so we urged Smudger to do it again. This time he went into the furthest corner of the pub and pretended to be an Irishman wanting to book another table for twelve with his friend Herman who had told him about the special cod offer. We were laughing so loud because we could hear his voice without the telephone that Tiffany had to go into the same corner herself to take the call. Even looking straight at him on the phone she didn’t twig what was going on immediately. When the penny finally dropped she threw a minor good natured strop and stomped back behind the bar muttering something about little boys. I’d have told him to fuck off.

I left the lads getting drunker and went home to pack. It didn’t take long to throw a few t shirts and shorts into a bag, it took longer to find things like chargers and adapters. I haven’t seen my camera for months now, thank goodness for iPhones. Packing used to be easy, along as you had passport tickets and money then anything you forgot could be bought out there. Now I have added medication to the list which means I can’t fully pack until the very last minute after I have injected and swallowed the half dozen or so pills that keep me alive daily.

Off then to darkest Watford and supper with the Divine Ms.B. I was pleasantly surprised to see her mum and dad there, Albert and Margaret. I’ve known them as long as I’ve known Ana, some thirty six years. I was always slightly scared of her mum when Ana was a teenager but now Margaret is a sweet but tiny bit confused old lady. Albert always looks like the Maltese gangster that he probably was, but now his talk is of starting up a stuffed olive business. God help his rivals if he ever gets involved in an olive turf war.They could wake up in bed next to a dead olive tree.

After her folks left Ana and I went to the prestigious Watford rock venue The Horns to see our friends Phil and Stan play with their band The Philistans. This was their first gig there and they wanted to get as many friends and family along as possible. We arrived fashionably late after the first set, we’ve both been on the scene for far too long to turn up anywhere on time. The band played a blinder, the set up there was good, house PA, well lit stage with monitor screens showing the band dotted around the pub. Being a Sunday evening everything stopped at ten thirty so we said our goodbyes, got totally blanked by a mutual friend who doesn’t  like seeing us together for some reason and went home. As I dropped Ana off she told me “Go on then, leave me here and go off and enjoy yourself won’t you?”. Sarcasm will get you everywhere so I promised I would but also that I would take her with me next time.

I had to drop the car off at the mechanics on the way back so I enjoyed a midnight stroll home through Harefield. I shot the breeze  with a few of the local cabbies loitering by the Peri Peri shop on the way back and arranged for one of them to take me to Gatwick at five in the morning. I sauntered off home and finished packing with just the medication left out for later. I finally crawled into bed at one thirty an exhausted but happy man. I was going on holiday in a few hours time.