Take That and party on!

At Christmas I squeaked when I opened my pressie from my sister, tickets for Take That in Cardiff. I was more than squeaking tonight seeing them live on stage. What a party!
It was breathtaking. Just amazing.
And despite my neighbour, a man clearly dragged to the show against his better judgement, I had a total blast.
Any vestiges of frumpy forty five year, old mum were lost mile by mile as we travelled to Cardiff. My sister and I became quite giggly and tempers which would normally have frayed when she overshot Cardiff completely were shrugged off with good humour and just added to the adventure.
We shopped, we tried on clothes, sunglasses and gorgeous Jo Malone scent, we ate and explored and reckon that Cardiff sure has changed for the better since we last visited in the early nineties.
And then it was with the crowds to meander our way to the stadium, surely the whole city was there or certainly most of the female population with a good smattering from Swindon, Bath and Bristol as we'd spotted them on the motorway on our way down. It became quite a game spot the Take That fans! (many thanks to those who made it easier by wearing their t-shirts loud and proud!)
And oh the music and oh Robbie! What a reception you were given the roar swept up the stadium and rocked the city! What a showman, such a wicked man but such a smile, yes you truly could get away with anything.
I forgot how good Take That were and being Robbie fan ( in case you didn't spot it), I was stunned. My words could not do justice to the night but I know that I will forever be a fan...

Going home...

Sounds basically bonkers but I'm going home tonight. In a few minutes I will be getting into my car with two bopisterous and overly excited boys in the back, Tattie the whippet in front 'cos she likes to see where she is going and so she knows when to duck for all the bridges. The boot will be fit to bursting and Abba will be playing very loudly all the way up the A1. I think at about Grantham I'll be able to change discs without too much upset, a little bit of Robbie, some Jamie and a nice littlwe bit of Pixie and some Snow Patrol will suffice to get me there if not exactly harrassed at least in one piece.
As I drive closer to home the landmarks will become as familiar  to me as the songs I listen to and just as sweet. Thye sky will open up and I will be able to breathe again the familiar scents of my childhood and the endless toing and froing I have done from south to north and north to south over the last 35 years. I'll pass the Rainton Service Station where I once stopped dramatically when my windscreeen collapsed and I was convinced someone had shot at me. I'll wonder fo teh umpteenth time what breakfast is like there and know I'll probably never find out now as I believe the powers that be are going to knock it down to widen that stretch of the A1.
I'll take the next exit and drive down the A61 looking over at Sutton Bank trying to make out the white horse in the day or else at kniogth see if I can spot the hosues that I know. I'll shoot past the cross roads known as Wards Corner where old man Ward used to have his veggie plot long before we came to live here. Then onto the Baldersbu Garden Corner where I did some spectacularl 180 degree turns in the ice at 4  in the morning - not on purpose honest!
And then turning down into the village in the quiet of the night, round the corner at the end and there is home, the light on in my attic room.
Home at last.

What if: Dreams one has when one should really be thinking like a grown up...

Late last night on my way home from visiting my newborn Nephew I thought about life as you do on a three and a half hour journey. You know, the ones you do on your own with no one to talk to but yourself. The music is thumping out Robbie Williams and you are sucked into a world of "What if..."
What if you were young again? The music disrupts your thinking and your mind becomes confused. One minute you're a forty something mother and wife, the next your are a mere slip of a thing at 23 and it is as if the last twenty years were but a dream...
The snow is falling and there are few, if any, vehicles on the highway. It's as if you are stuck between worlds and all you have to do is make a choice. This one or the one that could have been.
I think I must have been very tired and probably not fit to drive but I thought of so many missed opportunities not with exactly regret but with a wistfulness that should not have been there, not now anyway.
I allowed myself to dream, I allowed myself to meander impossibilities that never were and never will be. I crushed the thoughts from my mind. Or at least I tried. But my traitorous indisipline triumphed again. And, I being tired, thought: Why not? It is only dreaming after all, it's not as if it could ever come true.
So  I allowed myself to indulge and the dream was so perfect, so wonderful. I almost, almost could taste it. The yearning, the longing for it to be real without any hurt to anyone temporaily usurped my sense of reality. In fact for a time after my journey ended I was angry that it should not be so. But I slept on it and the mundane humdrum pattern of my daily life quickly gained the upper hand.
It should have faded.
But then a few words turned my life into a sopa opera, at least in my head, and I will never be able to tell anyone.
Anyway what interest are the daydreams of a forty year old anyway...
Do I really want to make a complete tit of myself and destroy everything? Embarrass everyone especially those I hold most dear?
No of course not.
I am the mother of sons. I have four dogs and two cats. Too many chickens to count. And of course I have a loving, though somewhat exasperating, husband.