The evening before last turned out to be extremely entertaining but in which ways that I could never have predicted. My niece had popped into the hotel to see me for a brief half an hour and afterwards I contemplated how I would spend the rest of the evening. As I had only a bacon sandwich for the rest of the day and was starting to feel in need of some food, I decided to venture out to my favourite Chinese restaurant which I have patronised on many occasions before when I have made trips to Harrogate. In the restaurant I ordered a house special fried rice meal for myself which was delicious and very filling. The only other diners in the restaurant were a group of youngish people who were engaged in talking politics, principally Liberal Democrat politics. As I would be tired of my own company, as I was paying my bill I asked them if they would like to hear some good political jokes/stories of which I had quite an abundance. They were more than happy for me to share their table and we exchanged as many good political jokes as we knew until the restaurant decided they were going to close, quite early at about 7.30pm. I made my way back to the hotel and thought I would just casually have a look around the really good pub that serves the excellent locally brewed dark mild beer just across the road. It was quite a fine summer evening and several people were outside the pub and a a group observed me looking around and engaged me in conversation, asking me to join them. They were a group of two young men and a sister celebrating their parents 30th wedding anniversary and seemed in a very jovial mood. They asked me to guess from their accent which part of Yorkshire they were from and although I am not very good at discerning varieties of Yorkshire, I made a stab at Hebden Bridge which was only 8 miles away from their home town of Halifax. They seemed intrigued by my back story which I readily gave and we spent some time discussing the Yorkshire film of ‘Brassed off’ which I had seen on the TV recently with my American friend. How we got onto the subject, I really have no idea but they wanted to guess my age giving estimates of 68 and then 73 and could not believe my actual 81 years of age. They were extremely good and jovial company. evidently really enjoying themselves and were joined by some cousins before they all set off for a family meal somewhere in the vicinity. I must say that I never before experienced such camaraderie, after all, I was a complete stranger to them but they are staying in ‘The Crown’ like myself so it is quite possible I will run across them on another occasion. After they had had gone off for their meal somewhere, I returned to the hotel and buoyed up by the experience of two lots of friendly chats decided to have a beer and see who else I might happen to meet rather than returning to an empty hotel bedroom. After about half an hour, a family group of about six and their 4 year old grand-daughter turned up and whilst the little girl ran around playing an imaginary game of hide-and-seek with her mother, the rest of the family invited me to join them in a drink. They were from Kent and were absolutely enamoured with Yorkshire life and Yorkshire people having stayed at ‘The Crown’ before. So I stayed in conversation with them until about 11.00 when they decided that the night was young and they decided to go off as a group and seek other perhaps musical entertainment in the Harrogate night-time scene, once their little girl and the mother had gone to bed. So this was my third encounter of the night and was completely unpredictable but it was certainly better than sitting alone in a hotel bedroom all by myself. It rather put me in mind of my stay in Jakarta, Indonesia, when my birthday coincided with an early teaching session – the students had got wind it was my birthday and had brought along a range of delicacies and sweet meats to try. Being an Islamic society there was no alcohol involved but when I returned to the alcohol in the early evening, I felt the need for a little celebration and did not want to drink on my own. I espied a couple of men, one in their 20’s and the other evidently older. They were Australians as were many other guests in the hotel but I remember marching up to them and saying to them ‘My name is Mike – its my birthday – what would you like to drink?’ to which the response was a couple of beers and this was the start of quite a friendship, particularly with Tom the younger man who was Brit who intended to go round the globe, got as far as Australia, met a girl and then married her and stayed on in Australia and was employed as a mining engineer. So feeling the need for company, I not averse to having a drink in a bar and then seeking out some enable company. Yesterday was quite easy as the little three year practically bumped into me as she was running about and the conversation and the camaraderie flowed from that point onwards – I know that I will probably meet the Kentish family in the bar again in the evening.
I received a telephone call from my niece and we arranged to meet with her and her sister (i.e. my two nieces) in my favourite coffee bar in Harrogate named ‘Lago di Como’ which has a very friendly and homely upstairs lounge for those in the know. My nieces and I had some delicious coffee and portions of home cooked spinach pie served with a few bits of salad and had a wonderful period of time in each others company before we had to part. I called in at an Oxfam bookshop which had all kinds of interesting books arranged by subject matter and I bought a little trinket box as. present. Upon my return to the hotel, I resumed a long and extensive conversation with a very engaging American actor (although he was born in Harrogate) who was over here to arrange some long term care for aged relatives who I had met briefly in the morning and with whom I continued our conversation about diverse matters before I needed to go up to my hotel bedroom and get packed up. I have a feeling that the evening might be quite busy so I thought I had better get the bulk of the packing done this afternoon.