I left my hoodie in Bournemouth a few weeks ago. Realised when I was only twenty minutes away from the place, but couldn’t turn around as I had to rush to The Globe in time to rehearse. So I rang them up, and they put it aside for me.
Yesterday when we were at the opera they left me a really hunpy message. There’s nowhere to store it. It’s the end of term. We’re gonna throw it away.
The woman was being a right plonker. I tried to persuade her to see if anyone would post it. “I’ll bung someone £15 if they can post it second class in no particular hurry?” She was having none of it. Even when I raised the bribe. I knew she was gonna say “no” to any figure that I named so deliberately raised it absurdly high. “Fifty quid just to walk to the post office for a minute or two, and you can offer any member of staff that, and I can pay it by any means they choose.” “No.” Because, like, apparently it would look like they were taking bribes or something. Lou was with me and I didn’t want them to burn my hoodie, so I didn’t spell out for them precisely what kind of a human I thought they were and what I would be pleased occurring in their lives as a result of the interaction.
So we woke up this morning, got in the car and drove to Bournemouth from Brighton. Two and a half hours. That’s more than the cost of a new hoodie in petrol, but that one has sentimental value.
On the way home we made sense of the trip by stopping in The New Forest. The woods near Bolderwood Deer Sanctuary, and they were bright green and fertile and ramjammed with interesting mycology.
We were both pretty glad of the chance to connect with nature. I spent a long time dancing with mushrooms but mostly failed to identify the ones I found with any certainty. Some were huge, old and probably not edible:
Others were great, but too small to take:
After enough time with horses and mushrooms and trees and light we schlepped back to Brighton and healthy food and bed. Back tomorrow to London town, and now I’ve got my hoodie back, hooray.
AlBarclay 