Pboro

Passport run to Peterborough. I believe its football team has the nickname of 'The Posh', recalled from some distant memory of then manager Barry Fry jumping around on the sidelines like an egg-shaped elf. I've never before been to Peterborough other than its station platforms, and whilst 'posh' is a step too far, it certainly seems a reasonable place.

I think as a youth watching Midlands Today, Peterborough got coverage, which seems odd now given its location in the flat eastern badlands of England. Its cathedral and grounds are impressive and it has the typical array of shops. Renewing my second passport (a process that isn't well advertised to no doubt discourage it, but handy for frequent travellers) was very easy and efficient. I only had to loiter in coffee shops for a few hours. In one a northern server was calling all his customers 'chuckie egg', which I absolutely bloody loved.

The day was tinged with luck as I found two quid on the station at Ely, my old stomping ground where I changed trains. I say stomping ground but I was usually in Cambodia or Indonesia when I lived in Ely. So maybe ghosting ground.

The coin discovery reminded me of being a wide-eyed wholesome pre-teen shopping on Newcastle-under-Lyme high street, down the opposite end of the Midlands to Peterborough. I found a fiver fluttering on the concrete outside WH Smith and actually handed it in to the cashiers in that shop. I left my name and number to claim it if no one else did. Unsurprisingly no one got in touch.

In the evening Leigh and I got food and went to see Black Panther. As she's been staying in my flat while I've been away she was in highly generous mode, covering costs of burgers, cinema tickets and chewy strawberry sweets. I tried not to take advantage but when someone else is covering the cost of sweet snacks it requires superhuman willpower to leave the extra bag of Double Decker mini bites on the shelf.