Maggoty Robyn

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

After a relatively low couple of days, I am back. 

The fog in my head lifted and today was a day to lift the spirits. Me and Caro had a lovely morning laughing together with cats. Caro was especially delighted because Jasper curled up next to her for a cuddle and a sleep. 

He is MY cat.

He NEVER does this.

She was very happy. 

She and I got talking about food and I said I would try to get something special for dinner tonight and we both lamented there is no Turkish place in Paraparaumu.

Then I walked to Duncan's Brewery to meet up with Tiger for an afternoon of craft beers. I was going more for the company than for the drinks. I'm not really a beer man. But HOLY MOLEY I discovered a beer that I liked! 

An ultra sour mai tai flavoured beer! No, don't mock. This is as close to real beer as I will ever get. I also drank a purple blueberry beer which was also quite nice. And then a tiramisu flavoured stout.

Tiger introduced me to his friend, Robyn. A particularly feisty lady who had just dumped her previous boyfriend on account of he disapproved of daytime drinking. 

"And I was on HOLIDAY," she said. "When you're on holiday there's no such THING as daytime drinking."

She then told us about a horrific date she went on with "some European bloke" who drank so quickly he was arseholed within an hour and "doing figure eights down the street" as he walked her to the restaurant where they were to have dinner.

"And he ordered ANOTHER beer!" said Robyn. "So I wrote a note on a napkin, saying 'PLEASE SAVE ME I AM ON A HORRIBLE DATE' and got the waiter to deliver it to a couple of blokes at the bar."

They called her on the phone number she had written down and she had a long conversation with them, the upshot of which was - gosh an OLD FRIEND OF HERS was in town - and she had to ditch the European. 

"Why you ditch me?" said the European. "Can I no haff kiss first?"

"Errrrrr... NAH," said Robyn. And went off with her new friends.

"I ditched them too," she said. "I had a few beers but then did the disappearing act. I bloody love doing the disappearing act, man." 

She warmed to her theme. She liked drinking, she said, but knew when she was getting to the point of getting "messy". 

"When I'm nearing having one too many, I pull the disappearing act," she repeated. "Too bloody right. No-one needs to meet 'Maggoty' Robyn."

She has a good point. And no-one needs to meet Maggoty Symon either. Since by this point I was feeling pretty good about myself, I decided to pull the disappearing act and excused myself. 

And as I wandered home and considered ordering a taxi... there it was...

A TURKISH PLACE.

So tonight Caro and me watched the fantastic documentary, "Summer of Soul" accompanied by chicken shish and a lamb kebab. 

It has been an exceptional day. And the most exceptional thing about it is that I was just hanging out with my everyday people. 

The fog is gone.

S.