Choose life

I eventually managed to cajole everybody into the car by about 9:45am which was half an hour later than planned. It was very slow going in places. The roads were obviously very busy and it felt like we kept hitting speed restrictions.  After about two hours I did stop at Warwick North to let everybody stretch their legs. We didn’t really stop for food or drink but Dad did buy a bottle of water.  And, then, as we continued north he started to worry he’d left his credit card there. There was an odd phone call with the bank where he tried to pause transactions on the card but he’d failed some of the security tests so they wouldn’t tell him what the last transaction was.

I decided to take the M6 toll to try and regain some of the lost time on the slow journey north. If there is such a thing I was getting middle land rage from all the drivers who wouldn’t move out of the middle land in spite of an empty lane to their left and a queue of traffic going faster than they were.  I know that I don’t drive very often but I have never seen so much undertaking in my life.  Sadly, the M6 toll didn’t save us too much time as I pulled off to let Dad try to find his credit card and the queue to pay at the tollbooths was quite long. 

It turned out he hadn’t used the credit card he thought he had.

We arrived at the Premier Inn which meant we could check-in but would be late for the party. We ended up waiting about twenty minutes for Jez to arrive but at least this gave me an PY the chance to change into our Choose Life t-shirts and put on the wigs so we could go as Wham impersonators. The theme was, after all, disco.  It wasn’t fancy dress but we felt it was worth dressing up and some people, at least, seemed to think it was fun. Although some, I assume, imagine we’d misread the invitation.

It took a while for the taxis to arrive and so we didn’t get to the party until gone 4pm. Wed missed the first session of the ABBA tribute but were greeted by a saxophonist playing hits of the 80s. He was very good. 

A one point Sarah told me and PY to prepare for going on stage. Somebody - it’s unclear if it was her or the ABBA act - decided that they would like the two of us, dressed as Wham, to perform on stage in a Abba-Wham bizarre set. We did Freedom. They sang and we tried to dance. A lot of fun.

Later in the evening the silent disco was out and there was a lot of dancing around the garden with people wondering what we were listening to. My favourite part was when Jez and I pretended there was some music on the unused red channel. The headphones glowed red and slowly other people switched to the channel to see what we were listening to. We really were dancing to silence.