Reflections

So everything was slightly surreal today.  
Three hours With The Worst Class in Mirepoix (c.f Trainspotting, the worst toilet in Scotland and you've got it),  Carcassonne airport which has morphed from a shed on the edge of a runway to something which disappointingly resembles an airport, a wee five year old next to me who was binge playing Free Flow on a reclaimed mobile and tugged my arm every five minutes for help and a huge secret which was bursting to be told.
The bus driver shouted at us all then told us to sit down, laugh and be merry.  The bus fell quiet and dark, so dark that I couldn't read my book and ferreted around with Wordle and Facebook until we hit the border and the red lights stalling our progress into town.
No one knew I was arriving.  I wound up at Spar (Rathrifland Road branch - run by the Wards - my gypsy rivals) where my girl was trapped at the till behind a perspex screen.  
I'd gone incognito (I was wearing a cap) but she saw me as soon as I opened the door and mouthed WTF?  I took her hands through the little slit that's normally reserved for paying and told her that I was here for her birthday although it felt like a prison visit.  While I was at it I bought two bottles of over priced Australian wine (screw top, WTF?) and a pack of Irish bacon.
Back at Number 40 I dragged a mattress into a room that had a radiator that worked, started undressing and realised the curtains were open and there was a whole wild inside/outside going on, with a duck to boot...