Bird, skull and rocks

Shelley, Barry, Lindsey and I went into Watermouth and had a really good time just wandering around shopping for Xmas presents. We paused a long time at a hologram shop which fascinated me, especially the ‘Holographic Gallery’ upstairs; there’s something ghostly and weird about the faint 3D images (of Saturn, a red leering skull, a ballerina figure in a wine glass, a box that actually appeared to project outside the plane of the glass). Incredible!

We stopped for coffee at a nearby café, then headed homewards, me bearing a hologram (Bird Skull and Rocks) for Rob and Carol and a copy of Derek Haughton’s biography of Helen Vaughan for Dad.

In the evening, we went into Watermouth again to eat, twenty of us in total, donned up in our best clothes, snaking in a long line through the spattering rain to Tang’s Chinese Restaurant. It took us an hour get our food and I was so hungry I was at breaking point. When the food finally arrived I stuffed my face until I felt almost queasy. We ran up a £127 bill.

Then out again and down to Annabella’s, an old music hall converted into a big, flashy, balconied nightclub. An impressive light show flickered and flashed high above the seething, smoking crowd. I didn’t really enjoy it: I never relax sufficiently to have a truly good time in places like that. So I was reduced to defiant muttering (“I’d love to napalm the lot of ‘em . . .”). I got home late.

Rowan has me sussed.