Reunion fragment no. 2: Saturday lunchtime, Stroud
So this is Stroud.
My scrawled list of road numbers and place names actually worked, and got me here.
It doesn't look anything like the pictures I've pored over on Google Earth and it mostly seems to be roadworks, but at least there are signs for the station occasionally. Oops, should have gone down there I think. Never mind, we'll do another circuit. Madam, that gesture is not polite and you shouldn't have been so close to my rear bumper anyway.
Station car park. Full. Ah, there's the hotel. Which bit is the hotel car park, then? That little triangle behind the hedge? You've got to be joking... but still, this is a very small car and it's not mine, so let's just wedge it in here and hope nobody with a LandRover tries to get through the gateway.
My hands are cold and although I have cursed this noisy little tin box many times on our hilly route, now it comes to it I am suddenly reluctant to get out, and all the butterflies are fearful ones.
However. I am supposed to be a grownup, and what's the worst that could happen?
No, don't answer that.
The Imperial Hotel is exactly as I was expecting: big and a bit shabby at the edges, with that hotel smell of carpet cleaner and polish and chips.
There are alterations or something going on, and there is no reception, so I wander vaguely through into the bar.
A bunch of people around a table - more butterflies - I know it's them - that must be trepkos, and camelotlives, and I wonder who these others are...
They greet me like a long-lost friend. No, really, they do; and suddenly my hands are no longer frozen, and the butterflies flitter away.
This is going to be wonderful.
These are my sort of people.
Mad, yes; but in just the right way.
But when I go to the bar to check in, the manager says there is no record of my room reservation...