Halloween in the Village

Who could miss it? As expected, all the affordable hotels were fully booked up and so we resorted to our trusty back up – The Travelodge at Lymm Services.

To go out on the Saturday entailed a pretty hectic schedule starting with the difficulties of packing a case whilst our youngest was in the house, organise my rugby team, play a league rugby match (we won) in Leicester, return home, pick up the wife, drop the daughter, load the car fielding questions from the youngest as o why were we taking two suitcases and a sports bag for one night!

Finally, we managed to get on the road for 6-20pm with Jackie driving allowing me to have a shave thus saving 10 minutes at the other end. Arriving at the hotel at 8-20, Jackie left me to get ready and filled the car up with fuel and grabbed something to eat.

For the night I had chosen to push the boundaries of decency as far as possible choosing a body con LBD from New Look which admittedly, was short – short of material some would say! – but what the hell, you are only young once and I am reliving my youth. Teamed up with diamond patterned opaques (no chance with stockings!) and a pair of snakeskin effect open toed heels in dark pink, the dress fitted great (over the corset that is!) Jackie was wearing an eually tight new body con dress she picked up on our last shopping trip from Karen Millen and on her feet, my favourite thigh high stiletto heeled boots – eat your heart out!

Finally ready, we made our way downstairs past reception eliciting a smile from the receptionist, the same woman who had booked us both in some 90 minutes earlier!, and made our way across the car park to the car.

On arrival at our normal parking spot at the top of Canal Street we unsurprisingly found it to be full as were all the streets in the vicinity so it was back to plan B and leaving the car in Charles Street. Strutting along towards the village, we joined the throngs of party goers all in fancy dress. At Eden’s we met up with our good friends, Kate, Shirley, Tina and Mandy and I was pleasantly surprised to find Jenny was there as well with Marilyn. The girls all looked superb and I was particularly proud of the way my wife looked. The continued weight loss by Kate was evident – good on you.

After a couple of drinks and a chat, the girls left for Spirit accompanied by Marlene who had joined us. We followed on finishing our drinks just as Summer of 69 was blasting out! and joined them on the mezzanine floor of Spirit.

The place was heaving with a huge variety of weird and whacky costumes, lots of Bo Peeps for some reason and quite a few fruits! It is strange that whilst we were in costume, we were the only ones who didn’t look like we had entered into the spirit of the occasion!

Due to the numbers making it difficult to get a drink at the bar, use the toilets and the noise level making it almost impossible to hold a conversation, we decided to move on with Kate and Shirley leaving us to form the advance guard at Napoleons, we followed via a bar that Marlene knew below the pavement level surprisingly called “The Bar Below”

Having negotiated the steps into the cellar, we were treated to some good music that I recognised and quaffed a couple of drinks. The ambiance was good and it is a venue we will return to in the future. However, I did face the ultimate in contortion tricks as I needed to go to the ladies. No lock on the door and no toilet seat made for a very interesting manoeuvre whilst trying to squat one legged, knickers and tights down with the other leg against the door. I seriously pondered on why they were called conveniences at this juncture.

At least I wasn’t alone in my condemnation of the toilets as I chatted to a number of girls in front of the mirror whilst refreshing the lipstick. My wife smiled knowingly when I returned to the group and related my trials and tribulations in the ladies. “Now you know what we have to put up with all the time” she said with a Cheshire grin on her face.

Past the witching hour, we made our way to Napoleon’s but were unable to find Kate or Shirley and with the downstairs area closed off (presumably for a private party) we initially remained adjacent to the dance floor sipping our drinks and chatting.

Moving back down to the ground floor we met up with a nice Welsh couple, the guy though 'T' was in “bob” mode.

Finally after a few more drinks and with my wife visibly flagging we decided to call it a night at 4am and we picked up our jackets and made our way through the still busy streets of the village and back to the car park where we gave Tina and Mandy a lift back to Tina’s before making our way back to Lymm.

We finally made the hotel for 5am absolutely dead on our feet only to find that in our absence, the roof had developed a leak and water was dripping from the ceiling and had caused a soggy wet patch at the foot of the bed!

We couldn’t see the point of trying to get anything done at this time and so I carefully removed my make up and undressed for bed, mindful of the previous occasion when I had upset my wife by collapsing comatose into bed still fully made up, wig on and in my underwear!

The following morning – just!, we woke at 11-45am – only 2 hours later than we had planned and threw everything into our cases, departed for home where we needed to be for 1-30pm – obviously not possible now, our progress was further stymied by traffic hold ups on the M6 Southbound which resulted us in covering 23 miles in 90 minutes!

Luckily, my daughter’s rugby match was called off or we would have been too late to take her, arriving home eventually at a few minutes past three after a pretty eventful 24 hours.