And maybe that was the case.
But we made a valiant effort!
Friday we went to a happening pub near my flat... Yeah, it was dead. No, worse than dead- there was a guy sitting alone at the table next to us reading. At 10pm. And he was wearing white socks [Simon has a lethal aversion to white socks].
Eh, but it was a year's worth of catch-up conversation and it was surprising to learn that I remembered more of Amsterdam than he did... which is hard to imagine. How in god's name have we maintained contact?
Facebook, you're moderately useful, it would seem.
Saturday was spent exploring my little town. Macc has a few decent qualities. Like the little food market in the indoor shopping... hallway, haha. It'd be insulting to call it a mall, but it does have some useful/interesting shops [if you can get past all of the stores dedicated to greeting cards and cell phone care...] but that is neither here nor there.
Simon couldn't get over the cheese. We got three kinds for dinner [and some disappointing olives... but they would be disappointing- they're olives. Blegh].
Then, apparently it's the beginning of [one of the many] football/soccer seasons here. So we did what any good Englishman does. We gambled.
Simon tried to teach me how the hell to finagle one of these sheets... so I winged it. And lost within a few hours, haha. Apparently the Wolves aren't a good team to place a bet on? Honestly I just bet for any team I'd heard the name of before. I thought it was a decent strategy...
Then we got coffee. Did some [unsuccessful- well, for me] shopping. And then we ended up at a pub around lunchtime. That's still so strange for me- to consider going to a bar before happy hour... but that's what you do here. AND it was lovely outside. So we sat on the patio and watched the most horrendous procession of wedding groups emerge from the chapel across the street. And took notes on the characters Macc churns out. And there are some characters, let me tell you. I learned a lot of English slang words!
Saturday night was actually really wonderful though. One of my co-workers, Adam, picked us up with his friend Johnny to meet up with a handful of their old schoolmates in a village outside of Macc called Bollington. Bolly [cute] claims to house the most pubs of any UK town, be that based on sheer volume, population or square foot I have no idea... but there were plenty. So we fabricated our own little makeshift pub crawl!
This was in... the second(?) pub we visited. I have no idea of the name... they're all double-names of some animal and some inanimate object like "Dog and Fiddle" or "Partridge and Rose" or something like that... it all kinda runs together after a while. Adam is on the left, Simon on the right. [And sorry for the spontaneous instagram- I FINALLY figured out how to get it to work over here so I got a little instagram-crazy.]
Jager and sambuca bombs... can you think of a more vile pairing?
I wish I wasn't so embarrassed about getting my camera out- these blog posts would be a lot more interesting if I captured events with pictures instead of words.
I'm gonna try to get better about it.
Simon had to have a cup of tea when we got back... [can you see my eyeroll encased in the ellipsis?] so we took very creative and classy drunken self-pictures. For you, my friends.
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