telephone thing - the fall

i got a text from elaine. it's ages since i heard from her. she'd said she was "going to have a wee scene-break". that was in january.

she must've finally had enough of her own company. the gist of her text was that she'd be attending tomorrow night. and would i like to meet in a pub first?

i rang tam, which i'd been putting off doing all week. it went to answering machine. i started to yitter fragments of what i was planning to say, when a jagged string of clicks and rubbing cut into what i was saying.

surprised, i let him rabbit for a minute or two before i asked him if we had a jumping-off point for tomorrow.

of course he did - anyone as focused on driving as tam is, will have planned out his non-driving nights like a military operation. we'd be assembling in the old queen's head between seven and eight, moving onto the club en masse between half-eight and nine, smooth as clockwork.

i got rid of him and texted elaine back. we texted each other back and forth for a while, just like in the old days.

i'd known elaine since i'd been on the scene here. met her at my second-or-third munch, i think it was.

one of those relationships that can lie fallow for a time, then recommence exactly where we left off.

so, a brand new club wasn't a bad punctuation point for us to re-start hanging out again. we've had breaks before; everybody needs to get out of all this every once in a while, the same as we all feel the need to immerse ourselves sometimes.

and, that time i had the operation, elaine was totally there for me.