Matthew Munson: Time for family visits, Folk Week – and some work

Whisper it, but Bryan and I left Thanet for a few days this week. Bryan’s siblings live further along the coast, and we had a long-standing date in the diary to go and visit for a few days. It was a delightful experience; they laughed, danced, ate well, played, and just enjoyed each other’s company.

We stayed in a Travelodge, which was comfortable, cheap, and welcoming. It didn’t have a restaurant, but there was a pub next door that served breakfasts. Bryan delighted in a large full English each morning, and still had room for lunch and dinner. We’ve almost never gone wrong in a Travelodge – although there was the time we stayed in one where the fire alarm went off at one in the morning. It turned out that residents had decided to smoke in their room, which was as far from clever as it’s possible to be. They were told to leave, and we expected everything to go back to normal. Except that the fire alarm went off about thirty minutes later … and thirty minutes after that … and then every ten to fifteen minutes for the rest of the night. It turned out that the company they used to maintain the fire alarms were on a four hour call out, but they couldn’t seem to find the engineer. I’m not sure whether that meant he had merely slept through the calls, or if he had done a Captain Oates and wandered off, never to be seen again. I was not a happy chap, but I got a refund for that night’s stay, so that’s something. That’s a Travelodge on my black list.

But almost every other stay has been fine. I even stayed in a Travelodge with a 24-hour freshly-made pizza bar on the premises. Not that I’ve ever craved a Hawaiian pizza at ten past three on a wet February morning, but it was nice to know that I had the option.

We arrived home on Friday evening, happy and exhausted, and slept well in our own beds that night. There’s something about your own bed that makes you sleep so much better, even when the hotel bedroom is clean, tidy, and with good mattresses. We both slept in on Saturday but didn’t want to waste the entire day. Given that Folk Week is now underway, we went down to the procession on Saturday evening, and pottered around the stalls for a little while. We used to go down most days, to the children’s area, but Bryan’s not as interested in that as he used to be, so we just listen to some music and enjoy spending time in a town we both love.

I’ve gone down to Folk Week every year for as long as I can remember (with the exception of 2020, of course), and I even lived in a flat over a shop in Broadstairs high street for two or three years in my mid-twenties. I actually moved in just as Folk Week was starting, which was probably bad timing on my part. I remember watching the opening procession with a couple of friends from my front room window (which was then entirely unfurnished except for a couple of fold-up chairs – my furniture was going to arrive a day later). It was a brilliant bird’s eye view, but also very noisy during the week. Swings and roundabouts.

My week off is now at an end. I’m back to work for the next two weeks, and then get another week off, which pleases me. We still make the most of the time we have together when I have to work; Bryan goes to a holiday club he absolutely loves and is incredibly active in it. I still miss him, of course, but he doesn’t give me a single thought while he’s there, I’m sure. For me, it makes me appreciate the time we have together even more.