Old Friends

Hugh and Helen are probably our oldest friends (this not a comment on their age but the length of time we have known them as a couple). Little did I know that when I walked into the British Airways Scheduling Office in 1977 that I and then we would make friends for life. So some forty years later we would be shared a weekend away. The nature of old friends is that when you get together even after a long time you never run out of things to talk about. These are wrapped in the shared memories that you have had over the years.

Hugh and Helen with the Sheppard's

 This time we remembered a holiday that we had taken to Spain in the spring of 1983. Thomas was in a pushchair and Laura was just a bump in Marion’s tummy. It was quite warm and Thomas was very fair skinned so he was well protected particularly with a rather fetching hat. The trouble was every time anybody mentioned the word hat; he threw it to the ground. It became a sort of bizarre game, which he found very amusing and we did not. Helen remembered how she resorted to saying h…a…t. Even at the tender age of eighteen months he recognised this and immediately threw the hat off. Helen thinks that they have an old cine film of this. It will be something to show the grandchildren!!!

So we had a lovely day and evening at a place called Goldstone Hall in the middle of the Shropshire countryside near Market Drayton.

Goldstone Hall

An added bonus of the hotel was that it had a full sized snooker table that allowed Hugh and myself to reprise our youth. I think the best break was a three ball with the score of seven. It just proves that you do not get better at these games.

The hotel was lovely a very typical English Country House. Large rooms, spacious soft comfy beds, log fires and excellent food. Much came from the extensive vegetable and herb gardens that adjoined the house. The gardens also provided the seasonal pumpkins that decorated each table in the dining room. We had some pungent local cheese with dinner made by an artisan cheese maker, Moydens. So this morning we set off to find the cheese, this was an adventure as they were actually situated in what looked like a storage yard. But a very helpful guy sold us some Wrekin Blue and Ironbridge Blue. We will look forward to eating these and with it remembering our friendship with Hugh and Helen.