On days like these

It was a super moon and it was in Virgo, my star sign.

And as I drove around the country lanes in search of my school reunion venue, I wondered what this big pizza pie of a moon had to do with me. A cosmic awakening, a reconnection with the earth, a breakthrough?

It grinned down on me, and I thought of all the things that had happened to me today. A mass decorating session at our village hall, eight hours of painting with a roller and brush amid a sea of magnolia. Sitting down to lunch with twenty others and literally watching paint dry.

Then a quick scoot around the field with the spaniels before every man and his dog descended on us for the England v Ireland rugby match. The doorbell kept ringing, and still they came, until thirteen bodies crammed into the Grigg hovel to watch the game.

The sedate ladies were in the kitchen, chatting about this and that while I sliced the potatoes. The fragrant Mrs Putter, Pelly Sheepwash, Mrs Champagne-Charlie and the lovely Mrs Bancroft with a waif and stray close at heel. In the front room, there was yelling and cursing and swearing as England failed to deliver. The profanity chorus was led by Mr Grigg, with solos by Mr Putter, Mr Sheepwash and Nobby Odd-Job ensconced in a leather armchair, and descant provided by Number One Son, a Sheepwashlet with another waif and stray on his arm.

So we sat down, thirteen of us, like the last supper, for a meal and then I got up and announced I was off to my school reunion, twelve years after the last one. I had been procrastinating about this ever since it was mooted before Christmas. I wanted to go but I didn't want to go. But, as always, curiosity got the better of me and I decided, with a little help from the ladies, that yes, indeed, I would be going.

There were lots of suggestions of what I should wear.

'Killer heels,' said Mrs Bancroft's waif and stray. 'And you can borrow my biker jacket.'

'Wear what's comfortable,' the Queen's Guide Pelly Sheepwash said.

If Mr Grigg had his way, I would have gone in a sack.

'You're not going out like that are you?' he said, when I finally paraded in the sixth outfit I'd tried on upstairs.

'Give us a twirl,' said a naughty Mr Champagne-Charlie, who had turned up to make it 14 after England had lost.

'You look wonderful,' he said. 'I like the boots.'

All Mr Grigg could do was growl.

So I found myself driving around the country lanes, completely lost, until there the place was, a beacon of light in an enchanted village over the Somerset border.

I looked over my shoulder at that big old moon as I entered the door and walked up the stairs to the sound of Dancing Queen.

'You're looking good, girl,' I said to myself. 'You can do it.'

And do you know what? That's not about it. This one's to be continued....

Love Maddie x