Girls’ night in

I was really looking forward to my quiet Friday night. I needed it! I was tired from the first week of term, and I also had something on every night. On Monday it was only catching up with Monique on video, but on Tuesday it was a cave rescue committee meeting that lasted forever. Past my bedtime! On Wednesday it wasn't so bad with the public lecture. But the running and eating pizza got me home slightly too late again. But while I had been running I saw I had a message from Claire. And when I got home I checked what it was. It was an invitation! For the day after! She wanted to cook curry for a bunch of friends and then do some board games.

I was tired, but I texted back to say yes. It's important to have people around you! I can’t turn up my nose at an opportunity like that. So while I was in Bangor I bought a bottle of non-alcohol booze, and when dinner time approached I drove southwest. 

I was quite Dutch! I was quite punctual, but everybody else was at least 45 minutes late. At least that meant I could do some proper catching up with Claire. She had been a lecturer for a year, as a maternity cover, but she had now gone back to being a PhD student. 

Then the other women arrived. It was really nice! One of them I had never met before. And we dived into the non-alcoholic drinks. And even some real wine was drunk! Not everybody was driving. And when dinner was ready we tucked in. It was really good!

After dinner we did a game that one of the ladies had brought: cat chaos. There were quite some cat people in there, so the name resonated. And the fact that it indeed turned out to be quite chaotic appealed as well. And it is quite a simple game! But indeed also one with a lot of excitement and confusion and noise. A winner!

One of the ladies had also said that this was a night when you could see the planetary alignment. So when we had done a few rounds of cat chaos, I suggested we go outside and look at that. And we did. And given that Claire lives outside a tiny village, it was quite dark outside, and we could see the stars really well. And when we let our eyes accustom to the dark for a bit, we saw the Milky Way. And we did see Mars and Jupiter and probably a few more, but these were the two that were easily pointed out to everyone. We were all quite mesmerised!

When we went back in I said I was going to leave. I still had half an hour to drive, and I was knackered. So I gave everyone a hug and left. But it had been really good! We should do more gatherings like that. And my place can be one of the venues…

Walking back to my car at the end of the evening