Why Rosé Is an Afternoon Drink

Forty Years, a Hedgehog Song and a Hangover

There are some weekends that feel like they contain about three months' worth of life.

This was one of them.

My friend Richard came over from Spain for the weekend. We've known each other for forty years, which sounds stupid because in my head, we're both still somewhere in our twenties, wandering round Loughborough with questionable 1980’s hairstyles (requiring lots of Country Born gel and cheap hairspray) and even more questionable decision making.

On Sunday we'd booked lunch at Kayal, a South Indian restaurant in Nottingham that Paul and I discovered on Valentine's Day before going to a burlesque show. I knew Richard would love it because he's vegetarian these days and Kayal isn't your typical British Indian restaurant where everyone orders chicken tikka masala without looking at the menu. It's a bit different. A bit more interesting.

I had a delicious chicken starter cooked in some sort of mysterious green something that I still couldn't identify if my life depended on it. Paul had lamb. Richard had a lentil dish. We shared rice, bread and a bottle of rosé because, and I'm convinced this makes perfect sense, rosé feels like an afternoon drink. Whereas red wine is for later in the day -don't ask me why. It just is.

Paul fancied an Old Fashioned afterwards, but the waiter didn't understand what he meant and, rather than embark on an explanation involving bourbon and bitters, he decided he'd rather go without. Richard and I had brandy and Bailey’s respectively, with a coffee – nice and easy.

One of the reasons I'd chosen Kayal was because it's about fifty yards from the pub we'd be spending the rest of the afternoon in. Fifty yards matters to me these days. I always plan around walking distances, where we can park, whether there are stairs, how far it is to the toilets and whether I'll need my stick, rollator (aka wandering throne) or my ‘nobility’ scooter.

Not because I'm trying to do things without mobility aids, or because I'm hiding my disability. It's a bit like needing reading glasses. You don't wear them all day if you only need them for the menu. My stick lives in my handbag because sometimes I need it and sometimes I don't. Same with my rollator and scooter. It's just one of those calculations I have to make before we go anywhere, I can’t not think about it.

Anyway...After lunch we wandered the grand total of fifty yards to the pub.

Forty years ago, Richard and I used to go there on Sunday nights. Back then we called it "the front room" because it genuinely looked like somebody's front room with a fire in the corner. It's changed a bit over the years, but it still feels cosy. These days it's become mine and Paul’s regular haunt because of the drag cabaret, music bingo and karaoke.

Ironically, Richard couldn't remember it at all. I'd spent ages saying, "You'll remember when we get there." He didn't, not even slightly. Although to be honest we were probably always drunk when we’d gone in there as youngsters. Apparently, he'd been thinking of a completely different pub all along.

Memory is a funny old thing.

What he did remember was something we still refer to as Sprout Attack Night.

Back in the 1980’s I used to wear this enormous overcoat that had belonged to my uncle. It had a massive inside pocket and inside that pocket we'd carry a half bottle of brandy and have the occasional swig while wandering between pubs.

One evening the market traders had obviously dropped hundreds of Brussels sprouts all over the square. Why we found that so funny I'll never know, but we spent the rest of the evening making up songs about sprout attacks. Some memories stay with you forever. Others disappear completely. Like pubs, apparently.

The music bingo eventually started, roughly on drag queen time, which we’ve learnt bears very little resemblance to actual time. (Paul won! Again!)

Then we all headed downstairs to the basement for karaoke. The room was empty when Richard started singing Copacabana. He was twirling round, throwing himself into it completely, then halfway through he turned round to discover people had quietly wandered in behind him. His face was priceless.

I sang Hey Big Spender, complete with very animated actions. Which I enjoyed a great deal more live than I did watching the video back the following morning- lol.Richard and I also murdered The Only Way Is Up together because it's been "our" song for years – but I can’t even remember why now.

There was also a duet of Something Stupid, House of Bamboo, an enthusiastic but technically inaccurate attempt by me to copy the line dance from This City Is Ours, and one remarkable couple who performed a song about a hedgehog entirely from memory despite there not being any words on the screen. Apparently, that summed up their forty years of friendship.

Monday morning arrived exactly as you'd expect. Pyjamas. Water and paracetomol by the bed because I'd wisely anticipated the hangover.

Richard and I sat on the settee like bookends, watching the karaoke videos back, laughing at ourselves, cringeing and then laughing again, before watching Coronation Street together like a couple of pensioners who'd accidentally been drag queens the night before. If I hadn't had my joint pain management class that afternoon, I think we'd probably have stayed there until it was time to take him to the airport.

Instead, I swapped my pyjamas for black leggings and a black T-shirt and headed to the gym. Nobody there knows I'm "Lisa from Funky Diva Vibes". They don't know about the sequins, the workshops or the sausage machine. They just know I'm another grey-haired woman trying to make standing up from a chair a bit easier.

The irony isn't lost on me that one day I'm discussing butterfly pillows, mattress toppers, MRI scans, tingly hands and exercises for aching joints, and less than twenty-four hours earlier I was belting out Shirley Bassey in a basement full of drag queens.

Both things are true. Neither cancels out the other. Maybe that's just life in your sixties. Maybe it was always life and I'm only just noticing…

What I do know is this.

A few years ago, I think I'd have assumed those versions of me didn't belong together. The woman planning every fifty yards because of her mobility. The woman buying handbags big enough to fit a walking stick. The woman who spends Monday learning exercises to help her joints. The woman in sequins singing karaoke.

It struck me as I was writing that, if you'd looked at my diary for that weekend without any context, you'd probably assume it belonged to four different women.

·Lunch with a friend I'd known for forty years.

·Drag karaoke.

·Joint pain management.

·Planning life around walking distances.

They don't really sound like they belong together. Turns out they're all exactly the same person. Which is rather handy because keeping up with four different personalities sounds absolutely exhausting. I'll stick with being one woman who occasionally sings Shirley Bassey, carries a walking stick in her handbag and thinks rosé is an afternoon drink.

And I'd do every single bit of that weekend again in a heartbeat. (Even the hangover.)