School "girls"night out.

This is an annual occurence . Don't want to overdo the reminiscing ! Five 40 something school friends meet up for a meal and a laugh. Sadly four out of five were driving so only one was able to partake of copious amounts of liquor .


One friend resides in Toulouse and when visiting her parents in Southend makes time to see us too. When collecting her and seeing her parents, revisiting the scene of so many "teenage memories " I can honestly say "How did I get here? Where have the years gone?" We'd even discussed having a sleepover (alcohol could then have been a significant contributor to the evening!) but that would have just been too weird.


Lovely restaurant cleverly named "SS9" (Its postcode) . We meet at the bar and start a tab for "4 diet cokes and a bottle of Chardonnay ! I shall save my large glass of "red" til later. Never mind says the only non- driver, I've seen you lot pissed on "Port & lemon"......or was it "Malibu & pineapple" ? oh the joy of youth......the crap we drank.


Anyway to the menu....you need to picture the scene..... dim lights... ..small print.....you know how it is "fading eyesight" as you get to a certain age. Luckily I had remembered the (+2 ) reading glasses. I haven't laughed so much in years as these "spectacles" were passed around the table. Not what used to be passed around between us...how sad have we become ?


Safe to say we are all pretty much the same age however our "offspring" range from 7 to 26 years therefore we are at varying stages in parenthood ! However one of the group remembered a family photo .The best I could come up with was from a photo booth that the kids had taken for their passports. This reminded us of how we regularly used to pile into photo booths to see how many people we could get in one snap ? Oh so much more fun when you could have 4 different photos .Think we'd cause a stir if we all tried to get in a booth now...but we'd have a laugh!

Til the next time.