The next morning it is raining. Hard. Eva and I pick plums from the tree in a marshy field in her garden in our dressing gowns and wellies, then go back to bed with our various books until lunch time. There is nothing else to do. The television has no reception and we've already stalked everyone she has been to college with and found her first boyfriend, as well as the person she started the Lithuanian Society with at Sussex University in 1973. I've lost my taste for stalking. I don't want to know anything about anybody, but nevertheless I find myself dictating another letter to the long lost boyfriend.
'Dear Alexander,' I begin
'I'm not sure whether you remember me...' I say as Eva types. I pause, wondering what to say next.
'...but you were the first man I slept with,' adds Eva, laughing. 'You'd think he would remember that, wouldn't you?
Hmm. I have no expertise on this matter. The last man I went out with didn't even know my surname.
At quarter to four, fifteen minutes after we've finally decided to get dressed, Sheila arrives in a car full of dog hair and straw - though thankfully no dog- and drives us several hundred miles through twisted country lanes of teeming rain to an Arts Centre for a tea dance.
I don't even dance.
Inside it's daunting. Farmers and their wives in Wedding Outfits are sitting around the room where in place of the promised De Souza Trio there's a CD playing Englebert Humperdink singing 'The Last Waltz' to which a few couples swirl round the floor. Tea is laid out on a long trestle table.
'That's Tony,' Sheila says of a tall, red faced man in grey polyester trousers, red shirt, and blue striped tie. 'No doubt 'e'll drag you round the floor if you like.'
I don't, but Eva looks interested by the idea. Tony is the local builder and single. It's immediately evident why.
Shelia slips out of her shoes and into her dancing pumps and is soon off - tall, regal and beautifully poised, dancing a quickstep with a small stooped man wearing his glasses on a chain around his neck who looks like he needs a zimmer frame, but who turns out to be her dance instructor. Another woman in a gold pleated skirt and gold shoes glides past in the arms of her husband looking every inch the professional, while yet another silver-haired couple do the foxtrot (at least I think that's what it was, either that or they were jumping about mid-step for no good reason).
'He's got eight kids and app-arent-ly was un'appy in his marr-iage. Not that 'is wife knew an-y-thing about't. It came as a big sur-pris-e to 'er. But now 'e's getting married to Ger'al'dine the min'ute 'is divorce comes through - 'e met 'er 'ere.' whispers Sheila in my ear between dances. 'But they're not sleeping to-gether until they actually get mar-ried,' she adds.
'Tell Marion about the commune... and the swingers who lived in the greenhouse,' Eva urges and Sheila, flushed and smiley from her various exertions fills me in on the local sexual shenanigans. Well I suppose they have to do something to make up for there being no South Bank Centre.
'Oh I got a mobile, did I tell you?' Sheila whoops and produces a tiny phone from her bag.
'Great, give me the number,' says Eva, 'and then I can text you.'
'I can't read it tho'. The let-ters are too small.' She squints at the dial and then hands the phone to Eva who taps in her number. 'Now, you ring me and I'll have a missed call from you and that way I'll know your number too,' says Eva.
Sheila presses dial. Nothing happens. 'No re-ception.' She says. 'I can only get re-ception when I'm up in the tractor on the top field. It's an awful lot of bother to go up there just for a text message.'
Eva looks at her phone. 'No, I haven't got a signal here either,' she says sadly.
I don't bother looking at mine. It's on the window ledge back at the cottage. Nobody is texting me and so the lack of signal is a convenient fiction to explain why my phone doesn't ring as I try to banish thoughts of Worcester man holed up in a hotel room with a Daily Telegraph lovely who isn't me.
Tea is served. The De Souza trio turns out to be the De Souza One - an old man with a rather warty face who doesn't look particularly Portuguese and who plays the piano. 'Per-'aps he was darker when 'e was younger,' Sheila suggests. Dancers flock to the table. It's another four quid for a cup of hot water with a tea bag swimming in it and a choice of dry cake, dry scone the size of a cornish pasty with jam (the cream has run out - and the 'ad a tech-nich-al problem with the mixer...?!?) or a dry meringue . (No spell check on this computer, so I may, inadvertently have led you to believe that there is a saucy Latin American dance being served with a hot beverage but we both know that would be extremely unlikely).
A few of the women look as though they have trouble walking, let alone dancing. One has a stiff leg that she drags around in a wide circle like the boom on a boat, another shuffles and yet another limps. However, people in glass houses and all that... I have nothing wrong with either of my legs and yet I still can't waltz to save my life, as Sheila informs a lovely young farmer with dark eyes and red cheeks when he asks her if 'any of your friends are dancing,' . She then rushes off to jive with a man in a jumper and a knitted waistcoat who will be perspiring heavily by the end of the dance. 'I 'ope you can't see my knick-ers.' she says as she prepares to twirl and spin.
We fish out our tea bags from the tepid water and Sheila, panting now, announces that she is off next week to ride across the steppes in Mongolia where she will be camping in sub-zero temperatures. 'You must come to one of our dinners and tell us all about it,' says Eva.
'No, I'd be totally out of my depth up in London with all you smart people.'
Eva and I splutter unattractively through our tea. 'Don't be silly, none of us have been on a riding holiday to Mongolia. I think coming to Wales is quite intrepid.' I say.
'No, you don't understand, our idea of a girls' night out is something here called (and she says something un-reproduceable in Welsh) which means girls of the area and it usually involves going to a pub and getting chips. It's boring. We 'ave people who come and give us talks on their tea towel collection or twenty different types of broccoli. It's like Calendar Girls it is. Our next event is a local girl coming to talk to us about her ter-min-al illness. And that was after there was some discussion about whether she would still be alive to do it'
But then one of the other women said, "oh don't worry, her sister could always come along and talk about it for her if she's dead".
Really. It's that exciting...'
The old guy at the piano shuffles back to his seat with his walking stick and the CD plays Acker Bilk's 'Stranger on the shore.'
I start singing along in my trumpet voice.
Really. It's that exciting.
