I'VE just had five days packed with both simple fun and (anything but simple) soulful reflection.
Let’s start with the soulful reflection. My partner Posh Boots had gone away, to Spain, on her own … without me.
But after a flurry of lovey-dovey texts between us ... a result!
She announced she was returning early.
So last Friday night I went to pick her up from the airport. Even the utterly charmless John Lennon International (no wonder people in Merseyside prefer to fly from Manchester) failed to dint the joyful anticipation of our reunion.

And it was a lovely moment when she emerged onto the main concourse to find me there, squinting up at the arrivals board.
We embraced and kissed each other like teenagers might. Good job there was no-one around to be embarrassed by our antics.
Then as I drove her home to New Brighton I couldn’t resist stopping off at a bar-brasserie on the main road running through, er, Grassendale, I think.
I’d noticed the place on the drive up to the airport because it appeared so beautifully lit. So few bars get their lighting right these days.
Wish I could remember what the bar was called but I can’t. Anyway, we enjoyed a couple of glasses of red there before continuing our journey home with Roddy Frame’s 'Surf' album belting out on the car cassette player. Beautiful!
Then into Tallulah’s Bar in New Brighton for more wine.
Being apart from Posh Boots for just eight days started me musing about the paradox of how we can only ever fully appreciate the mystery and loveliness of people when they've gone away from us.
So, for instance, when someone dies, or goes abroad for a while, or moves down south to work in That London, that’s when we start to value them profoundly, to know the mystery of them. By their absence, they reveal themselves to us.
This paradox is true of friends as well as lovers / spouses. Maybe it’s also true of our parents and our children. It is one of those things that makes being human so exquisite, so richly emotional.
Anyway, back to the fun. On Saturday we had drinks with Rocky and his bird, Melony, a couple with whom we’ve started to attend a wine-tasting group in Chester.
I know! On the face of it, joining a wine-tasting group does seem bourgeois and middle aged, and I'll admit that, to begin with, I felt like I was in the cast of Midsomer Murders, without (so far) the murders.
But actually me and Posh Boots enjoy the wine-tasting very much and the people at the sessions are charming.
On Sunday we were invited to a very relaxed tasting session at the splendid rural home of one of the wine tasting group ladies … in Kelsall, Cheshire.
The hospitality was gracious, the wine excellent, and the company very entertaining.
And as we drove back through the murk in Rocky’s car along the original Road To Hell (the M53 through the Wirral), there was a miraculous break in the clouds to to the west.
Posh Boots, who has been plagued with muscular pain in her back and shoulders in recent weeks, was asleep with her head on my lap in the back seat as we drove through the gloaming, so she missed what came next…
What came next was a fantasmagoric sunset over Leasowe. It felt great to be alive and, er, full of wine at that moment.
As the sunset infused life with a big injection of magic, the car radio was playing 'You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ by The Righteous Brothers.
A great song, of course, but so wrong – because, believe me, at that moment the loving feeling was alive and well in Wallasey.
On Monday, there was a 16th birthday bash to attend for Horatio, the son of Duncan Kindlyface and Lady Di.
I’m not exactly ‘down with the young’ so wasn’t sure what to get Horatio as a pressie. In the end I handed him a copy of the classic novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J D Salinger, in a groovy, retro, Penguin paperback cover.
There was a brilliant spread of food and booze put on by the Kindlyfaces, so I filled me boots, natch, as did fellow new Brighton guests, including Mini Marvin and Dixie the Jazzman. Also present were several hip young gunslingers of the teenage tendency, pals of Horatio's, and, of course, his sister, Holly, who is soon to be studying drama at uni.
Posh Boots had to be careful about drinking because she was on pain-killers for her dodgy back, but I managed to knock back her share of the wine, don't you worry.
Anyway, I had an extra day off werk on Tuesday so me and her took a drive out to Southport.
We had a three-course carvery meal in the Prince of Wales on Lord Street, which was reasonable value for six quid each, but the food could have been warmer and the wine was way too pricey.
Also, there was something clunkily institutional about the dining room, with its desultory workers whose body language screamed ‘we are not really enjoying our jobs’.
I’ve worked in catering – as a silver service waiter in Wigan – so I can’t say I blame them.
Now, I’m used to driving to Southport from Wigan, which is a simple and enjoyable route, but the road in from Liverpool is tedious-going, passing many empty hulks of urban decay, and it's very poorly signposted.
When we finally reached Southport, I noted that Sefton Council has taken to draping every lamp post with naff penants telling us that the place is a 'classic' resort – a meaningless piece of PR bull**** if ever I saw one.
This hanging of corporate banners splattered with logos by municipalities with bloated senses of their own importance, it’s a lamentable trend.
I note that the spectacularly under-achieving Liverpool City Council has, like Sefton, got the tedious banner-hanging habit – to promote European Capital of Culture Year.
Even more alarming, I heard a rumour that the despised Wirral Council – the notorious ‘Death Star’ that kills everything it touches – is planning to hang new signs to greet motorists emerging from the Wallasey Tunnel with these words: ‘Wirral: You’re welcome to it!'
Anyway, I’m not one to let the naff activities of councils to spoil my enjoyment, so we left behind Southport, with all its wealthy Scouse settlers with orange faces and clunky gold jewellery, to head for the Scouse House café in Birkenhead, where my friend Malcolm Saunders runs a poetry club on the fourth Tuesday of each month.
I read a couple of my tortured love poems there and listened to a very high standard of versifying from other poets. It was a great end to a great few days.
The Scouse House, in Price Street, also has a comedy night on the first Tuesdays of each month.
And I’m planning to perform my comedy monologue ‘Aliens on Merseyside’ there next Tuesday (June 3, 2008) evening.
Till next time,
Keep the faith!

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