A Singles Holiday.

Friends are the best and as you get older, they are even more precious. I still have two friends I was in school with, one in Junior School and one from my boarding school.

When we talk of course we speak about those times when we were younger, however my friends I made in later life are my bestest friends.

I met them through holidays with Single Group holidays. After my divorce in 1987 I joined several groups to go out socially. One group went to the theatre or cinema, others just met up for drinks or walks.

Through the one I met up with Hillary, we looked for holidays for single people and found a firm called 'Small World.'  For our very first we booked a New Year weekend in a hotel in North London.  Going together we saved money, because we shared a room, even though it was for Singles there was still a single supplement, unless you shared. 

We agreed we wouldn't sit together or say we were together,  so we could circulate and get to know other people.

We loved it and because we had done some ball room dancing we could do regular dances as well as modern, jive and the usual shuffle that a lot of people do. I loved dancing, and the nights went on till the early hours of the morning, so it was exhausting. We used to met up in the afternoons for a rest on our beds and there we used to chat and giggle about men we had spoken to.

Hillary spoke about one man, who she had sat beside, who was asking did she own her own house. We never said we did, but that we lived with a son. This man wanted someone to buy a property together with him in N Wales, to make it into a Singles Holiday house. Yes, he did ask me too and I had to say sorry, I didn't have a house to sell!

On the Sunday of that weekend we decided we would sit on the same table on the last night with 6 other people and none guessed we were friends and neither did we say, but we were both were nearly hysterical laughing when the 'do you own your own house to set up a Singles Holiday home' man sat with us. He must have asked so many people he'd forgotten who he had asked!

I really did enjoy that first weekend away and although I never went to them, to meet men or for a partner, I did dance with a lot of men and one really lovely man who was wearing a lovely aftershave and he could dance. I remember it because the band was playing 'Lady in Red' and Hillary and I had been to a Chris de Burgh concert the previous year. We even danced together on the next evening too. I wonder what happened to him.

 It was such a fun time of my life, and reading this, have you noticed I haven't mentioned the food, it was all very good, but it wasn't a big thing in my life in those days, I was 47 and slim!

I worked hard at my teaching job, paid the mortgage and bills but had a holiday fund.  It wasn't easy being single with older children to support in Uni and one still in school, but every year I went on at least 4 weekends away, plus a holiday abroad. Often with Hillary, but I met three other women and we went on holidays together as well as visiting each other for weekends,  I loved it all and them. 

That firm went bankrupt, which was a shame, because it was so good

Those were the days!

Chrisxx