brains is bitter

A weekend in Aberystwyth. Dave drove, which was lucky as I can't. On the motorway, the signs were not good. Lorries bearing company names like Panic, Discordia, and (sic) Greif shuddered past. Who would call their firm Discordia? By the time we got to Oxford, it was already going wrong: massive hold-ups. Patrick Stewart's voice on the Tomtom sounded increasingly angry, adding stern vocals, like furious dance-move commands, to Dave's happy hardcore. 'Turn left!' 'Turn right!' We might as well have been waving our hands in the air like we just didn't care: whenever we left one traffic jam we managed to hunt out another.

We got there in nine hours all told, cruising into Aberystwyth down a road littered with animal corpses, as the sky grew dark. The hotel was Kafkaesque: we walked into the door of what we thought was our hotel, only for one of the East European girls who worked there to drag us through a couple of inner doors into another, almost identical one. It was as though a trick had been played on us; and yet the hotels are in some sense the same, in spite of having different names, neither of which was the name on the key fob. My reservation was in the name of (something like) 'Mart Timulphuldus.'

Mat and Amanda and Nicki and Shaun all had a sea view: we had a view of a dirty discarded sock lying on a roof beneath our window.

Despite the omens, it turned into a good time. I even danced - briefly, feebly, under duress, at what felt like someone's wedding, though it was just a normal night in the Pier Brasserie, apparently. I threw even more ridiculous shapes on the beach at Ynislas the next day. Rhys had assembled a beach volleyball court - a lengthy and elaborate process involving a mallet, so that we kept expecting to turn our heads to find that he'd built a miniature replica of the Stadium of Light, there on the sand behind us. Of course I was terrible at beach volleyball - except when I was a genius. It was all terribly random.

We had a meal in a posh restaurant. 'Everyone' had monkfish. Then, for dessert, 'everyone' had baked alaska. Mat was just about to voice the observation that baked alaska was therefore 'the monkfish of desserts' when I (apparently) stole his thunder by uttering those very words. This infuriated him so much that he has now dedicated himself to utilising this witty construction on every suitable occasion that arises. Hence, when we had a curry on the last night, the tandoori mixed grill turned out to be 'the baked alaska of curry house main courses'. I do hope this doesn't come to dominate his life. That would be tragic.

A lot of time was spent trying to decide how gay Mat and Rhys are. Was watching Hollyoaks in bed together 'gay'? Later, Rhys watched Top Gear, alone, in the nude - where on the scale that left him was very unclear, even to Shaun, our expert on these matters. As for JP, he gave us a compelling insight into the heterosexual bachelor lifestyle when he described how the other night he caught himself dipping hula hoops into Bovril while simultaneously taking bites out of a lump of cheese. He needs a woman in his life, was the conclusion he arrived at.

Someone had written as their comment in the visitor's book: 'The girls are nice!', a reference to the East European girls who work - I should say run - the joint. Dave added his own version, as merely 'Dave' from 'Essex': 'Great girls', he scrawled - all that was missing were the drool-stains. I couldn't think of anything to write. I can't now. On the way home I saw a pub advertising 'Good food', 'Good beer', and 'Brains.'

Brains! We fled with this echo of clamouring zombie voices (from Return Of The Living Dead, from The Simpsons) in our ears. But really we know that Brains is bitter.