Me by the sea

I'm Up North visiting the parentals. All is well: my dad is recovering well from his shoulder operation, and my mother seems still to be suffering no major ill effects from having smoked 20 a day for the last 40 years. In fact she's still fitter than I am. So same as it ever was, which is cause for celebration in itself, as it can't ever remain thus, one eventually realises.

However, it's Friday night, and their idea of fun is watching Independence Day on TV while drinking endless cups of Nescafe Decaf. This is a film which makes me want to heave combined with not nearly enough alcohol, so I applied some green eyeliner and headed out in search of company.

There were two possible options, Mick Son of Mick and my uncle, but the one pub I ventured into was Dante's Lancastrian Inferno, heaving with testosterone, alcopops and semi-naked women. You forget what it's like round here at the weekend, I swear. To be female and fully clothed is freakish enough on Christmas Eve - to be out in a jacket in July is tantamount to declaring yourself a feminist. Which can be a dangerous thing to do.

So I elbowed my way out of hell, bought myself a can of lager at Spar and went for a walk down the front. It was kind of drizzly, so I had the entire coast to myself. It was amazing. I sat on one of the sheltered benches by the lifeboat station, sipped my Heineken, watched the late July night draw in and felt exactly as I felt half my life ago when I used to do exactly the same thing as a teenager.

I had several advantages then: 1) I smoked, so could spend far longer sitting on a bench by myself without feeling like a spare part. 2) I had a dog, so had an excuse to be sitting on a bench by myself. 3) I was a teenager (see 2).

It somehow felt that this was not a grown up thing to be doing, which seems profoundly unfair. Where are the 35 year old women sitting on a bench by themselves on a Friday night of yesteryear?

joella