Breaking the Habit of - not quite - a Lifetime

 When we come up to Bristol we aim to meet up with a couple of friends and/or family if we can.

This time, our departure from Eastbourne was somewhat abrupt because of juggling a shedload of other things.  It meant that I had no chance to forewarn family.

I posted something about the beer I was drinking on social media and my sister-in-law spotted it - saying that they were very tied up with family birthdays and other events - all fair enough, we've never asked people to unravel their lives just because we've landed in Bristol.

However, my brother messaged me later to ask when we were going back...the upshot being we all agreed to meet at the Barleymow for lunch yesterday.

They've become almost fans of using public transport so that they can both drink and not drive.

We wandered around just before 1pm and wondered whether it would be busy with Thursday lunchers.  It was reasonably quiet and we got a nice table, picked up some beer and settled in.  With that, Brother and Sister-i-L arrived. Conversation flowed, as did beer and we had a really nice simple lunch (burger, toasties, chips, soup...that kinda thing).

We chatted about how all of us a really quite set in our ways:  they like eating out but mainly at lunchtime, we like eating out in the evening but prefer it to be just us, we go to the pub around 4.30pm but usually go home and eat after...so getting the four of us into a pub to eat and drink at lunchtime (and travel by public transport) definitely represented a compromise on all sides - nevertheless, a happy one.

They departed around 3pm leaving us to decide what to do...

We finished the beer we'd started but decided to stay on for a bit.  We couple a couple of 2/3rd of something strongish and played cards in the relative quiet.  We were mid-game when we came to the end of the drink but I was comfy and happy, the fire was crackling away and I was enjoying the game (Regicide, obvs).  So we shared another one to finish the game.  All the while after-workers were drifting in and making the place lively again.

We finally left just after 5pm, the place was bustling and our recently-vacated seats were hungrily leapt upon.  All in all a very satisfactory break from our normal routine.

Back to normal today, I reckon!