Swansea Festival Road Trip

I had an amazing evening with my dear friend last night. Can’t remember if I’d mentioned it or not, but we had tickets for the Swansea Comedy Festival… it may have come up whilst I was talking about something else!

As with most things we do together, it was an adventure.

Firstly, the shouty SatNav bitch insisted we were going to arrive an hour later than we thought we would, which baffled us both as I had set it to the quickest journey. It seems the power-mad bint hates the bridge as much as I do, as she kept insisting we take junctions to avoid it altogether before announcing “Toll - now” …. and I’d swear she had a tone of smugness to her voice in that “You wouldn’t listen, would you” way. I also discovered the things that scare me most about the bridge are exactly what my friend loves about it as she set about the queue-hopping and excitedly participated in the post-payment frenzy to be first to hit the road proper. Made me feel a bit silly, to be honest, since I have a far bigger vehicle than she does yet the whole process terrifies me so much I don’t stop crying until Cardiff – I was thinking I could easily take on these pissy little cars! Something to think on, I guess!

Since I am referring to her driving, it is quite important I stress a few points: she didn’t once thrash the hub’s car, she certainly broke NO speed limits, didn’t swear at other drivers (even the proper c***s) and we certainly did NOT crank up the stereo to an unacceptable level. Ok, one or more of those things may not be true…. or they all could be; I’ll leave you to ponder the reality for yourselves.



So anyway – having used all our change to avoid dealing with an actual person at the gate, we arrive at our destination with only notes to pay for parking. Seems Swansea does not yet have pay-by-text parking machines, either; which is not necessarily a bad thing, since in my experience the whole system is a bloody nightmare but it did mean having to blag change and losing more of our precious time; although time was something we were blessed with an abundance of after banishing Miss Shouty-bollocks and taking our own route!


Once parked and after a quick car-park based wardrobe adjustment, we set out to find the venue itself. Now I was fairly sure I knew which building it was, but there were no discernable signs so it was not clear that I was correct. We made a poor choice in the person we carefully selected to direct us (by which I mean we darted across the road in front of someone and asked him as he stopped to let us continue!) after he suggested it was “in town”… firstly, that statement itself answered a question we had discussed earlier on our journey as to whether Swansea was a city or a town, although given that this guy did not seem particularly well-informed, maybe he did not know either! I also wondered what kind of direction “in town” is to two people who clearly do not know the place at all. I often give directions which are so detailed they completely confuse people. This man seems to be the opposite extreme; not to mention being a total moron as we were actually less than fifty yards from the venue itself when we asked. This in itself annoyed me too; I am a bit mannish about these things and will rather hunt around and find something for myself than ask randoms for directions, so that my friend asked for directions so early on had irked me somewhat, especially with the hindsight of seeing a) How easy it actually was to find and b) How much of a spanner the person we asked was; but we arrived in plenty of time and that is what counts!


The show itself was fab – but that’s for another post. The journey back; more not thrashing the car, not driving too fast and not having the stereo too loud and lots more chat!

That in itself was a great thing. With my kids getting older, they are no longer in bed when my friend comes round for a boozy evening so it is often difficult to talk about some things. It was great just being the two of us, talking openly about the things we needed to talk about – even if she did spend most of the time trying to convince me my plan for the future was not a good one.


We shall see!