Easter weekend

Good Friday. It doesn't seem so good. And really, it means very little to somebody brought up outside mainstream religion. However, it brings a four day weekend with it.

But it seems like I must be the only one that doesn't feel like celebrating that fact. Four days with no plans is far too much time for introspection and wallowing in self pity. At least work, mind-numbing as it is, would keep me occupied and my thoughts away from her.

We were due to go away together this weekend. Tickets had been booked and hotel rooms reserved. Nothing much, just a simple trip to the coast, a quick getaway, with its promises of sunset walks along the beach, of paddling in rock pools, of candy floss and sticks of rock, of sleeping late and staying in bed, our naked bodies intertwined.

It's depressing. A reminder of what was, what could have been and now, what never will.

And I miss her.

So I resolve to spend my weekend questing for oblivion. I call Kurt and arrange to meet up with him. Him, and his bandmates, and their assorted hangers-on. Some of the wild kids of Sheffield. Still in their teens or early twenties. People that seem instinctively to know the hot spots, the late night parties, the drug peddlers.

Mid-afternoon, I meet Kurt in the Palm Tree Inn in Walkley, round the back, in the beer garden, in the sunshine, where they can all smoke. I try to ignore it but every single cigarette looks mighty tasty to me.

Kurt stands, fag hanging from his lips, and takes my hand in a firm handshake before introducing me to everyone in a barrage of names that I know I haven't a hope of remembering. A few of them are familiar, including Richard, Sara's fella, and a scrawny bloke with a large nose called Marcus, both of whom I've met before on several occasions. The others I will have to get by with calling them 'dude' or 'mate' and I hope they won't mind.

We drink, we talk, we laugh. Eventually we raise our hands in salute, clutching fistfuls of pharmaceuticals, and we say goodbye to all rational thought.

I dive off the deep end and I hope I shan't resurface 'til this terrible holiday is over.