This might seem a bit of an odd thing to say, but sitting in silence with friends is actually rather wonderful. I met my writing chums today for coffee in a place which used to be an aquarium which protruded out onto the beach like a short pier. For whatever reason the aquarium closed and local business people took it over and made it into a rather nice café/bar/restaurant. It extends out from the sea front, over the sand, and sitting inside – or outside on a lovely day, there are marvellous views around Weston Bay and across to South Wales.
Revo Kitchen & Terrace, is an enticing new restaurant located on Weston-super-Mare’s seafront in what was, until March 2019, the SeaQuarium.
We caught up with each other’s news, talked about our latest writing – we have all entered a competition in which entries have to be fifty words, including the word ‘fox’. Whether I win (fat chance!) or not, I will share my submission here at some point. I was inspired by a blog about the Woolwich foot tunnel by my friend Andrew Simpson. His post used a photo of the tunnel from 1916 and it had caught my eye and triggered various writing thoughts. When the fox competition was mentioned, it coincided with my tunnel thoughts and I combined the two, in exactly fifty words.
My friends and I had coffee, and we talked about what we had been up to, writing and other, and spoke about our writing group and our various projects. Revo’s was absolutely packed, extremely noisy with the chatter of the other guests, the clatter of crockery and cutlery, and the screams of various children, it was a busy Saturday lunchtime. We mentioned various friends, books, writing competitions, projects, blogging, funny stories, adventures, TV programmes, you know – the usual. And between all that we lapsed into silence (apart from the racket all around us) and none of us felt pressed to speak, or awkward, or uncomfortable. That’s what it’s like with real friends, the comfortable silence between us.
Here is a link to Andrew’s blog about the Woolwich foot tunnel:
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/in-search-of-adventure-out-of-peckham.html
Lois Elsden 