mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday, I met my friend Stephen in his new hometown of Rothwell, which was my first chance to visit him since he moved about a month ago. It’s been a bit strange not having him as local as I’m used to for the past few weeks. He had lived in Hitchin for just over a year, but had been based in Stevenage prior to that, so it had always been easy to meet up with little notice. Even when he wasn’t living in the same town as me, he was working here, so I’d often give him a wave when I walked past his shop. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I still see regularly, and seldom a week would go by when we wouldn’t meet for what’s become affectionally known as our Old Man Pub Crawls, to swap stories of our various work and life frustrations, and just generally catch up. The great thing I discovered yesterday was it’s easier and cheaper to get to Steve’s by public transport than I’d originally thought; until then, I’d been looking at trains via Lond...