The writing on the wall....

Friday night was a perfectly timed reminder to how good my life is now.

I dropped Monkey off with his dad. He's been counting down to his weekend with Daddy and was super excited! It's good for him to be that excited - it makes it a) easier for me to let him go, b) better for Daddy to have a son who wants to be there and c) I don't feel bad about wanting him to go!!

I'd arranged to meet up with some friends at an unknown pool bar/night club in town. After grabbing some burgers at the beach, we parked in our secret $3 a night parking spot. We wandered down Courtney Place and into a seriously dodgy alley.

All good nights have a dodgy alley or two in them, don't they?

Following the signs we found Fast Eddies...

It was a pool bar to end all pool bars. None of this "upmarket yuppy pool with cocktails". It was a graffiti'd, sticky floored pool joint. It smelt like uni days. It looked slightly less savoury than the pool bar above Debonaire's and Steers in Rondebosch. The soundtrack was hauntingly similar though...

Misogynistic, profanity laden rap punctuated by weirdly red-neck music. The kind of music that feels good to move to but if you listen to the lyrics you cringe...

I LOVED IT.

The people I was with are, beyond any doubt, awesome. They're fun to hang out with individually and in a group. They're loud, crazy, quiet and insightful. They're also pretty decent at pool. I'm not. But we had fun.

It was a place I would never have found previously. I would never have gone into it. It wouldn't have fitted with the box I'd placed myself in. The wife of a respected high-flyer, mother of one, pretending to have grown up and having it all... But on Friday night, I was there. I was in a new space and I was reminded of who I am. I'm the bad dancer who dances anyway. I'm the bad pool player who gets some lucky shots. I'm the person who will tickle opponents to put them off their game. I'm the girl who runs up to the bar to get pen and paper to write some thoughts down.

But over and above all of that - being  encouraged to graffiti a poem on the wall in the loo and do it by using the vivids hanging from every light fitting was a sense of freedom that I haven't felt in years. Not since the pool bar days with their paper tablecloths...

It's my kind of place. Words are free. And expression should be free too.

Not too bad for a few minutes thinking.