Yesterday I found myself wandering through Birmingham International station. I was supposed to be meeting Ali and as I wandered through the station I suddenly realised that it was close to three years since I met Ali. What's more, Birmingham International was the site of our completely random meeting. Random being the operative word. About two weeks later, I managed to ring Ali at the exact moment she was walking into her room at uni for the first time. About a month later, I went to York and made her make me a welcome banner; that may have been the time we got lost in York too. The three years have been pretty random - they saw us wandering down the street in York carrying a vacuum cleaner, deciding that the suitcase trolleys at the station were fun to play on as long as we didn't get arrested and seeing exactly how many people we could fit into Ali's room at uni. Then there were the numerous road trips, including my birthday one where Ali tried to dance to Steps whilst driving down the motorway. If I've learnt one thing in these three years, it's that if Ali is picking you up, don't count on her being on time. I know this from the numerous waits at York station. So as I emerged from the station, I wasn't too surprised that Ali wasn't there. I contented myself watching the planes take off - I love watching planes, it's being on them I hate. Oh and some weird guy with a t-shirt saying 'You love us', which confused me a lot. I love who? Him? His t-shirt? Who's us? There was only one of him.

Eventually Ali arrived, waving manically. And when we got back to hers I finally got to meet Karl!



And see Rhea again.


For lunch, we went to a pretty pub by the canal and mused about how fun it would be to go on a barge, and how long it would then take us to get bored.


We also debated the merits of the playground with it's slide and fireman's pole but eventually, alas, had to walk away without playing on it. We decided that a pub lunch wasn't enough and we needed dessert in the form of ice cream. We drove to a little store and got ice cream and Ali suggested that we could wander down by the canal and eat our ice cream. "We'll park the car here and just wander up there to the footpath that leads to the canal", she said. We wandered up the road and came to a gate. It was locked. "We'll just go to the other gate and go down that way." I followed her over the bridge. Halfway over I stopped to look over the wall and down to the canal. "Erm, Ali? That's not a canal."


I burst out laughing and Ali joined me. "I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said there used to be one there?" Eventually we ate our ice creams in the car and drove back to Ali's house, where her mum informed us that if we'd walked the other way down the road, we'd have found the footpath to the actual canal. As if this didn't prove that trips with Ali are always bloody random, I later found myself sitting in a [closed] garden centre carpark at seven o'clock at night, eating fish and chips and admiring their log cabins.