13 July - Convents 'R Us

We arrived at the priory of our lady! And it’s still light and we’re delighted by the view. It’ a large Georgian house with a sort of 70’s Nordic looking convent attaché, all functional wooden beams and low buildings, but it may as well have been a university mini campus or any of those places that contain people in a small room each and gathering in a larger one to eat, read, pray, do laundry oh and meditate whilst staring ahead to the large grounds, the bridle path, the duck pond, the deer, the herb garden and so on.

During the tour Toph tries the organ in the chapel, he can’t play but makes pretty sounds by holding the notes for a while. I’m tempted by the bells but it could be mistaken by an SOS and it’s best not to attract attention. I skip around spotting locations for porn video filming but that would get my friend (one of the guardians of the property) in trouble. There is however much banter on our part about nuns and their habits etc. D. is a ex convent girl which is probably why she sports lovely little tattoos on her ankles…the rebel! And pretty young homeopath L. has come out for the w/end too and she’s always a laugh in these matters.

The remaining few old nuns who have been re-housed recently - and how sad that every bathroom and shower cubicle has those elderly adjustable seats... very sobering old age - have however left the library behind! Maybe now they read their books on computer? There’s shelves of books on the lives of St Theresa and St Francis and so on, many in French and German but also DH Lawrence and a few other surely more suspicious and possibly forbidden texts! We’re all tempted to purloin a few but… leave them for now. We will be back. Am sure the new owners (planning a school for children with disabilities) will not need this kind of library.

We have drink and end up discussing knife crime (this year’s paedophile headlines? Remember how the tabs were all about paedos and before then football hooligans and before then.. whatever becomes the sole thing they can write about) and then go to bed in our little cell where D. has pushed together two single beds for us ahhhh… Wish could wake up and discover we’re in at top spa! It’s been a long day what with starting off at 8 to go to the wedding.

I wake up and Toph says in my ear ‘Mmmhh my little nun’ and he’s got a raging hard on. Somewhere in the night, my talk of misbehaving brides of Christ has given him some ideas. That’s extra good! Especially as D. had told us that with so many cells to chose from she’d put us all alone in a wing, determined as she was that sex would take place on the premises. Maybe it already had, builders have been here after all and a few local kids, but hey… she likes it this way. Clearly, my fat stomach is only a problem to myself for now. ‘Mmmhh, my visiting excellency the cardinal from Rome’ Here we go.