Post 235: Bank Holidays aren't the same

Bank Holidays used to be a time of great excitement, a three day weekend with Monday a recovery day. It was a fantastic opportunity to spend time with friends, laughing and larging it – these days, that is what everyone else is doing and I am left at home to read the never-ending facebook updates and pore over pictures of friends having a laugh. I hate myself for feeling like this, I am rubbish on my own. This is the double edged sword of facebook, it's nice to be able to chat to people but it isn't so nice finding your ex-girlfriends wedding photos or pictures of people you know living it up when you want to be there.
Let me get this straight, I never begrudge anyone a good time, indeed I think it's peoples duty to have a good time, you never know if you're going to be hit by a bus or have a stroke. This particular weekend is SW4, an event I have been to twice as an ablebodied person, to the first one in 2004 (I think it was) and then in 2005 (I actually took this photo) and once in a wheelchair (in 2008) the people I'd go with are not around this year plus the person who drove me home two years ago is sadly no longer with us, poor lady dying of a heart attack, nothing is as simple as that first year I went to it where I simply walked there and back from my flat in Brixton and we were even able to swing by the official afterparty at the Telegraph on Brixton Hill where we'd heard Sasha (who headlined the main event spectacularly) was going to do an extra special surprise secret set. Of course he never did but we had a great time seeing Rocky from Xpress 2 and some unknown DJ belt out some of the grimiest funky Techno I've ever heard – apparently it could have been Billy Nasty. I do remember it being dangerously hot in the Telegraph. Whatever, all this partying and still a day to recover – it didn't get much better.
Nowadays, all I have are memories, going in a wheelchair in 2008 to SW4 was little more than proving a point, it was nice to see a lot of my friends I'd spent my first SW4 with but the same feeling is not there. It was the most exhausting day (post 66) Wearing shorts and being able to dance outside in the sun and open air and walking home from a music festival – not having to suffer the long journey home with a bunch of Zombies who can barely speak, feeling so relaxed that you feel weightless, a feeling I've only ever achieved on holiday in Ibiza. These are all just memories I'll never relive. And this is what I've been remembering this bank holiday, I wish memories could make you happy, but they can't, only happiness in the moment can make you happy. I can remember the pain of breaking my arm, but I can't feel it, this is why to feel anything we must live in the moment and engage that right brain. I wish I could do that.
The only slightly mitigating factor has been that the new kittens, brother and sister Ham and Cheese are now roaming the house. The sound of their charging around, playing is quite Mellifluous. They are gradually getting used to humans. My existing cat, Pickle – who we'd expected to stamp her authority on the place is terrified. I'm no pet psychologist.