Yes, I know it’s actually Wednesday today, but that’s the rallying cry we’ve developed on our Tuesday nights down at the local for all the peculiarities, snark, and boisterousness that inevitably develops through the course of an evening.

Whether it’s a vigorous re-enactment of Lumiere’s dancing in ‘Be Our Guest’, the addition of farmyard animal noises to accompany a blues song being played by the band, or the teasing of newcomers by trying to explain who everyone is and how they all know each other, we generally use Tuesday nights to blow off steam and let our hair down. Most of the regulars have got used to us, and the landlord hardly flinched when Lady M accidentally knocked a full pint of iced Diet Coke into the ex-Lady M’s lap recently.

To be fair, the usual spiel directed at people asking who we are: “This is my wife, this is my ex-wife, that’s our concubine in chief, and this lass is hanging around because we used to play D&D together and is now dating one of the guys in the band” usually sees people’s jaws dropping, much to everyone’s amusement. There’s a certain air of Saturnalia that can descend on the night, and it makes for wonderful quotes that can be endlessly taken out of context.

I’ve come to cherish these nights out – largely because I’m an antisocial sod at heart who would often rather be curled up with a book, or writing one, or playing on the XBox, or watching Netflix – or various combinations of all of these – than being out and about, but I also recognise that it is a good safety valve, and keeps me from going into some sort of hermit mode which will do my underlying mental health no good at all.

If nothing else, the people watching is good, and the number of dialogue lines and scene kernels I’ve picked up can’t be counted. Now, if I can just resurrect my laptop to retrieve the most recent draft of the book I’ll be well away…