tale of two odysseys

it was a bit of a mini adventure with things going disastrously wrong due to lack of foresight and forward planning.  setting out from aberdare, i picked my friend up at abercynon, before getting the train towards merthyr. now in an ideal world, the seats in aberdare wouldn't have sold out and we'd have gotten to see the movie, grabbed a meal afterwards and been home in record time.

however, the cine at aberdare had sold out, we had to explore alternatives and with vue merthyr being a big hecking cineplex titan in comparison, we figured there would be significantly greater odds and that the sun gods would smile in our favour.  the way i saw it, it was a complete no brainer.

but whaddya know?  fully booked there too.

then my friend turns and says, "half hols ain't it?"

THANKS DICKHEAD THAT'S REALLY HELPING

so 4pm-ish, we're in spoons having food while i look for another solution which didn't involve going to cardiff.  mainly because fri night in cardiff during summer hols would've been far too hectic.  managed to find a small glimmer of hope - an independent cine in brecon had availability.  this meant getting a bus up there but that's fine.  i call them up, make the booking, all is well in the universe, right?

we get there for the 7pm viewing, and the clerk can't find any record of the booking, despite it being made less than three hours ago and me showing my bank transactions.  20 mins after the film has started, they managed to find a booking, but with no name attached to it and said they couldn't prove it was me.  but they were nice, giving us the benefit of doubt since there were seats available, and said if anyone came in to claim them, we'd have to dip.

EVEN THOUGH THAT BOOKING WAS OBVZ ME AAAAAAAA

anyway, we got to watch (most) of the movie, which btw was absolutely fantastic, a superb all round cinema epic and the best summer movie of the year without a shred of doubt.  then 10pm rolls around, there are no buses back towards merthyr and we're effectively stranded, like odysseus cast away onto calypso's island.  how the actual fuck will we return to ithaca now???  of course, there's a perfectly good solution to problems like these:

three hours and two pubs later, we're scrambling through the country lanes with a bottle of cider and some snacks.  there was some drunk zigzagging, a heap of cursing the moon for not providing adequate light and majestically falling head over arse into every single bush or hedgerow we managed to pass (which in them country lanes, is a lot).

but many hours later, through all our trials and tribulations, we managed to make it safely back to merthyr, and when i caught a sniff of greggs being carried by the morning winds, it felt exactly like odysseus finally returning to the welcoming arms of his beloved penelope.  

that's if penelope was a bacon and sausage baguette 

with caramel latte and hash browns on the side 

ty for read xoxo