Saturday 9 November 2013

#46 Sarah

On Wednesday night, my cousin was in the city so we went out for some food. The cousins on my mother's side used to live in Bristol until they were about ten years old. My uncle Pete, a hard-working Liverpudlian, made his way up the ranks of the supermarket Gateway (which then became Somerfield before merging into Co-op) and accepted a job offer at Rebel Sport in New Zealand, at which point the family moved half way around the globe. They visit regularly enough to still be the cousins that I see the most.

Last year, Sarah had been having a really bad time with some of the people with whom she was living and decided she needed to get away. She left the house, worked out her notice at work, stayed in a hotel for a short period of time and made a plan for her next move. She had a friend that had worked on large ships in the Middle East and decided to follow suit by heading out to the Persian Gulf and working on a super yacht for a royal family. 

Despite the long hours and periods spent at sea, Sarah got to meet some F1 drivers and eat lavish food. During one spell of shore leave, she found a kitten in a dumpster and befriended it. Near the end of her travels, rather than put her friend back in the bin, she mailed it to New Zealand at a cost of several thousand dollars and it's now kept as a pet by one of her friends at home.

We met a a Vietnamese place called Tay Do, north of Shoreditch High St. Chilled out, bring your own drinks, with huge portions, which none of the six of us came close to finishing. The others at the table were a collection of people that she'd met at various points in her life, who happened to be in London at the time. After hearing most of the stories and finishing most of the food, we stumbled out, said goodnight and I made my way back south of the river.

1 comment

Running on empty said...

Wow, several thousand dollars!