Somewhere Near Belfast, Northern Ireland
We arrived at their house. It wasn’t exactly a house, more of a small mansion. It didn’t have an address. It was a really pretty port town, with a big, white house that you would pick out as long as your eyes were open. This was their house. Packages addressed there were addressed to:
The Big White House
Town I don’t remember
Region I’m not sure was Belfast anymore
Northern Ireland
The house was owned by Reggie and his late wife. It had many rooms, and she used to rent them out to visitors, as sort of a proper B&B. They were very, very good hosts, fed me well, And then we proceeded to get proper Northern Irish drunk on Northern Irish whiskey and sat around telling stories all night. The best story was Reggie’s side of our first encounter.
Reggie: I was sitting in my car, listening to peaceful classical music, when a motorcyclist pulls into the spot next to me and crashes into the sheep fence. They took off their helmet and I noticed their long hair, and thought, “Oh god, it’s a girl”, then he turned around and I thought, “Oh no, it’s a German guy. A drunk german guy.” and said to himself please don’t have this person come to my car and knock on my window
Reggie and I spent a lot of time that night bonding over classical music, and some other things. He let me stay over in one of the rooms. By the time I left, we felt kindred spirits.