Today we had visitors, our friends Phil & Viv have just moved back to the UK after spending some years working abroad with the Baptist Missionary Society.
We know them from Gloucestershire where Phil was minister of the church we attended in Wotton-under-Edge.
It was great to catch up with each other’s family news and hear about mutual friends too. After predominately speaking French for the last few years Viv confessed to now getting stuck for English words sometimes, especially the technical ones you need for arranging mobile phone contracts and the like.
As it happens, Phil was born and bred in Leigh and was able to point out his secondary school, the factory where his dad had worked and the pithead gear of Bickershaw (?) Colliery as they cruised with us in the glorious sunshine down to Worsley. (Pronounced Worse-lea rather than Worzley, he assures me)
At Worsley we enjoyed lunch together at The Barton Inn along with some proper Lancashire ale, although the ladies succumbed to some raspberry flavoured Belgian cider. Afterwards we returned to the boat for coffee and more chat before seeing them onto a bus to take them back to Leigh to re-unite them with their car.