Mrs. Pope: OAP Dancer
I make no bones about my addiction to older women. All my friends know it and often use it to have fun when we are on trips, daring me to pick up the oldest woman they point out. Normally I ignore them because they pick women who are, quite frankly, ancient, but it does provide the odd laugh so it's quite good playing along sometimes. Mrs. Pope was the exception that proves the rule though.
A group of fifteen of my friends had decided to go to Tenby, in West Wales, for one of the lads' stag weekend. Tenby was well known for these occasions and briefly held the top spot in the world as a destination for stag and hen parties. However, Tenby is also well known as a destination for the older generations, a large number of hotels cater for these coach trips and they come from a fair distance away at times. Such was the case for Mrs. Pope's trip, they were all from Wigan and decided on Tenby instead of their usual Blackpool trip. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself.
I decided to make a week of it since I was on my downtime from the rigs and was a bit bored. I booked into the Atlantic Hotel, one of the top hotels overlooking South Beach in Tenby. I had the last room, according to the receptionist, they had been booked up for weeks but had a single cancellation, so I snapped it up. I was looking forward to a week enjoying the walks around the coast and reading, not the most energetic break for a 26-year-old, but it was what I wanted.
On the Sunday afternoon before the stag weekend, I drove down to Tenby and parked up in the carpark behind the hotel. I checked in just before two coaches arrived outside the front door and proceeded to disgorge about 100 OAPs on an autumn trip. The receptionist rolled her eyes at me.
"Good job you got in when you did, this lot will take hours to decide what rooms they all want!" she said and gave me my key. I went up to my room and unpacked, had a wash and changed my shirt then headed down to the hotel bar. I had to carefully pick my way through reception due to the vast number of elderly people trying to move suitcases around while they checked in. I smiled at the receptionist who was looking frazzled already and went into the bar. I got a pint and found a great spot to look over the cliff to the sea below and settled in with a book.
I was well into my second pint when I heard a voice behind me.
"Do you mind if I sit here, it's the best view in the place."
I looked up and saw a slim and elegant woman, well over 60yrs of age to my mind, long straight silver-white hair and dressed in a smart trouser suit outfit. She held a glass of wine and smiled at me when I stood up to offer her a seat.
"Of course, please sit down." I said.
I was going to simply pick up my book again but thought that would be really rude so started to chat with the lady, who's name turned out to be Elaine Pope - a widow of 10 years as she was at great pains to tell me! We chatted for about ten minutes or so before some more of her party turned up and she excused herself to go sit with them. At that point in time, I didn't think anything more of it as Elaine was outside my usual age limit, but I did catch myself looking over at her from time to time and more than once caught her looking back at me and smiling. That night I went into Tenby to meet a family who I knew and had moved to West Wales a few years back, Mrs. Pope went totally out of my mind.
The next day I went down to breakfast fairly early, hoping to miss the hoards of OAPs, but as it turns out, they don't sleep a lot and were already in the restaurant at 7am. The Atlantic was not one of those hotels with a buffet breakfast so every one of the guests had to order breakfasts from the menu on each table. This meant an almost infinite number of breakfast types being ordered and the staff were already being run ragged by tables asking for more tea and coffee. I looked around to see if I could find a spare table but there were people at all of them. It was then I saw a hand waving at me across the room and recognized Mrs. Pope sat with two couples. I was going to turn around and go see if I could find anything in the town but something made me walk over to her table.
"Please join us, John." Elaine said and introduced me to her friends.
"We haven't ordered anything other than tea yet so if you make your mind up quickly, we should get an order in when they bring the pot over." she went on and moved seats so I could sit down without making anyone else move.
Breakfast came and went, the conversation revolving around ordering more tea, where the toilets were, when was the coach coming and when was dinner. Elaine looked over at me constantly, even pouring tea for me when my cup was empty. I must admit it was really nice chatting to her and was a little sad when she got up to leave. There was a day trip organized to St Davids cathedral that she wanted to go on so she left to get changed. I left immediately after as the conversation went back to whether there would be toilets on the coach.
This was the sort of pattern for the next two days as well, breakfast with Elaine and her friends followed by them going on day trips while I went for walks and read books. On the Thursday though, there was a function planned by the hotel, it seems this is something expected by these trips! The theme of this particular party was 'Roaring Twenties' and Mrs. Pope was very excited about it at breakfast.
"I've made myself the perfect 'flapper' dress for tonight!" she said, "I hope you pop your head in at some point to see me in it!"
"Well, I've not got a costume or anything, but I wouldn't miss it for the world, it sounds like you lot are going to have a blast!" I said, at which Elaine beamed a big smile.
That afternoon I did go into Tenby and checked out a couple of charity shops but couldn't find anything remotely suitable so decided just to wear jeans and shirt as normal. Why I tried to get something I don't know, probably Elaine's excitement rubbed off on me. The party was due to start at 8pm but I was going to watch the local rugby club at 7:30pm so wouldn't get back to the hotel until close to 10pm. I didn't expect there to be much going on past then, but I had promised Elaine so wanted to get back.
As it turned out, the Wigan crowd really knew how to party and it was still in full swing when I got back at 10:20pm. There were people everywhere in the hotel, reception was bustling with people going between the bar and the function room and everyone was dressed to the nines. I wandered into the bar and bought a drink before wandering through to the function room to see if I could spot Mrs. Pope before going up to my room.
I walked around the outside of the dancefloor scanning the dancers for Elaine and then saw her in full flow, flapper dress swinging as she gave it everything! I noticed that she had really nice legs because she had the dress just above her knees, plus she had some pretty tall heels on too so they brought out her calf muscles really nicely. I also noticed that she had a nice figure too, slim but there was definitely some curves as well. It may have been the beer I had drunk at the rugby club kicking in but I started to see Mrs. Pope in a very different light.
Elaine saw me staring at her at the end of a dance and she almost ran across to me, beaming smile on her face!
"You finally turned up!" she almost squealed, "I thought you'd stood me up, John!"
"I wouldn't have missed this for the world, Elaine." I said, "You look stunning, by the way!"
"That is very kind of you to say, now, you can buy me a drink to make up for being late!" and she turned around and walked to the bar, swinging her hips quite a bit to make the dress move.
