London Calling

Since Thursday night I have been staying with my Great Aunt Alison, and have been having a fantastic time. On Friday, I just got up late, tidied up some emails and what not, decorated Alison’s minimalist Christmas tree with her, went for a stroll down the street, and did a lot of chatting with Alison. Yesterday I went into London city to purchase some tickets for Andrea, Adam and myself for our trip to Glasgow and I had a nice wander past Buckingham palace to Trafalgar square where I passed a protest about the atrocities in Darfor as well as a march for the annual Santa convention by about 850 people dressed up as Father Christmas. I checked out the massive pine in Trafalgar square which is an annual gift from the city of Oslo to the people of London as a token of their appreciation for their help in WW2, and then I went down into the underground to eat some fruit for lunch as it was too bitingly cold outside. I took my gloves off to eat and layed them on my lap, but as we all know our lap disappears when we stand up, and I did just that to catch the train to Embankment, once I realised this I was already at another station, so it took me five or so minutes to get back to where I had dropped them, but by this time, one of them had vanished – so now my left hand gets a little chilly… But thankfully inside the National history museum was quite warm as that was where I went next, and I had a ball looking at different animals and dinosaurs for a couple of hours. That evening Alison and I went to see the St. Peters singers at the local church, which was quite pleasant, and we then had dinner and sat around chatting until 12:30. So today had another slow start, but after a late breakfast Alison and I started to fix up some lattice in her garden. We then sat about for an hour or so chatting with coffee and biscuits and are now just about to have dinner. I’m really having a super time here, it’s nice and laid back, and I’m learning a great deal about this side of my family, and English culture and history, and celebrities (almost). The man that lives next door composes music for films for a living and he was responsible for the soundtrack to St. Trinians which has just been released here. He is married to a BBC journalist who is often travelling all over the world. Also it seems a little odd when we are talking about celebs in the magazines, and Alison drops in ‘Yes well Perou (her son in law) said that she was actually quite a nice person’ – ha! Also the lady that won the first ‘Strictly come dancing’ (which is just like ‘Dancing with the Stars’ although taken a lot more seriously here) lived just down the street, next to some other guy who gets picked up occasionally by a chauffeur driven Mercedes. It’s all a bit surreal!

England Day 6

In the morning we had our complementary breakfast (cornflakes and toast) and mounted a train to Salisbury, a small town near Stonehenge. Once there we took a £7 return bus ride to the stones and wandered around there for an hour or so. I was told by many people who had been that you couldn’t get close to them and that you had to pay a whole bag full of money just to get within a couple of hundred metres of them, but I came away quite impressed with it, and thought it was well worth the money. There was a small wire (could hardly be called a fence) stopping tourists getting within fifty metres or so of them, and these are some serious rocks, so you get to see plenty of them from that distance. The audio guide that we got was quite useful too, detailing the history of them and possible uses for it. Simon’s theory could still hold true, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if the rocks just accidentally lined up perfectly with the sun at the summer and winter solstices. Apparently back in the day tourists bought hammers from a local store and chipped away little pieces of it to take as souvenirs. Once back in Salisbury Ben and I made the most of our studentrail cards and jumped on a train to London, which just made forking out the £20 for the card worth while. Two or three hours later we were in England’s capital and after finding Victoria coach station settled into a very nice Pizzeria for our final meal and t’was indeed a grand affair, massive garlic bread, pizza and very nice dessert for about £13. Then at the coach station where Ben was heading off to Paris to hang with Celine for a couple of days we did the awkward high five, handshake and man hug all in one and said our goodbyes. It was a bit sad, I’d basically hung out with him everyday for the last two and a half months and we’d had a lot of fun together, but now I’ve got another good mate to visit in the States.

England Day 5

In the morning we wandered around the old Bristol markets and found out that we could not get to Cheddar (that’s right the town of cheese!) and it’s apparently well known gorge on a week day, so we caught a local bus to Bath. Now surely everyone that visits wants to have a bath in Bath, and Ben and I were no different. I’m sure we do appear quite worldly, and proper, being two well to do, travelling University students, but nothing makes us more chipper than some fun words – and the proposition of being able to say ‘we had a bath in Bath’ had us had us foaming at the mouth. But once we had found our way to the hostel by sneakily following another backpacker that was on the bus with us, we discovered that our bathing dreams might not be fulfilled. Apparently people are not allowed to swim in the 800 year old Roman baths, and if you want to experience the goodness and healing properties of Bath water you need to go to a new Bath Spa centre around the corner which costs £20 for two hours and it is all modern and icky. So we passed on the modern dip and instead had a lovely combined tour of the Fashion museum, and Roman Baths.
Apparently back in the day, the Romans would have a work out in a heated room, then have a slave scrap the perspiration and crud from off their bodies with a with a metal scraper, before having a massage and then having a paddle in the steaming hot baths. Now I certainly would have paid £20 for that sort of treatment. Come here my little Roman slave! We also got a glassful of the fabled Bath water, which tasted like normal bath water – but we knocked it back. So from Italians from long ago having fun with heat, Ben and I then tried Italians having fun with the cold – Gelato! (Beat that Anna Coren!) Once our mega super bowl of fantastic chilly goodness was consumed, we bought some pasta, sauce and cheese, whipped it up in the hostel, and went to see the film ‘American Gangster’ starring our mate Rusty and Denzel Washington. This cinema was quite different to Aberystwyth’s being really big and modern, and we were assigned seats. The film was fantastic, rough and brutal, but very well done, quite engaging. That night I had a shower in the hostel – it was cold and not fun, would have preferred a bath.

Wales to England Day 4

After a lovely long sleep and some breakfast, Mrs Cooper drove us down to the coast about a mile away, once it had thoroughly been discussed which was the best way for us to walk. The fact that we didn’t have any proper outdoor boots seemed to worry Mrs Cooper and her neighbour a fair bit, and I felt a little on display with them looking at my little purple booties and tutting. But I wasn’t going to pretend like I was a mud and off-road master and know all there is to know, yet I did turn down the offer of wearing some Wellies. Once at the shore we walked along a small goat track which apparently stretches for 180 miles along the southern Welsh coastline – I’d love to do it all one day. It was really beautiful, and the day was fantastic, some cloud but mainly sunny and not very windy weather. We walked for about twenty minutes along the top of the cliffs and then came across a beach that didn’t have any footsteps on it, so we descended into it via some steep steps. Then took our sweet time making our way across it climbing up and along the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff, having a great laugh. Every now and then our peaceful explorations were interrupted by a loud whoosh and bang that came from the headland a little further along, so once we raced each other up the steps we sat down and watched two or three metre long planes being launched from what was apparently an army training base. We then ambled back to the house, had a nice lunch of cheese lettuce, and beetroot chutney sandwiches and got a lift into Tenby with Jo, where we looked around a monks shop, the old castle and then caught a train to Bristle.

By the time our train arrived at Bristle it was ten or eleven o’clock, and having not booked anywhere to stay we were keen to find a hostel. The first one was right on the river in a prime position, but cost £21 so we went in search of another, which was easy enough to find with the instructions given from the Kiwi at the first hostel. On the way we took some pics of a lovely church and then crossed a bridge that opens and closes to let big ships through, I pointed this out to Ben just as we had crossed it and while he was looking back he walked straight into a pole. I saw the whole thing happening and assumed he was doing it for a joke, so when he hit his head on the pole and fell over backwards I played it up really big for the man that was walking behind us. Ben got up, we had a laugh and walked about fifty metres before he realised that he didn’t have his camera on him. It wasn’t where he had fallen over, and the man behind us had walked off so it looked ominous. Ben ran back further and found a group of men in a circle looking at all his pics on his camera, it must have just fallen out of his pocket after he took it out at the church. So he said thanks, got a photo with them all, and we headed onto find this hostel. Thirty minutes and £14 later we had ourselves a place to sleep and were in search of some cheap food for the night, of which a greasy late night fast food place looked to be the most promising. Now Ben and I don’t rush into big decisions like this head on, so we compared prices from several places to find the best value for money. When we were walking back from a cheap curry place an older man approached us and said

‘Excuse me, I know 1200 poems and recite them for people and was wondering if I could tell you one in exchange for some money to buy myself dinner tonight’

So we got talking to him, and he told us about how he had just found out that week that he was actually a Grandfather, and how even though he was now fifty it only felt like a couple of weeks ago he was in his teens. He has dyslexia (must be something in the Welsh water) and has memorised over thirty six hours of poetry – he knows this because he did a charity poetry recital where he recited for 34 hours straight before collapsing. Upon our request he told us two poems about watching his lover pass him everyday by a pond and another about the pointlessness of war. He has written over a hundred himself and after eight years has secured a contract with Penguin, and a book compiling all of his poetry will be published in the next few months. According to him he is on Youtube and there is fan club on the internet as well as a following at the local University. He writes under the pseudonym Bear, but he told us his real name too – which I am not at liberty to tell.

Wales day 3

The next morning Celine caught a train back to Leeds and Ben and I headed on our way to a place near Tenby in Southern Wales to stay with the parents of Christine, a girl that we had briefly met at Swing dancing lessons. We started out with a cheap and nutritious breakfast from Summerfield’s of Apple turnovers, glazed raspberry rolls and orange juice and then boarded a bus to Aberareon. Our initial plans were to take an eight hour train trip back into Enlgand to Tenby, as this was the only available option on the internet, but Nia suggested just using local busses which proved to be twice as quick and cheap. It also provided us with what would have to be the most picturesque bus ride I have ever taken, with farmland on one side of the bus meeting jagged cliffs on the other going down to the sea. We stopped for an hour in Aberareon because Ben found out in his book of Great Britain that it is home to a world famous ice-creamery, however as it turns out it was only open in summer, so had to be satisfied with a walk around the dock and through the main street. From Aberareon we travelled to Carmantheon and then to Tenby, where I called Jo, Christine’s sister to tell them that we would arrive soon. As we had a one hour wait for the next bus we decided to check out the village, starting with the tourist information centre. The lady there seemed very excited to speak to us, but said there wasn’t much to see in Tenby during winter. She was wrong though. Just through the centre of town we walked onto a beach that would still be called beautiful if it were on the east coast of Australia. It was wide and sandy (no stones) and met a blue sea with proper waves. Firstly our attention was grabbed by the fort that was built on a small island just off the shore, but then Ben spotted something even cooler – caves! So for the next half hour or so we climbed in and around the caves in the rock face looking over the beach, and as a result missed our bus by less than a minute, so we spent another hour exploring the town centre and examining railway times for the following day. After we caught our bus, armed with rudimentary directions from Christina, we managed to find the right house, and were greeted with some tea by Jo, who told us that she and her Dad and some friends were going to have a Welsh folk music jam session tonight at a pub and that we were most welcome to join them if we wished. She then served up some fantastic vegetarian curry when family friends Gwilian and Claudia arrived who are 60 or 70 year old leading Welsh landscape and still life painters. Since we found out that Chicken Tika misala is England’s favourite dish during the intro week pop quiz Ben and I have been wanting to have some curry here, and this certainly did not let us down, it was beaut.
Jo studied folk music at Newcastle university and plays the fiddle and banjo. One of her fiddle friends picked us up and we all drove to Carmantheon via some narrow twisty roads with built up hedges on either side. Once there we entered an old pub and joined a circle of people sitting around some tables with various instruments such as drums, guitars, mandolins and a harp. We were then introduced to Mr Cooper, Christine’s Dad who bought us a drink as well as a fifty or sixty year old lad who I was sitting next to called Simon Hedger. Simon has lived in a nearby valley for 25 years paying rent from a farmer by working one day a week for him, the other days of the week he spends carving things out of wood, with chainsaws. Later on this year he is going to the world championships for it. When he is not carving, he is writing songs to go to the music that the people in the group perform, each telling stories of Welsh history, such as ‘the last coal mine in Wales’. He has written over twenty, and has them all memorised and none of them written down as he has dyslexia. When everyone was playing he would start singing in his deep raspy voice and we would all join in for the choruses. Towards the end of the night, he told a story to the light accompaniment of a mandolin and harp, all about the ancient family of man and how they survived. This later lead him into telling me and Ben about his theory on Stonehenge, that it is actually an ancient animal trap. After a solid couple of hours of music we travelled back with Mr Cooper, and went to bed upstairs in the great big house in beds in Christine’s old room nicely warmed up with electric blankets.

Wales day 2

[Spoiler alert: This blog entry ends with your protagonist being fed a two-minute noodle sandwich by a naked dreadlocked, nipple pierced man]

The next morning after a very solid sleep we walked down the beach in the centre of Aberystwyth. The town is meant to be a very popular place during the summer because of the beach, but it was quite pretty now, just in a different, more chilly way. We looked at the (almost compulsory) castle and then ducked into a pub/restaurant for some breakfast/lunch as it started to rain. After filling our hungry bellies we wandered up the top of the hill and lookout near Nia’s place. There was a pretty steep old track leading up and once there we found some really odd touristy stuff like a Frisbee golf course, children’s play equipment, and restaurant. From the top of the hill we got a fantastic view of the bay and town, rolling hills meeting the rough sea at steep cliffs. We also experienced the mightiest winds I have ever encountered and had a ball holding our jackets out and leaning right into them, until it started to rain again and the raindrops stung like needles. So we turned our backs on the wind and walked another path down the hill. On the way back we passed a couple of the millions of sheep in Wales that still had their tails on. That afternoon we chilled out with Nia and her American boyfriend Vince and talked about all aspects of Whale milk. After darkness had set in Ben, Celine and I went to a quaint little cinema to see the film ‘the Golden Compass’. What made the cinema so odd was that it had the opening time for the cinema, when the previews started, then when the film started and ended. After the previews there was a small intermission and a little sweets bar opened up near the screen. Once we were back in the house we ate pasta for dinner and yoghurt and peaches for dessert. To finish off the cheese that we bought, Ben and I ate a sizable chunk with our pasta, which prompted Vince to comment that eating a chunk of cheese is best done in the buff. I asked if he had a dress code for all sorts of food, but he just said that easy to make bad food is naked food. Nia and Vince met in the Czech republic at a Ska concert and hitched around together for a while. While they were in Barcelona Vince spent a whole night going from bar to bar completely naked, because there is no legal rule against it, and now they are married. Vince married them. He is an ordained minister, of the Universe. Apparently just like the guy who wrote ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ he signed up with some organisation to make up his own church which means he can legally wed people in America. So I’m not actually sure if they are legally married in the UK, I don’t think Nia is either – I don’t think it bothers her, she’s pretty easy going. When we were having our yogurt she leant us some of her honey and explained that it came from her farm,
Justin: ‘Oh, you lived on a bee farm did you?’
Vince: ‘Yeah she did, until she got bitten on the vagina!’
(General laughs)
‘Oh Vince’ we thought ‘trust him to say a joke as silly as that!’
Nia: ‘You don’t have to tell everyone that story!’
Hee hee hee, so she told us the story of how it happened, it was pretty amusing, not the sort of thing you expect to hear from someone that you only just met.
Vince then decided to make some two-minute noodles and toast, and I suggested that he should have them together like a sandwich, two good things put together are never going to be bad are they? I then questioned whether he thought that a two-minute noodle sandwich would be classed as naked food or not, to which he replied by taking off all his clothes despite there being myself and four other people in the room. He then offered me some of his sandwich – which as I had suspected tasted fantastic!

Wales day 1

On Friday night I went to the Erasmus fairwell party at the Packhorse pub and hung out with lots of my international buddies and ate the yummy free food. I also met up with Steph who I have danced with several times at Salsa and Swing and had a good natter to her and her mate for close to an hour. She is from a place between London and Oxford and has a fantastically posh sounding accent, but she says she the specific area she is from is not that high brow. I left the pub at about 12:30 and woke up six hours later ready to catch a train to Conwy in Wales with Ben and Celine. For the first hour train ride we all slept or tried to, then marvelled at the sweet Welsh country side, all different shades of green and rolling hills and meadows. After boarding another train we had to tell the conductor that we wanted to get off at Conwy, which we did.

The station was very small, and with the directions (which we didn’t even ask for) from a lady who also got off the train we headed for the tourist information centre. After about a minute of being outside we were all freezing, the wind was quite nasty. We took shelter in a little café and then walked down to the harbour where I went into the bathroom and put on an extra pair of pants, another jacket and worked out that I could wrap my scarf over the top of my head as well as my neck to keep my ears warm. Fully clothed up we walked on top of the wall that surrounds the town and then ambled through the castle as the rain started to sprinkle down.

As the sun set we went into a local bakery and ordered some Welsh Oggies which are large pasties filled with beef, gravy, leeks and potatoes. Bridgette the owner of the shop let us stay inside and eat even though they were closing and cleaning up, according to her assistant she was only doing this because she fancied me because I was an Aussie. After our meal we fancied checking out a local pub and only had to walk 100 metres before we found one. Once inside we were greeted by a very smiley chap who introduced himself as David, and we ordered our drinks – apparently it is not common to have coffee in a pub… We sat down by the open fire near David, so I asked him ‘So David, what do you do around here?’ ‘What?’ he replied ‘You don’t go asking people that! What would you say if I asked you what you do?’ ‘Err, I’m a student’. There was a bit of an awkward pause and then some of the other people in the bar started talking to us. When I was talking to the lady who owned the bar, David pulled me aside saying he wanted a hand with something, so I went with him into the next room and chose some songs on the juke box which he paid for. After a while of listening to the Eagles and Belle and Sebastion, I thought I’d try and strike up a conversation with Dave again and tried to continue on the conversation we were having with the other people in the bar, ‘So Dave, have you done much travelling?’, he looked at me and put one finger on the table, then slowly moved it about 12 inches (imperial – keeping it authentic) along the table, then he spat out ‘Don’t ask me that, ask your F***ing self!’ then turned around. Brilliant, we thought – cool Welsh locals!

But that was only the start of the craziness that we were to experience, as we were now heading to Aberystwyth a town of 13000, of which 7000 are students on the western coast of Wales. Just the night before I had texted Nia, a girl I had found on Couchsurfing.com to see if we could stay with her for a couple of nights, and she had agreed. So after two train trips and about 4 hours of playing ‘What am I?’ and other similar games we arrived in Aber and were met by some of Nia’s mates, one of which had just gotten back from Taiwan after staring in the film ‘September Winds’ there as the lead role. On the way back they bought some Fosters (which heaps of Poms drink) and we got some Fizzy drink and then walked to Nia’s place. It was a biggish flat overlooking the beach, and we all sat around chatting (and them drinking and smoking like chimneys) until one or two. We slept in the living room, Ben and Celine on a double lie low and me on the couch.

Dinner @ 7 Spices 4 2

Finally i was able to get rid of the advertising, i traded it with the manager of the 7 spices resturant that already advertises with the paper. I wanted to get the other place that offered me a dinner for four because that would bring in a new customer for the paper, but they bailed on me. I only asked this man for a dinner for two as i was getting pretty desperate - seeing as the comp ends today. And i think the dinner for two will be plentiful, as i'm planning on trading it with a nice couple that own an antiques store. Thats what i'll get stuck into later on today.

Last night i went to Gaghole the comedy night, and it was by far the funniest one yet, all the comedians were a hoot - worth the £5. Tonight Ben and i are going to a Swing social, so before hand we are meeting up to brainstorm some dancing ideas so we don't freeze out on the floor, if all goes well it should be a good night. After that we might do a little more planning on our Wales trip. It is a little hard as the places we are going are all so tiny, but we have all but lined up accommodation for free at two or three different places, so that is a bonus. Means we can hang with some locals too.

It's the last week of Uni now and we had the last philosophy/ethics proctorial. It was relaxed and fun, and afterwards we went out to the old bar with our proctor, he's a nice chap. I started talking to one of the lads from the class and mentioned going to Israel, turns out he was born there and visits all the time, so we had a good chat about that.

>>>------------------>

I woke up feeling fantastic today, with the sound of the rain dripping onto my skylight in my ears and the prospect of a day experiencing Robin Hoods stomping ground ahead of me! And sure enough after a rather damp walk to the bus station and two and a half hours on a bus we were in Nottingham. Ben, Celine and I hit up the Robin Hood centre and felt cool wearing the awesome hat and posing with Robin Hood paraphenalia. We then went to Englands oldest Inn for lunch which looked like a cave inside. The food was great, and reasnobly priced too. I got beef and gravy wrapped in a big yorkshire pudding - nice! Then onto the castle and there was an exhibition on the latest Robin Hood tv show with lots of costumes and props from the show, good fun! Here are a couple of pics from the day

"There you go my darlings"

Wow - dinner at Agostina's place was fantastic! We had Bread and something Tuna-ish, pasta with a fantastic meaty sauce, chicken and bell peppers, fruit salad and chocolate cake and Italian coffee. Very very nice!

Today Ben and i went in search of a Frisbee golf course that is meant to be in Harrogate, a nearby town. We walked for about two kilometres out of the town to where it should be but didn't find it. We did find a nice country pub and had lunch there. It was fantastic, just like the ones on the bbc dramas that we watch on tele - lots of pokey rooms and the lady behind the bar called us love and said "there you go my darlings" when she put the food on the table for us - orrrhhh! This town Harrogate must be really high brow, because there were so many expensive cars there - also the well renowned cafe and bakery Betty's had some very steep prices, but in all fairness, a very nice lemon and lime tea cake.

I realised last night that my £300 advertising sace has rapidly lost alot of value, because the last paper for the year went out on Friday, so the soonest that their ad will run will be next year... I think i will try going to the couple of businesses that have already run ads as at least i know they are actually keen on it. It can get a bit disheartening getting turned down all the time. I've got until tuesday to get rid of it, the dinner for four that i was previously offered is looking tempting...