Archive for April, 1998

One month ago I arrived in this country. Today, I’m actually setting out to explore it on my own.

We’re pulling out of the bus station in Bristol. The driver just announced that we ought to fasten our seat belts, but I don’t see any. None of the other passengers seem worried. There aren’t very many on this bus, so I get two seats and a window to myself. The coach from Gillingham to Bristol was pretty full. I sat next to a little old man. I hope he didn’t mind.

I wonder if increased violence in today’s society will be linked to growth hormones in meat.

Anne Marie packed me a lunch, including a Granny Smith apple from France. It was small, not too tart. Before I left she begged me to eat. “I know you don’t like to spend money on food, but if you don’t, you’ll STARVE!” I gave her a look to which she replied, “I know, I know, I’m a parent. I can’t help it.”

Toilets are another thing this miser doesn’t like spending money for. I got off the bus in Bristol to find a line (queue) outside the restrooms while people paid 10p to go through a turnstyle. I decided to wait till I got on the bus, so I got in line at bay #1. There was nearly a half hour to kill before my next coach departed, so I sat on my pack and started eating my sandwich and drinking orange squash. I love that stuff. Taste like Tang.

Soon my coach arrived, the sign in the front window reading “CAMBRIDGE.” A few people got on, but then the driver stood idly by the door and no one else in the line moved. Eventually, another bus pulled up and everyone started toward it. I made my way through the mob and got on MY bus, happily not very full.

I’m sure we’ll pick up some more passengers along the way. After all, we’re driving from one side of England to the other. This bus stops in Oxford. I find that very amusing–I have to go through one university town to get to the other.

I suppose I should be panicking, uptight, or at least a little more concerned about where I’m going and what I”m doing next. But I’m unnervingly calm.

Maybe it’s because I did get to sue the bathroom (loo) once I got on board. It was stuff and smelly and smaller than a porta-john. But it was free. And I didn’t have to listen to easy listening version of the Beatles.
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We’re in Oxford now. I was going to venture into the onboard lavatory once again (and this time flush, which I didn’t know how to before). But when the bus driver found out I was going to Cambridge, he told me to go get a cup of tea while he checked with another bus driver, who was leaving earlier and getting there sooner. I didn’t particularly need or want a cup of tea, even though the English seem to think I must, but I went anyway to see if I could find a restroom. I’d walked all the way through the tea shop when the bus driver came running after me, saying driver of the other bus was back from his break. “Com wif me, love. That’s right. You’ve got your pass, haven’t you, darling? Well, get your luggage, come on then; I’ve got your bag. Pull hard on the door. There you are…”

I collected my jacket and things from my seat while he got my bag from the luggage compartment underneath, and we went over to the next bus whose driver was collecting fares from students going home for the weekend. I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled out my coach trail pass marked with the number of days I’ve traveled and my seat booking ticket. “You don’t need that, love,” my driver gestured at the booking ticket, “Put that in your pocket.” I nodded by my hands were full. “Put that way, put that in your pocket,: he kept saying as I tried to rearranged my belongings so I’d have a hand free to obey him. He boarded the new bus behind me, still holding my bag. I don’t think anyone understood the conversation that followed between the two bus drivers, least of all me, as my pass was handed around among the three of us about five times. I think driver #1 was trying to explain that I’d already paid for my ticket while driver #2 was saying he needed something to vouch for my presence. “Nevermind,” driver one stormed off the bus.”

“Nevermind,” driver two gestured for me to find a seat on his bus. I figured I better go with the man who held my bag.

Sorry ’bout that,” he said, placing it back in the compartment below. “We’re the same company, you see? Now go get a cuppa tea. You can bring it back on the bus.”

Instead, I ducked into the next store and bought some stamps. Then I found the toilets, free this time. I guess they figure they won’t be getting much out of students. I guess they make up for it by using waxed paper for toilet rolls.

We’re heading ever east through fields of lams and brilliantly yellow rapeseed flowers. Down near Oxford there was a lot of flooding in the low lying areas, nothing serious, just rivers and creeks overflowing their banks.
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“Shit, you would ask, and I don’t know! exclaimed the driver when we got to Cambridge, “That looks like a local, you could ask her…”

“Are you going to the youth hostel?” asked one of the two other guys on my bus. I think it’s the same one who turned around and looked at me when I was talking to myself sitting in the back practicing different British accents, ’cause I was bored. My new companion and I asked the driver of another bus that drove up and then walked to a stop around the corner and down the street.

“Uh, the last bus comes by here at… 6:45.” So we walked, asking directions from passers by. Well, Paul asked, and I followed him. He asked me the usual questions, where you from, how long you here. “I’m gonna guess you’re from the Northwest,” I said after listening to his accent. He is, California, north of San Francisco, where he says he’s pent all of his 24 years.

After walking the 20 minute trek to the train station,m I think we took a roundabout route, the YHA sign appeared. A chick with a silver stud in her chin signed us in. I purchased a guide to Youth Hostels in Europe as well as paying for my bed. I’m in a room with 7 other people, I think. I’m actually down in the lounge right now, listening to Drop Zone playing in the corner and looking up during my favorite parts. Paul is sitting in the next overstuffed chair writing post cards from what I can tell, since he keeps licking stamps. He’s been over here for two weeks now, starting in Ireland. “I’m trying to decide to go to Spain or France,” he said on our hike here.

“Spain is warmer.”

“I know! he laughed, “but everyone says I have to see France.”

“Eh, see it on the way.” I asked what I should see in Ireland. He gave me the names of a couple hostels on the Western coast.

I guess I’ll forego my favorite scene in Drop Zone and head for bed. I’m pretty bushed and I’ve got a big day of sight seeing tomorrow.

We’re still in Wales, but barely. The mountains have been replaced by much gentler hills, the grouse by green fields. There are still sheep grazing, but their pastures adjoin ones holding black and white cows. Perhaps, most taletelling, the rain has stopped and the sun even came out.

We’re on the M something, so the road is much straighter as well, which is why I can write. The only straight roads in England and Wales are either the M highways or the paths of ancient Roman roads. All the rest wind around like cattle paths. When the weather is overcast, I completely lose my sense of direction unless I pull out a map.

Another sign we’re still physically in Wales is the road signs printed in both English and Welsh. The language seems made up of L’s and Y’s and W’s, or pairs of those, and ending in “au.” Some of the people in the fish and chip shop where we ate last night were speaking this consonantal language. Francis flipped through the channels on Rebekah’s boombox this morning and found a station playing country music in Welsh. It’s a language older than the Roman roads built across this land built to subdue a country that would remain independent for centuries, even after the rest of England was unified under one ruler. Passing through its valleys surrounded by mountains of rock, one can see why this land was so hard to invade or why no one would want to invade it. It’s a stark land, beautiful but not much good for anything except raising sheep. And tourism.

Maybe it’s appropriate I’m watching Air Force One for the third time, especially having just seen it again this last weekend. It’s a good movie but not that good, which is why I’m journaling instead of watching Harrison Ford with full attention.

Charlotte and Helen and “Beks” are in the kitchen serving up pasta.

And good pasta it was, especially after only having a cheese and tomahto sandwich today that I got at a downtown grocery store in London for 99p. That’s 41 pence less than the salami sandwich I got at a sandwich deli yesterday. And it even came with tomahto. That would have cost an extra 30p on the salami, but as sparse a meal it was, I wolfed it down with relish. It had been a busy day.

Rebekah and I caught the 9:53 train to London that morning, dozing off during the trip. At Waterloo Station, we had to pay 10p to use the ladies room, I guess for the ambient music. Rebekah spent the next several minutes staring at maps and monitors attempting to figure out how to get to the British Museum with the tube/bus pass we bought for 3.80 Pounds.

The Museum was amazing and far too huge. We agreed to meet back at the front at 3. I took off for the Greek and Roman area and happily stared at Grecian urns for a long time. Breezing through the room of Egyptian mummies, I stumbled upon the area of artifacts from Mesopotamia.

Far too soon it was ten till three. I dragged myself away from ancient Sumeria and started heading downstairs through crowds of French students staring at a Canadian totem pole. Unfortunately, these stairs led to boarded off doorways and scowling security guards. I went back up and tried a different set of stairs, but that emptied out into an unfamiliar entrance. It didn’t matter which stairs I went up or down, none of them seemed to lead back where I started. Instead of asking a scowling guard, I went outside to try walking around to the other side, only I didn’t know which direction to go. I think I ended up going the long way, looping around a block of row houses. Finally, the stairs to the front entrance appeared with Rebeka sitting patiently on them. It was ten after three.

I could have spent a week in there, but one can only look at ancient crap for so long at one time. Rebekah showed me the Rosetta Stone. All around wt were huge, old stones from antiquity. We went into an area where extensive slabs of stone from the Assyrian temple of Tiglath-Pileser were embedded in the walls. The detail on them was incredibly fine, images of the king hunting lions and wild asses.

The next room was dedicated to the Eglin Marbles. So little of Greek sculpture has survived. The Romans made many copies, but Roman sculpture just doesn’t have the vitality of the Greeks.

It’s amusing watching this movie with a room of Brits. They’re really supportive of the American president, or maybe just that it’s Harrison Ford. They cheered when Glen Close wouldn’t sign the paper taking power away from the President, quite different from my reaction. They call Gary Oldman “the baddie.”

Leaving the museum of old crap, we grabbed a couple of sandwiches (I should have ordered a bun) and walked to the tube station. We stopped at the Trafalgar Square Stop and climbed the stairs. I looked around at Nelson’s column and the other stuff in the square then turned back to Rebekah and said okay. “You sure you don’t want to go up to it or anything.” she asked. No, I didn’t even take a picture. We walked back down the stairs and got back on the Tube.

They just showed the scene where the F-15 flies in to intercept the MiG missile. That part always gets me. As Lael pointed out when we watched it last, the British just don’t quite have the same reaction. One of the guys here just laughed.

I guess it’s sort of a party here in honor of Beks’ visit. Several of her friends are here. Charlotte and Helen and some guy named John, who I haven’t met, live here, as well as Dom and, I think, Rob, boyfriends of Charlotte and Helen, respectively. I slept in John’s room last night.

“Too bad the Queen can’t be an action hero,” Charlotte just quipped.

They’re watching Time Cop now, which isn’t a good movie and also one I’ve already seen. Three blokes just walked in to be challenged by “Charles,” “We have a rule in this house. Everyone who enters must say who’s their favorite Spice Girl, and if they get it wrong, they have to leave. Now,” she prompted, “holding up a copy of the Spice Girls very own official “book,” “who’s your favorite Spice Girl?”

“Oh, let’s see,” answered Cary, one of the blokes, “I dunno, Who can dare mention any of the Spice Girls when there’s someone with as stunning a personality as yours here.”

“Oh, fuck off,” laughed Charlotte, “You got it wrong. Now guess again.”

“Emma?”

Maybe it’s that Baby Spice is blonde like Charlotte, She split her jeans last night climbing up onto a little wall on the way back from the pub as she attempted to perform a Spice Girls dance routine to “Wannabe.” It was hilarious, though I’m sure the Becks and pint I’d had at the pub helped.

For most of the evening, after we’d stopped by Rebekah’s old nannying family’s house, I sat in a corner at the pub and listened to Bek’s friends joke around. I’m getting used to hearing conversation in only British accents. At one point, the inevitable question arose, “So what about Bill Clinton?” And I was suddenly the center of attention for about five minutes. I didn’t think I’d every say it, but thank God for Bill Clinton! I’ve got at least one thing to talk about.

The crowd here isn’t too interested until the fight scenes. The volume isn’t even up loud enough to catch dialogue. Poor Van Dam.

I’ve been giving Rebekah a hard time. She thought she’d packed light… until she saw my bag. Even so, she’s had to borrow pens and my hairbrush from my sack.. She even forgot to bring an umbrella, but I couldn’t help her there.

Uh oh, looks like Time Cop got ejected, and we’re watching something else, Ah, Contact. It’s a good thing I’ve already seen it, since I can’t hear over the discussion about whether or not to pass the bottle of vodka around. Rebekah suggested just putting some music on. “But,” said one of the blokes, “then we’d have to talk to each other.”

Looks like that’s what we’re going to do anyway. One of the guys is reading selections out of the Spice Girls’ “book,” so we’re all laughing. I’d probably have more if I had a drink, but I’ve already had half a pint and some wine today.

The half pint was at The Round House, a pub right down in the middle of London, right across from the grocery where I got my cheese and tomahto sandwich. I was quite ready to sit and rest for a while after a full day of touring the Victoria and Albert Museum. I thin I actually at least walked by every gallery in the museum. (We’re listening to Sting now. I can’t complain at all.)

Agreeing to meet at the front of the museum again at 3, we took off in separate directions. I headed straight for the Frank Loyd Wright exhibit, but got waylaid by the armour gallery. After a while, I had to force myself to stop reading every card marking each rapier from the 15th century.

The three blokes are just leaving. One of the fellows went around the room and kissed each of the girls goodbye. It’s different, all of the girls kiss each other on the cheek when they greet one another.

Charlotte is evidently the only one here who’s still in school, unless you count Kim and Dom, who teach. Almost all of them seem to smoke too, except for one or two, including Dom, who’s on his eleventh day. (At least he was on day ten yesterday.). Even so, the rule is that if you smoke you have to do so over by the window, not that this seems to make any difference, since the wind blows it straight in.

Having exhausted the armoury exhibit, I again set out for the FLW exhibit. Even with a map the people at th front gave me)I was free, being a student_, I had the dickens of a time finding it. When I finally got to the correct floor of the correct wing, thee security guards blocked my way. Thinking there might be another entrance, I tromped upstairs a floor, but that didn’t help at all. At least I got to see a room full of John Constables, including “Mill at Gillingham, Dorset,” of which the museum in Gillingham is immensely proud.

And oh, what a treat! A room of Rodin attached! One of them, “The Age of Bronze” was decried as a mold of a human being by art critics of the time, until Rodin’s colleagues assured the powers that were that the sculptor had formed an original piece.