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.
—
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.