You hear that, Mr Andersen?

To the place I belong

I had the date of the 4th of September in the back of my head as the one to be concerned about - but that it the date that I arrive back in Wellington. When I leave Europe is the day after tomorrow.

The day after tomorrow!

Suddenly, I feel like I've got no time left here at all - mainly because I've got no time left. On the other hand... I have actually managed to get to all the places I planned to try for, apart from Prague, as well as one or two bonus areas. I saw most of the people I wanted to see, and I've gotten up nice and early, so I'll be able to see some more Copenhagen sights.

***

Museums are closed on Monday.

Once I saw the first "closed" sign, it was like - oh, yeah, I vaguely remember reading about that last time I was here. Luckily, there were plenty of other things to do; and I had made a late start, so I didn't have too much time to fill. :)

One of the first things I did was to take a canal tour. Appart from the Haunted Edinburgh tour and the free Edinburgh castle guide, this was the only professionally guided expedition I've been on this trip. It was pretty good - as well as pointing out the coiled dragon tails of the old Stock Exchange spire (with the three crowns to symbolise the three Scandinavian kingdoms), he pointed out the yacht owned by one of the initial Microsoft team and used in a James Bond movie, and talked about the sculpture created to celebrate the recent royal wedding: "The statues are meant to look like them, but the heads are much bigger than their bodies. But it's a nice sculpture anyway."

(I've just spent five minutes trying to find out which Microsoft bigwig owned the yacht, but my Google-fu is insufficient today.)

I also wandered around the grounds and foundations of Christiansborg Palace, which was pretty cool, and had a look in some of the shops, though I managed to avoid buying anything.

Then, it was back to Helen's place, where I transformed the leftovers from last night into a very nice shepherd's pie. We were going to try to learn the Settlers card game, but it looked like it might take a while, so we went for a quick walk around Gentofte (the suburb where she lives). Not many suburbs in Wellington have castles in them! (Well, it was more along the lines of a manor-house, but Bernstorff Slot is still plenty impressive.)

***

Back to London around lunchtime tomorrow, hopefully meeting up with my friend David; I should stay with Ellen that night, I guess. And then... fly home late afternoon the next day. Freaky!

Ellen, send me those phone numbers!

If anyone can contact Ellen, can you please remind her that she's meant to send me Jane & Eigel's phone numbers - I only have another day here in Denmark, and it would be a shame to miss them completely!

(I meant to get them off Ellen before I left England, but we both forgot - argh!)

By the way - it doesn't look like the Virgin prepay card has roaming, so I'm unreachable by mobile. :( I guess it means that I don't need to worry about running out of credit while I'm in Denmark. :)

I'm editing this at about half-past five, local time, so it doesn't look like I'll be having dinner with them tonight. :) I hope they're free tomorrow... Ellen, if you just send me their address, I've got something I could drop off in their mailbox. :)

Agnes Dei

The taxi service in London sucks.

I ordered a taxi from the biggest company I could find in the Yellow Pages the previous night, to be picked up at 4:30am. This was plenty of time, I thought, to get to Liverpool St Station to catch either the 5:00am or 5:30am express to Stanstead; the 45 minutes that the train takes should get me to my 6:15am check-in time, and that should give me plenty of time to get to my plane. No problem; I won't get much sleep tonight, but I'll be on time.

So - I'm all packed and ready to go, and then I get a call from the taxi company, who are very sorry, but there are no taxi's available, and they can't say when one will be free, they'll ring me with an update in ten minutes. Twelve minutes later, and I'm trying to ring other cab companies - none of whom seem to be answering their phones at quarter to five in the morning. So eventually I decide that I've got to go down to the street, and start walking towards the train station. But - as luck would have it, a taxi comes past, I'm able to flag it down, and it gets me to the station just in time to buy a return ticket and run to the bus, which gets me to the check-in line just in time to get my ticket, which gets me into the x-ray and metal-detector line just in time to catch the train to my gate, and as the train arrives I see on the boards that my plane is boarding.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the cab company I booked with called me five minutes into my cab ride, to say they still hadn't found a cab for me. I cancelled the booking.

***

Very nice first day in Copenhagen, though I was a bit tired. Helen met me at the airport, guided me through the complexities of the Danish rail system, and we had brunch at her place. Then back into the city for a performance of Verdi's Requiem in Tivoli gardens - one of her friends was in the choir. Then, we met up with another friend, and strolled around Tivoli for a while. All in all, a very pleasant evening.

The next day, we went into town, and Helen pointed out many of the sights - mostly from the outside, since the majority of things are closed on a Sunday. We then went to an (English) service with Helen's church group, which is Lutheran but fairly ecumenical. I met a number of Helen's friends there, including an American couple - Helen knew the wife, and the husband told me about a script that he's pitching to various people, including Peter Jackson. Small world. :)

***

We had agreed that a roast might be a good idea, and Helen invited the new pastor-in-training, Gretchen, to dinner and a game of Settlers. So while Helen limed the ceiling and tidied the main room, I cooked. We had an Icelandic lamb roast, which I just rubbed with rosemary, garlic, salt and oil; I used the same pan to do jacket roast potatoes, and added a little paprika to them. I also fried some mushrooms and corgettes with a bit of garlic and soy, cooked a bit of corn, and made a light salad. Oh, and gravy - the juice from the roast, a bit of "brun sauce" powder, and little bit of flour when I realised I'd been way to generous with the water. I was a bit nervous about cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen where I couldn't read any packets or labels, but the results were pretty yum.

I should point out that I introduced my brother and his wife to Settlers, and they introduced Helen. (Helen, for those that don't know, is a half-cousin to my brother's wife, and we met when we were both in their bridal party.) So the fact that she and Gretchen conspired in front of me in Danish was a bit unfair, I thought. :) I was one point away from victory, but Gretchen managed to snatch it away from me - which is, I suppose, all to the good, since it should hook her all the deeper. ;)

***

I've written this entry once already, and then the browser crashed, so I feel I've spent quite enough time on the internet. I have a Copenhagen card, which gets me free or cheaper entry to a bunch of things, so I'm going to go use that. It's weird to think that I'll be back in my own bed in the weekend - good in some ways, bad in others. There are plenty of places and things I'll miss, though crazy keyboard configurations is not one of them. ;)

Off to the city!

Wonderful, Wonderful...

Okay, I was writing a post in between deleting comment spam, and that seems to mean I've lost the entire thing. Argh. Stupid, annoying spammers.

Anyway, I've just booked tickets to Copenhagen! The details are:

Saturday - leave Stansted airport at 7:15am, arrive in Copenhagen at 10:05am.
Wednesday - leave Copenhagen at 10:30, arrive at Stansted at 11:20am.

Now all I have to do is arrange transport out to Stansted, arrange somewhere to stay in London tomorrow, get hold of the people I want to visit in Denmark, etc etc... so it's not done at all. But it's mostly done.

Ellen and I took pictures of Christ College to show Louise, since it was the basis of parts of Hogwarts. I also went to a lecture on the development of writing at the Ashmolean, which was pretty interesting, though more crowded than the organizers expected. I should get going, since I'm paying £1/20 minutes, and it's taken a lot longer than I expected - I'll be getting dinner, and then possibly going to a gig at Ellen's work. Should be interesting. :)

Hot sausage and mustard

I'm not sure that I'm entirely enamoured of the Cornish pastie. I mean, it's perfectly edible - but to someone who's been bought up on pies, they seem to lack... juiciness. The lack of gravy (in the ones I've bought, at least) makes them seem a bit dry - this isn't a problem in the chicken, potato and sweetcorn one I bought to sustain me on the trip back to London, but was a bit disappointing in the pork and apple one I tried while tramping around the town.

***

I didn't manage to do much in my sojorn to Penzance - didn't catch the bus to Land's End, didn't go to any ancient mining areas, didn't go to the exciting-sounding Pilchard Museum ("still a working factory!"). But I did get to wander around the town itself a bit, and saw a bunch of stuff that interested me. :)

Penzance is a British seaside resort - so they have things like a salt-water swimming pool right next to the sea, where you can swim above concrete rather than pebbles, and a "mechanical marvels museum", where you can let your children drive you barmy indoors rather than outside. But it's also definitely part of Cornwall - as well as selling "Old Rosie" cider and having more "real, original" pastie shops than you can shake a stick at, if you wander far enough away from the toursit areas you might run across a graveyard, where whole families are buried in a single plot - mother, father, son, wife, grandaughter. For some graves, the headstones are much taller than I'm used to, with space on some of them for more writing as it becomes necessary. For others, the writing is around the outside of the plot, and you have to walk around the grave to see all the people sharing the space. It was very peaceful.

***

Had dinner with the Austrian girls, Andrea and Connie. They both came from the same small village outside Stuttgart, and had known each other since kindergarten. Connie will be visiting New Zealand with another kindergarten friend either later this year or early next year, so who knows, maybe some of you reading this will get to meet her. (I gave her my email address.)

The only reason I met them was that I had been discouraged by the first B&B I tried ringing, and so had plumped for the backpackers when they said "yes"; and for there part, the Penzance backpackers were plan C, after plan A (stay in Helston - foiled by absence of places to stay) and plan B (use their tent in the bush - foiled by the rain, common-sense, and complete absence of bush). And even then, it was pretty much pure chance that I got to chatting with them. I'm glad I did - it was much more fun chatting to them about what Austrians think of the British than reading the book I'd bought along. :)

(Not that "Across the Nightingale Floor" is a bad book - I read the whole thing on the train - but it's something that can be done at any time. :)

Had a relatively unremarkable dinner at a Wetherspoons - the others had a pasta bake and a fish pie respectively, and I had the mixed grill. Well, once I managed to get the bar staff to admit that the kitchen was open - when I first went up I was told (somewhat cryptically) that the kitchen was "sick", and that he didn't have any idea when it would get better. While going back, defeated, to the table, I noticed that people were still getting dinners from this supposedly "sick" kitchen, so I went back and tried a different, slightly more clueful looking barperson - and that seemed to do the trick.

(The mixed grill was okay, but a little dry - and the baked potato had no butter. So, points off for you, Wetherspoons!)

It's sad, in a way - the number of people I've bumped into that I'll never meet again. On the other hand, I may end up offering Connie and her friend a couch to sleep on when they're in Wellington (if I can convince my flatmates), so it's not like life over here is completely disconnected from life back home. ;)

***

I'm back in Paddington at the moment, waiting until Adrian is available. I might try and catch up with some mail, or at least read some blogs, but at £1/20 mins, I'm not inclined to stick around too long.

Oops, went back and added some stuff, and now I only have two minutes. I guess I just have time to put this up and log out. Sorry for any typos or lapses of grammar!

Try some, buy some, fi fi fo fum.

Rrrived in Penzance safely, and spent the night in a backpackers. This was fine for me, and I met a very nice German girl and a couple of very pleasant Austrians on their Gap year, but apparently someone of the people in the room had trouble sleeping because someone was snoring. On the grounds that I had no trouble, and have been known to snore before, I suspect that I was the culprit - though the friend of the Austrian who stayed in my room told me last night that her friend snored, so perhaps I'm feeling guilt for no good reason. Unfortunately, I didn't book for two nights yesterday, so I've had to move on to a B&B; the upside is that it's my own room, I can leave my phone charging there, and I won't be disturbing anyone tonight. (If it was, indeed, me. :)

And I've arranged to meet up for dinner with the Austrians, so that will be nice. Eating by yourself is not particularly exciting. :)

***

It's actually a relatively sunny day outside (and I'm paying 50p/10 minutes), so I'll have to keep this fairly short. I'm sitting in a cafe in the Penzance railway station - there were free internet terminals in the library, but there was a queue of eight or so people, and you were limited to half an hour, so I scooted over here. Thought I should check my finances, and I'm glad I did - I was in overdraft on my current account. :p Luckily, there was still a bunch of money that I'd left sitting in my old flat account, so I haven't had to dip into my savings account yet - but I guess I won't quite manage to last the month on whatever I had on my current account. Given that I was eating out most of the time for the two weeks of the Film Festival, I think I've done pretty well. :)

***

Staying with Adrian for a while was, I think, a lot closer to the "typical" Antipodean experience of London. The night I got in, I went for a drink with him, a friend of his, and Leon (of "Leon is a God" fame), which was mostly the four of us trying the handful of pubs that don't close at 11pm. (The licensing laws here are a bit weird.) Leon is a dangerous man to go drinking with, though from what I hear I caught him on a more moderate night.

Adrian's flat is impressive - a few minutes from Mornington Cresent tube station, on the 19th floor of a block of flats that look mightily suss from the outside, but are fine once you're in the flat proper.

The next day, Adrian and his flatmates were going off to watch the South Africa/Australia rugby game at a pub with friends. (Adrian has fallen into bad company - most of the people he knows in London are Aussies. So we decided, in the interests of solidarity with the two South Africans there, to lend our support to whoever was against Australia. :) I was given a "snakebite" to try, and chatted with a bunch of people I'm unlikely to see ever again.

Then, back to the flat for a while, and then they went off to a show at the Soho theatre while I went to try to find somewhere to eat in Chinatown, and maybe meet up with Leon for a drink. I didn't get hold of Leon in time, and the Chinatown restaurants were unsurprisingly expensive, but it was pretty much fine - until I had to stand around outside the theatre, waiting for the show to let out. There were several people looking for change, someone wanting 10p to play a sea chanty, one shady-looking black guy who wanted to know if I needed anything, one blonde who wondered if I was looking for companionship, and a couple of guys who wanted me to call them a taxi. (I said that I didn't have a phone.)

In the end, I went and stood next to a nearby bouncer, which seemed to screen out all but the beggars.

After that - a bunch of Adrian's friends went off to something called a "Slovakian party" (which sounded... interesting, in a deeply dodgy way), and Adrian, his friend, her flatmate and I went off to get a drink. Which ended up meaning that we went to a nightclub.

Now, I'm not sure whether I've mentioned the dress sense of young women in Britain yet. If not... well, it's noticably different to the NZ idea - there seems to be quite a bit less of it, for a start. Well, the nightclub was the same again, but even more so - I felt distinctly underdressed. Or perhaps "overdressed" is a better term. :) I'm glad I did it, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be a clubbing type if I lived in London.

Then, back home, sleep, rearrange my stuff to leave a bunch of it with Adrian, and off to Paddington station!

***

Okay, I better go and pay for this, and then wander about for a bit while there's still daylight. :) Tomorrow - London, and dinner with some of the people I met with Adrian. And Wednesday, off to Oxford to pick up my passport, and then maybe Denmark!

Pour, oh pour the pirate sherry...

I'm in Paddington Station, waiting to get on a train to Penzance. Why I'm going to Cornwall is an interesting, amusing and instructive tale, that I won't be able to go into in the 14 minutes I have left at this internet cafe terminal.

***

Bumped into the lovely stonesouper Siobahn while wandering the streets of Edinburgh. Morgue, Cal and I met up with her and her brother in a tiny Irish live music pub, and then I met her for lunch the next day after climbing to the top of Arthur's Tor. (This is much closer to what I'd think of as "real exercise" than the ramble I went on with Paul & co. - lots of scrambling involved. The scariest thing is watching children zoom around on the rough, steep top of the tor, and not worry about them tripping and falling to their doom.) I'm really glad I bumped into Siobhan; at least she's planning to come back to NZ when she finishes her degree.

***

Okay, eight minutes left. Basically, Cal & Morgue were off somewhere this weekend, so I thought I'd seize the opportunity to rearrange my stuff, possibly grabbing my passport from Ellen. Except, as I remembered on the train, Ellen is at a music festival this weekend.

So I was heading into London, and thought - where will I be sleeping tonight? Paul has left for Canberra by this point, but I do have his friend Bob's number, and an offer of a couch. But - as it turns out, the number I have is a work one, and by the time I realise this, it's already too late.

But nil desperandum - I have my friend Adrian's number from Morgue. So for the last two nights I've bee sleeping on Adrian's couch, which was quite comfortable, despite being a two-seater...

***

Okay, stories about the other side of living in London as a Kiwi (watching rugby at a pub, waiting for friends to get out of a show in Soho late at night, and a real London club) will have to wait - I'll post this so I don't lose it!

Next stop - Cornwall!

That's why I wrote this song

A really quick note, 'cos I have to get some sleep.

***

I liked the Terry Pratchett musical - some jokes didn't quite work, and I don't agree with at least one of the abridgements, but it was pretty good. No tunes I can't get out of my head, but I think using the same actor for Big-Mac's brother and the Gunnery officer was an excellent choice.

***

Met Hannah as I came out of the show, which was weird since last I saw her she was leaving Weta. She's been doing Festival admin stuff, and so I chatted to her and her boyfriend Bret (of Flight of the Conchords) really briefly.

***

Bought a crazy book called Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries, by William Kotzwinkle. Think Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, except as a preying mantis and a grasshopper. The front has a pseudo-Victorian street scene, with a hansom cab being pulled by a moth and driven by an ant. It looks pretty good, and I figured I was unlikely to see it again, so... Morgue recommends the author.

***

The Flight of the Concords show was good, though disappointingly they didn't do any encores. However, they did have a bit of banter where they asked an audience member their name and occupation (it was "Becca" and "Waitress" in this instance), but just read what was written on their piece of paper as banter - which was the name "Svend" and the job "IT". (They then said, "Sorry, there's not a lot of comedic scope there.", and continued with the show. :)

***

Went on a tour of the "haunted" catacombs under Edinburgh. It is a weird feeling - cold air moving around your legs, and the air around your head hot and slightly stuffy. I had to bite my tongue a number of times, though, when they talked about the "scientific" investigations of the areas, and what psychics had offered about the place. Good fodder for gaming, though.

Didn't get to the castle again, because there were enormous cues, even though it was pelting down with rain, and I turned up at 10am rather than midday. I think that tour-buses are to blame. Curse them!

***

I'll be staying another day here, and then heading down to London Friday morning. I should probably try to organize some accomodation between now and then. Got to get back and see Ellen before going to Denmark, because I left my passport with her. :)

Goodnight!

Is timing.

Went to a couple of things at the Festival today, and booked to see Flight of the Concords and a musical version of Terry Pratchett's "Only You Can Save Mankind". (Quote from Mr Pratchett: "If I had know it was going to be such a good musical, I would have written a better book.")

The first thing I saw was Classical Graffiti, a string quartet that had all been buskers when they met. A woman and man on violin, a woman on cello, and a guy on double-bass - I started watching because I overheard them doing the Jeeves and Wooster theme tune, and stayed because they stomped, high-kicked, and generally performed while playing really well. They've done music education things, and as well as the CD I bought, have done a Norwegian children's stories CD. Well worth watching if you get a chance.

***

I never really realised, while I was at university, how funny the people I knew were. I mean, I just assumed that when people yarned, they were funny - I didn't see other people being funny because I didn't chat to them in that way.

I now realize how wrong I was.

Morgue and I went to see "The Contractors". Now, I feel that I should say right off the bat that the audience seemed to like them, and they had 3 or 4 good lines ("Tim lives wherever he lays his hat, and is currently living in a hat-box.") and a number of potentially quite funny situations. But... they often seemed to do whole gags that had just one bit of funny, and all the rest was set-up.

For example, there was a ballad, four or five verses long, that was all set-up for a single joke. It was a good ballad, too - it rhymed, and made sense, and everything. But... it was only one joke, and I can easily think of ways to wring four or five more laughs from exactly the same material, with maybe thirty seconds more time.

Morgue pointed out to me that all of the humour could easily have been shifted to the 1970s without changing anything, and that this was the kind of humour that comedians like Ben Elton and Rowan Atkinson came from. And with that in mind, I think it was actually a valuable show for me to go and see.

But it's somewhat sobering to watch something that is being presented professionally, and think, "I could produce funnier material than this."

***

Nearly went to the castle today, but the lines were mega-long. Maybe I'll make it in tomorrow, before the shows I've booked for. I'll also be trying to fit in some Haunted Edinburgh tours, and maybe walk up to Arthur's seat if the weather's fine.

Oh, yeah - put my washing out on the relatively sunny morning. It started pelting down early afternoon. Two positive things, though - I had the umbrella that Ellen bought for me, and the flatmate who still hasn't appeared saved the washing from the rain! This more than makes up for the "not so great comedy" thing.

***

I've now had a cup of tea at the same cafe that the first Harry Potter book was written in. In fact, I wrote a couple of postcards there, while Morgue was doing some novel-writing. I wonder whether any of the postcards I've sent home so far have arrived yet?

Yesterday upon the stair

Okay, I acknowledge that the spelling and general form of my last entry left something to be desired; unfortunately, I ran out of time, and decided that it was better to post in an imperfect form than not to post at all. So - thank you for your patience, and in return, here's a cute photo of a baby.

See why I said she was adorable?

***

At dinner with Morgue and Cal tonight, I suddenly felt cut off from the news. Now, I normally don't think of myself as particularly well-informed, but they were talking about something that had been all over The Register recently. Now, The Register is one of the few news sites that I do read regularly - I'm not a big fan of slashdot, Z-net or Ars Technica, and I only occasionally visit the BBC news site or Stuff - so it really made me realise how much I've put my life on hold while I'm travelling.

I wonder whether travelling with a laptop would make a difference? I mean, hot-spots seem to be all over the place now, so as long as you're prepared to pay for it, you should able to keep up with your favourite sites while you're cruising around. But on the other hand, there are heaps of internet cafes around, yet I only seem to update my blog when I'm staying with someone with web access - so maybe I wouldn't have time, even if I had a laptop.

***

Morgue and Cal have a flatmate, I'm given to understand. He has not left his room in the time I've been here. No, wait, that's not entirely true - when I went out to brush my teeth last night, I saw his door close. And when I was in my long, drawn-out process of getting up, he came into the room, saw I was there, mumbled something, and left. Well, I assume it was him - I didn't have my glasses on, so I can't even guarantee that it was a "him".

Got up rather later than I intended (I must have been more tired than I thought), and then caught the bus into town, and walked around all day. I certainly hope that this holiday is making me fit, as I seem to spend an awful lot of it on my feet. As many people have said, Edinburgh is a beatiful city; as Morgue has said, it is currently full of tourists.

The big film festival is on next week. Luckily, I'll be gone by then; I'll admit to being tempted to pick up a brochure.

There were many people trying to give me fliers to shows. Since I'm not entirely clear how you book tickets, this seemed to me to be somewhat pointless, but I accepted one or two for politeness sake, and then kept my hands in my pockets.

I have had more people asking me for change here than in London, Oxford or Cambridge. (The absence of homeless people in Hay-on-Wye isn't that surprising; there wasn't very much Hay-on-Wye to be homeless in.) I'm not sure whether they've been drawn here by the extra tourists, or if there's a high number of them normally, maybe one of the semi-natives can clarify. :)

***

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do next. I mean, I know what I'm doing tomorrow - I'm probably going to a show with Morgue. And I know what I'll probably be doing after Edinburg - I have a return ticket to London, and hopefully I'll hear from one of the ex-Weta people before I go back, otherwise I may have to impose on Bob. And then I have to pop back to Oxford to change my books and grab my passport, and then I have to get over to Denmark.

But... I'm not really interested in going to Prague if it's only me that's going. Maybe I'll go to Dublin, or even somewhere in Scotland other than Edinburgh - who knows, maybe I'll get to chat to someone Scottish if I did that. (Talking to Morgue & Cal, it's apparently quite easy to live and work in Edinburg and not know any Scots: there are simply tons of people from elsewhere working here.)

Maybe I'll go to another small town and walk around - that seemed to work pretty well.

***

It's getting pretty late, so I'll wrap it up here. I guess my holiday is more than half over now; while I'm still enjoying myself, I'm glad that it's only a month. There's very few things that beat your own bed.

Standing up in the falling down

Sorry that it's been so long between entries; access has been a bit erratic, and I just spent a fair while deleting viagra spam. I wonder whether we could set up a fake web-log that only spammers would comment to, and automatically block any IPs that post to that blog...

So I managed to get to Cambridge from Oxford; this took slightly longer than I anticipated. (I seem to be spending a fair wack of my holiday in public transport of one form or another; one the plus side, I'm getting to see an awful lot of country-side, and have actually chatted to a number of random English people. :) Got a room at a B&B, and just enough time to shower and shave before my first meeting with Rebecca.

She is a very, very cute baby. Very smiley, happy to be held, talkative (or, more accurately, "noisative"), and generally a pleasure to be around. She vommed on me a little, but in a cute way, rather than "I hope you have a spare shirt" way. I also had roast lamb & roast veges with Jack and Heather, after which I played Flight of the Concords at them for a bit. It was really nice to get to see them again.

Thursday, and I'm off to Wales! Not very far into Wales, of course - in fact, the sign that said "Welcome to Wales" way about 50 meters from the window of the first B&B I stayed at. Hay-on-Wye was really beautiful, but a bit hard on the wallet - I managed to buy about 50 books, plus a set of PG Wodehouse. The majority of these books are winging their way back home as I type - thank goodness for surface post! :) I would definitely go back to Hay-on-Wye - there are a lot of beautiful-looking walks, and some of the bookshops I merely had a cursory dash through. (They did have an internet connection, but I wasn't prepared to waste valuable book-browsing time on internet stuff. ;)

Side-note - one of the nifty features of the town was that there were shelves and shelves of books in the open air of the courtyard of the castle. These books were overflow from various shops, and you could pay for them in a red honesty box at any time of the day or night. The chickens that strutted about between these gently rusting shelves added a certain surreality to the whole affair.

So - Friday I wandered around the scenic Welsh countryside and the scenic Welsh second-hand bookshops, and Saturday I headed back to London for my friend Paul's going-away bash. While I was on the train heading for Paddington, I noticed that I was actually going to pass through Oxford: I very nearly jumped out to wish Ellen birthday wishes in person. Unfortunately, she had a fairly packed day, so I contented myself with wishing her happy birthday by phone (which cut out suddenly because I ran out of credit).

Now, the fact that my phone ran out of money is quite important for this next bit, because I realised, when I got into Paddington, that I didn't actully know the number of the bus that I was meant to catch to get to Paul's. Or the number of his house. Or, indeed, the suburb. I had been there twice before, but both times had been with Paul, so the first order of business was to get some credit so I call Paul to find these things out. This proved slightly more difficult than I first thought, since the place that I was directed to buy credit had closed, so I had to trek to an alternate store... and when I had some credit, I discovered that Paul had his cell-phone turned off.

So - I caught the tube out to Elephant and Castle, since that's where I got the tube from when I left Paul's place, and I remembered Paul talking about the ugliness of the shopping center. And I remembered that we discussed the Brixton race riots while riding into town, and that the bus had three versions - a two digit route, a "1" followed by two digits (which stopped at E&C), and a "4" version (that went from E&C on). When I saw that the number 68 stopped in Herne Hill, I was fairly sure that I was guessing correctly, hopeed on, and managed to find Paul's place with only a couple of stops overshot. So I say "hah!" to those who doubt my navigational sense! Hah!

Of course, it might of been better to get a few navigation details earlier. The party itself was quite fun.

Probably off to Edinburgh today, depending on trains, which I better check now.

Hope everyone is doing well back home.

We're going where the sun shines brightly

Under Ellen's expert shopping tutelage, I have just purchased an excellent suitcase (a special she happened to know about), several light tee-shirts and a soap-protector. At this rate, I'll be ready to go on holiday before you know it!

(We also saw a vinyl copy of Cliff Richard doing "Summer Holiday" for £18 - unsurprisingly, we weren't tempted. :)

***

There are many things that tell you you're not in NZ any more. The first is the money and the accents, obviously; but there are several more subtle things. For example, the British call iceblocks "ice lollies", and you can't buy them at the corner shop. Lots of ice-cream based snacks - very little in the way of frozen juice goodness. You can get "Callipo" which is sort of like a Fruju in a tube; but nothing quite like a lemonade popsicle.

This can seem quite important when you're wandering around London in blazing heat, disoriented by jet-lag and general fatigue. :)

***

The walk in the Cotswolds (or what we are fairly sure was the Cotswolds) was very nice. There were four NZers in all - myself, the stalwart Paul, the mighty Max, and Elizabeth known as Bob. They told me about strange encounters with English "ramblers", who wear laminated maps around their necks and have alpine sticks for walks that are often considerably less arduous than what the typical Aro Valley flat has to go through to fetch the mail.

Walking in the English countryside is nice, but there are hidden dangers. Stinging nettles, for example - one plant I'm very glad we have managed to keep out of NZ. They look completely innocent, and then suddenly the leaves you've just brushed out of the way have raised little red welts all over the back of your hand. At least with brambles and holly, you can *see* what's going to hurt you, and avoid it - nettles are just nasty. In a way, I'm glad that I don't have shorts here - at least my legs were safe from the stinging scourge.

Pub lunches in a beer garden a very pleasant indeed - the only downside being the wasps. There seem to be an inordinate number of these black and yellow fiends about - apparently, it's been a really bad summer for them. Or rather, an exceedingly good summer for them, and an exceedingly bad summer for not having insects trying to crawl into your ale. :) But the food where we went was excellent, and the company was quite congenial - I had some very nice aged steak, and an excellent lime and lemon cheesecake. (The others were all seduced by the prospect of gooseberry fool.)

***

I now have a plan for the next week or so! I'm off to Cambridge tomorrow, where I will find a hostel, and meet up with Jack & Heather & their wee one. The next day, I'll take a bus to Birmingham, and then a train to Hereford, and then a bus to Hay-on-Wye, and seek out local lodgings there. And after that, I'm aiming to be back in London on Saturday, for Paul's going-away party. (It is my sister Ellen's birthday on Saturday, but I didn't really want to crash it, since I figured she'd want to be hanging out with her friends. I've given her the present I brought over already - it's the Te Papa book of cool stuff that I gave Mum on her birthday.)

Don't know what I'll be doing Sunday or beyond - I should find out when Morgue and Cal are back from Paris, so I know when to trek up to Scotland. Oh, and I've still get in contact with Helen & relatives, if I'm going to get out to Denmark... and I haven't heard from my ex-Wetan colleages at all.

I'm a little bit more organised, anyway.

***

Plenty more to talk about qua Oxford - but we're off to dinner, so it will have to wait. :) Hopefully, I'll be able to put up a picture or two in the near future.

And yet it rained but yesterday

Quick note, since we're skiving off to lunch shortly. Went for a lovely walk in the British countryside the day before yesterday, and managed to get sunburnt. Sunburnt in England!!

Arrived in Oxford yesterday, and Ellen was very happy that the weather confirmed all she'd said about it - a light grey drizzle that turned into a downpour as the day progressed. No thunder or lightning, however. Had lunch in a 16th century pub, and later that evening helped Ellen's team claim victory in her local pub quiz - by a mere half point.

So far, so good.

Ole, Ole; Ole, Ole

It is hot. Very, very hot.. My typically Wellingtonian prelidiction for dark colours is proving my downfall, to the benefit of the bottled drink industry - at least I managed to pack some light-coloured trousers. I may have to get Ellen to help me go shopping... :)

Downstairs, Paul is playing some classic Kiwi tracks to his flatmates - "Rewind" by the Hallelujia Picassos, "Parehaka" by Herbs & Tim Finn, "There Is No Depression In New Zealand" by Blam Blam Blam... I find it hard to conceive what it might be like to hear some of these for the first time, rather than having them evoke the halcyon days of my youth. I'm annoyed about what I don't seem to have brought with me - some essentials like a really good collection of NZ pop (of the Hello Sailor / Coup d'Etat / Dragon variety) and the Beatlecracker Suite, for example. But being able to play Paul the version of "Dirty Creature" that's done by King Kapisi and Betchadupa is quite cool. :)

There were a number of things I meant to say yesterday about entering the country - but when I started pausing, having a mini dream, and then found I had written a word that made sense in the context of the dream, but not in the sentence... well, then I decided that I had to go to bed. But I had wanted to mention going through customs - I was a bit worried, since I had a bunch of coffee in my bag, which I know is used by drug smugglers to hide the smell of their contraband. So it was some trepidation that I headed to the "nothing to declare" gate... only to find that there was no-one there. Like, no-one - there were tables and metal detectors, but not even someone to do a visual check. It was weird, and somewhat creepy - I mean, I'm used to NZ, where they take biosecurity seriously, and have sniffer dogs that seek pears rather than cocaine. I'm not saying that I would have prefered a full cavity search, but I felt a bit like I was breaking some kind of rule.

Anyway, the trick of "stay up until 4am the night before you go, then don't properly go to sleep for more than 45 hours" seems to have done the trick, jet-lag wise - I feel a little tired, but not weirdly so. I think the fact that I've been out in the bright sunshine probably helps a lot - I'm really not looking forward to the trip back.

Went out sight-seeing with Paul today - Houses of Parliment, the Cenotaph, Cleopatra's Needle, etc. Had a pub lunch at a nice chain that has a non-smoking secction and only charges 15p for a lime and soda - something begining with 'W', I forget what. (Paul tells me "Wetherspoons".) Popped into a enormous five-story bookstore, really wanted to get a big hardback called "Jewish Legends and Folklore", talked myself down to a wee paperback on the history of the names of the currently active Underground stations. Have already bought a bunch of books - at some point, will buy a suitcase.

Was mocked at drinks yesterday for talking about dairies - here, they're cornershops. According to Paul, in Australia they're "milkbars", which is just bizarre.

("@" is in the place I expect the double-quotes to be - if you see any mistakes along that line, well, now you know why. '"' is above the 2, for some reason - I can't remember what *should* be there but double-quotes isn't it. :)

Hey, flatmates - how's the tidied flat holding out? Is it weird being able to get to the balcony door? :)

Should go off to bed now - going for a country ramble in the morning. Constable country, in fact - the place that Constable painted the hay-wain, to be precise. I've rung Ellen, so I'll be turning up in Oxford either today or tomorrow. Slowly but surely, I'm organizing this trip on the fly... I can see how it's nice to have this all done beforehand, but I'm not sure I would have been walking on the Southbank with Paul and running across a Cuban/Sri Lankan/Liverpudllian band playing a free salsa concert. (I bought the album. :)

This trip has been a bunch of happy chances so far - I hope that the random live music theme continues!

To the faraway towns

Now it may be the 30-odd hours without proper sleep, but when I swang by to go to lunch with Paul Thomas, and he was standing in the sun with a Yiddish chorus and a tuba thundering through something spritely yet mournfully Russian... well, it seemed slightly surreal. (As it turns out, there was a perfectly good explanation - the combination of a false fire alarm and a Kletzmer festival in the same building conspired to get my holiday off to an excellent start.

But let's rewind a little.

***

The night prior to leaving the country was a mad flurry of unpacking and tidying. One reason for this sudden burst of activity was wanting a full list of the books I own before I left; another was to spare my flatmates the complete disaster area that constituted my room every time they wanted to use the internet. (There was also a certain amount of displacement activity in there, I suspect. :) This mission was accomplished - you can not only see the carpet, you can actually get to the balcony!

Leaving the country was a surprisingly low-key affair. In an attempt to make the jet-lag better (possibly in the Invader Zim sense), my brother and I stayed up until 4am looking at various things on the internet (including the excellent Broderick and the Cracker). Dad dropped me off at Departures, and most of the Qantas counter people were just about to pop off to have a smoke, since it was so quiet. I sat in the terminal for a couple of hours, and then started my oddessy...

Wellington to Auckland was uneventful. Auckland to Hong Kong was actually pretty good - I had an aisle seat, there was only one seat next to me (and that was empty). Apart from the fact that Cathay Pacific seem to prefer their tea stewed, the food was very good, and the attendents were very pleasant. I watched a bunch of movies, listened to some music, and eventually got to Hong Kong airport.

I wanted to buy a digital camera while I was on this layover, so first I made sure I knew where the terminal I needed to get to was, and then I went looking at camera. My first attempt was thwarted by the fact that I wasn't sure about the exchange rate (5 Hong Kong dollars to every NZ dollar), and the guy I was talking to gave a definite air of trying to sell me something, rather than listening what I was asking for. A second attempt, after doing some research on the free internet kiosk that wouldn't let me log into my blog, curse it, yeilded a much more helpful salesperson, and a digital camera. Tonight, I hope to get it out of the box and read the manual.

Next, onto the plane that will take me to London. I'm already feeling a bit tired and dirty, and this flight turns out to be on a much bigger, much more full plane. I turn out to be in the window seat, and it looks at first like I'm going to have a Chinese couple next to me - a definite problem when I want to get to the toilet in the middle of the flight. Luckily one of them disappeared to an unknown location, so I was not reduced to fighting for arm-rest space. I haven't had a chance to check my tickets, but I hope that I have an aisle seat for the trip back. (Or a row to myself - that would work too. :)

Got to London, worked out how to look at the net , found Paul's number, rang him, and arranged to meet him just before he went to work. Wandered around the British Museum, then out to where comic-shop Andrew works (he wasn't there). Then back to Paul's work. Then the scene that greeted me was that given above.

***

It's sunny and hot - quite, quite hot. I'm spending quite a bit of cash on drinks, actually. One annoying thing i found is that there don't seem to be any popsicles, in the cheap and non-creamy mode, anyway.

Anyway, I *still* haven't gone to bed - and I'm finding it really hard to write this, with lots of lost trains of thought. Poop poop! Hope it's readible.

My new cellphone number is 07981 653 308. I'll try to get hold of Jack & Heater, so I can get to see them and the sprog.

The children of the brain

Since I'm having trouble putting these lists on my Palm, as an interim measure here are:

• Complete list of fiction books
  
• Complete list of graphic novels
  
• Complete list of non-fiction and humour
  

Don't know when I'll be back again

I wish they had given me my itinerary in a handy electronic format - instead, I guess I'll have to type it up by hand. Ah well, here goes:

And the return journey:

So... I guess I'll be arriving early on Friday, rather in the afternoon like I remembered. On the other hand, maybe that will mean I'll have a nap during the day, and be fresh on the weekend while other people are free. Sure, it'll take only one day for me to recover - that's what the 84 movies have been training me for, right? :)

***

I realised that I worked about 16 hours yesterday. I was trying to get away early today, but a confluence of circumstances meant that I did 12 hours instead. If I do the same tomorrow... well, I know that I said in my contract that I'd prefer to do 40-hour weeks, but I didn't mean I'd do them over the course of three days. Ah well, it'll all be money going on a good cause - namely, having fun while I'm on holiday. :)

***

I feel I should try and talk about more of the movies - how cool Ong Bak and Zatochi were, how much I liked Imelda as a documentary, how interesting Ramones: End of the Century was, how nifty (but sour) Los Angeles Plays Itself was... but on the other hand, I've got a bunch of stuff to do before I fly to England the day after tomorrow. I wish I could take tomorrow off. I will mention that the LA documentary points out that Blade Runner depicts an urban planner's dream - a rich, vibrant night-life on the streets, lots of parking, no congestion, and neon as far as the eye can see.

I'm also mightly tempted to read Teen Idol, Meg Cabot (of The Princess Diaries fame) latest effort. After all, it's nice and short... :) (I only managed to read about three books during the Film Festival - Anne Perry's Slaves and Obsessions, David Gutterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, and Louis McMaster Bujold's Diplomatic Immunity, so I'm feeling a bit deprived.) That brings up the whole "airplane and travelling book" problem - as I have discovered to my dismay, there are books that I actually can't gather the resolve to plow through, so a new book is risky. On the other hand, it seems crazy to bring a book you've read before, since you're wasting valuable concentrated reading time. Of course, events may render the choice moot - I might sit next to someone fascinating on the plane, and find no time to read; or more likely, the person in front of me will put their seat all the way back as soon as possible, and I won't have room to do more than fidget slightly.

Anyway, I've still got some time to catalogue some books, and maybe do some other housekeeping, so I will bid you, dear readers, a fond good night.

Gonna be some sweet sounds coming down

So, my first day back at work - I felt a bit bad, since I was a half-hour later than I meant to be. (I went over to borrow the parents' van, only to find that the battery was dead. What is it with me and vehicles at the moment anyway?) As it turns out, I needn't have worried - they needed me to change the FileMaker passwords, which means tediously trawling though about seventy files and fiddling with them using a clunky GUI after everyone has gone. I popped out to get the car from the garage and have some dinner about six, got back at eight, and then was at work until half-past midnight. And then I had to make sure that I got in around eight this morning, since I was the only one who knew what the passwords had been changed to.

Bah. FileMaker administration is the bane of my existence.

On the plus side, I got to have dinner with my flatmates, something that I hadn't managed for several days. It's nice to occasionally bump into them. :)

***

Okay, I missed out Control Room last time - which is a pity, since it was an excellent documentary. It's hard to tell if it was balanced, but it certainly felt balanced, and you'd expect that if the station had an axe to grind it would spill over in the documentary. The very fact that they had woman presenters and journalists suggests to me that they can hardly be the fundamentalist hard-liners that some reports have implied them being. It was interesting how the US Army liason officer moved from being somewhat hostile to viewing them as "like Fox, but from the other perspective" during the course of the documentary; from what was presented, they seemed a lot closer to CNN than Fox. :)

Also in the international relations basket, The Battle For Algiers was an interesting one. Made in 1966, only four years after Algeria got independence, it sends a weird mixture of signals. For example, we start with the French army having tortured the location of the last of the rebels out of a Algerian; but we see the Algerian rebels murdering policemen numerous times, and policemen saving Algerians from mobs of angry Frenchmen. We also see how differently the Algerians and French are treated at checkpoints, but also how the rebels use the fact that the French won't touch their women to smuggle things through the checkpoints. The head of the army who is brought in to crush the rebellion admits that he'll use toture to root out the rebels, but he was a member of the Resistance, and is shown allowing his most influencial prisoner to talk to the press. (However, it's implied that the prisoner may have been murdered later.) The only "evil" thing that we actually see on-screen is a group of French citizens secretly planting a bomb next to a bulding; but in contrast, we see the faces of the people that the Algerians later bomb.

It made me think of the Citizen King documentary - King's struggle to find a non-violent solution, especially. And Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion, and the Dhalai Lama's struggle with the Chinese authorities. I'd like to believe that the Algerians were wrong, and they could have eventually rid themselves of the French by politely and consistently asking them to leave; but I'm afraid that it might not be true, just as it's not really been true in these two examples.

To talk about these two films quickly - the Tibetian film was engaging, and seemed to cover the material pretty well; I feel that I have a better idea of why the Chinese are so intent on keeping it, and how the whole "Tibetans in India" thing works. I wonder whether there are interesting parallels to be drawn with the Cubans in the US?

Citizen King I really enjoyed. The director was there, and he was intelligent and articulate; I got a much better idea of how King and the movement he headed fit in with the general civil rights movement, as well as the kind of man he was. I would say it was one of the better documentaries I saw.

***

I'll post my flight plan tonight.