Entries from January 2008 ↓

Hostel life is curious. Some people don’t want to know you, some want to be your best friend, and some are quite happy to pretend that you don’t exist altogether. I’m not sure precisely what I expected, however I have determined a brilliant new system of ranking accommodation based on four simple categories.

A ) Number of things present that I am likely to be allergic to (lower is better)

B ) Maximum temperature of water as dispensed from shower nozzle (higher is better)

C ) Volume of water dispensed by shower nozzle per minute (higher is better)

D ) Number of minutes that category B can be maintained when utilised in accordance with category C (higher is better)

The hostel in which I am staying rates well in category A, but barely registers on the remaining three. I would be less forgiving, but the water from the cold tap in England is truly cold. Really, really cold. I brush my teeth using the hot tap.

Other theories regarding London life:

Redheads are slaughtered at birth or transported immediately to Scotland under cover of darkness. I have seen barely anyone in my travels with even red-ish hair. If they come for me at night, I will be waiting.

Large numbers of sticks and other lumps of wood seem to be planting themselves in the ground and masquerading as trees, despite their obvious lack of foliage. I am not yet sure what these flora imposters are up to, but you can be sure that it is no good.

I am the only person in the greater London area wearing camo pants. I suspect this is becuase (A) the trees have been replaced with sticks with no leaves, rendering jungle camo ineffective or (B) they blend in well enough by just looking miserable and wearing long black coats.

Due to increases in the price of local food, accommodation and fuel, many services have been cut back. This includes sunlight. Hours of daylight have been reduced to the minimum necessary to sustain life and the intensity of the sun has been lowered to a dull glow, illuminating the picturesque cloud of smog hanging over the city.

The number of Australians in London can only be explained by the discovery of a large tunnel travelling directly through the centre of the earth, connecting the two locales. I will endeavour to find out where this tunnel is, and whether frequent traveller miles are calculated on surface distance or displacement through the core.

Apparently since the bombings of tube stations some years ago, the authorities realised the potential for explosives to be hidden in bins and other trash receptacles at train stations, bus stops and pretty much everywhere in public. So they decided to solve the problem by removing them all. Which is fine, until you are holding a piece of rubbish.

Observational curiosities seem to be my flavour of the week.

The villages in Yorkshire are like a living photograph, the rolling green hills keep company with clusters of hundred year olf cottages that hug to the rivers and streams. Paddocks are carved out by hedgerows and stonewalls that reach out for miles on end. There are fords and moors… it’s like a storybook.

I’ve been staying with Tara’s Nan Anne and her friend Tony in a cosy three-floor house off the main drag of Sleights in the North end of Yorkshire. If it weren’t for the sheer flights of stairs from room to room, the Yorkshire hospitality would be a mighty challenge for my belt. In the two days since arriving I’ve had two roasts, a four course chinese meal and been introduced to after-lunch dessert. I have managed to talk them out of a fry-up for breakfast every morning however, for which my arteries are grateful.

The front door and kitchen are on the ground floor, the sitting room and bathroom on the first floor and my bedroom on the second. My legs are like steel springs. The countryside is just breathtaking though, amongst its mists, fog and rain there are forests of fir trees that make me think of fairy tales and there is such a range of songbirds here that cast a spell on me. I could sit in the cold and listed to them for days. This is an England I could stay in.

It’s six thirty in the morning and black as night outside. I’m on the 403 bus out of Croydon when I catch a glance of my reflection in the closing shutter doors. Suddenly I realise how plainly my purple jumper clashes with my jungle camo pants as I sit on my bright red suitcase. I am the epitomy of fashion crime. Still, it’s function over form today and besides, it helps distract attention from my accomplices bright pink and red love-heart wellington boots.

Soon we’ll be jumping the bus to catch the train to the coach terminal for eight hours of bus travel North out of the city to get some fresh air and see the lush English countryside. we’re headed for Sleights, out of Whitby, and it’s a long day ahead.

Well I’ve spent my first full day in London and survived with all of my appendages. The temperatures aren’t quite as sub-zero as I had been making preparations for, but it’s still pretty damn cold. I get the chance to see the wisps of the wind twirl around in the steam from my breath for at least a few metres before it loses itself in the cold local air.

We talk about the urban sprawl back home in Perth, but we really haven’t any clue. The greater London makes my home state’s capital look like a quaint seaside village. Thankfully London is blessed with a public transport system with phenomenal scope. The infrastructure is amazing, the buses, trains and trans stretch across the landscape, to say nothing of the mindboggling underground. The Tube has a dozen lines that travel on several levels that criss and cross in a lattice of tunnels. It took Perth three years to build one train track in a straight line, I imagine they might barely comprehend the massive reach and utility that is provided here.

Of course trains and buses aren’t particularly inspiring as far as subject matter, so I should probably waffle about the rest of my day. After the public transport experience, Tara and I met up with her cousin Julie somewhere underground and made our way out to the O2 arena to take a squiz at the exhibition they had on, starring the remains of Tutankhamun. Unfortunately by the time we got there, the only tickets left would clash with the ones we had to go and see the terracotta army at the British Museum later that day. Resisting the urge to spend ungodly amounts of money to join three other suckers on the indoor ‘Ice Disco’, we grabbed some lunch at a reasonably classy joint called The Slug and Lettuce.

After some more public transport we spent some time wandering around one of the university districts since Julie needed to pick up some journals. A short walk later and we turned up at the British Museum to have a look around before our time slot to view The First Emporer exhibition. The inner hall of the Museum is monstrous, it has buildings inside of it, and of course they serve tea and scones at the cafe. Speaking of tea, my coffee intake has plummeted to about a serve a day, but my tea habit has risen sharply to roughly six hundred cups per day. Apparently in England, if you’re in someone’s home and you’re not holding a cup of tea, there is something amiss. I’m actually quite fond of tea though, so it works out remarkably well.

Anyhow, we took in most of the British Museum, and it turns out that mummified bodies and other things involving the remains of actual people kind of creep me out, so missing out on King Tut probably wasn’t too bad a deal. I appreciate the opportunity to see so many things with such a history, but it seems so cold and unnatural in museums like this one. Everything taken from context and placed in glass cabinets, from trinkets to treasures, even entire faces of thousand year old buildngs. It’s more like a giant hall dedicated to booty that England have collected from around the world and refuse to give back (which in some cases causes a mite of resentment amongst the people).

While the Museum had about fifteen soldiers of the terracotta army on loan, there were around about seven thousand found buried in China. I didn’t realise that they were only found just over thirty years ago. The scale of some of the things that rulers demanded of their people out of vanity is incredible.

So we wandered back through several more places I recognise from my Monopoly board, including Leicester Square, which would have been a proper disappointment if it weren’t for the young fellow on the kerb playing The Saints Go Marching In on orange traffic cone. Surprisingly well in fact.

I think tomorrow will be a little slower paced so that my body can catch up with itself before we head off up North for the weekend galavanting about the countryside. I’m looking forward to it, as London is rather grey. Very, very grey.

So I’m chilling out at a Starbucks next to my gate at Dubai International, watching the steam rise off my triple espresso while I gnaw on a stale cinnamon roll. It’s two in the afternoon local time, but I’ve been up for fifteen hours already, and I’m waiting to board the eight hour second leg of my journey to London. This isn’t exactly nutrition, but it sure beats plane food. Breakfast on the flight in from Perth was supposedly crepes and pork sausages, but what I got was something closer to Protein Supplement #4 and a sample of the Miscellaneous Meat Off-Cut Roll. Air travel is hell. One of these days cash will rain down upon me from the sky and I’ll be chaufferring my ass around in first class comfort, but until then I’m afraid it’s Battery Hen class for me.

Next time I do international flights, I have to remember to look more socially acceptable. I mean the extra berth that other passengers give you can be nice for elbow room, but it does tend to get you “randomly” selected for the first additional search going through security on departure.

Boarding starts in about twenty minutes, so I’m gonna finish downing my carcinogens of choice and prepare for more chasing the sun. I figure that when I land on English soil I should have *just* seen the last of twenty-one hours of daylight. Probably a good thing, seeing as how I hear they don’t have the stuff where I’m headed.