London has this habit of sneaking up on you - sitting on the train you pass through village after village divided by miles of fields and pasture until the villages start to roll one into the next and you look over your shoulder to realise that that there'll be no more fields and there's London staring back at you with a guilty grin while it tries to pretend it wasn't about to shiv you with the sharpened pool cue it's doing a poor job of hiding behind its back. i've heard tell of people who commute into London from villages in the surrounds (even met a couple) but i'd never believed it was that popular until i rode the train back from Harwich first thing in the morning. by the time we're half-way there the train's crowded. half an hour out and it's packed. these people must spend almost as much time commuting as they do working (more so knowing some of the office-workers i've met over the years), but they don't seem to care... or at least, are resigned to it out the quietly desperate way of the English that Pink Floyd referred to years before i was born.
Louise and i parted company at Liverpool St Station - me taking the bags back to base-camp and her off to work. i walked into the cool quiet of our room. she walked face-first into a Don't Come Monday. the company she's been working for since December runs in cycles of workload and she'd already dodged two staffing cuts. this one got her. on the plus side, she gets to work out the week which means a bit of extra cash for her. on the minus, this leaves her at a massive loose-end, and no idea where her next paycheck's coming from.
my job search has showed little more than previous weeks and i'm not in the mood - going through the motions if for no other reason than that i have fuck-all better to do. i've had an increasingly sinking suspicion since Tuesday that this might be the beginning of the end and my mind's already started to build contingency plans and pondering dates of return to the a sunburned country. i don't know. i really don't. there are too many different factors pulling in different directions. what i'm hearing from the homeland hasn't been positive as far as the job opportunities are concerned, but at least i have infrastructure there - a strong professional reputation, pimps who take my calls, couches to crash on and the dole i can apply for... but i have this sinking feeling that if i wound up back in Canberra in a month or so i'd wind up sitting there staring out across Lake Burley-Griffin thinking WTF? my current temptation is to give it another few weeks or a month, pack it in and go travel the continent. Louise has been talking about doing a 3-week tour through Egypt, which sounds like a great way to get it started. St Patrick's Day is around the corner, as is Ireland, and that seems like the sort of thing that just has to be done, so i could probably fit that in before Egypt... then instead of coming back to London i could head on elsewhere... Greece is just across the Mediterranean. so's Italy, and from either or the rest of Europe's laid out in a patchwork of irregular borders and train lines, begging to be traversed. i could easily lose 2 or 3 months in that and get back into Aus at around Tax Time when budgets are full and the departments are casting around to fill in their FTE. or i could keep hanging around London...
i need to sit down with Louise and see what she has to say, and what her plans are. i don't think she's done yet, but it's a conversation we have to have. not sure whether, or how, it'll change my plans just yet, but if i can remove that variable then at least i can start thinking about how i want to attack things. there's also the small matter of a pretty little brunette who i've not spoken to enough since i left... knowing her mind will certainly help push me in one direction or another.
i hate to think about slinking home with my tail between my legs, but i know in my mind that i've made the best go of it that i could under the circumstances, and backpacking Europe would make a fantastic way to end it... or at least make the return smell less of failure and more of the grand adventure i'd envisioned a year ago when i was first putting my plans together. conversations i have in the coming days will tell me a great deal. i just hope that they provide me with some clarity on which way to jump. at very least i expect that they'll remove any excuse i might have to not make the decision i don't want to have to make myself.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Amsterdam/Rotterdam: sometimes all you want to do is nothing...
the wind turbines at Hoek van Holland are whirling silhoettes against a cloudy sky stained orange by industial lighting, and i've been standing in the cold wind on the upper deck of the ferry that'll be taking me back to Harwich in a couple of hours. outside it's freezing, but inside it's temperature controlled and sterile. as far as I can tell, there are two ferries servicing the Harwich - Hoek van Holland route. each one does the round trip every day, passing each other somewhere mid-way with their loads of holidaymakers and freight. in twelve hours i'll be back in Blighty again, back to my job search and an increasing concern as to what the fuck i'm going to do with myself for the next few months... and in fact what country i'll be in by year-end.
this day's been one of relaxed cruising. neither of us could think of anything we desperately wanted to do before we left, so we hit the street and wandered some more, meandering our way through now familiar streets and the peacefulness of the canals with out bags left in the relatative security of the hotel. now on our 3rd day in this country i've found my feet, so to speak, and it no longer feels like every cyclist and tram driver is trying to kill me... or maybe i'm just getting better at avoiding them. once again we manage to find ourselves i the RLD completely by accident. it was between wherever we were and where looked interesting. the main harbor and the NEMO Science Centre is chanced upon in the same way - a huge green facility that i suppose is designed to be reminiscent of a sailing ship. by the time we're done with lunch we've had enough and resolve to spend an hour or so in Rotterdam on the way back to the ferry so bags are recovered and we sit on the train listening to our PSD's as we watch the countryside roll by again in reverse order.
after the "stuck at the turn of the last century" vibe of Amsterdam, Rotterdam's blisteringly modern - cobble and brick footpaths have given way to concrete and bitumen and we find ourselves in an obvious CBD where i never saw one in Amstedam. for 5PM on a monday afternoon the traffic seems light, but people are still bustling around with the "i'm not in a rush, but there are still places i'd rather be" attitude i've come to associate with the Dutch. i may have completely the wrong idea, but what the hell?
we find a cafe and drink coffee if for no other reason than that caffeine is good and we're not in the mood to wander far, and after a few hours we've decided we've seen enough and are between countries again.
i'd love to say more about the experience, but that's really it. it's been nice, but i'm underwealmed by it all. there's a new sticker on my Eee as a sort of "haha - see where i've been" to any onlookers, but that's all i'm leaving with souvenier-wise. if i'd wanted to be on the go the whole time i'd have been disappointed, but since i just wanted to cruise it was great. that said, if i REALLY wanted to cruise there's beaches in Fiji i've not swum at... but then a good coffee can be hard to find on a desert island. i came, i saw, i left again... and i can see this being a theme in the coming months as i gear up more and more towards what i think may be an impending European Backpacking Odyssey. in the meantime, there's a shower waiting for me which promises to clean the top 3 layers of skin off my back and a bunk calling with the promise of too little substandard sleep.
this day's been one of relaxed cruising. neither of us could think of anything we desperately wanted to do before we left, so we hit the street and wandered some more, meandering our way through now familiar streets and the peacefulness of the canals with out bags left in the relatative security of the hotel. now on our 3rd day in this country i've found my feet, so to speak, and it no longer feels like every cyclist and tram driver is trying to kill me... or maybe i'm just getting better at avoiding them. once again we manage to find ourselves i the RLD completely by accident. it was between wherever we were and where looked interesting. the main harbor and the NEMO Science Centre is chanced upon in the same way - a huge green facility that i suppose is designed to be reminiscent of a sailing ship. by the time we're done with lunch we've had enough and resolve to spend an hour or so in Rotterdam on the way back to the ferry so bags are recovered and we sit on the train listening to our PSD's as we watch the countryside roll by again in reverse order.
after the "stuck at the turn of the last century" vibe of Amsterdam, Rotterdam's blisteringly modern - cobble and brick footpaths have given way to concrete and bitumen and we find ourselves in an obvious CBD where i never saw one in Amstedam. for 5PM on a monday afternoon the traffic seems light, but people are still bustling around with the "i'm not in a rush, but there are still places i'd rather be" attitude i've come to associate with the Dutch. i may have completely the wrong idea, but what the hell?
we find a cafe and drink coffee if for no other reason than that caffeine is good and we're not in the mood to wander far, and after a few hours we've decided we've seen enough and are between countries again.
i'd love to say more about the experience, but that's really it. it's been nice, but i'm underwealmed by it all. there's a new sticker on my Eee as a sort of "haha - see where i've been" to any onlookers, but that's all i'm leaving with souvenier-wise. if i'd wanted to be on the go the whole time i'd have been disappointed, but since i just wanted to cruise it was great. that said, if i REALLY wanted to cruise there's beaches in Fiji i've not swum at... but then a good coffee can be hard to find on a desert island. i came, i saw, i left again... and i can see this being a theme in the coming months as i gear up more and more towards what i think may be an impending European Backpacking Odyssey. in the meantime, there's a shower waiting for me which promises to clean the top 3 layers of skin off my back and a bunk calling with the promise of too little substandard sleep.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Amsterdam: where XXX doesn't mean what you think it means...
Liverpool St Station is packed when we get there, luggage in tow. some fool's organised a Facebook Flashmob to convene in the foyer. i'm all for anarchistic protests and celebrations of public space by the public, but there are people trying to use this as a fucking train station you inconsiderate motherfuckers. the police-presence is massive - i stop counting at 20 of them, standing around eyeing everyone off, trying to work out who's travelling somewhere and who's there just for fun and they're getting more in the way than the Flashmobbers. next time go meet up in a Maccas or in front of Westminster or fucking Piccadilly Circus.
i'd met Louise at the station with her bag to save her from having to cart it in to work and then out again. between my ever-present shoulder bag and backpack, i still have a hand free when i'm dragging her little rolling luggage so it bothers me not at all. after sorting out our tickets (we had them all along, they just didn't look right, so there was something of a panic while we ran around trying to find an internet connection i could hook into with my Eee and check the details) we grab some food, then navigate the gauntlet of "For Your Protection" (yes we are travelling - can't you see the backpack and rolling luggage?) and find our train to Harwich. the arrangement is beautifully elegant: on the one site you book your ferry passage on Stena Lines from London to Hoek Van Holland. the package includes Liverpool St to Harwich tickets on the train for the day you leave, then Hoek Van Holland to ANY DUTCH STATION tickets for the next day when you arrive. yeah - ANY Dutch station, so no matter where you're going you're covered. hell - you could ride the Dutch rail system all day long if you wanted.
2 hours or so later we've got to Harwich, through customs and found our cabin on the ferry. it's not huge - 2 bunks, a little couchy thing and an ensuite bathroom, but it's all you need for an overnighter. the bar is hit where we burn the last of Louise's euro-change before we decide to sod it all off, grab a bottle of el-cheapo Californian wine from the duty-free shop (the entire bottle is ~50c more expensive than the glass Louise had at the bar, with the benefit that we have the comfort of our cabin to enjoy it in. win!) and we bed down for the night.
the beds are comfortable, but neither of us sleeps well. i have another shower under the torrent of scalding water the shower provides to wake up and we're off, through immigration and out into the Dutch morning. add a couple of hours and we've passed through Rotterdam and emerged slightly lost at Amstel Station in Amsterdam. the train from Rotterdam passes through village after village, spaced out by well irrigated (or is that "drained" pasture with the occasional windmill or turbine spinning in the distance. every available surface is graffiti'd, but not the train, or anything that looks to be of value. some of it's beautiful, most of it's amateur, but no one seems bothered by it. i can't decide whether i like it or not - i love graffiti art, i hate tagging random pieces of wall... but then most of the walls were grey and boring to start with so why not add some colour where you can?
we follow the map we printed out off the hotel website, only to realise that it's wrong. luckily my man Dan is staying in the same hotel and he comes and finds us. through happy coincidence Inspector Morse was in Amsterdam for an interview the day before and was staying until Sunday, giving us a day to run around, and run around we did. bags get dumped, maps acquired, and we're off into Centraal to find food, fun and adventure, which comes in the form of getting minorly lost, nearly run over by trams and flocks of pushbike riders with a god-complex, the Van Gogh Museum and the Heineken Experience (a tour through their old, inactive brewery, followed by getting fed beer and advertised at). hiking back to the hotel for a change of clothes and it's back out on the street in search of something to fill out stomachs prior to a night on the town. Amsterdam's an odd place to wander around after London. it's still flat, but full of canals, and you can turn down an seemingly innocuous road and realise that you were one street away from a restaurant or shopping district. there's Mexican, pub food, french, Italian, Indian, Thai, Indo (not to mention a thousand places to get great chips and mayo) and a noticeable amount of Argentinian food around, which is where we fetch up, waiting an hour for food to show up which turns out to be fantastic. throwing caution (and budgets) to the wind, Dan and i embark on the Meat Odyssey - a charcoal burner full of meat which lands on the table with escorting side-salads and we enjoy the most high-quality protein either of us have had in since we'd left. Louise sits through the whole thing listening to us moaning with the happiness of the satisfied carnivore with a smile on her face - i gather the show we put on was just as enjoyable as her meal was, although when i gave her a couple of bites to try she understood.
staggering out of the restaurant we find the red light district and wander around for a while, finding a couple of pubs and getting ourselves nicely wasted before finding our way back to the hotel... more by luck and guesswork than by skill or map-reading. none of us were in any condition to read the map anyway.
the next morning is a slow start. we're all hungover, but Dan and i grab some food from the breakfast bar while Louise gets an extra half hour of kip. he's got to get to Amsterdam Centraal Station for his flight out, so the day becomes one less of touristing and more of wandering around the canals and seeing what the place is really like to live there. there's a motivation behind this greater than exploration though - Dan's trying to work out whether he wants to take the job he interviewed for if it's offered. it's a hard call and he's going back and forth. on one hand, he's a raver and Holland would be insane for that. on the other, he's gotten attached to London and isn't relishing the idea of trying to make friends in a country where he doesn't speak the main language. it occupies most of our conversation until we put him on his train at 2ish.
this leaves me and Louise at a bit of a loose end. neither of us had come out to Amsterdam with much of an agenda past "get out of London for a weekend and have a couple of big nights out", so we take stock and check the map. taking a canal-boat ride is traditional, but too expensive for our tastes. after some meandering which took us unexpectedly through the Red Light District again we fetch up at the Jewish History Museum (don't bother unless you're really REALLY keen on Jewish History), followed by a short bus ride (the only bus i'd seen so far, but i'll get to that) to Anne Frank's House on the other side of town (DO bother - it's surprisingly interesting). out of there and we're wandering towards hotel, enormous burritos and another heavy night of drinking in front of Dutch television.
the Red Light District in Amsterdam is a curious beast. i've been to the equivalent in Bangkok and from that experience i was wary. Amsterdam was as far away as you could get while still being the same sort of thing. when we wandered through last night there was the scent of sleaze in the air. the streets are full of students on Eurotrip, smiling police paying less attention than you'd expect, tourists there for the spectacle, drunken louts who've come to make a mess, interspersed with actual punters looking for a good time and seedy looking men on standing in the shadows muttering things like "coca, coca, coke" and "heroin? got heroin...". these guys don't really seem to bother anyone. they're there. they're touting their wares, but they're not in your face and they're not trying to shove it down your throat. meanwhile, every so often you'll pass a series of 7"x3" windows with red fluorescent borders illuminating a girl in a bikini or similar who's generally standing there looking bored and smoking a cigarette. big girls, small girls, young and old, smoking hot or somewhat not so, they're there and they're working. a little research will tell you that they're actually incredibly well treated - there's a Support Centre (or so i'm told) where not only will they help you get out of the industry, but help you get IN if that's what you want to do - who to talk to, what the laws are, where to get medical advice... i heard this and i just about fell over.
the RHD didn't seem like a particularly happy place... these sort of districts don't leave me with the sweetest taste in my mouth. still, there was a vibe of "safe" fun to the place. i never felt like i'd be assaulted or attacked or coerced into losing my cash... but of course, anyone who wants to spend some cash would be well accommodated. it's clean, regulated depravity, with a constant whiff of high-quality marijuana for perfume. yeah, it's there. it's EVERYWHERE. "Coffee Shops" differentiate themselves from the cafes in that they ALSO sell coffee. the locals don't seem to care. go have your fun. get a couple of joints into you and you'll not be starting any fights, and you're less likely to vomit in someone's garden than if you go 10 pints and stagger home with a skin full.
the Dutch seem to be the most permissive, accepting people i've met anywhere. anywhere i went i was greeted with a smile and a hello. there were a couple of times i'd walk into a cafe to be greeted in Dutch - i'd smile and say "sorry... english?" and they'd just switch over for you. no english version of the menu? they'll be happy to translate for you. directions? happy to oblige. an ounce of award winning pot after banging an attractive prostitute? might i recommend my favourite establishment good sir? they don't care, just don't fuck around and be an arsehole and everything's mintox. i was really starting to dig it.
another thing you notice really quickly is the transport, and not just that the cars drive on the wrong side of the road compared to what i'm used to (i kept checking both ways before i crossed a lane to remind myself of which way the traffic was going to come from). yeah, there are plenty of cars, but i never once saw a petrol station. pushbikes are the kings of transport, and the only reason i think the trams have right of way is because they're bigger and will fuck your shit up. most of the "footpaths" are actually cycle paths, and woe betide he who strays onto one. put one foot wrong and i'll be greeted by bells. the cycle path us usually broader than the footpath, and while people will put signs and rubbish bins and cars in the way of peds, cyclists get free reign. everywhere we went there were people giving each other dinkies on pushies. even tandem bikes were not uncommon. and i wasn't kidding about the trams - they're frequent and fast and you get the feeling that they'll only stop to scrape you out of the gears, then they're off again.
still, we've another day here tomorrow. no idea what we'll get up to, but i'm not really fussed to be honest. it's refreshing to not have an agenda and be free to just wander. they'll be coffee whenever i want it, and canals to walk down. it's been overcast and dreary since we got here and i can't help but feel that if it was sunny it'd all seem just that much happier. still, i'm loving the cruisy pace everything seems to be at. every canal is lined with houseboats, and everyone seems to ride these rusty, clapped out old bikes. i haven't seen a fat person since i got here, except for maybe a tourist or two. Amsterdam seems full of fit, contented people going about their lives with no concern whatsoever. if only Canberra could be so contented...
i'd met Louise at the station with her bag to save her from having to cart it in to work and then out again. between my ever-present shoulder bag and backpack, i still have a hand free when i'm dragging her little rolling luggage so it bothers me not at all. after sorting out our tickets (we had them all along, they just didn't look right, so there was something of a panic while we ran around trying to find an internet connection i could hook into with my Eee and check the details) we grab some food, then navigate the gauntlet of "For Your Protection" (yes we are travelling - can't you see the backpack and rolling luggage?) and find our train to Harwich. the arrangement is beautifully elegant: on the one site you book your ferry passage on Stena Lines from London to Hoek Van Holland. the package includes Liverpool St to Harwich tickets on the train for the day you leave, then Hoek Van Holland to ANY DUTCH STATION tickets for the next day when you arrive. yeah - ANY Dutch station, so no matter where you're going you're covered. hell - you could ride the Dutch rail system all day long if you wanted.
2 hours or so later we've got to Harwich, through customs and found our cabin on the ferry. it's not huge - 2 bunks, a little couchy thing and an ensuite bathroom, but it's all you need for an overnighter. the bar is hit where we burn the last of Louise's euro-change before we decide to sod it all off, grab a bottle of el-cheapo Californian wine from the duty-free shop (the entire bottle is ~50c more expensive than the glass Louise had at the bar, with the benefit that we have the comfort of our cabin to enjoy it in. win!) and we bed down for the night.
the beds are comfortable, but neither of us sleeps well. i have another shower under the torrent of scalding water the shower provides to wake up and we're off, through immigration and out into the Dutch morning. add a couple of hours and we've passed through Rotterdam and emerged slightly lost at Amstel Station in Amsterdam. the train from Rotterdam passes through village after village, spaced out by well irrigated (or is that "drained" pasture with the occasional windmill or turbine spinning in the distance. every available surface is graffiti'd, but not the train, or anything that looks to be of value. some of it's beautiful, most of it's amateur, but no one seems bothered by it. i can't decide whether i like it or not - i love graffiti art, i hate tagging random pieces of wall... but then most of the walls were grey and boring to start with so why not add some colour where you can?
we follow the map we printed out off the hotel website, only to realise that it's wrong. luckily my man Dan is staying in the same hotel and he comes and finds us. through happy coincidence Inspector Morse was in Amsterdam for an interview the day before and was staying until Sunday, giving us a day to run around, and run around we did. bags get dumped, maps acquired, and we're off into Centraal to find food, fun and adventure, which comes in the form of getting minorly lost, nearly run over by trams and flocks of pushbike riders with a god-complex, the Van Gogh Museum and the Heineken Experience (a tour through their old, inactive brewery, followed by getting fed beer and advertised at). hiking back to the hotel for a change of clothes and it's back out on the street in search of something to fill out stomachs prior to a night on the town. Amsterdam's an odd place to wander around after London. it's still flat, but full of canals, and you can turn down an seemingly innocuous road and realise that you were one street away from a restaurant or shopping district. there's Mexican, pub food, french, Italian, Indian, Thai, Indo (not to mention a thousand places to get great chips and mayo) and a noticeable amount of Argentinian food around, which is where we fetch up, waiting an hour for food to show up which turns out to be fantastic. throwing caution (and budgets) to the wind, Dan and i embark on the Meat Odyssey - a charcoal burner full of meat which lands on the table with escorting side-salads and we enjoy the most high-quality protein either of us have had in since we'd left. Louise sits through the whole thing listening to us moaning with the happiness of the satisfied carnivore with a smile on her face - i gather the show we put on was just as enjoyable as her meal was, although when i gave her a couple of bites to try she understood.
staggering out of the restaurant we find the red light district and wander around for a while, finding a couple of pubs and getting ourselves nicely wasted before finding our way back to the hotel... more by luck and guesswork than by skill or map-reading. none of us were in any condition to read the map anyway.
the next morning is a slow start. we're all hungover, but Dan and i grab some food from the breakfast bar while Louise gets an extra half hour of kip. he's got to get to Amsterdam Centraal Station for his flight out, so the day becomes one less of touristing and more of wandering around the canals and seeing what the place is really like to live there. there's a motivation behind this greater than exploration though - Dan's trying to work out whether he wants to take the job he interviewed for if it's offered. it's a hard call and he's going back and forth. on one hand, he's a raver and Holland would be insane for that. on the other, he's gotten attached to London and isn't relishing the idea of trying to make friends in a country where he doesn't speak the main language. it occupies most of our conversation until we put him on his train at 2ish.
this leaves me and Louise at a bit of a loose end. neither of us had come out to Amsterdam with much of an agenda past "get out of London for a weekend and have a couple of big nights out", so we take stock and check the map. taking a canal-boat ride is traditional, but too expensive for our tastes. after some meandering which took us unexpectedly through the Red Light District again we fetch up at the Jewish History Museum (don't bother unless you're really REALLY keen on Jewish History), followed by a short bus ride (the only bus i'd seen so far, but i'll get to that) to Anne Frank's House on the other side of town (DO bother - it's surprisingly interesting). out of there and we're wandering towards hotel, enormous burritos and another heavy night of drinking in front of Dutch television.
the Red Light District in Amsterdam is a curious beast. i've been to the equivalent in Bangkok and from that experience i was wary. Amsterdam was as far away as you could get while still being the same sort of thing. when we wandered through last night there was the scent of sleaze in the air. the streets are full of students on Eurotrip, smiling police paying less attention than you'd expect, tourists there for the spectacle, drunken louts who've come to make a mess, interspersed with actual punters looking for a good time and seedy looking men on standing in the shadows muttering things like "coca, coca, coke" and "heroin? got heroin...". these guys don't really seem to bother anyone. they're there. they're touting their wares, but they're not in your face and they're not trying to shove it down your throat. meanwhile, every so often you'll pass a series of 7"x3" windows with red fluorescent borders illuminating a girl in a bikini or similar who's generally standing there looking bored and smoking a cigarette. big girls, small girls, young and old, smoking hot or somewhat not so, they're there and they're working. a little research will tell you that they're actually incredibly well treated - there's a Support Centre (or so i'm told) where not only will they help you get out of the industry, but help you get IN if that's what you want to do - who to talk to, what the laws are, where to get medical advice... i heard this and i just about fell over.
the RHD didn't seem like a particularly happy place... these sort of districts don't leave me with the sweetest taste in my mouth. still, there was a vibe of "safe" fun to the place. i never felt like i'd be assaulted or attacked or coerced into losing my cash... but of course, anyone who wants to spend some cash would be well accommodated. it's clean, regulated depravity, with a constant whiff of high-quality marijuana for perfume. yeah, it's there. it's EVERYWHERE. "Coffee Shops" differentiate themselves from the cafes in that they ALSO sell coffee. the locals don't seem to care. go have your fun. get a couple of joints into you and you'll not be starting any fights, and you're less likely to vomit in someone's garden than if you go 10 pints and stagger home with a skin full.
the Dutch seem to be the most permissive, accepting people i've met anywhere. anywhere i went i was greeted with a smile and a hello. there were a couple of times i'd walk into a cafe to be greeted in Dutch - i'd smile and say "sorry... english?" and they'd just switch over for you. no english version of the menu? they'll be happy to translate for you. directions? happy to oblige. an ounce of award winning pot after banging an attractive prostitute? might i recommend my favourite establishment good sir? they don't care, just don't fuck around and be an arsehole and everything's mintox. i was really starting to dig it.
another thing you notice really quickly is the transport, and not just that the cars drive on the wrong side of the road compared to what i'm used to (i kept checking both ways before i crossed a lane to remind myself of which way the traffic was going to come from). yeah, there are plenty of cars, but i never once saw a petrol station. pushbikes are the kings of transport, and the only reason i think the trams have right of way is because they're bigger and will fuck your shit up. most of the "footpaths" are actually cycle paths, and woe betide he who strays onto one. put one foot wrong and i'll be greeted by bells. the cycle path us usually broader than the footpath, and while people will put signs and rubbish bins and cars in the way of peds, cyclists get free reign. everywhere we went there were people giving each other dinkies on pushies. even tandem bikes were not uncommon. and i wasn't kidding about the trams - they're frequent and fast and you get the feeling that they'll only stop to scrape you out of the gears, then they're off again.
still, we've another day here tomorrow. no idea what we'll get up to, but i'm not really fussed to be honest. it's refreshing to not have an agenda and be free to just wander. they'll be coffee whenever i want it, and canals to walk down. it's been overcast and dreary since we got here and i can't help but feel that if it was sunny it'd all seem just that much happier. still, i'm loving the cruisy pace everything seems to be at. every canal is lined with houseboats, and everyone seems to ride these rusty, clapped out old bikes. i haven't seen a fat person since i got here, except for maybe a tourist or two. Amsterdam seems full of fit, contented people going about their lives with no concern whatsoever. if only Canberra could be so contented...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
from the bottom, the only way to look is up...
it took one day of being back on the job hunt to knock me back on my arse again. back in London and from out of nowhere the tourists have appeared, clogging my usual haunts around Trafalgar Square with over-excited, camera-waving, stopping-in-the-middle-of-the-footpath exuberance, forcing me to duck, dodge and dive through them all like a rider heading the wrong way down a Malaysian freeway on an aging Chinese moped. the whole world seems to have gone insane and sent the worst of it all here on holiday.
Saturday was one of those nights that ended early, but didn't finish until late. by the time i met Louise at Clapham South Station i was swaying slightly on my feet. she had her friend Margeaux in tow, both dressed to kill and drunk enough to make Boris Yeltsin blush. after having a few drinks at Rhodora's house nearby the expanded party made its way to a loud, busy club in Clapham called Infernos where people danced while i cockblocked random sleezeballs until Louise lost her phone and decided she'd had enough at around midnight - just early enough to miss the last tube out by seconds and have to find the bus to get back to base-camp. we spent Sunday bumming around the house watching Star Wars movies, comparing notes about the last week and generally keeping our heads down, and the next day i shook my arse into Bite with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
my good mood lasted for about 3 hours - i called all my contacts in the pimping community to say: i'm back from holiday in Scotland. yeah, it was lovely. no jobs, you say? well shit, and cruised the job sites until it was time to meet Louise in Covent Garden for tea. as far as anti-climaxes go, Monday was right up there. nothing to apply for, nothing going on, no positive word in any direction. Louise was effervescent - she'd come out of the funk she'd been in for nearly a week and her grin lit her face up like the London Eye. i, on the other hand, sat there eating good indian food feeling flatter than my naan bread, so for the rest of the evening our roles were reversed and it was her job to cheer me up for a while.
Monday was very much a "hit bottom" sort of day, and i didn't just hit: i carved a nice deep crater on impact. see, i went off on walkabout to get my spirits up again and shake off the despair and frustration. one afternoon of adversity and it all came crushing down again and it broke me... but when you're broken and defeated it opens up a lot of options you wouldn't have considered otherwise. it's also the best way i've ever found to really Give Up, and while i sat there staring into space i decided well, fuck it.
once you've seriously Given Up a lot of things stop mattering. when a pimp calls you up and asks if you've X, Y and Z skills, but your Y's a little lacking you don't explain the intricate details - you just say yes, absolutely. this job's good enough? meh - apply for it anyway. i've taken to telling them that i love it here and i want to stay forever and ever. it's not strictly true. but why should that matter? it's a contract for 3 fucking months, not 3 years! do i have any holidays planned? no - i just got back from one. they don't need to know that i'm off to Amsterdam on Friday, and looking at going to Egypt for most of April. call them white-lies, call them filthy-mistruths, but frankly my dear, i don't give a damn.
i've taken to applying for all sorts of odd jobs. i applied for a job in recruitment because... well, why the fuck not? i've been putting in for all manner of weirdness, emailing friends and asking if they have any contacts, firing my CV all over the internet like an over-enthusiastic male porn star trying to get the record for World's Messiest Moneyshot. i was sitting in the office in Leicester Square yesterday when a new face walked in. i finished off my phone call, looked over and said hello, before explaining that yes, i DO swear a lot, i am an ANGRY motherfucker and i hoped he'd understand. he laughed and said that when he'd walked in he'd been impressed by my phone manner, so this was a bit of a shock by comparison. i laughed, flattered, and told him that you do what you have to do, but in the meantime i was going to make a fucking coffee.
by this time on Friday night i'm going to be on a ferry to The Netherlands. when i spoke to her from Inverness, Louise had said that she really wanted to get out of town for the weekend and was considering locations in Spain that she was happy to wander around alone. i suggested that i'd be mad-keen to head to Amsterdam if she'd consider that as an alternative and she went for it, so on Monday night we booked the trip. the system's really quite awesome: for a reasonable fee you get a train from Liverpool St Station to Harwich, transfer to the ferry where you have a sleeper cabin, arrive at the Hook of Holland early in the morning and catch another train to Amsterdam, arriving at 10ish. this means that not only do you not have to be at Gatwick at WTF in the morning, but you don't get to your destination way late at night and have to pay for a hostel, either. maximum use of your weekend time, and actually cheaper than flying (without having to book weeks or months in advance). young Daniel will be there this weekend - he's got a job interview on Friday and will be hanging around until Sunday, so the plan is to get in, drop our crap at the hostel and run rampage for the day. we're both really looking forward to it - it's the first time we've both left London to go to the same place at the same time for a start, so it feels like we're making good on the whole "we'll go explore Europe" idea we came over here with.
in the meantime i'll be continuing to spam pimps with my CV, using every trick i know to get noticed. for some strange reason there's a feeling around our little shared room that there's Progress being made and regardless of the reality of the situation i can't help but make the most of it. one way or another, catching a boat over to the continent for a weekend of depravity screams "adventure" and i'm massively looking forward to it. one thing's for sure - i just know i'm going to wind up eating a whole lot of things i can't pronounce, and that's almost always guaranteed to be entertaining...
Saturday was one of those nights that ended early, but didn't finish until late. by the time i met Louise at Clapham South Station i was swaying slightly on my feet. she had her friend Margeaux in tow, both dressed to kill and drunk enough to make Boris Yeltsin blush. after having a few drinks at Rhodora's house nearby the expanded party made its way to a loud, busy club in Clapham called Infernos where people danced while i cockblocked random sleezeballs until Louise lost her phone and decided she'd had enough at around midnight - just early enough to miss the last tube out by seconds and have to find the bus to get back to base-camp. we spent Sunday bumming around the house watching Star Wars movies, comparing notes about the last week and generally keeping our heads down, and the next day i shook my arse into Bite with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
my good mood lasted for about 3 hours - i called all my contacts in the pimping community to say: i'm back from holiday in Scotland. yeah, it was lovely. no jobs, you say? well shit, and cruised the job sites until it was time to meet Louise in Covent Garden for tea. as far as anti-climaxes go, Monday was right up there. nothing to apply for, nothing going on, no positive word in any direction. Louise was effervescent - she'd come out of the funk she'd been in for nearly a week and her grin lit her face up like the London Eye. i, on the other hand, sat there eating good indian food feeling flatter than my naan bread, so for the rest of the evening our roles were reversed and it was her job to cheer me up for a while.
Monday was very much a "hit bottom" sort of day, and i didn't just hit: i carved a nice deep crater on impact. see, i went off on walkabout to get my spirits up again and shake off the despair and frustration. one afternoon of adversity and it all came crushing down again and it broke me... but when you're broken and defeated it opens up a lot of options you wouldn't have considered otherwise. it's also the best way i've ever found to really Give Up, and while i sat there staring into space i decided well, fuck it.
once you've seriously Given Up a lot of things stop mattering. when a pimp calls you up and asks if you've X, Y and Z skills, but your Y's a little lacking you don't explain the intricate details - you just say yes, absolutely. this job's good enough? meh - apply for it anyway. i've taken to telling them that i love it here and i want to stay forever and ever. it's not strictly true. but why should that matter? it's a contract for 3 fucking months, not 3 years! do i have any holidays planned? no - i just got back from one. they don't need to know that i'm off to Amsterdam on Friday, and looking at going to Egypt for most of April. call them white-lies, call them filthy-mistruths, but frankly my dear, i don't give a damn.
i've taken to applying for all sorts of odd jobs. i applied for a job in recruitment because... well, why the fuck not? i've been putting in for all manner of weirdness, emailing friends and asking if they have any contacts, firing my CV all over the internet like an over-enthusiastic male porn star trying to get the record for World's Messiest Moneyshot. i was sitting in the office in Leicester Square yesterday when a new face walked in. i finished off my phone call, looked over and said hello, before explaining that yes, i DO swear a lot, i am an ANGRY motherfucker and i hoped he'd understand. he laughed and said that when he'd walked in he'd been impressed by my phone manner, so this was a bit of a shock by comparison. i laughed, flattered, and told him that you do what you have to do, but in the meantime i was going to make a fucking coffee.
by this time on Friday night i'm going to be on a ferry to The Netherlands. when i spoke to her from Inverness, Louise had said that she really wanted to get out of town for the weekend and was considering locations in Spain that she was happy to wander around alone. i suggested that i'd be mad-keen to head to Amsterdam if she'd consider that as an alternative and she went for it, so on Monday night we booked the trip. the system's really quite awesome: for a reasonable fee you get a train from Liverpool St Station to Harwich, transfer to the ferry where you have a sleeper cabin, arrive at the Hook of Holland early in the morning and catch another train to Amsterdam, arriving at 10ish. this means that not only do you not have to be at Gatwick at WTF in the morning, but you don't get to your destination way late at night and have to pay for a hostel, either. maximum use of your weekend time, and actually cheaper than flying (without having to book weeks or months in advance). young Daniel will be there this weekend - he's got a job interview on Friday and will be hanging around until Sunday, so the plan is to get in, drop our crap at the hostel and run rampage for the day. we're both really looking forward to it - it's the first time we've both left London to go to the same place at the same time for a start, so it feels like we're making good on the whole "we'll go explore Europe" idea we came over here with.
in the meantime i'll be continuing to spam pimps with my CV, using every trick i know to get noticed. for some strange reason there's a feeling around our little shared room that there's Progress being made and regardless of the reality of the situation i can't help but make the most of it. one way or another, catching a boat over to the continent for a weekend of depravity screams "adventure" and i'm massively looking forward to it. one thing's for sure - i just know i'm going to wind up eating a whole lot of things i can't pronounce, and that's almost always guaranteed to be entertaining...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Inverness - a bus, a plane and a train...
i've heard of Britain's "low cost" carriers and their methods for saving money. now i'm sitting in the back row of a little Airbus A319 on EasyJet's Inverness-Gatwick run, stuck next to a really big guy on my left and... damn. the plane was landed before we were boarding. turnaround scraped in at just under half an hour. there's no seat assignments, and checked luggage is an extra charge so EVERYONE has a fuckload of carry-on. my backpack's half-way up the cabin because there was simply no room for it anywhere closer. my shoulder-bag is sitting between my ankles on the floor. i'm amazed i got a seat on this thing - i only booked 2 days ago and it's jam-packed. the safety lecture led straight into the in-flight advertisements, suggesting that we spend-big for valentine's day. now i've got my earphones in (oh fuck me... the fat guy just farted. and i thought my bowels were bad...) so that i don't have to listen to his breathing or the drone of the engines and once again i'm glad that my Eee not only has a decent amp, but that it's lack of bulk fits nicely on the tray table. i'm also thanking fuckery that i'm not carrying the weight that once i did or i'd be making life extremely difficult for the average-sized lady to my right. at least it's only a 100 minute flight.
i was up yesterday morning in good time, with a plan for the day. rumour had it that there was some nice coastline and the possibility of dolphon-sightings a little up the west-shore of the Moray Firth. the original idea was to head to Cromarty, a 3/4 of an hour bus ride away. after a couple of conversations with random strangers i fetched up in Rosemarkie instead - around half-way to Cromarty, with better prospects for aquatic mammals, and by 10:45 i was walking along a quiet beach that ran between two little hamlets (Rosemarkie and Fortrose) which are roughly a mile apart by road. it was quiet, peaceful, like pretty much everywhere i'd seen around Inverness. 45 minutes or so later i was sitting at a park bench near the lighthouse on the little peninsula. the people are friendly around here. it's all little villages, so it's obvious you're a stranger when you're walking around, and a hairy man dressed all in black stands out around here like a clown at a funeral. still, everyone i'd passed on the beach had smiled and said hello which kept my spirits high. i after sitting around for a while and seeing nothing but still water and little birds mucking around in the grass and the snow i picked up and walked the 2 miles into Fortrose through the golf course, found the bus and sat there enjoying the view (both outside of the Firth, and inside of possibly the prettiest redhead i've ever seen who'd been welcomed onboard by a heavily made-up girl with the query "Or-ite? Wossa craic?") on the way back to Inverness.
three and a half hours later i'd found the appropriate bus and gotten out to the Collodden Battlefield and was standing on the spot where the front lines of the Jacobites who'd survived the artillery blasts and musket barrage met the redcoats in hand-to-hand combat before being blown to pieces by the government's 2nd-line, who encircled them and opened fire. wandering through the exhibition there's a video-rendering of the movements of the battle - an hour or maybe less during which the little blue ants had the shit kicked out of them by a strong defence and a commander who wasn't blinded by delusions of a god-given destiny. the story of the lead-up to the battle, and the aftermath, are worth reading because it explains a lot of the religious and political situation of the time. also worth doing is stopping to have a talk to the period-garbed staff at the end of the exhibition centre, because if you ask nicely you'll find yourself holding some extraordinarily beautiful weaponry. the muskets and shields are replicas (GOOD replicas, mind), but there are originals you get to play with if you're lucky. i wound up being handed and swinging around a 200+ year old Jacobite Cavalry Backsword, so named because the rider would swing it down and back as he galloped past the infantry. it was beautiful, too - well preserved and perfectly weighted, and as much as i wanted to bolt for the door i DID give it back.
i was about done with Inverness by the time i got back there in the evening. this is partly because a lot of the fun stuff to see and do was closed for the winter, but also because i was itchy to be moving on. fortunately or unfortunately, "on" meant back to London. i was fully prepared to chill out in the hostel for the evening, but wound up being dragged to the pub by a french guy and a couple of italians. i even wound up getting chatting to a tiny little brunette from Perth (Australia) called Rachel, but was interrupted by the italians who were trying it on with her pretty messily then got stuck talking to the french guy who was really fucking loud and annoying, to the point where i drained my beer, made an excuse about getting some sleep and bolted. as i strolled back to the hostel i was stopped by a group of Scots who were asking if i could point them to a good boozer. i'd pointed out 2 or 3 that i'd seen or been into before the leader looked at me and asked "Or-stralean?" yeah mate. "Orite! Cheers mate!"
for some reason last night i had great difficulty sleeping. i was the second person to hit the sack, and the other guy had the good grace not to snore, but for some reason i just couldn't nod off. i put my ear plugs in but kept waking up again and again until finally i slept half-way through the morning. i took my time getting packed, heading downstairs and having a strong, hot coffee while i checked my mail in the common room. i'd checked on where to catch the bus to the airport the day before, so finding the stop and getting out was uneventful, until of course i had to go through airport security. anything liquid in my toiletries bag went into a clear plastic bag. my Eee came out and was scanned separately (although they were happy for it to stay in its little sheath). my belt had to come off, although i'd prepared and everything from my trouser pockets was already in my coat. every time i fly anywhere the security gets more and more anal, and i enjoy the experience less and less. what was really 20 minutes felt like forever, but eventually i was in the air with my Eee open and Title And Registration by Death Cab For Cutie launching into its 23rd repetition in the last week. at least the flight's quick and from the inclination of the aeroplane i have the feeling that it'll be over soon - then i just have to look forward to the ruinously expensive Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, then the bus ride back to base-camp. oh joy, ecstasy. at least the snow that hit the south and midlands the other day hasn't caused any delays in my travel plans, unlike the snowfall last week which backed up Heathrow worse than a fat man on a beef and imodium diet.
please excuse me if i hate everything right now. i'm most of the way back to the real world, which is something i was managing quite nicely to avoid while i was away. going back to London means resumption of my responsibilities, fiscal conservativism and job-hunting. it means grey streets and grey people, and watching while louise messily self-destructs and cries herself to sleep at night. of course, it also means not sleeping in a room full of stangers or walking for miles a day. it means quiet time and semi-normality. it means sitting around wondering where i'm going to go next, a question for which i have more answers than pounds. it means no more being beaten in the back of the head by the sound of snow crunching under my feet the smell of clean air and the feeling of being remarkably alone in a beautiful setting, wishing i could magically teleport all my mates there so that they could see what i was seeing and share in the moment. one of the joys of traveling with someone is the times later when you can turn to them and say "do you remember when...?" and they smile and nod and you share that moment all over again. being somewhere on your own robs you of that, but at least you still have the story to tell years later at the pub when someone talks about something they heard about Scotland and you get to be that irritating fucker who pipes up with
oh yeah - i was out there back in 2009. fucking beautiful out there. you should go...
i'm going to need to get away again, and soon. days, weeks, a month at the most. get away and forget i have a care in the world while i grind the soles of my boots further down on different streets and darken foreign doorsteps. run away from the real world and return to being yet another dirty backpack-toting itinerant with their 24-Hour Friends and No Fixed Address, constantly trying to reduce the number of places they've never been by one. meanwhile, i'm hearing the call of the hostie asking that electronic equipment be shut off so that's me done. i'll be back with the regularly scheduled programme once i've slept, sorted a few tihngs out and the haunted look's gone from my eyes whenever i look the mirror.
i was up yesterday morning in good time, with a plan for the day. rumour had it that there was some nice coastline and the possibility of dolphon-sightings a little up the west-shore of the Moray Firth. the original idea was to head to Cromarty, a 3/4 of an hour bus ride away. after a couple of conversations with random strangers i fetched up in Rosemarkie instead - around half-way to Cromarty, with better prospects for aquatic mammals, and by 10:45 i was walking along a quiet beach that ran between two little hamlets (Rosemarkie and Fortrose) which are roughly a mile apart by road. it was quiet, peaceful, like pretty much everywhere i'd seen around Inverness. 45 minutes or so later i was sitting at a park bench near the lighthouse on the little peninsula. the people are friendly around here. it's all little villages, so it's obvious you're a stranger when you're walking around, and a hairy man dressed all in black stands out around here like a clown at a funeral. still, everyone i'd passed on the beach had smiled and said hello which kept my spirits high. i after sitting around for a while and seeing nothing but still water and little birds mucking around in the grass and the snow i picked up and walked the 2 miles into Fortrose through the golf course, found the bus and sat there enjoying the view (both outside of the Firth, and inside of possibly the prettiest redhead i've ever seen who'd been welcomed onboard by a heavily made-up girl with the query "Or-ite? Wossa craic?") on the way back to Inverness.
three and a half hours later i'd found the appropriate bus and gotten out to the Collodden Battlefield and was standing on the spot where the front lines of the Jacobites who'd survived the artillery blasts and musket barrage met the redcoats in hand-to-hand combat before being blown to pieces by the government's 2nd-line, who encircled them and opened fire. wandering through the exhibition there's a video-rendering of the movements of the battle - an hour or maybe less during which the little blue ants had the shit kicked out of them by a strong defence and a commander who wasn't blinded by delusions of a god-given destiny. the story of the lead-up to the battle, and the aftermath, are worth reading because it explains a lot of the religious and political situation of the time. also worth doing is stopping to have a talk to the period-garbed staff at the end of the exhibition centre, because if you ask nicely you'll find yourself holding some extraordinarily beautiful weaponry. the muskets and shields are replicas (GOOD replicas, mind), but there are originals you get to play with if you're lucky. i wound up being handed and swinging around a 200+ year old Jacobite Cavalry Backsword, so named because the rider would swing it down and back as he galloped past the infantry. it was beautiful, too - well preserved and perfectly weighted, and as much as i wanted to bolt for the door i DID give it back.
i was about done with Inverness by the time i got back there in the evening. this is partly because a lot of the fun stuff to see and do was closed for the winter, but also because i was itchy to be moving on. fortunately or unfortunately, "on" meant back to London. i was fully prepared to chill out in the hostel for the evening, but wound up being dragged to the pub by a french guy and a couple of italians. i even wound up getting chatting to a tiny little brunette from Perth (Australia) called Rachel, but was interrupted by the italians who were trying it on with her pretty messily then got stuck talking to the french guy who was really fucking loud and annoying, to the point where i drained my beer, made an excuse about getting some sleep and bolted. as i strolled back to the hostel i was stopped by a group of Scots who were asking if i could point them to a good boozer. i'd pointed out 2 or 3 that i'd seen or been into before the leader looked at me and asked "Or-stralean?" yeah mate. "Orite! Cheers mate!"
for some reason last night i had great difficulty sleeping. i was the second person to hit the sack, and the other guy had the good grace not to snore, but for some reason i just couldn't nod off. i put my ear plugs in but kept waking up again and again until finally i slept half-way through the morning. i took my time getting packed, heading downstairs and having a strong, hot coffee while i checked my mail in the common room. i'd checked on where to catch the bus to the airport the day before, so finding the stop and getting out was uneventful, until of course i had to go through airport security. anything liquid in my toiletries bag went into a clear plastic bag. my Eee came out and was scanned separately (although they were happy for it to stay in its little sheath). my belt had to come off, although i'd prepared and everything from my trouser pockets was already in my coat. every time i fly anywhere the security gets more and more anal, and i enjoy the experience less and less. what was really 20 minutes felt like forever, but eventually i was in the air with my Eee open and Title And Registration by Death Cab For Cutie launching into its 23rd repetition in the last week. at least the flight's quick and from the inclination of the aeroplane i have the feeling that it'll be over soon - then i just have to look forward to the ruinously expensive Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, then the bus ride back to base-camp. oh joy, ecstasy. at least the snow that hit the south and midlands the other day hasn't caused any delays in my travel plans, unlike the snowfall last week which backed up Heathrow worse than a fat man on a beef and imodium diet.
please excuse me if i hate everything right now. i'm most of the way back to the real world, which is something i was managing quite nicely to avoid while i was away. going back to London means resumption of my responsibilities, fiscal conservativism and job-hunting. it means grey streets and grey people, and watching while louise messily self-destructs and cries herself to sleep at night. of course, it also means not sleeping in a room full of stangers or walking for miles a day. it means quiet time and semi-normality. it means sitting around wondering where i'm going to go next, a question for which i have more answers than pounds. it means no more being beaten in the back of the head by the sound of snow crunching under my feet the smell of clean air and the feeling of being remarkably alone in a beautiful setting, wishing i could magically teleport all my mates there so that they could see what i was seeing and share in the moment. one of the joys of traveling with someone is the times later when you can turn to them and say "do you remember when...?" and they smile and nod and you share that moment all over again. being somewhere on your own robs you of that, but at least you still have the story to tell years later at the pub when someone talks about something they heard about Scotland and you get to be that irritating fucker who pipes up with
oh yeah - i was out there back in 2009. fucking beautiful out there. you should go...
i'm going to need to get away again, and soon. days, weeks, a month at the most. get away and forget i have a care in the world while i grind the soles of my boots further down on different streets and darken foreign doorsteps. run away from the real world and return to being yet another dirty backpack-toting itinerant with their 24-Hour Friends and No Fixed Address, constantly trying to reduce the number of places they've never been by one. meanwhile, i'm hearing the call of the hostie asking that electronic equipment be shut off so that's me done. i'll be back with the regularly scheduled programme once i've slept, sorted a few tihngs out and the haunted look's gone from my eyes whenever i look the mirror.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Snippets #12: in gratitude...
every once in a while it becomes appropriate to thank people for the little things they've done for you. far too often the smallest nudges can snowball quietly and imperceptibly, not becoming apparent until months, or sometimes years later. today i'd like to pay tribute to some of these, in the order in which i though of them:
AB - for trying with limited success to get me into Death Cab For Cutie (the unofficial soundtrack for my time in Scotland) all those years ago.
Rapunzel - for giving me a reason to pull Death Cab out of my collection and listen to it again.
SiJ - for telling me to bring an umbrella to Scotland, even if it did break after less than a day.
Matt - for convincing me to give Sharing Space by Cog another listen (it's become the unofficial soundtrack to my time in London).
Shadow - for filling my head with ideas of the UK, and keeping me on the straight and narrow when i've been headed off the rails.
The Boss - for looking the other way while Shadow and i have run amok and letting him look after my stuff.
The Boy - for proving that a lot of what i can't do is not in fact impossible.
Danae - for giving me something to hope for.
Louise - for making this trip survivable, and helping prevent me from turning into a total mess when it's all gone south.
Scott Mortimore aka ScuM (wherever on earth you are) - for showing me just how amazing music can be.
Sandra - for being someone i can say just about anything to when i have the need.
Cymun - for demonstrating how to stay positive when the sky's fallen in, and trying again and again to impress his taste in music on me.
Alex D - for helping me get set up and giving up her bedroom so that louise and i'd have a quiet place to stay.
Ondine - for reminding me that even the most serious people can go, and making me start writing again after years of neglect.
Sam from Sydney - for being someone to hang out with when i was all alone in a cold, wet place.
My Mum - for not complaining too much about all the swearing in my blog and providing much appreciated financial support.
Marcia - for always making an effort to do the right thing.
Moonbug - for having solid advice, especially when it comes to travelling.
Brad - for being a constant reminder that at least there's one person i'm superior to.
Amanda - for giving me the escape velocity i needed to break out, and inadvertently saving me from thinking i could never do any better.
Gordon Brown - for making my beers 4 pence cheaper.
that'll do for now. i've missed a lot of people out, but that's always going to happen. if you feel hard done by, let me know how i've neglected you and i'll be sure to amend, or provide appropriate derision.
AB - for trying with limited success to get me into Death Cab For Cutie (the unofficial soundtrack for my time in Scotland) all those years ago.
Rapunzel - for giving me a reason to pull Death Cab out of my collection and listen to it again.
SiJ - for telling me to bring an umbrella to Scotland, even if it did break after less than a day.
Matt - for convincing me to give Sharing Space by Cog another listen (it's become the unofficial soundtrack to my time in London).
Shadow - for filling my head with ideas of the UK, and keeping me on the straight and narrow when i've been headed off the rails.
The Boss - for looking the other way while Shadow and i have run amok and letting him look after my stuff.
The Boy - for proving that a lot of what i can't do is not in fact impossible.
Danae - for giving me something to hope for.
Louise - for making this trip survivable, and helping prevent me from turning into a total mess when it's all gone south.
Scott Mortimore aka ScuM (wherever on earth you are) - for showing me just how amazing music can be.
Sandra - for being someone i can say just about anything to when i have the need.
Cymun - for demonstrating how to stay positive when the sky's fallen in, and trying again and again to impress his taste in music on me.
Alex D - for helping me get set up and giving up her bedroom so that louise and i'd have a quiet place to stay.
Ondine - for reminding me that even the most serious people can go
Sam from Sydney - for being someone to hang out with when i was all alone in a cold, wet place.
My Mum - for not complaining too much about all the swearing in my blog and providing much appreciated financial support.
Marcia - for always making an effort to do the right thing.
Moonbug - for having solid advice, especially when it comes to travelling.
Brad - for being a constant reminder that at least there's one person i'm superior to.
Amanda - for giving me the escape velocity i needed to break out, and inadvertently saving me from thinking i could never do any better.
Gordon Brown - for making my beers 4 pence cheaper.
that'll do for now. i've missed a lot of people out, but that's always going to happen. if you feel hard done by, let me know how i've neglected you and i'll be sure to amend, or provide appropriate derision.
Snippets #11: on walking in snow...
i don't know how many people out there care, or feel like they know this already, but i though i might share some of my recent learnings with others who come from the warmer climes.
walking in snow is hard fucking work. if you've ever run in loose dry sand you'll start to get the idea. like sand, in snow your feet sink. unlike sand, you pretty much need to lift your foot out of it before you can move on, and there's more chance of slipping. on a footpath the foot-traffic crushes it underfoot, and as it melts and freezes and melts and freezes it gets slippery under the layer of fresh flakes, so what looks like nice clean crunchy snow turns out to be ice which makes things treacherous. this means you wind up placing your weight straight down which, if you try it, makes for slow going, and requires you to use ankle and calf muscles you don't usually use. so far, i've found the best method is to look for bits of snow that are less-walked on because that's more likely to crunch and give you some decent traction.
of course if, like i was today, you find yourself in a field of sheep where the snow's the 2-odd foot deep, the only thing for it seems to take it slow and easy, and gods help you if have to walk up a steep slope. i had to stop and rest every 5-6 steps - that's how hard going it was.
the single best thing i can suggest is to make sure you leave the house with a pair of over-the-ankle boots. i like workboots, myself, since they're designed with non-slip soles and deep tread, but good hiking boots are fine too. just don't go in uggs - the soft leather will get waterlogged before long and then they'll pretty much fall apart. or trainers - there'll be melted water running down your instep before you know it.
oh, ballet slippers? don't make me fucking laugh... actually, do - i could use the cheering up. personally i can vouch for Steel Blue work boots. they've worked remarkably well so far...
walking in snow is hard fucking work. if you've ever run in loose dry sand you'll start to get the idea. like sand, in snow your feet sink. unlike sand, you pretty much need to lift your foot out of it before you can move on, and there's more chance of slipping. on a footpath the foot-traffic crushes it underfoot, and as it melts and freezes and melts and freezes it gets slippery under the layer of fresh flakes, so what looks like nice clean crunchy snow turns out to be ice which makes things treacherous. this means you wind up placing your weight straight down which, if you try it, makes for slow going, and requires you to use ankle and calf muscles you don't usually use. so far, i've found the best method is to look for bits of snow that are less-walked on because that's more likely to crunch and give you some decent traction.
of course if, like i was today, you find yourself in a field of sheep where the snow's the 2-odd foot deep, the only thing for it seems to take it slow and easy, and gods help you if have to walk up a steep slope. i had to stop and rest every 5-6 steps - that's how hard going it was.
the single best thing i can suggest is to make sure you leave the house with a pair of over-the-ankle boots. i like workboots, myself, since they're designed with non-slip soles and deep tread, but good hiking boots are fine too. just don't go in uggs - the soft leather will get waterlogged before long and then they'll pretty much fall apart. or trainers - there'll be melted water running down your instep before you know it.
oh, ballet slippers? don't make me fucking laugh... actually, do - i could use the cheering up. personally i can vouch for Steel Blue work boots. they've worked remarkably well so far...
Inverness - snow on the ground and a sudden change of plans...
when the train pulled into Inverness i'd been sitting, watching snow-laden fields and towns go by for the last 2 hours. Inverness, on the other hand, was dry, apart from a couple of patches of ice here and there. when my boots hit the pavement this morning a couple of inches of snow covered the ground and as i headed out it started to rain. a good day to go and sit beside Loch Ness this was not going to be, but this is me we're talking about so i did it anyway.
the hostel was easy enough to find - a couple of minutes walk from the train station, with the entrance in the middle of a short alley that led between a side road and High Street. in the doors and up the stairs and i was greeted by a jovial scot and the sounds of construction - "We're in the middle of renovation, so sorry about the mess," he told me. the standard procedures took place, my stuff was dumped in the dorm and i ejected myself back onto the street again. i stopped through the Tourist Information Centre, picked up enough information to make plans for the coming days, and wandered down to the River Ness. a left-turn took me southwards and into the peaceful village. green grass, a nice footpath and a shallow river flowing quickly, but gently out to sea. after London and Edinburgh, even Brighton, the quiet village atmosphere (Inverness is officially a city - they have a piece of paper stamped by Queen Elizabeth II that says so - but it's only got ~70,000 people in it and it FEELS village-like) was like a gentle breeze and i fould feel myself relaxing as i walked. crossing over one of the suspension briges i was able to look down into, and through the water. from what i was told later it's drinkable - clean and fresh with no industry upriver to mess it up. salt water seeps through an artesian basin, filtering through the rocks and into Loch Ness, then flows back out to sea again. up at the Loch it's just as clear and cold you feel like you could immerse yourself and it would wash your sins and pain away, leaving you clean and renewed once again.
heading back up the other side, i kept going until i got to the two churches and crossed over and down Church St where i'd been told i could find a Wetherspoons and therein a cheap feed. it WAS cheap, too - £4.38 bought me a pint of local ale and a cottage pie, which i sipped and scarfed respectively while hitting the net and checking on the news. my phone rang while i sat there - the pimp who's placed me in Louis Vuitton a few times previously, wanting to know if I was interested in some £10/hour work he had going. i laughed, explaining that i was in a pub in Inverness and that it'd take something pretty spectacular to get me to rush back - in other words: you can take your £10/hour and shove it, mate.
a bit of a sit-down in the hostel and i was back outside the Tourist Centre by 6:45PM for an evening tour, which was led by a Patriotic Scot, and on that cold evening catered to a clientele of one: me. he didn't seem peturbed by this - he was as happy to take my money as i was to have an informal one-on-one, and we wandered around chatting while he told stories for an hour or so and i learned a few odds and ends about the town and its history while enjoying some pleasant company.
another quick chill in the hostel after which i fetched up in the Hootenanny - a chain, apparently. they have music every night and tonight was a "traditional scottish jam session", which meant a piano-accordian (for once, not used as a Weapon of Mass Destruction), a couple of violins and a guitar. i found a seat and wound up chatting to a Scottish bloke in his 50's while enjoying pleasant music and pint after pint of the local ales and generally having a really nice time for a few hours.
i was supposed to be up early this morning to get out to Drumnadrochit (Drum-na-d'rocket) - about a 3rd of the way down Loch Ness, near to Urquhart Castle. the plan was to get to the village and hike the 2 miles to the Castle - then i woke up late (missing the earlier bus by about 5 minutes) and saw the weather. alternatives came to mind, but Cawdor Castle was closed (unless you're in good with Lady Cawdor who lives there, and i'm not), so that was out, as was the Culloden Battlefield Centre which is shut through the winter. oh well, fuckit. i bought a ticket for Drumnadrochit, chilled out for the hour or so i had to wait and took a ride down a narrow, windy road past the Loch.
sitting on the bus, i plugged my earphones in for the first time in days (i', hit "Last Played" and Death Cab For Cutie started singing in my ears again (they've wound up providing the unofficial soundtrack for this trip) and i sat there looking out the window, quietly losing it. i'm sitting on the knife-edge between wanting to go back to head back to civilisation and wanting to continue wandering on and on until i run out of breath or money. i was starting to get the over the perception of loneliness, and starting to get the feeling that i could just keep doing this forever - a new town every couple of days, a new bunch of room mates, a new set of streets to learn to navigage. suddenly, while i sat on the bus to Drumnadrochit i was sitting on the MRT in Singapore. as i walked up the road towards the Castle i was hiking back to home-base in London. walking the dark, narrow alleys in Edinburgh and i was walking across the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. in an airconditioned taxi with a disinterested cabbie in Melbourne and i was in a tuktuk in Bangkok where the driver had a mad gleam in his eye and i had the wind in my hair. walking on the pebbled beach in Brighton and i was walking up Cable Beach in Broome. sinking pints in Inverness and i was in the back-deck at Little Creatures in Fremantle. all in the blink of an eye, i splintered an reformed and the only thing that changed was the view out the window, but somehow i got the impression that when i settle down again i'll still be sitting on a bus careening through snowy fields with a view of one of the most famous bodies of water on the planet.
Drumnadrochit is a sleepy little one-horse village sitting just off the water and seems pretty much to cater to tourists and Loch Ness pilgrims. i got some directions for a walking trail (which i couldn't find), pulled out my umbrella and headed off down the road which got more and more treacherous as i went along. with the verge covered in 2 feet of snow i wasn't going to get anywhere in a hurry, so i walked along the edge of the road against the traffic and jumped into the snow any time a car came past. somewhere around 3/4 of an hour later i was finally at the Castle - tired, but alive.
Urquhart is an old ruin sitting out on the side of the Loch with a little visitor's center which i'm now sitting in, nursing the remnants of a hot chocolate, watching what look like robins playing around in the snow. there's not much to it to be honest - it took me a little over half an hour to meander quietly through the remnants of the fortifications and buildings, my earphones dangling dormant around my neck while i enjoyed the sound of rain on my umbrella and Sweet Fuck All else - the silence that comes from being a long away from too many people and the glossolalia of their noisemakers and gadgetry. after investigating the nooks and crannies of what remains standing i ducked down to the shore of the Loch so that i could dip my toe in the water and tempt the Nessie, marveling at the water's clarity, before heading back up to gift shop for a warm drink and a bite to eat.
i'm a little irritated - if i'd managed to get to the earlier bus i'd be back in Inverness by now and i'd have time to do something else this afternoon, but then i guess a quietish day is for the win at this point. i have another 20 minutes before i have to be out on the roadside waiting for the bus back to Inverness (i got a return from the village, but i'm hoping that the driver won't make me hike back there to catch the proper one. in better weather i'd have gone for a walk down the side of the Loch, but i at least got to go to the shore by the castle and dip my toe into it. it's a beautiful place - even shrouded in mist and raining, it's quiet and wild and remarkably unpoluted. even if i don't get to do what i've got planned for tomorrow, i'm glad i came up this way just for the chance to hang around here for a bit.
anyway, word is that the bus drivers do a drive-by and if they don't see anyone than they don't stop, so i'd best be out on the road looking obvious. hopefully being dressed all in black with an umbrella counts as obvious, but i'll not be taking any chances of having to walk along that road in the dark so i'm off.
---
i spent half an hour standing on the edge of the frozen road chewing gum and playing with the robin who seemed keen on flying and hopping around me while i waited. by the time i was back in Inverness i had a gaping hole where my stomach used to me - the hot chocolate and steak slice back at the Castle cafe having filled it not at all. i felt like an old pair of boots - soles ground thin on strange pavement and starting to crack, leather faded to grey, crinkled and soft. i managed to not trip out of the bus when it stopped and dumped the broken remains of my umbrella (stalk cracked while waiting outside the Castle) into the first bin i found. too early for the All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet, so i headed back to the hostel, dumped my bag and spoke to a pimp who seemed keen to talk to me, then wandered back and stuffed my face while i watched the river trickle its way past beyond the window.
tonight has been designated a "dead" night. i'm not in the mood to go and sit in a pub on my own, so i'll be sitting around the hostel, working on my writing. i have a few things to get out if i can get them together properly. tomorrow i'll try to make an early start and head up to Cromarty where i'm told there are wild dolphins, seals and maybe even puffins. i'd have liked to have wandered around somewhere indoors, but what the hell - i might as well make the most of the situation, and if that means bothering the wildlife then so be it. i won't be going hell-for-leather anyway - it'll be my last day in Scotland since i'm now rushing back to London on Saturday (thankyou EasyJet)... but that's an explaination i think i'll tell out of sequence.
the hostel was easy enough to find - a couple of minutes walk from the train station, with the entrance in the middle of a short alley that led between a side road and High Street. in the doors and up the stairs and i was greeted by a jovial scot and the sounds of construction - "We're in the middle of renovation, so sorry about the mess," he told me. the standard procedures took place, my stuff was dumped in the dorm and i ejected myself back onto the street again. i stopped through the Tourist Information Centre, picked up enough information to make plans for the coming days, and wandered down to the River Ness. a left-turn took me southwards and into the peaceful village. green grass, a nice footpath and a shallow river flowing quickly, but gently out to sea. after London and Edinburgh, even Brighton, the quiet village atmosphere (Inverness is officially a city - they have a piece of paper stamped by Queen Elizabeth II that says so - but it's only got ~70,000 people in it and it FEELS village-like) was like a gentle breeze and i fould feel myself relaxing as i walked. crossing over one of the suspension briges i was able to look down into, and through the water. from what i was told later it's drinkable - clean and fresh with no industry upriver to mess it up. salt water seeps through an artesian basin, filtering through the rocks and into Loch Ness, then flows back out to sea again. up at the Loch it's just as clear and cold you feel like you could immerse yourself and it would wash your sins and pain away, leaving you clean and renewed once again.
heading back up the other side, i kept going until i got to the two churches and crossed over and down Church St where i'd been told i could find a Wetherspoons and therein a cheap feed. it WAS cheap, too - £4.38 bought me a pint of local ale and a cottage pie, which i sipped and scarfed respectively while hitting the net and checking on the news. my phone rang while i sat there - the pimp who's placed me in Louis Vuitton a few times previously, wanting to know if I was interested in some £10/hour work he had going. i laughed, explaining that i was in a pub in Inverness and that it'd take something pretty spectacular to get me to rush back - in other words: you can take your £10/hour and shove it, mate.
a bit of a sit-down in the hostel and i was back outside the Tourist Centre by 6:45PM for an evening tour, which was led by a Patriotic Scot, and on that cold evening catered to a clientele of one: me. he didn't seem peturbed by this - he was as happy to take my money as i was to have an informal one-on-one, and we wandered around chatting while he told stories for an hour or so and i learned a few odds and ends about the town and its history while enjoying some pleasant company.
another quick chill in the hostel after which i fetched up in the Hootenanny - a chain, apparently. they have music every night and tonight was a "traditional scottish jam session", which meant a piano-accordian (for once, not used as a Weapon of Mass Destruction), a couple of violins and a guitar. i found a seat and wound up chatting to a Scottish bloke in his 50's while enjoying pleasant music and pint after pint of the local ales and generally having a really nice time for a few hours.
i was supposed to be up early this morning to get out to Drumnadrochit (Drum-na-d'rocket) - about a 3rd of the way down Loch Ness, near to Urquhart Castle. the plan was to get to the village and hike the 2 miles to the Castle - then i woke up late (missing the earlier bus by about 5 minutes) and saw the weather. alternatives came to mind, but Cawdor Castle was closed (unless you're in good with Lady Cawdor who lives there, and i'm not), so that was out, as was the Culloden Battlefield Centre which is shut through the winter. oh well, fuckit. i bought a ticket for Drumnadrochit, chilled out for the hour or so i had to wait and took a ride down a narrow, windy road past the Loch.
sitting on the bus, i plugged my earphones in for the first time in days (i', hit "Last Played" and Death Cab For Cutie started singing in my ears again (they've wound up providing the unofficial soundtrack for this trip) and i sat there looking out the window, quietly losing it. i'm sitting on the knife-edge between wanting to go back to head back to civilisation and wanting to continue wandering on and on until i run out of breath or money. i was starting to get the over the perception of loneliness, and starting to get the feeling that i could just keep doing this forever - a new town every couple of days, a new bunch of room mates, a new set of streets to learn to navigage. suddenly, while i sat on the bus to Drumnadrochit i was sitting on the MRT in Singapore. as i walked up the road towards the Castle i was hiking back to home-base in London. walking the dark, narrow alleys in Edinburgh and i was walking across the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. in an airconditioned taxi with a disinterested cabbie in Melbourne and i was in a tuktuk in Bangkok where the driver had a mad gleam in his eye and i had the wind in my hair. walking on the pebbled beach in Brighton and i was walking up Cable Beach in Broome. sinking pints in Inverness and i was in the back-deck at Little Creatures in Fremantle. all in the blink of an eye, i splintered an reformed and the only thing that changed was the view out the window, but somehow i got the impression that when i settle down again i'll still be sitting on a bus careening through snowy fields with a view of one of the most famous bodies of water on the planet.
Drumnadrochit is a sleepy little one-horse village sitting just off the water and seems pretty much to cater to tourists and Loch Ness pilgrims. i got some directions for a walking trail (which i couldn't find), pulled out my umbrella and headed off down the road which got more and more treacherous as i went along. with the verge covered in 2 feet of snow i wasn't going to get anywhere in a hurry, so i walked along the edge of the road against the traffic and jumped into the snow any time a car came past. somewhere around 3/4 of an hour later i was finally at the Castle - tired, but alive.
Urquhart is an old ruin sitting out on the side of the Loch with a little visitor's center which i'm now sitting in, nursing the remnants of a hot chocolate, watching what look like robins playing around in the snow. there's not much to it to be honest - it took me a little over half an hour to meander quietly through the remnants of the fortifications and buildings, my earphones dangling dormant around my neck while i enjoyed the sound of rain on my umbrella and Sweet Fuck All else - the silence that comes from being a long away from too many people and the glossolalia of their noisemakers and gadgetry. after investigating the nooks and crannies of what remains standing i ducked down to the shore of the Loch so that i could dip my toe in the water and tempt the Nessie, marveling at the water's clarity, before heading back up to gift shop for a warm drink and a bite to eat.
i'm a little irritated - if i'd managed to get to the earlier bus i'd be back in Inverness by now and i'd have time to do something else this afternoon, but then i guess a quietish day is for the win at this point. i have another 20 minutes before i have to be out on the roadside waiting for the bus back to Inverness (i got a return from the village, but i'm hoping that the driver won't make me hike back there to catch the proper one. in better weather i'd have gone for a walk down the side of the Loch, but i at least got to go to the shore by the castle and dip my toe into it. it's a beautiful place - even shrouded in mist and raining, it's quiet and wild and remarkably unpoluted. even if i don't get to do what i've got planned for tomorrow, i'm glad i came up this way just for the chance to hang around here for a bit.
anyway, word is that the bus drivers do a drive-by and if they don't see anyone than they don't stop, so i'd best be out on the road looking obvious. hopefully being dressed all in black with an umbrella counts as obvious, but i'll not be taking any chances of having to walk along that road in the dark so i'm off.
---
i spent half an hour standing on the edge of the frozen road chewing gum and playing with the robin who seemed keen on flying and hopping around me while i waited. by the time i was back in Inverness i had a gaping hole where my stomach used to me - the hot chocolate and steak slice back at the Castle cafe having filled it not at all. i felt like an old pair of boots - soles ground thin on strange pavement and starting to crack, leather faded to grey, crinkled and soft. i managed to not trip out of the bus when it stopped and dumped the broken remains of my umbrella (stalk cracked while waiting outside the Castle) into the first bin i found. too early for the All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet, so i headed back to the hostel, dumped my bag and spoke to a pimp who seemed keen to talk to me, then wandered back and stuffed my face while i watched the river trickle its way past beyond the window.
tonight has been designated a "dead" night. i'm not in the mood to go and sit in a pub on my own, so i'll be sitting around the hostel, working on my writing. i have a few things to get out if i can get them together properly. tomorrow i'll try to make an early start and head up to Cromarty where i'm told there are wild dolphins, seals and maybe even puffins. i'd have liked to have wandered around somewhere indoors, but what the hell - i might as well make the most of the situation, and if that means bothering the wildlife then so be it. i won't be going hell-for-leather anyway - it'll be my last day in Scotland since i'm now rushing back to London on Saturday (thankyou EasyJet)... but that's an explaination i think i'll tell out of sequence.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Edinburgh to Inverness - 24-hour friends...
9:37AM, sitting on another train. this one stops a few times on its way to Stirling, where i get off and change for the one to Inverness. i only left the backpacker's 20 minutes ago - an incredible luxury in my book. sitting in the bar sipping a coffee and looking relaxed, chatting to a couple of the folks i'd been hanging out with last night:
"What are you doing still sitting here? Shouldn't you be at the station?"
nah - i've got 20 minutes to get from here to there (pointing across the road to the sign 10 metres away that reads "Edinburgh Waverley"). you know what, i think i'm gonna be ok.
"HA! Well, we'll see you back here in half an hour when you miss it! We'll be waiting!"
sorry guys. it's been real, but i'm off.
true to prediction, i was not a happy lad when i awoke yesterday morning. the warm room and doona had saved me from the worst of it, but my legs were still stiff and aching and my shoulders whined in protest at the abuse. i lay there while my companions were getting up and got ready to face the day. the room had nearly emptied the day before - all that was left was Sam - a girl from Sydney who'd been there the night before, and a pretty Romanian girl who's name i hadn't caught who was there because she'd missed the train out to the farm she was headed to the night before. she'd asked a taxi driver about somewhere to stay and he'd pointed her towards the nearest hostel to the train station. she explained that she was a something between a horticulturist and a botanist and had been employed on a 6 month contract to work with rare flowers. never been out of home, and now she was in Scotland on what sounded like a pretty awesome adventure. she heard me grumbling about being stiff and achy (i explained that it was self-imposed misery, but she was sympathetic regardless) and the next thing i know she's kneeling on the floor and demanding that i give her a foot which she proceeded to massage. this sort of kindness from strangers was a bit of a shock, but i wasn't going to rock the boat.
when she was done i thanked her profusely and took her downstairs so that she could get a quick feed before she was picked up by someone from the farm. i asked the usual questions - the answers don't necessarily mean much to me, but it's comforting to talk about home, and it gets people's lips moving. she was from Transylvania, which got an instant grin out of me, and she made an obvious joke about vampires and werewolves. of course, it's somewhere i'd like to get to at some point and she insisted that i contact her before going so that her family could show me around. i'd known her for about 45 minutes at this point, and i nearly fell over by her earnest friendliness. i managed to dodge exchanging numbers to make sure the temptation didn't arrise, but as she headed out the door with a slightly confused looking scotsman carrying her bag i couldn't help but hope that she got by ok. some people are just too fucking nice for their own good, but she put a smile on my face and 24 hours later i can't help but wonder how she's getting on.
the Romanian girl now a memory, i finished shovelling cereal into my mouth and got myself ready to face the day. it wasn't until 10AM that my boots hit the pavement, sunglasses on my face to ward off the bright, sunny day which none-the-less felt like ice, and headed north. i'd taken 15 minutes out, sitting on the veneer floor of the dorm, stretching to get my unhappy muscles moving before getting kitted up and getting out. i could have headed down to Holyrood Castle, but after the day before's adventures the idea of another castle and more touristy shit did not sit well with me, so instead i took a bearing on the water i could see in the distance and headed for it, meandering otherwise aimlessly through the New Town.
the Georgian New Town was built with geometric precision after 300 years of Edinbrugh being confined to a mile-by-half-mile area behind the Flodden Wall, built to keep the English out but instead served to just keep the Scots in. for 300 years they built higher and higher inside the wall, expanding way past maximum capacity, creating a population and hygenic nightmare until it was finally decreed that the wall would no longer be maintained. the people took it into their own hands at that point and, so the story goes, they quietly demolished it inside of 5 months and sprawled with reckless abandon. the New Town is a victory of urban planning - the roads for the most part are grid-like, each block another series of uniform terrace houses. from up high it looks very impressive, especially seing as it was built in 3 stages over the course of a century. after 20 or so minutes of wandering generally northwards i was well and truly off any of the maps that i had so i just kept making educated guesses, letting my instincts, and then the bus stops be my guide. it took a little over an hour to get to the water, by which time i was staggering. most of the kinks had been worked out, but i was far from recovered, so after a little while of standing on the edge of the redevelopment i asked around and found a bus to take me back to Princes St (the edge of New Town closest to the train station). i was fortunate in that the number 10 took me through the suburb of Leith, somewhere i'd wanted to at least pass through so that i could drop an email to an old friend of mine of the same name and tell him i'd been there.
it was past midday by the point the bus let me off in front of the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, and i needed to sit down somewhere and sort myself out for an hour or two. in my travels i'd been pointed towards Rose St - a not-quite-street, not-quite-lane one block up from Princes St - which was reputed to be pretty much wall-to-wall bars and taverns. 40-odd of them. finding a place to sit down, have a quiet beer and some food was pretty easy - all i needed to do then was walk up one direction or another until i saw the familiar "Free WiFi" sticker in a window. walked, found, entered, connected, i had a pint (so that i'd be a customer) and started working out What The Fuck i Was Doing. having an extra day up my sleeve in the hostel was a bonus, but by this point i was starting to get a little sick of Edinburgh. don't get me wrong - nice town, but the time to move on was rapidly approaching. Inverness was the next place on the cards, but with Perth (Scotland) an hour or so north it was a temptation and i had a look at options, but in the end Perth went in the Too Hard Basket - i could have done it as a day-trip, but the timing was looking a bit harsh and i've had to hump my backpack around for the day, and hostels in the town were looking thin on the ground so without having to pay at lesat 3 times as much for a B&B an overnighter wasn't going to happen. 20 minutes later a £10 train ticket to Inverness was booked, as well as a couple of nights at a hostel near to the station and that was that.
plans made and sorted, i had something to eat and and a pint of water while i checked the news and investigated tours and things to do in Inverness and the surrounds. when my battery started to wind down i packed up and headed west along Princes St and up Carlton Hill where Eve and i had gone back on Sunday, enjoying the view for a little while before i headed back to the hostel.
i just got distracted in an amusing way: after changing trains at Stirling and now Inverness-bound, i wound up sitting across from a Swedish couple playing guitar and singing old James Taylor songs. we wound up getting chatting for something like half an hour about music, and since i have my music collection on my Eee i gave them an introduction to some reasonably obscure Australian music. i'm now SO glad i made up the Oz Mix - it made things a whole lot easier...
when i got in Sam had just got back from checking out the castle and we got chatting. i wanted more scotch, and managed to convince her to come up to High Street and try some, so 10 minutes were were swapping stories in the Albernach while sipping 21 year old Glenfarclas. having someone to hang out with was really very pleasant - we've next to nothing in common, apart from being a ridiculously long way from home, but a friendly face and company over pints seemed to be enough. back in the hostel bar we met up with Blondie (from Melbourne, with a penchant for giving people nicknames, which is probably why i can't remember hers) and Random (Steve from Winnipeg, Canada). for the rest of the evening i managed to gain the title of PC (for Perth/Canberra) and after playing cards and demolishing burgers the four of us headed off for a pub crawl which wound up lasting just one pub (the Bannerman where i'd been the day before) before fetching back up at the hostel again. i wasn't overly upset - i felt that i'd seen my share of pubs by this point and finishing the evening within staggering distance of my bed was entirely For The Win. Sam and i had the dorm to ourselves... although when we'd passed through after getting back from the Albernach the windows had been open and there was a strong smell of weed in the room. the Sneaky Stoner didn't resurface and by midnight i was showered and sleeping the sleep of the dead, and the rather tipsy.
meanwhile, the Swedes are back to singing and playing and making pleasant noise to my left and the view out the windor is of hills and trees and old stone buildings all dusted in snow. is it happened, the train wound up stopping at Perth, so i grabbed my camera, dumped out and took a bunch of hurried photos to prove i'd been there. from what i could see while passing through there's not really a lot going on, but at least i got there, if only for a minute or two. between the 24-Hour Friends back in Edinburgh, the jovial Swedes and my minor wish-fulfilment of getting to Perth, i'm in really quite high spirits. 24 hours ago i was starting to lose interest... now i'm back in the swing and curious as to what the world will look like when i get to my destination...
"What are you doing still sitting here? Shouldn't you be at the station?"
nah - i've got 20 minutes to get from here to there (pointing across the road to the sign 10 metres away that reads "Edinburgh Waverley"). you know what, i think i'm gonna be ok.
"HA! Well, we'll see you back here in half an hour when you miss it! We'll be waiting!"
sorry guys. it's been real, but i'm off.
true to prediction, i was not a happy lad when i awoke yesterday morning. the warm room and doona had saved me from the worst of it, but my legs were still stiff and aching and my shoulders whined in protest at the abuse. i lay there while my companions were getting up and got ready to face the day. the room had nearly emptied the day before - all that was left was Sam - a girl from Sydney who'd been there the night before, and a pretty Romanian girl who's name i hadn't caught who was there because she'd missed the train out to the farm she was headed to the night before. she'd asked a taxi driver about somewhere to stay and he'd pointed her towards the nearest hostel to the train station. she explained that she was a something between a horticulturist and a botanist and had been employed on a 6 month contract to work with rare flowers. never been out of home, and now she was in Scotland on what sounded like a pretty awesome adventure. she heard me grumbling about being stiff and achy (i explained that it was self-imposed misery, but she was sympathetic regardless) and the next thing i know she's kneeling on the floor and demanding that i give her a foot which she proceeded to massage. this sort of kindness from strangers was a bit of a shock, but i wasn't going to rock the boat.
when she was done i thanked her profusely and took her downstairs so that she could get a quick feed before she was picked up by someone from the farm. i asked the usual questions - the answers don't necessarily mean much to me, but it's comforting to talk about home, and it gets people's lips moving. she was from Transylvania, which got an instant grin out of me, and she made an obvious joke about vampires and werewolves. of course, it's somewhere i'd like to get to at some point and she insisted that i contact her before going so that her family could show me around. i'd known her for about 45 minutes at this point, and i nearly fell over by her earnest friendliness. i managed to dodge exchanging numbers to make sure the temptation didn't arrise, but as she headed out the door with a slightly confused looking scotsman carrying her bag i couldn't help but hope that she got by ok. some people are just too fucking nice for their own good, but she put a smile on my face and 24 hours later i can't help but wonder how she's getting on.
the Romanian girl now a memory, i finished shovelling cereal into my mouth and got myself ready to face the day. it wasn't until 10AM that my boots hit the pavement, sunglasses on my face to ward off the bright, sunny day which none-the-less felt like ice, and headed north. i'd taken 15 minutes out, sitting on the veneer floor of the dorm, stretching to get my unhappy muscles moving before getting kitted up and getting out. i could have headed down to Holyrood Castle, but after the day before's adventures the idea of another castle and more touristy shit did not sit well with me, so instead i took a bearing on the water i could see in the distance and headed for it, meandering otherwise aimlessly through the New Town.
the Georgian New Town was built with geometric precision after 300 years of Edinbrugh being confined to a mile-by-half-mile area behind the Flodden Wall, built to keep the English out but instead served to just keep the Scots in. for 300 years they built higher and higher inside the wall, expanding way past maximum capacity, creating a population and hygenic nightmare until it was finally decreed that the wall would no longer be maintained. the people took it into their own hands at that point and, so the story goes, they quietly demolished it inside of 5 months and sprawled with reckless abandon. the New Town is a victory of urban planning - the roads for the most part are grid-like, each block another series of uniform terrace houses. from up high it looks very impressive, especially seing as it was built in 3 stages over the course of a century. after 20 or so minutes of wandering generally northwards i was well and truly off any of the maps that i had so i just kept making educated guesses, letting my instincts, and then the bus stops be my guide. it took a little over an hour to get to the water, by which time i was staggering. most of the kinks had been worked out, but i was far from recovered, so after a little while of standing on the edge of the redevelopment i asked around and found a bus to take me back to Princes St (the edge of New Town closest to the train station). i was fortunate in that the number 10 took me through the suburb of Leith, somewhere i'd wanted to at least pass through so that i could drop an email to an old friend of mine of the same name and tell him i'd been there.
it was past midday by the point the bus let me off in front of the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, and i needed to sit down somewhere and sort myself out for an hour or two. in my travels i'd been pointed towards Rose St - a not-quite-street, not-quite-lane one block up from Princes St - which was reputed to be pretty much wall-to-wall bars and taverns. 40-odd of them. finding a place to sit down, have a quiet beer and some food was pretty easy - all i needed to do then was walk up one direction or another until i saw the familiar "Free WiFi" sticker in a window. walked, found, entered, connected, i had a pint (so that i'd be a customer) and started working out What The Fuck i Was Doing. having an extra day up my sleeve in the hostel was a bonus, but by this point i was starting to get a little sick of Edinburgh. don't get me wrong - nice town, but the time to move on was rapidly approaching. Inverness was the next place on the cards, but with Perth (Scotland) an hour or so north it was a temptation and i had a look at options, but in the end Perth went in the Too Hard Basket - i could have done it as a day-trip, but the timing was looking a bit harsh and i've had to hump my backpack around for the day, and hostels in the town were looking thin on the ground so without having to pay at lesat 3 times as much for a B&B an overnighter wasn't going to happen. 20 minutes later a £10 train ticket to Inverness was booked, as well as a couple of nights at a hostel near to the station and that was that.
plans made and sorted, i had something to eat and and a pint of water while i checked the news and investigated tours and things to do in Inverness and the surrounds. when my battery started to wind down i packed up and headed west along Princes St and up Carlton Hill where Eve and i had gone back on Sunday, enjoying the view for a little while before i headed back to the hostel.
i just got distracted in an amusing way: after changing trains at Stirling and now Inverness-bound, i wound up sitting across from a Swedish couple playing guitar and singing old James Taylor songs. we wound up getting chatting for something like half an hour about music, and since i have my music collection on my Eee i gave them an introduction to some reasonably obscure Australian music. i'm now SO glad i made up the Oz Mix - it made things a whole lot easier...
when i got in Sam had just got back from checking out the castle and we got chatting. i wanted more scotch, and managed to convince her to come up to High Street and try some, so 10 minutes were were swapping stories in the Albernach while sipping 21 year old Glenfarclas. having someone to hang out with was really very pleasant - we've next to nothing in common, apart from being a ridiculously long way from home, but a friendly face and company over pints seemed to be enough. back in the hostel bar we met up with Blondie (from Melbourne, with a penchant for giving people nicknames, which is probably why i can't remember hers) and Random (Steve from Winnipeg, Canada). for the rest of the evening i managed to gain the title of PC (for Perth/Canberra) and after playing cards and demolishing burgers the four of us headed off for a pub crawl which wound up lasting just one pub (the Bannerman where i'd been the day before) before fetching back up at the hostel again. i wasn't overly upset - i felt that i'd seen my share of pubs by this point and finishing the evening within staggering distance of my bed was entirely For The Win. Sam and i had the dorm to ourselves... although when we'd passed through after getting back from the Albernach the windows had been open and there was a strong smell of weed in the room. the Sneaky Stoner didn't resurface and by midnight i was showered and sleeping the sleep of the dead, and the rather tipsy.
meanwhile, the Swedes are back to singing and playing and making pleasant noise to my left and the view out the windor is of hills and trees and old stone buildings all dusted in snow. is it happened, the train wound up stopping at Perth, so i grabbed my camera, dumped out and took a bunch of hurried photos to prove i'd been there. from what i could see while passing through there's not really a lot going on, but at least i got there, if only for a minute or two. between the 24-Hour Friends back in Edinburgh, the jovial Swedes and my minor wish-fulfilment of getting to Perth, i'm in really quite high spirits. 24 hours ago i was starting to lose interest... now i'm back in the swing and curious as to what the world will look like when i get to my destination...
Monday, February 9, 2009
Edinburgh: you are guaranteed to regret this tomorrow...
sweet fuckery i hurt. i just climbed a mountain. a snow-covered mountain, no less. it's funny - we all have these things we want to do before we die. climbing a mountain was never really on my list, but now i've done it i think i'll add it anyway. it was only a little mountain, as far as mountains go - 251 metres in total. my trusty (and heavy - have i ever meantioned heavy?) Lonely Planet guide said that it was an easy walk. an hour or so. but i'll bet you the coffee i'm drinking those fuckers never did after a night of bloody snow.
a quick break to demolish my 2nd breakfast and i'm back, finishing off the coffee (which is good... so good). i'm sitting in The Rabbie Burns - it being the first place i found that looked like it had a decent lunch. in my mind, All Day Breakfast counts as lunch, and their version of the Big Breakfast included haggis so it had to be done. that, and it's warm, dry and there arev nice eastern-eurpoean women who seem more than happy to bring me coffee while i sit here feeling like i've just been beaten up and pissed on by excited Welsh rugby supporters (there was a lot of piss on the streets. i was informed that it was because the Welsh were in town. no love lost there then...).
i was on the street at 9AM. my alarm had gone off before 8, and of course got snoozed - my hand found it before my eyes rembered how to open and instinctively hit the right button. sleeping in a smallish dorm room with 8 or 9 other people left me better rested than i had expected - i passed out not much past midnight and apart from the creaking of the metal bunks as people shifted in their sleep, none of them were noisy or irritating. a quick shower later (and a MUCH better shower than back at base-camp) and i was shovelling toast, cereal and coffee down my throat, got tooled up and headed down towards the hill. Arthur's Seat is at the top of the highest mountain in the area and affords incredible views of the countryside. of course, right after the snow the air's far from clear. not foggy, just not clear, so i don't think many of my photos came out too well. still, for all the sore legs getting up there it was worth the view. coming down was quicker, but treacherous. i wound up on my arse at least twice, and i know i got air on the third slide, breaking the fall on my side. i got up swearing, pondering the relative entertainment of trying to get some laundry dry, imagining just how grubby i was going to wind up and wondering how the fucking hell the two old people ahead of me with walking sticks weren't just keeping pace, but making distance on me (no - seriously. how did they not slip and brek their fucking hips?). one of the benefits of being up a snowy mountain with very few people around was that when nature called, i did finally get to write my name in the snow. hoorjay!
eventually i fetched up back on level ground again and trudged back up the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Castle. typically, the Mile is UPHILL to the fucking castle which is why i started assessing anything that looked like a relatively budget eatery on the way. this isn't at all the area for cheap food. welcome to Edinburg's Tourist Central. there are kilt shops and bagpipe shops and Historical Taverns so densely packed that if you tripped over one you'd faceplant in the next. still, it's pretty and entertaining. i'll pick this up again later this afternoon/evening.
---
another 4 hours later, another interesting location. right now i'm sitting in a basement scotch whisky bar with a shot of something lovely in a glass that looks like it was designed by craftsmen intent on ensuring that i enjoy its contents as much as humanly possible. it's less than 50 metres from the gates of the castle and had a sign above the door saying "The Scotch Whisky Experience" and somehow i knew i had to go and check it out.
after leaving The Rabbie Burns i
OOH FUCK, MY THROAT IS IN HEAVEN! IT'S LIKE A BURNING SLUG OF HAPPINESS!
sorry, anyway, i continued up the hill to the castle. i'm not going to go into the details of the place. come here. go see it. it's pretty, it's old, it's got a lot of history. i did the tour, which i recommend if only because it's free (well, after you pay the £10 entry fee), it runs every half an hour and you'll pick up a lot of useful information which comes in useful when you start to wander... and the view's spectacular.
i wound up hanging around there for the best part of 3 hours looking around all the little nooks and crannies of the place. by the time i left i was getting towards ruined. another long day with a LOT of walking (climbing, falling on my arse)
OOOOH IT'S SMOOTH, IT'S VELVETY, IT'S LIKE SOME SCOTTISH BASTARD LEARNED HOW TO TRAP JOY IN A BOTTLE!
erm... yeah. tired. sore. getting REALLY sore now, and i've still to do the cemetery tour i missed out on last night. plan of attack for the moment is to sit around in this little bar for a while longer and try something else. at £3.50/shot it's not the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but they have nearly 300 different bottles of scotch on the wall and a lot of them i'll not get the chance to taste without spending over $150/bottle somewhere out in the world. that, and the bar attendant has a gorgeous accent and knows her stuff incredibly thoroughly.
hmm... note to self. find a single malt tour. probably best done from Inverness. i should get the chance to finish this off later tonight.
---
a chair in the bar downstairs from the hostel, my drink's changed to Guiness and i'm hearing american accents from the groups of people doing the pub quiz. i'd be in on it... in fact, i'm almost a little disappointed that i didn't pay attention to the signs saying it was on, but what the hell. i did the cemetery tour instead.
i bogged out of the whisky bar after having another shot and chatting to the bar attendent for a bit, getting some suggestions on out-of-the-way pubs to visit while i'm here. i wandered off and found one of them down on Cowgate and wound up having a couple of pints cruising the net. there was no "Free WiFi" sticker that i noticed, but their wireless router had pride of place, hanging in an ornate birdcage over the left-hand side of the bar, so i settled into one of the big, plush couches and drank local beer (which tasted oddly of peat) and cruised the net while i ate, catching up on the news from back home. i still read The Age, The Australian and (when i'm really bored) the Sydney Morning Herald to find out what's going on back home, otherwise i'd never know about the $950 K-Rudd wants to give me for Anzac Day.
anyway, fortified by my 3rd big meal of the day and happy from the two pints with which i'd followed my scotch i wandered back to the hostel to dump some stuff and have a bit of a sit down before wandering off to the ghost tour, which was also good fun. the guide for this evening was actually from Wollongong. she was trying to cover her accent with a bit of an english one, but her aussie kept shining through. it was fun, informative, theatrical, and i got a couple of pounds off the price because i'd gone along to the Vault tour the night before and had missed out on doing the cemetery last night.
i hiked back to the hostel through the wet, dark streets of Edinburgh's Old Town feeling exhausted. it's not that i covered a lot of miles today, but the place is hilly. REALLY hilly... compared to anywhere i've walked around before at least. the Old Town's also completely riddled with alleyways. as the buildings were built they just left bits out. some of these Closes are wide enough to drive a car down. one i walked down this evening was narrow enough that if someone had tried to pass me we would have had to both be pretty friendly. walking down one of these wet cobbled streets with insufficient lighting is actually really spooky, although that could have had a lot to do with the spooky tours i've done these last two nights. the Royal Mile which runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle (royalty lived in the one at the bottom of the hill, and came up to the one on top of the hill when they had to. links two castles, a mile long, not a very imaginative name) seems to be built along a ridge, and if you turn off in either direction you wind up heading down quite a steep slope. it would probably partly explain why i've not seen any fat people around since i got here (or in the local parlance: thaat be whah arve nae seen noo faht people in Ehd'nbraa). they burn it all off walking up and down the bloody hills.
still, ignoring how demolished i'm feeling at the moment (the litany goes as follows: sore chest and shoulders from my shoulder-bag, right bicep for some unknown reason, both knees, quads and calves, right palm from using it to break my fall on the mountain, feet from wearing these boots for 14 hours now and, of course, walking all fucking day) today's been good. i've extended my stay here for another 2 days since i got a 2-for-1 offer and it cost me the same as booking only for a single night. watch me complain - even if i do leave on wednesday it's not as if it cost me any more and i'm a fan of having flexibility.
tomorrow i think i'm going to go fairly easy... although i'm tempted to walk to the coastline directly to the north so that i can dip my toe in the North Sea. i probably won't get the chance at Inverness since it's on Loch Ness. still, while i don't mind trudging for miles on end i'm not climbing any more snowy fucking mountains for the next few days, i'll say that much. i'm relatively certain that my body is going to exact a penance upon me for my exertions today come tomorrow. i'll have a shower before bed tonight in an effort to appease the physical shell, but it's going to hurt one way or another and it'll take some work to get me moving again in the morning. still, another pint should help with the sleeping process. that would make... um... 4 today, plus scotch... but that was only tasting sizes so it doesn't count, right?
oh well. it's 11PM now and i've about had it so i can see an early night in my future... at least, once i finish my fresh Guiness...
a quick break to demolish my 2nd breakfast and i'm back, finishing off the coffee (which is good... so good). i'm sitting in The Rabbie Burns - it being the first place i found that looked like it had a decent lunch. in my mind, All Day Breakfast counts as lunch, and their version of the Big Breakfast included haggis so it had to be done. that, and it's warm, dry and there arev nice eastern-eurpoean women who seem more than happy to bring me coffee while i sit here feeling like i've just been beaten up and pissed on by excited Welsh rugby supporters (there was a lot of piss on the streets. i was informed that it was because the Welsh were in town. no love lost there then...).
i was on the street at 9AM. my alarm had gone off before 8, and of course got snoozed - my hand found it before my eyes rembered how to open and instinctively hit the right button. sleeping in a smallish dorm room with 8 or 9 other people left me better rested than i had expected - i passed out not much past midnight and apart from the creaking of the metal bunks as people shifted in their sleep, none of them were noisy or irritating. a quick shower later (and a MUCH better shower than back at base-camp) and i was shovelling toast, cereal and coffee down my throat, got tooled up and headed down towards the hill. Arthur's Seat is at the top of the highest mountain in the area and affords incredible views of the countryside. of course, right after the snow the air's far from clear. not foggy, just not clear, so i don't think many of my photos came out too well. still, for all the sore legs getting up there it was worth the view. coming down was quicker, but treacherous. i wound up on my arse at least twice, and i know i got air on the third slide, breaking the fall on my side. i got up swearing, pondering the relative entertainment of trying to get some laundry dry, imagining just how grubby i was going to wind up and wondering how the fucking hell the two old people ahead of me with walking sticks weren't just keeping pace, but making distance on me (no - seriously. how did they not slip and brek their fucking hips?). one of the benefits of being up a snowy mountain with very few people around was that when nature called, i did finally get to write my name in the snow. hoorjay!
eventually i fetched up back on level ground again and trudged back up the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Castle. typically, the Mile is UPHILL to the fucking castle which is why i started assessing anything that looked like a relatively budget eatery on the way. this isn't at all the area for cheap food. welcome to Edinburg's Tourist Central. there are kilt shops and bagpipe shops and Historical Taverns so densely packed that if you tripped over one you'd faceplant in the next. still, it's pretty and entertaining. i'll pick this up again later this afternoon/evening.
---
another 4 hours later, another interesting location. right now i'm sitting in a basement scotch whisky bar with a shot of something lovely in a glass that looks like it was designed by craftsmen intent on ensuring that i enjoy its contents as much as humanly possible. it's less than 50 metres from the gates of the castle and had a sign above the door saying "The Scotch Whisky Experience" and somehow i knew i had to go and check it out.
after leaving The Rabbie Burns i
OOH FUCK, MY THROAT IS IN HEAVEN! IT'S LIKE A BURNING SLUG OF HAPPINESS!
sorry, anyway, i continued up the hill to the castle. i'm not going to go into the details of the place. come here. go see it. it's pretty, it's old, it's got a lot of history. i did the tour, which i recommend if only because it's free (well, after you pay the £10 entry fee), it runs every half an hour and you'll pick up a lot of useful information which comes in useful when you start to wander... and the view's spectacular.
i wound up hanging around there for the best part of 3 hours looking around all the little nooks and crannies of the place. by the time i left i was getting towards ruined. another long day with a LOT of walking (climbing, falling on my arse)
OOOOH IT'S SMOOTH, IT'S VELVETY, IT'S LIKE SOME SCOTTISH BASTARD LEARNED HOW TO TRAP JOY IN A BOTTLE!
erm... yeah. tired. sore. getting REALLY sore now, and i've still to do the cemetery tour i missed out on last night. plan of attack for the moment is to sit around in this little bar for a while longer and try something else. at £3.50/shot it's not the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but they have nearly 300 different bottles of scotch on the wall and a lot of them i'll not get the chance to taste without spending over $150/bottle somewhere out in the world. that, and the bar attendant has a gorgeous accent and knows her stuff incredibly thoroughly.
hmm... note to self. find a single malt tour. probably best done from Inverness. i should get the chance to finish this off later tonight.
---
a chair in the bar downstairs from the hostel, my drink's changed to Guiness and i'm hearing american accents from the groups of people doing the pub quiz. i'd be in on it... in fact, i'm almost a little disappointed that i didn't pay attention to the signs saying it was on, but what the hell. i did the cemetery tour instead.
i bogged out of the whisky bar after having another shot and chatting to the bar attendent for a bit, getting some suggestions on out-of-the-way pubs to visit while i'm here. i wandered off and found one of them down on Cowgate and wound up having a couple of pints cruising the net. there was no "Free WiFi" sticker that i noticed, but their wireless router had pride of place, hanging in an ornate birdcage over the left-hand side of the bar, so i settled into one of the big, plush couches and drank local beer (which tasted oddly of peat) and cruised the net while i ate, catching up on the news from back home. i still read The Age, The Australian and (when i'm really bored) the Sydney Morning Herald to find out what's going on back home, otherwise i'd never know about the $950 K-Rudd wants to give me for Anzac Day.
anyway, fortified by my 3rd big meal of the day and happy from the two pints with which i'd followed my scotch i wandered back to the hostel to dump some stuff and have a bit of a sit down before wandering off to the ghost tour, which was also good fun. the guide for this evening was actually from Wollongong. she was trying to cover her accent with a bit of an english one, but her aussie kept shining through. it was fun, informative, theatrical, and i got a couple of pounds off the price because i'd gone along to the Vault tour the night before and had missed out on doing the cemetery last night.
i hiked back to the hostel through the wet, dark streets of Edinburgh's Old Town feeling exhausted. it's not that i covered a lot of miles today, but the place is hilly. REALLY hilly... compared to anywhere i've walked around before at least. the Old Town's also completely riddled with alleyways. as the buildings were built they just left bits out. some of these Closes are wide enough to drive a car down. one i walked down this evening was narrow enough that if someone had tried to pass me we would have had to both be pretty friendly. walking down one of these wet cobbled streets with insufficient lighting is actually really spooky, although that could have had a lot to do with the spooky tours i've done these last two nights. the Royal Mile which runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Castle (royalty lived in the one at the bottom of the hill, and came up to the one on top of the hill when they had to. links two castles, a mile long, not a very imaginative name) seems to be built along a ridge, and if you turn off in either direction you wind up heading down quite a steep slope. it would probably partly explain why i've not seen any fat people around since i got here (or in the local parlance: thaat be whah arve nae seen noo faht people in Ehd'nbraa). they burn it all off walking up and down the bloody hills.
still, ignoring how demolished i'm feeling at the moment (the litany goes as follows: sore chest and shoulders from my shoulder-bag, right bicep for some unknown reason, both knees, quads and calves, right palm from using it to break my fall on the mountain, feet from wearing these boots for 14 hours now and, of course, walking all fucking day) today's been good. i've extended my stay here for another 2 days since i got a 2-for-1 offer and it cost me the same as booking only for a single night. watch me complain - even if i do leave on wednesday it's not as if it cost me any more and i'm a fan of having flexibility.
tomorrow i think i'm going to go fairly easy... although i'm tempted to walk to the coastline directly to the north so that i can dip my toe in the North Sea. i probably won't get the chance at Inverness since it's on Loch Ness. still, while i don't mind trudging for miles on end i'm not climbing any more snowy fucking mountains for the next few days, i'll say that much. i'm relatively certain that my body is going to exact a penance upon me for my exertions today come tomorrow. i'll have a shower before bed tonight in an effort to appease the physical shell, but it's going to hurt one way or another and it'll take some work to get me moving again in the morning. still, another pint should help with the sleeping process. that would make... um... 4 today, plus scotch... but that was only tasting sizes so it doesn't count, right?
oh well. it's 11PM now and i've about had it so i can see an early night in my future... at least, once i finish my fresh Guiness...
Edinburgh - a strangely ominous sort of place...
after the bright lights and modernity of London, Edinburgh was something of a shock. i'd seen a couple of photos before arriving - long shots of the castle, mostly. getting in i was completely unprepared for the weighty feeling of age you feel when you wander around the streets. it turns out that where i'm staying is actually across Market St from Edinburgh Waverley Station which is in the Old Town, and around here they're not fucking kidding with the word Old. in fact, the New town didn't actually fill me with feelings of modernity. most of that was still older than most of Australia, and i'd have been freaking out a bit if it wasn't so downright cool.
i wound up rather enjoying my train ride, polishing off 7 cups of coffee while i sat around and blogged, enjoying the luxury of space, comfort, and a power point. the train arrived on time at 2PM, and by 2:30PM i'd checked into my hostel. dumped my backpack and hit the street again to find Eve. i'd met Eve once before on my trip to Brighton and had faithfully Friended her on Facebook in order to make it easier to keep in touch later if the chance came up - it's the quickest and easiest way i've found to date to expand your social network. when browsing FB yesterday i noticed her status saying that she was up here, so i dropped her a line and we tentatively arranged to meet up when i got here. she's been here since Friday and had tramped across most of town already, but was keen on lunch and kind enough to shout me, so we found a place with a good wine list and ate hearty comfort-food while downing a bottle of good Italin red. we'd only really met briefly back at Brighton and hadn't really had much of a chance to talk, but it was pleasant to see a friendly place in a strange place and she has strong geek-roots so we had plenty to talk about.
we wound up wandering to an infamous graveyard not too far away and looked around until the light started to fade. it's infamous because of one particular internee who's supposedly one of the best-documented poltergeists in history. Edinburgh has a big thing going with ghosts apparantly. i don't know the full story, in part because the tour i was going to go on this evening was cancelled due to insufficient patronage, which is why i'm now sitting in one of the bars downstairs from my hostel having a pint to myself in a window seat, watching the snow fall outside.
as the light faded Eve suggested that we head up to Carlton Hill where there's a great view of the lights of the city to be seen and photographed. it's not the BIG hill nearby - that's a trip for another day with more light and more time, but we climbed up and took some photos before she had to go and pick up her bag and head off for the shuttle to the airport. having nothing else to do for an hour or so i stopped in the hostel to take stock and pull my book and the bottled water i'd nabbed on the train out of my shoulder bag in order to lighten the load a bit before heading off again.
in my research of last night i found a link to a couple of walking tours that looked interesting - one through a series of underground vaults built into one of the bridges between Old Town and New Town, the other which heads through a couple of the grave yards, including the one with the aforementioned poltergeist. ordinarily i'd avoid guided tours - i'd much rather wander the streets at my own pace, but when it comes to locked and out of the way places, or less-than-well documented history sometimes going with a guide can be awesome. fortuntely, the meeting point was just around the corner from my hostel, so i was there with plenty of time. the first tour was the underground, so i joined the crew and followed the David Tennant look-alike around and i'm so incredibly glad i went. he was funny, knowledgeable, and he presented in a remarkably entertaining way, discussing Scotish history in greater detail than you really thought necessary, until you realise that he was setting the scene as an explanation for what was later to come. one point he launched into a story about the visit of King George IV and by the time it was all explained and the relevance understood you were so enthralled that you'd forgotten why he was telling the story in the first place... and really didn't care. if you wind up in Edinburgh and you're looking for something to do of an evening, doing the City Of The Dead (ignore the wanky name) tours are well worth it.
after finishing up i had half an hour to kill before the Cemetery tour started and it was snowing in earnest. you'd think this would ruin a night-time walking tour, but i was excited. spooky cemetery at night? cool. spooky cemetery in the murky snow? FUCKING AWESOME! unfortunately they needed 15 people to run and with only 10 showing up the 9:30PM tour was cancelled. i was a little gutted since that was my plan for the evening out the window, but hey - this is how things go sometimes. i wandered the 10 minutes back to the hostel, grabbed a pint and found a seat to write stuff down.
it's been a long day. i'm tired, i'm achy and i'm certainly more alone than i've been in ages - sitting in a bar in a strange city listening to the bar staff (at least 3 of which are Australian from the accents) banter as they close up. they've let me sit here because i'm not in the way, but i expect i'll be moved along pretty soon. tomorrow will likely involve wandering up and down the Royal Mile, visiting Edinburgh Castle, and (if weather and light permits), hiking up to Arthur's Seat. there're are a few things to see around here, and i can see it occupying at least the next couple of days. right now i'm going to go and check the activity in the main bar next door, and if that's too boring or irritating i'll head upstairs and watch something on my Eee and get some sleep. breakfast's laid on here (which is impressive since i'm only paying £12/night) so i might as well try to get up early and take advantage of it, even if only in the hope that i can avoid spending cash on lunch (i know that's bad - don't start). i'm in a 10-person mixed dorm, but it didn't seem full when i was up there earlier, and with luck no one'll be too noisy, although i have ear plugs just in case.
meanwhile - note to self: buy a padlock for the under-bunk storage. i remember Moonbug once telling me that a padlock was essential equipment when backpacking, but the relevance of the comment didn't dawn on me until i saw the little wire cage under the bed today. i might make that something i keep an eye out for tomorrow... meanwhile, time to go see if there's anyone interesting in the other bar and let these guys close up...
i wound up rather enjoying my train ride, polishing off 7 cups of coffee while i sat around and blogged, enjoying the luxury of space, comfort, and a power point. the train arrived on time at 2PM, and by 2:30PM i'd checked into my hostel. dumped my backpack and hit the street again to find Eve. i'd met Eve once before on my trip to Brighton and had faithfully Friended her on Facebook in order to make it easier to keep in touch later if the chance came up - it's the quickest and easiest way i've found to date to expand your social network. when browsing FB yesterday i noticed her status saying that she was up here, so i dropped her a line and we tentatively arranged to meet up when i got here. she's been here since Friday and had tramped across most of town already, but was keen on lunch and kind enough to shout me, so we found a place with a good wine list and ate hearty comfort-food while downing a bottle of good Italin red. we'd only really met briefly back at Brighton and hadn't really had much of a chance to talk, but it was pleasant to see a friendly place in a strange place and she has strong geek-roots so we had plenty to talk about.
we wound up wandering to an infamous graveyard not too far away and looked around until the light started to fade. it's infamous because of one particular internee who's supposedly one of the best-documented poltergeists in history. Edinburgh has a big thing going with ghosts apparantly. i don't know the full story, in part because the tour i was going to go on this evening was cancelled due to insufficient patronage, which is why i'm now sitting in one of the bars downstairs from my hostel having a pint to myself in a window seat, watching the snow fall outside.
as the light faded Eve suggested that we head up to Carlton Hill where there's a great view of the lights of the city to be seen and photographed. it's not the BIG hill nearby - that's a trip for another day with more light and more time, but we climbed up and took some photos before she had to go and pick up her bag and head off for the shuttle to the airport. having nothing else to do for an hour or so i stopped in the hostel to take stock and pull my book and the bottled water i'd nabbed on the train out of my shoulder bag in order to lighten the load a bit before heading off again.
in my research of last night i found a link to a couple of walking tours that looked interesting - one through a series of underground vaults built into one of the bridges between Old Town and New Town, the other which heads through a couple of the grave yards, including the one with the aforementioned poltergeist. ordinarily i'd avoid guided tours - i'd much rather wander the streets at my own pace, but when it comes to locked and out of the way places, or less-than-well documented history sometimes going with a guide can be awesome. fortuntely, the meeting point was just around the corner from my hostel, so i was there with plenty of time. the first tour was the underground, so i joined the crew and followed the David Tennant look-alike around and i'm so incredibly glad i went. he was funny, knowledgeable, and he presented in a remarkably entertaining way, discussing Scotish history in greater detail than you really thought necessary, until you realise that he was setting the scene as an explanation for what was later to come. one point he launched into a story about the visit of King George IV and by the time it was all explained and the relevance understood you were so enthralled that you'd forgotten why he was telling the story in the first place... and really didn't care. if you wind up in Edinburgh and you're looking for something to do of an evening, doing the City Of The Dead (ignore the wanky name) tours are well worth it.
after finishing up i had half an hour to kill before the Cemetery tour started and it was snowing in earnest. you'd think this would ruin a night-time walking tour, but i was excited. spooky cemetery at night? cool. spooky cemetery in the murky snow? FUCKING AWESOME! unfortunately they needed 15 people to run and with only 10 showing up the 9:30PM tour was cancelled. i was a little gutted since that was my plan for the evening out the window, but hey - this is how things go sometimes. i wandered the 10 minutes back to the hostel, grabbed a pint and found a seat to write stuff down.
it's been a long day. i'm tired, i'm achy and i'm certainly more alone than i've been in ages - sitting in a bar in a strange city listening to the bar staff (at least 3 of which are Australian from the accents) banter as they close up. they've let me sit here because i'm not in the way, but i expect i'll be moved along pretty soon. tomorrow will likely involve wandering up and down the Royal Mile, visiting Edinburgh Castle, and (if weather and light permits), hiking up to Arthur's Seat. there're are a few things to see around here, and i can see it occupying at least the next couple of days. right now i'm going to go and check the activity in the main bar next door, and if that's too boring or irritating i'll head upstairs and watch something on my Eee and get some sleep. breakfast's laid on here (which is impressive since i'm only paying £12/night) so i might as well try to get up early and take advantage of it, even if only in the hope that i can avoid spending cash on lunch (i know that's bad - don't start). i'm in a 10-person mixed dorm, but it didn't seem full when i was up there earlier, and with luck no one'll be too noisy, although i have ear plugs just in case.
meanwhile - note to self: buy a padlock for the under-bunk storage. i remember Moonbug once telling me that a padlock was essential equipment when backpacking, but the relevance of the comment didn't dawn on me until i saw the little wire cage under the bed today. i might make that something i keep an eye out for tomorrow... meanwhile, time to go see if there's anyone interesting in the other bar and let these guys close up...
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Giving Up part 2 - this i did not expect (but could get used to)...
outside there are fields of white - where the city has gone icy and depressed, out here it still looks pure with a stark beauty that doesn't so much smack you in the eyeballs as sit back with a sherry and a pipe, its tweed jacket belying a hooligan past, the look in its eye asking cynically:
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
"... and?"
meanwhile i'm sitting here blogging while i look out the window, enjoying the graffiti sprayed on the walls around snowed-in soccer-fields enjoying the novelty of blogging while on public transport. what's that? yes, i KNOW i've been blogging a lot on public transport, but this is different - this is LIVE. somehow i managed to book a 1st-class ticket on the 9:05 to Edinburgh. i can only assume that thetrainline.com blindsided me, or that i clicked on the wrong checkbox, or that this was simply the cheapest fare available for today, and... you know what? fuck it. i have an enormous reclining seat in a cluster of 4 to myself, and all the coffee i can drink while i sit here with a power point and a WiFi connection and fuck you if you think i'm not going to make the most of it.
i was supposed to get some sleep last night - alarms (3 of were set for 6:59, 7:01 and 7:07 this morning, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep behind me i was awake, staring at the faint halo around the curtains and wishing for death. 7:33 and i was moving. 8:09 and i was out the door, Death Cab For Cute providing the now standard soundtrack for my "i'm up too early with too little sleep" experience. tube from Oval to Kings Cross St Pancras (Kings Cross is the city overland and national rail terminal, St Pancras is international) with enough time to collect my tickets and find my train, but not enough to get bored waiting. Kings Cross is a fairly unimpressive yellow-beige brick building notable only for its size and the triskell-motif'd clock. next door, St Pancras is far more impressive with a spire rising above the filth not unlike one of the many churches you see damn near everywhere in London.
of course, what you may be wondering (if you've been following the narrative in recent history) is what the fuck i'm doing in 1st-class on an overland train, and where the fuck am i going? see, i could have explained at the start, but starting there wouldn't have been so fun now, would it?
when last i spoke i mentioned that i was waiting for news from jobs to come in. since then i had another interview for a Team Leader job for a small government advisory commission (which went surprisingly well, thanks), and so i waited. then finally, on Friday afternoon i got news from both sets of pimps - their sympathetic speeches so similar they could have been carbon-copied:
"You did incredibly well at interview. They were really impressed with the way you answered the questions succinctly, they thought you have a great personality for the role, technical skills are right up there and your leadership style would work really well for them. It was a hard decision - it was down between you and one other guy, but in this situation they've decided not to move forward with you, but they really want to consider you for future roles if they come up."
well fuckery - you've got to be fucking kidding. 2nd best is 1st loser, and twice more i've been the best of the rest. i've said before that if the jobs i was in for didn't come through i'd be fucking off into the hinterlands and less than 48 hours later, being a man of my word, i'm on a train heading north at "surprisingly ridiculous"-an-hour and onto my second cup of "better than any airline i've ever been on" coffee.
Friday was not one of my shining moments - i waited and i was sick of waiting and 2 weeks of waiting culminated in one afternoon of failure. i'd spent the day bumming around the flat before heading into Leicester Square for a couple of hours, with plans of cruising the job sites, sorting out some paperwork and hitting the National Portrait Gallery (i walk past it almost every day and had never been in before). i must admit that while i enjoyed the gallery, it would have been nice to have seen more photographic work since i was fishing for ideas on composition in the interests of hopefully improving my own photography. the second call came through while i was on the bus on my way back to base-camp and i managed to not blow out the windows with a scream of rage and despair, (later 1/3 of a bottle of scotch helped wash down the bitter pill of failure) and within 5 minutes of walking in the door i was pulling open the bookmarks i'd saved weeks ago and started getting organised. come Saturday morning i booked the train out of town, and the first two nights in a hostel, while i sipped my morning coffee, then proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon being shown around Greenwich Park (which has ducks and pigeons and squirrels and deer) by SiJ, then the evening watching Stargate, fixing the music player on my Eee, drying clothes and packing my shoulder bag and backpack.
you might notice that i've not discussed my plans, and the canny amongst you will have worked out that it's because i don't have any. i know where i'm staying tonight and tomorrow. past there i can't really bring myself to give a fuck. i can extend my stay in the hostel, or change if i want. i can find transport to get me to the next town. i've got my passport and access to enough cash to keep me for a year if the urge should strike to do something unexpected. i'm past caring and i'm past comprehension. i don't even know when i'll be back in London - it'll be either when the idea sits right with me, or i get bored of wandering. whichever comes first. in the meantime, i'm Dropping Off The Face Of The Planet with my middle finger raised in one final "fuck you" to anyone bored enough to watch me fall.
were it not for the absurd novelty of having a net connection on the train i'd have been officially Offline from the moment i walked out the door this morning. i'm a fairly well connected lad - being an IT professional and technology enthusiast i live a pretty hifi life. one of my great fantasies of the last couple of years has been to switch off and fuck off into the distance for a while. no phone, no net, just me, my PSD, access to transport and hopefully places i've never been. sure, i've got my Eee with me, but that just means i can write to my heart's content and worry about posting it all later. no email, no Facebook, no phone ringing. hell - if i didn't want to be able to take calls form pimps i'd have turned my fucking phone off and thrown it so hard at the fucking wall it'd have embedded in the plaster (i love this phone - i could do that and it'd probably STILL survive). i've been so tempted to fling the thing into the Thames, and wave goodbye and giggle maniacally as it sinks along with the last of my sanity, but i've managed to fight the urge.
so there you go. 4 months in this country is all it took for me to say "fuck it" and drop out. i expect i'll get back into the swing again when i go back to London, but for the time being i'm past making promises or building expectations. promises can be broken. expectations can be shattered. plans can fail, and i'm sick of the cloud of failure that follows me around as if i was Pig Pen in Peanuts. i've Given Up, Dropped Out and Fucked off. time to see how i go out in the world on my own, outside my comfort zone and reliant on no one, and at some stage eventually i'll even get around to telling you about it. meanwhile, if you don't know how to find me it's because i want it that way. leave a message.
Raven Out.
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