you know exactly where to stand on the tube platform so you'll be set up just right for when you get off to change lines.
you check the Transport For London website for directions before you check Google Maps.
you stop minding that the pubs call for last orders at 10:45PM because it means you can still get the tube home.
the idea of owning your own car has become a somewhat alien concept.
you no longer laugh when you hear the name "Cockfosters" on the Piccadilly Line.
a 2 hour commute to work is something you'll live with.
you never, ever consider taking the Circle Line unless you're on a pub crawl.
you can get from anywhere to anywhere on foot at 3AM, just by reading the bus stops.
whenever you pass Trafalgar Square you think "bloody tourists".
you start thinking in miles rather than kilometres.
you know where East-17 got their name.
you instinctively know where to get the best chips within a mile radius of your house.
2 miles isn't THAT far to walk.
you pull out your mp3 player whenever you get on public transport, even when you're travelling with a group.
heading to Brighton for the day is nothing, but going to Shepherd's Bush to go shopping is a bit far, innit?
you don't bother carrying a book if you know you'll be traveling in peak times because you know there'll be a free newspaper to read.
you know the only two things you're allowed to say to a stranger on the tube are "excuse me" and "are you done with that paper?"
you can't remember how to tune a television because you don't own one and can't think of why you'd watch free-to-air anyway.
you firmly believe that anywhere past Zone 3 isn't really IN London.
you don't get upset when the pub's full because you know you can just go the one next door.
seeing the sun is more of a surprise than seeing naked women in the newspaper.
whenever you meet an Australian you think "not another one".
you stop expecting your beer to be ice cold and taste faintly of urine.
you consider any meal that costs less than £5 and fills you up to be a bargain.
you've stopped thinking about the exchange rate because it's too heartbreaking, but you can do it in your head if you have to.
you know exactly how far it is to the nearest Tesco or Sainsburys in steps.
you'd consider trying to carry a mattress home on public transport.
a flat that was advertised for rent more than 48 hours ago isn't worth calling about because you know it's already gone.
you can't understand why you can't find an ATM in other cities because you've already gone half-way around the block.
there's a public holiday coming up and you thought about going to Spain and Morocco before you even considered Liverpool or Bristol.
every time you hear someone refer to Milton Keynes you snigger.
it's raining. so?
you see a burst pipe spraying water down the street and you don't think of it as a criminal waste.
pasties and fried chicken have taken over from pies and pizza as your junk-food of choice.
you'll catch a tube anywhere, but avoid the overland at all costs.
you've developed a subtle disrespect for anyone who doesn't, or hasn't lived here themselves...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
"I came here to find myself," and other banal comments...
i've never been anywhere it was easier to do a spur-of-the-moment pub crawl than here. i crawled Brunswick St in Fitzroy, Melbourne once, many years ago. i got lucky and there were plenty of bars, although some of them were crappy Old Man bars. i crawled The Rocks in Sydney and was bored by the end. Daniel and i crawled Leicester Square/Covent Garden on Friday night and had an awesome time. we were skipping places because they were too crowded and were still spoiled for choice. i didn't drink the same beer twice that night and by the time we jumped tubes out from Embankment at 11PM we were both staggering.
we met at the Bear & Staff on Charing Cross Rd because it's easy for us to find, as well as being a bit of a haunt for us now and meandered from there - out for a night on the piss for no better reason than that we're both working at the moment, it was a Friday night and we could. i'd like to say that it was the start of a great weekend, but to be honest i spent most of it in bed. the flu i'd started coming down with on Tuesday had lain dormant for the last 3 days and jumped on my back like a deranged monkey come Saturday morning screaming "SUBMIT," so i did. the previous week or so had left me more than a little fucked up and by the afternoon i'd come crashing down into a ditch and the dam burst, releasing a flood of disappointment and self-loathing. i had a nap in the afternoon hoping that i'd feel up to going out with Louise and her friends that night but woke up feeling worse and said fuck it, so she left me to my Stargate and my blanket and went out on the town.
Sunday came and with it an invitation to go see Watchmen down in Stockwell and i wasn't missing that for the world, illness or no. sitting around a nearby pub afterwards stuffing myself with the Sunday Roast and pint after pint of water, it seems like everyone's having problems finding or keeping work. contracts not extending, roles being made redundant, the party's over and the hangover's just starting to set in. the Children of The Southern Cross have a reputation around here as being here for a good time, not a long time and these folks are no different. Louise is great friends with them, but while i enjoy going out partying with them i know i'll never be. honestly, i appreciate being invited along when they're heading out for a fun night out, hearing people who seem to have all the introspection of an lobotomised otaku with a penchant for high-school romantic comedy talk about how they came to London to "find themselves" sounds shallower than kiddie's paddling pool, and almost as full of shit. as Shadow has been wont to say over the time i've known him: "The problem with going somewhere to get away from your problems is that no matter where you go, there you are." still, these guys DO know how to party so they're obviously onto something. i think perhaps i may still have much to learn from these people.
spin forwards and by the time i was standing at the bus stop on my way back to Heathrow i was already counting down the number of times i'd have to make that trip again. the job's fun enough and i'm glad to have it, but the percentage of my waking hours that i'm spending on public transport at the moment is ridiculous. i'm just thinking of the money and the trip i'll be up to the eyeballs in a fortnight from now and getting the work done.
the next few days are going to be quiet, i think. i need to get over this illness. Louise has come down with it as well and we've both been coughing up a lung. this is the third time she's been knocked for 6 since we came here - this is the first time i've got sick since the flu that laid me out right before we flew out of Sydney - and i'm a bit worried about her to be honest. i'm already starting to get over it and she's still going. the first one had her in bed for a fortnight. the second one lingered for almost as long, although she managed to keep going to work through it. she seems to get every bug that comes round (except for the vomiting-flu that did the rounds back in December/January - we both managed to miss that). i'm not her mum or anything, but it's still a bit of a worry.
London's the sort of place that invites an epidemic though. pack half the population onto the tubes, then into offices in town every day of the week and any airborne or sneeze/cough-transmitted pathogen is going to spread faster than a nymphomaniac student's knees after 4 litres of Fruity Lexia at a toga party. back in Canberra i saw how a cold could wipe out an office. here it could lay waste to suburbs as people infect and reinfect each other with every packed train they hop on, the public transport system becoming a machine of Mass Rapid Infection. when the Umbrella Corporation release the Resident Evil virus, all they'd have to do is drop a canister at Leicester Square and watch as the Northern Line spreads it out through Kings Cross and Waterloo,and the Piccadilly takes it directly to Heathrow then from there: the world.
that sort of makes me wonder whether, if London became Zombie Central, anyone would actually notice. maybe the leaflet and free-newspaper touts would be a little more polite. watch the people on the tube at 6:30PM and you start getting protective of your head-meats because most of the people are standing there looking like something's eaten theirs.
whatever the case, i can afford to have a quiet week. sit around, watch some movies, build up my strength and gird my loins for Egypt. i've been invited to a Pi Party on Saturday night - by the american calendar the date will be 3.14.09 (also, Einstein's Birthday. Happy Birthday Albo!), so the evening promises to be full of IT and Maths geeks getting drunk and eating pie. i'm missing out on going to The Car Wash (70's theme, with a foam canon) but i can't miss a geek gathering - it's been far too long since i've smelled my own kind. i'll go in with my 1337 hoodie, a six-pack of cider, a smile on my face and get my geek on. after that it's just one more week and i'll be getting a tan and trying not to let my pockets get picked or sand in my jocks. 3 weeks away to get some perspective and see whether, when i pull back up in Heathrow, i'm still wanting to hang around. with any luck Louise and i won't piss each other too much and i don't wind up feeding her to the crocodiles. as always, only time will tell, but i'm sure it'll be a whole lot of fun finding out...
we met at the Bear & Staff on Charing Cross Rd because it's easy for us to find, as well as being a bit of a haunt for us now and meandered from there - out for a night on the piss for no better reason than that we're both working at the moment, it was a Friday night and we could. i'd like to say that it was the start of a great weekend, but to be honest i spent most of it in bed. the flu i'd started coming down with on Tuesday had lain dormant for the last 3 days and jumped on my back like a deranged monkey come Saturday morning screaming "SUBMIT," so i did. the previous week or so had left me more than a little fucked up and by the afternoon i'd come crashing down into a ditch and the dam burst, releasing a flood of disappointment and self-loathing. i had a nap in the afternoon hoping that i'd feel up to going out with Louise and her friends that night but woke up feeling worse and said fuck it, so she left me to my Stargate and my blanket and went out on the town.
Sunday came and with it an invitation to go see Watchmen down in Stockwell and i wasn't missing that for the world, illness or no. sitting around a nearby pub afterwards stuffing myself with the Sunday Roast and pint after pint of water, it seems like everyone's having problems finding or keeping work. contracts not extending, roles being made redundant, the party's over and the hangover's just starting to set in. the Children of The Southern Cross have a reputation around here as being here for a good time, not a long time and these folks are no different. Louise is great friends with them, but while i enjoy going out partying with them i know i'll never be. honestly, i appreciate being invited along when they're heading out for a fun night out, hearing people who seem to have all the introspection of an lobotomised otaku with a penchant for high-school romantic comedy talk about how they came to London to "find themselves" sounds shallower than kiddie's paddling pool, and almost as full of shit. as Shadow has been wont to say over the time i've known him: "The problem with going somewhere to get away from your problems is that no matter where you go, there you are." still, these guys DO know how to party so they're obviously onto something. i think perhaps i may still have much to learn from these people.
spin forwards and by the time i was standing at the bus stop on my way back to Heathrow i was already counting down the number of times i'd have to make that trip again. the job's fun enough and i'm glad to have it, but the percentage of my waking hours that i'm spending on public transport at the moment is ridiculous. i'm just thinking of the money and the trip i'll be up to the eyeballs in a fortnight from now and getting the work done.
the next few days are going to be quiet, i think. i need to get over this illness. Louise has come down with it as well and we've both been coughing up a lung. this is the third time she's been knocked for 6 since we came here - this is the first time i've got sick since the flu that laid me out right before we flew out of Sydney - and i'm a bit worried about her to be honest. i'm already starting to get over it and she's still going. the first one had her in bed for a fortnight. the second one lingered for almost as long, although she managed to keep going to work through it. she seems to get every bug that comes round (except for the vomiting-flu that did the rounds back in December/January - we both managed to miss that). i'm not her mum or anything, but it's still a bit of a worry.
London's the sort of place that invites an epidemic though. pack half the population onto the tubes, then into offices in town every day of the week and any airborne or sneeze/cough-transmitted pathogen is going to spread faster than a nymphomaniac student's knees after 4 litres of Fruity Lexia at a toga party. back in Canberra i saw how a cold could wipe out an office. here it could lay waste to suburbs as people infect and reinfect each other with every packed train they hop on, the public transport system becoming a machine of Mass Rapid Infection. when the Umbrella Corporation release the Resident Evil virus, all they'd have to do is drop a canister at Leicester Square and watch as the Northern Line spreads it out through Kings Cross and Waterloo,and the Piccadilly takes it directly to Heathrow then from there: the world.
that sort of makes me wonder whether, if London became Zombie Central, anyone would actually notice. maybe the leaflet and free-newspaper touts would be a little more polite. watch the people on the tube at 6:30PM and you start getting protective of your head-meats because most of the people are standing there looking like something's eaten theirs.
whatever the case, i can afford to have a quiet week. sit around, watch some movies, build up my strength and gird my loins for Egypt. i've been invited to a Pi Party on Saturday night - by the american calendar the date will be 3.14.09 (also, Einstein's Birthday. Happy Birthday Albo!), so the evening promises to be full of IT and Maths geeks getting drunk and eating pie. i'm missing out on going to The Car Wash (70's theme, with a foam canon) but i can't miss a geek gathering - it's been far too long since i've smelled my own kind. i'll go in with my 1337 hoodie, a six-pack of cider, a smile on my face and get my geek on. after that it's just one more week and i'll be getting a tan and trying not to let my pockets get picked or sand in my jocks. 3 weeks away to get some perspective and see whether, when i pull back up in Heathrow, i'm still wanting to hang around. with any luck Louise and i won't piss each other too much and i don't wind up feeding her to the crocodiles. as always, only time will tell, but i'm sure it'll be a whole lot of fun finding out...
Snippets #13: on odd habits...
i've adopted some strange new modes of behavior in the last few months. creating a new life from scratch is a great method for reassessing whether you're doing what you do because it works in the here and now, or if you've just been doing for so long that it's ingrained. like pronouncing the 't' in '"often". or always having a diet coke with your meal. calling your girlfriend Jemima at the point of orgasm. some of it's completely inexplicable - for example, i've found that i tend to wake up at around the same time as Louise does most mornings. when she was working and getting up early i'd wake up either just before or after she headed to the bathroom to get dressed and say good morning, or make sure she was awake, then roll over and go to sleep. last week i did it again... except she didn't wake up until 12:30 in the afternoon. it was never a conscious thing, just something i'd fuzzily rembember having done when i woke up properly some time later. what's really odd is that she's been doing the same thing while i've been working - yelling at me to get up while i lie there looking at the numbers tick away on my mobile, then snoring away again by the time i'm out of the shower.
in the evenings when we eat together (we usually do), i'll usually do the cooking or preparation or oven-wrangling while she sits and keeps me company, then afterwards she'll wash up while i return the favour. i've taken to blogging down in the kitchen so that i can sit up typing late into the night while she goes to sleep, usually with a cup of tea, and i've become so used to it that i have difficulty collecting my thoughts to write when i'm up in the room even when she's up and about.
on the way to work i pick up a copy of the Metro and read it to save me from going through my book too quickly. on the way back to base-camp i sit and blog on the tube from Heathrow to Leicester Square while the people around me pretend not to stare at the stickers covering the lid of my Eee. in the mornings i always stand at the bus stop staring at the radar dish as it spins, wondering how much it weighs and time the spins in my head (~15RPM). in the afternoons i watch the planes take off and try to project how many must be leaving each hour (between 60 and 90).
i usually catch the bus into town in the interests of saving money, and even now i'm using an unlimited travelcard that makes the cost of the service irrelevant i still factor in the time it takes to use the bus and walk when i'm working out how to get anywhere. i've taken to hating on tourists who clog up the footpaths (even though i was one only a few months ago. no, i'm not still a tourist. i've got a lease on a place - i live here now), but i still look up at Nelson's statue in Trafalgar Square as i walk by and get slightly surprised that i'm actually here.
that said, when i'm sitting around bored my first instinct is still to call Sandra or Shadow, or Marcia and Rick, or Matt and Tiernan, or Jules. when i want to escape from the world it's always a bike i imagine myself on when i do. when i want a hug the same faces swim to the surface, shadows of my past who are long gone, but somehow still sitting over my shoulder whenever there's nothing else shedding light into my world.
in the first year after i left Perth i still used to think of it as Home. now when i think of Home i'm thinking of Canberra. when i go back to Canberra, will i be thinking of London - doomed to be eternally unfaithful to wherever i actually live? and will there come a day when the thought of freedom will be something other than the feeling of weight on my back and a pair of arms wrapped around my waist while i twist the throttle and point my front tyre at the horizon? now that i've cut myself loose am i ever going to consider the idea of settling down as anything more than a seocnd-best, if-all-else-fails contingency, or will i always be looking through Google Earth for the next destination?
it's odd - these little things. the habits you find you've picked up and the ones you can't leave behind. the thought processes that colour your judgement and you can't seem to shake. the things you catch yourself doing without thinking, or even being conscious of it and wonder why...
in the evenings when we eat together (we usually do), i'll usually do the cooking or preparation or oven-wrangling while she sits and keeps me company, then afterwards she'll wash up while i return the favour. i've taken to blogging down in the kitchen so that i can sit up typing late into the night while she goes to sleep, usually with a cup of tea, and i've become so used to it that i have difficulty collecting my thoughts to write when i'm up in the room even when she's up and about.
on the way to work i pick up a copy of the Metro and read it to save me from going through my book too quickly. on the way back to base-camp i sit and blog on the tube from Heathrow to Leicester Square while the people around me pretend not to stare at the stickers covering the lid of my Eee. in the mornings i always stand at the bus stop staring at the radar dish as it spins, wondering how much it weighs and time the spins in my head (~15RPM). in the afternoons i watch the planes take off and try to project how many must be leaving each hour (between 60 and 90).
i usually catch the bus into town in the interests of saving money, and even now i'm using an unlimited travelcard that makes the cost of the service irrelevant i still factor in the time it takes to use the bus and walk when i'm working out how to get anywhere. i've taken to hating on tourists who clog up the footpaths (even though i was one only a few months ago. no, i'm not still a tourist. i've got a lease on a place - i live here now), but i still look up at Nelson's statue in Trafalgar Square as i walk by and get slightly surprised that i'm actually here.
that said, when i'm sitting around bored my first instinct is still to call Sandra or Shadow, or Marcia and Rick, or Matt and Tiernan, or Jules. when i want to escape from the world it's always a bike i imagine myself on when i do. when i want a hug the same faces swim to the surface, shadows of my past who are long gone, but somehow still sitting over my shoulder whenever there's nothing else shedding light into my world.
in the first year after i left Perth i still used to think of it as Home. now when i think of Home i'm thinking of Canberra. when i go back to Canberra, will i be thinking of London - doomed to be eternally unfaithful to wherever i actually live? and will there come a day when the thought of freedom will be something other than the feeling of weight on my back and a pair of arms wrapped around my waist while i twist the throttle and point my front tyre at the horizon? now that i've cut myself loose am i ever going to consider the idea of settling down as anything more than a seocnd-best, if-all-else-fails contingency, or will i always be looking through Google Earth for the next destination?
it's odd - these little things. the habits you find you've picked up and the ones you can't leave behind. the thought processes that colour your judgement and you can't seem to shake. the things you catch yourself doing without thinking, or even being conscious of it and wonder why...
Friday, March 6, 2009
good news is golden when you're looking up from the Bottom...
standing at the bus stop just north of the Heathrow runways watching a plane take off every 30 or 40 seconds, Andy McKee providing a calming soundtrack, for a moment the sun poked out from between the clouds and it felt like the world was smiling at me. "You've been beaten and battered," it seemed to be saying, "so here's me giving you a break," and isn't it funny what a difference a day or two make?
i woke up on Tuesday morning feeling like i'd been hit by a truck. actually, saying "morning" is a lie - neither Louise or i were moving before 12:30PM. we were both feeling sick - i was coughing and sniffling, her with a developing sore throat, and shared a look across the room which seemed to say "well, fuck." my phone had rung at 9:15AM - a pimp from my favoure agency calling to get some details from me. it rung again at around 4PM while we fought our way to Sainsburys through the cold and the wind to pick up a couple of backpacks of groceries. neither of us were in any mood to go, but a lack of staples meant we were relying on takeaway so it had to be done.
"There's a job out near Heathrow. Fill in for someone on Compassionate Leave. There's some laptops to be sorted out and a problem with their Anti-Virus. I think I can get you £160/day. Can you be out there at 9:30 tomorrow morning?"
um... yeah. sure. why not. job's a job and i need the cash.
"Great! I'll get your CV over to them and get back to you soon!"
no worries.
on the way back to base-camp an hour later it rang again - checking i was still good, the cash was ok, that i had an umbrella company set up already. while we unpacked he rang to say that i was in for the next 2-3 days and he'd need details for payroll. while i was stowing my backpack under the bed he called to give me directions, contact names, the sort of things you need to know before you start a new job. an email with everything included is promised, and suddenly i had a job, if only for a couple of days.
Wednesday morning was a complete shambles. i know the commute is going to take a while - guesstimation is around an hour and a half, so i'm at the tube station by 7:45AM. 9:30AM rolled around just as i was finding the right bus to take out of Heathrow Terminals 1,2&3. by 10AM i'm in front of the wrong building and on the phone trying to get directions while i walk up and down the wrong street. at 10:30AM i finally stagger in the right door looking haggard, feeling completely unprofessional, desperately trying to salvage things. the manager's a dear and takes pity on me and i'm more grateful than polite words can express for the coffee that appears in front of me while i start interrogating her for intel on what i need to be doing.
my day's filled with coffee and technical issues while i start to assess their systems. you've got computers riddled with viruses because people are installing software of questional providence. "Yes, we know." what's your corporate policy on these things? some of this stuff is kinda illegal. and leaves you open to liability. "We don't actually have one." right. would you like one? "Yes please!!" i get a lot of stuff sorted and make my leave, with a plan of attack for the next day. i find the bus back to Heathrow and while i stand there watching the planes take off i switch from Cake to Death Cab For Cutie because i figure that if i'm going to be depressed i'll do it propperly. it takes me nearly 2 hours to get to base-camp, by which time i've read a LOT of my book. my trip involves an hour on the Piccadilly Line, changing at Leicester Square, then half an hour or so back to Oval
9AM this morning i've had a smooth run in. i'd stuck Andy McKee on my PSD while i was on the platform at Oval Station for its calming joy and i'm feeling pretty damn good when i'm about to walk in the door to the office and my phone rings:
"Tom here. Where are you at? At the bus?"
nah mate - i'm right out the front door. much easier to get in on time now i know where the hell i'm going. this place isn't exactly on my A-Z...
"Fantastic! Well done! I just spoke to Joanna and it sounds like she was well impressed. They were going to get a junior in for the next two weeks because he'd be cheaper, but she sounds really keen to keep you on for another fortnight. I know you're not keen on the commute, but what would it take to get you to stick around?"
damn... well, no, the commute sucks bollocks but they're nice here and there's free coffee. the cash is pretty dire though... i guess i'd take £180/day for it, but no less. i've got another possibility for next week which is closer to home but the cash is crap. it's a fallback at least...
"I think I can talk her into that. I'll try to get you more of course, but I'll be in touch."
legend. let me know.
2 hours later i'm onto my 4th coffee, my phone beeps its SMS tone and i've got a new contract. i let the manager know that it's all done and dusted and she's so happy that another coffee shows up in short order. i've got my work cut out for me - i've bitten off more than i think they expected i would but at least i'm going to have a bit of fun with this job. it's got the potential to hike my skills in a few things, as well as paying enough cash to make my life MUCH easier in the next few months. at Heathrow on the way back i spend £47 on a Zone 1-6 Travelcard - all the public transport i can eat for a week. with a little certainty it's well worth it. sitting on the tube my phone rings not once but twice with pimps on the line with jobs starting Monday, sounding disappointed that i'm suddenly unavailable. why it all had to come at once, and not spread itself out nicely the way it should is beyond me - punishment for the i'll get a job - no problems! arrogance i had when i left the homeland, i suppose. still, it seems that i'm suddenly popular and i'll have to find a way to migrate that over to when i'm next on the market.
as i've said a few times, Louise has been putting together plans to go and do Egypt. the framework is based around a 15-day tour she's found that covers most of the goddamn country from the looks of things, from felluca sailing down the nile to snorkling in the Red Sea, from Cairo to Aswan via Abu Simbel, from the Pyramids of Giza at sunset to hot air ballooning over the Valley of Kings at dawn. she was looking at doing it around the end of the month in order to beat the Easter Holidays. that's 3 weeks from now. meanwhile, i've wound up with a contract for 2 weeks, and with the ink on that now dry we've booked it for the weekend after i finish (convenient, since the flights for the original weekend would have cost 4 times as much). i'm stoked - Egypt was never a huge thing on my agenda, but she sold me on it when she showed me the trip she had planned, and in the last week or so it's become something of a lynchpin in my projections. even if i was still basing my plans around going back to the land Downunder in a couple of months, i was still going along for the ride to Egypt. now it's booked and paid for and the work i've got for the next two weeks will pay not just for the trip, but 2 months of rent and expenses in London.
once more i feel like i have something to look forward to, and it's a definite, not a pipe-dream. i've no room for hope or wishful thinking - see where that got me? i'm still bruised from the last thing i ivested hope in and i've no taste for it any more. a little certainty puts a smile on my face, even if it involves the certainty of 3 or more hours on public transport every working day for 2 weeks, and once that's done i've the wilderness and adventure of the ruins of one of the world's oldest civilisations to look forward to - the details can be found here:
http://www.thegobus.com/Group-Tours/Egypt/Pyramids-and-Beaches
i can't shake the feeling that in missing out on what at least i thought i wanted i'm settling for the first best thing to show up, but what the fuck? fuck hope and wishful thinking. fuck home and comfort. i was finally forced to Give Up on the one thing i couldn't bring myself to and the universe seems to have finally decided that i have found humility enough to accept what it thinks i need.
i woke up on Tuesday morning feeling like i'd been hit by a truck. actually, saying "morning" is a lie - neither Louise or i were moving before 12:30PM. we were both feeling sick - i was coughing and sniffling, her with a developing sore throat, and shared a look across the room which seemed to say "well, fuck." my phone had rung at 9:15AM - a pimp from my favoure agency calling to get some details from me. it rung again at around 4PM while we fought our way to Sainsburys through the cold and the wind to pick up a couple of backpacks of groceries. neither of us were in any mood to go, but a lack of staples meant we were relying on takeaway so it had to be done.
"There's a job out near Heathrow. Fill in for someone on Compassionate Leave. There's some laptops to be sorted out and a problem with their Anti-Virus. I think I can get you £160/day. Can you be out there at 9:30 tomorrow morning?"
um... yeah. sure. why not. job's a job and i need the cash.
"Great! I'll get your CV over to them and get back to you soon!"
no worries.
on the way back to base-camp an hour later it rang again - checking i was still good, the cash was ok, that i had an umbrella company set up already. while we unpacked he rang to say that i was in for the next 2-3 days and he'd need details for payroll. while i was stowing my backpack under the bed he called to give me directions, contact names, the sort of things you need to know before you start a new job. an email with everything included is promised, and suddenly i had a job, if only for a couple of days.
Wednesday morning was a complete shambles. i know the commute is going to take a while - guesstimation is around an hour and a half, so i'm at the tube station by 7:45AM. 9:30AM rolled around just as i was finding the right bus to take out of Heathrow Terminals 1,2&3. by 10AM i'm in front of the wrong building and on the phone trying to get directions while i walk up and down the wrong street. at 10:30AM i finally stagger in the right door looking haggard, feeling completely unprofessional, desperately trying to salvage things. the manager's a dear and takes pity on me and i'm more grateful than polite words can express for the coffee that appears in front of me while i start interrogating her for intel on what i need to be doing.
my day's filled with coffee and technical issues while i start to assess their systems. you've got computers riddled with viruses because people are installing software of questional providence. "Yes, we know." what's your corporate policy on these things? some of this stuff is kinda illegal. and leaves you open to liability. "We don't actually have one." right. would you like one? "Yes please!!" i get a lot of stuff sorted and make my leave, with a plan of attack for the next day. i find the bus back to Heathrow and while i stand there watching the planes take off i switch from Cake to Death Cab For Cutie because i figure that if i'm going to be depressed i'll do it propperly. it takes me nearly 2 hours to get to base-camp, by which time i've read a LOT of my book. my trip involves an hour on the Piccadilly Line, changing at Leicester Square, then half an hour or so back to Oval
9AM this morning i've had a smooth run in. i'd stuck Andy McKee on my PSD while i was on the platform at Oval Station for its calming joy and i'm feeling pretty damn good when i'm about to walk in the door to the office and my phone rings:
"Tom here. Where are you at? At the bus?"
nah mate - i'm right out the front door. much easier to get in on time now i know where the hell i'm going. this place isn't exactly on my A-Z...
"Fantastic! Well done! I just spoke to Joanna and it sounds like she was well impressed. They were going to get a junior in for the next two weeks because he'd be cheaper, but she sounds really keen to keep you on for another fortnight. I know you're not keen on the commute, but what would it take to get you to stick around?"
damn... well, no, the commute sucks bollocks but they're nice here and there's free coffee. the cash is pretty dire though... i guess i'd take £180/day for it, but no less. i've got another possibility for next week which is closer to home but the cash is crap. it's a fallback at least...
"I think I can talk her into that. I'll try to get you more of course, but I'll be in touch."
legend. let me know.
2 hours later i'm onto my 4th coffee, my phone beeps its SMS tone and i've got a new contract. i let the manager know that it's all done and dusted and she's so happy that another coffee shows up in short order. i've got my work cut out for me - i've bitten off more than i think they expected i would but at least i'm going to have a bit of fun with this job. it's got the potential to hike my skills in a few things, as well as paying enough cash to make my life MUCH easier in the next few months. at Heathrow on the way back i spend £47 on a Zone 1-6 Travelcard - all the public transport i can eat for a week. with a little certainty it's well worth it. sitting on the tube my phone rings not once but twice with pimps on the line with jobs starting Monday, sounding disappointed that i'm suddenly unavailable. why it all had to come at once, and not spread itself out nicely the way it should is beyond me - punishment for the i'll get a job - no problems! arrogance i had when i left the homeland, i suppose. still, it seems that i'm suddenly popular and i'll have to find a way to migrate that over to when i'm next on the market.
as i've said a few times, Louise has been putting together plans to go and do Egypt. the framework is based around a 15-day tour she's found that covers most of the goddamn country from the looks of things, from felluca sailing down the nile to snorkling in the Red Sea, from Cairo to Aswan via Abu Simbel, from the Pyramids of Giza at sunset to hot air ballooning over the Valley of Kings at dawn. she was looking at doing it around the end of the month in order to beat the Easter Holidays. that's 3 weeks from now. meanwhile, i've wound up with a contract for 2 weeks, and with the ink on that now dry we've booked it for the weekend after i finish (convenient, since the flights for the original weekend would have cost 4 times as much). i'm stoked - Egypt was never a huge thing on my agenda, but she sold me on it when she showed me the trip she had planned, and in the last week or so it's become something of a lynchpin in my projections. even if i was still basing my plans around going back to the land Downunder in a couple of months, i was still going along for the ride to Egypt. now it's booked and paid for and the work i've got for the next two weeks will pay not just for the trip, but 2 months of rent and expenses in London.
once more i feel like i have something to look forward to, and it's a definite, not a pipe-dream. i've no room for hope or wishful thinking - see where that got me? i'm still bruised from the last thing i ivested hope in and i've no taste for it any more. a little certainty puts a smile on my face, even if it involves the certainty of 3 or more hours on public transport every working day for 2 weeks, and once that's done i've the wilderness and adventure of the ruins of one of the world's oldest civilisations to look forward to - the details can be found here:
http://www.thegobus.com/Group-
i can't shake the feeling that in missing out on what at least i thought i wanted i'm settling for the first best thing to show up, but what the fuck? fuck hope and wishful thinking. fuck home and comfort. i was finally forced to Give Up on the one thing i couldn't bring myself to and the universe seems to have finally decided that i have found humility enough to accept what it thinks i need.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
the foolish man built his house upon the sand...
today Louise and i got ourselves up and went to the British Museum for a few hours for something to do, get out if the house and clear our heads - mine especially. it's a huge place filled of antiquities of more than a couple of bygone eras that have been looted and gifted over the last few hundred years of British Colonisation and Exploration - perfect for a bit of distraction. Louise loves museums, especially anything to do with Egypt (and there's a LOT of Egyptian stuff in the BM, including what's left of Cleopatra to whom we paid our respects), and i needed to get the fuck out of my own head lest i drown from trying to swim through the murky depths and junk. when we got back to base-camp i sat down and wrote the reply to the email i'd received in response to the call for clarification i'd sent out on Sunday. i'd received it first thing in the morning, read it while i drank my coffee and commenced to stew on it for the rest of the day. by the time i was finished over three and a half thousand words had crisscrossed the internets, and the biggest, most tenuous thing i'd used as a crutch for the last nearly half a year was gone, dissolved and revealed as fantasy and self-deception.
9 months ago i wound up catching up with a girl i'd known on and off for a while. a month or so later we were an item without ever intending to be. a month later i'd fallen for her harder than i had any right to given the circumstances and then 5 months ago i kissed her goodbye on her doorstep, climbed into a rented 4x4 and drove to Sydney on my way out of the country with a little piece of her riding shotgun in the back of my head. i've jokingly referred to it as being one of the most foolish things i've ever done, but then i've done a lot of stupid things in my time so perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. today she told me "come back for you, not for me".
we've kept in touch here and there since i flew out - an email here, an IM chat there. i sent her a Valentine's Day message from Inverness while sitting in the common room of the hostel. before i left i told her that i'd be back for her and while the black on my boots has faded the feelings behind my promise didn't. when things have been fucked up and i've been in a pit of despair thinking about going back one day and finding her has kept me moving - my little Get Out Of Jail Free card. she said to me, one night out on the balcony when i was having doubts about my impending departure that "[i] seem to be under the misapprehension that there's something that won't still be here for [me] when you come back," and that stuck with me like a Kick Me sign. turns out that it may not have actually been worth the paper i'd written it on and now i've got no one to blame but myself for my presumption.
last Thursday we wound up having a long chat on IM and it all came out. for a while now i've been questioning the wisdom of hanging around here watching my slush fund trickle away while i sit around getting rejected for job after job and was thinking about making a move - go travelling for a few months before heading back. it wasn't really my ideal solution, but the idea of showing back up in Canberra and on her doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a bucket of Hoboken Crunch had some appeal. what i needed to know, though, was whether an hour later i'd be sitting on her couch exchanging stories and kisses, or out the back of Shadow's place with a hot mug of tea and tears running down my mug, and i REALLY needed to know this BEFORE i pulled the pin and flew half-way around the world. after a couple of hours we hadn't come to a conclusion and agreed to reconvene on my Sunday morning.
Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon and she wasn't answering her phone. i'd bought some SkypeOut credit so that i could call her mobile from here without destroying my credit (and got to test it the day before with Shadow, which was nice) and she wasn't answering. turns out she'd been exhausted after along day and was asleep before i could get out of bed, 11 hours behind, so i sat down for 2 hours with mug after mug of coffee and wrote it all down asking please. the next morning her response came saying "no". i'm not upset with her - it was always on the cards that something like this would happen, and in the finest form of trip it has. doesn't stop me from being gutted. it wasn't an "i don't care for you", more, a she put it:
"it doesn't much feel like our paths are lining up."
after our IM discussion on Thursday, on Friday night i booked a long chat with Louise to find out what she had planned. her job had just finished and i wasn't sure what she was thinking with regards to hanging around here. i gave her the rundown of what i was thinking - that i'd give it a little while longer, go with her on the trip to Egypt she's planning then spent the spring and early summer backpacking Europe. she told me that she wasn't going to be able to afford to come on the Eurotrip, but she'd be staying. find a place to herself and settle in, or if cash got too tight go and stay with family either in London or Manchester. i couldn't say what i was hoping to hear - i've no responsibility to hang around with her, although if she'd been thinking of pulling that same pin i knew i'd be able to walk away with a whole lot less guilt. my pack-leader instincts have been telling me to look after her, and as much as it's usually been unnecessary and much to her confusion i have done in my own way.
the loudest thought i had in my chaotic head was that if the girl i left behind had said "come home" i would have - gone for my wander through the continent and make my way back to the place where the constellations are familiar and the roads call out to be cut up by a pair of tyres. instead, she said "don't", taking with her my easy out.
now i'm sitting in the kitchen again pondering my increasingly unknowable future. now that the main impetus for my return is gone, should i still pack my bags and fuck off out of this place that i've come to love so much? the feeling i get is that if i wound up back in Canberra next month i'd go stir-crazy, but staying here may well send me insane. as The Clash (and B.A.D. covered in the years of my youth) said, "should I stay or should I go?" i don't know any more. i can't decide. 2 days ago i thought i had a clue... or at least, that the decision might conveniently get made for me. now i have even solid ground to stand on. in these situations i tend stay the course - sit still if that's what i've been doing, else keep putting one boot in front of the other. let the universe push me where it will, and since it seems to have gone to such great lengths to utterly confuse me i guess i'll just have to keep going around in circles until it gives me another nudge in whatever direction i'm sitting here waiting for.
whatever the case, tomorrow's another day and i'll assess it when the sun rises, and again the next and the next after that. don't make a decision without enough data, unless the clock's ticking and i still have all the time in the world and while there's a gap in the back of my head i know that "not now" doesn't mean "not ever"... it just won't be something i'll let myself rely upon, or even think about until one day i cross the ACT border on my own terms and in my own time. between now and then there's still things left i have to do, or have done to me. only time will tell.
9 months ago i wound up catching up with a girl i'd known on and off for a while. a month or so later we were an item without ever intending to be. a month later i'd fallen for her harder than i had any right to given the circumstances and then 5 months ago i kissed her goodbye on her doorstep, climbed into a rented 4x4 and drove to Sydney on my way out of the country with a little piece of her riding shotgun in the back of my head. i've jokingly referred to it as being one of the most foolish things i've ever done, but then i've done a lot of stupid things in my time so perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. today she told me "come back for you, not for me".
we've kept in touch here and there since i flew out - an email here, an IM chat there. i sent her a Valentine's Day message from Inverness while sitting in the common room of the hostel. before i left i told her that i'd be back for her and while the black on my boots has faded the feelings behind my promise didn't. when things have been fucked up and i've been in a pit of despair thinking about going back one day and finding her has kept me moving - my little Get Out Of Jail Free card. she said to me, one night out on the balcony when i was having doubts about my impending departure that "[i] seem to be under the misapprehension that there's something that won't still be here for [me] when you come back," and that stuck with me like a Kick Me sign. turns out that it may not have actually been worth the paper i'd written it on and now i've got no one to blame but myself for my presumption.
last Thursday we wound up having a long chat on IM and it all came out. for a while now i've been questioning the wisdom of hanging around here watching my slush fund trickle away while i sit around getting rejected for job after job and was thinking about making a move - go travelling for a few months before heading back. it wasn't really my ideal solution, but the idea of showing back up in Canberra and on her doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a bucket of Hoboken Crunch had some appeal. what i needed to know, though, was whether an hour later i'd be sitting on her couch exchanging stories and kisses, or out the back of Shadow's place with a hot mug of tea and tears running down my mug, and i REALLY needed to know this BEFORE i pulled the pin and flew half-way around the world. after a couple of hours we hadn't come to a conclusion and agreed to reconvene on my Sunday morning.
Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon and she wasn't answering her phone. i'd bought some SkypeOut credit so that i could call her mobile from here without destroying my credit (and got to test it the day before with Shadow, which was nice) and she wasn't answering. turns out she'd been exhausted after along day and was asleep before i could get out of bed, 11 hours behind, so i sat down for 2 hours with mug after mug of coffee and wrote it all down asking please. the next morning her response came saying "no". i'm not upset with her - it was always on the cards that something like this would happen, and in the finest form of trip it has. doesn't stop me from being gutted. it wasn't an "i don't care for you", more, a she put it:
"it doesn't much feel like our paths are lining up."
after our IM discussion on Thursday, on Friday night i booked a long chat with Louise to find out what she had planned. her job had just finished and i wasn't sure what she was thinking with regards to hanging around here. i gave her the rundown of what i was thinking - that i'd give it a little while longer, go with her on the trip to Egypt she's planning then spent the spring and early summer backpacking Europe. she told me that she wasn't going to be able to afford to come on the Eurotrip, but she'd be staying. find a place to herself and settle in, or if cash got too tight go and stay with family either in London or Manchester. i couldn't say what i was hoping to hear - i've no responsibility to hang around with her, although if she'd been thinking of pulling that same pin i knew i'd be able to walk away with a whole lot less guilt. my pack-leader instincts have been telling me to look after her, and as much as it's usually been unnecessary and much to her confusion i have done in my own way.
the loudest thought i had in my chaotic head was that if the girl i left behind had said "come home" i would have - gone for my wander through the continent and make my way back to the place where the constellations are familiar and the roads call out to be cut up by a pair of tyres. instead, she said "don't", taking with her my easy out.
now i'm sitting in the kitchen again pondering my increasingly unknowable future. now that the main impetus for my return is gone, should i still pack my bags and fuck off out of this place that i've come to love so much? the feeling i get is that if i wound up back in Canberra next month i'd go stir-crazy, but staying here may well send me insane. as The Clash (and B.A.D. covered in the years of my youth) said, "should I stay or should I go?" i don't know any more. i can't decide. 2 days ago i thought i had a clue... or at least, that the decision might conveniently get made for me. now i have even solid ground to stand on. in these situations i tend stay the course - sit still if that's what i've been doing, else keep putting one boot in front of the other. let the universe push me where it will, and since it seems to have gone to such great lengths to utterly confuse me i guess i'll just have to keep going around in circles until it gives me another nudge in whatever direction i'm sitting here waiting for.
whatever the case, tomorrow's another day and i'll assess it when the sun rises, and again the next and the next after that. don't make a decision without enough data, unless the clock's ticking and i still have all the time in the world and while there's a gap in the back of my head i know that "not now" doesn't mean "not ever"... it just won't be something i'll let myself rely upon, or even think about until one day i cross the ACT border on my own terms and in my own time. between now and then there's still things left i have to do, or have done to me. only time will tell.
Friday, February 27, 2009
things are starting to fall apart...
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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