It was about noon when I finally succumbed to the pesky daylight streaming into our room. Amazed that on a Sunday morning I hadn't yet heard from my parents, I picked up the phone and dialed their room. I woke them up. No mass today, this would be a Godless heathen Sunday.
Tomorrow I depart on a 13 day trip to Ireland. The primary purpose of the trip is to bury my grandmother as she requested. The event will take place on Monday, August 11th, nine months after her death. As I've mentioned though, the Irish celebrate best when the circumstances are not, so we are also taking the opportunity to tour the country Nana once called home. This will be the first time my entire immediate family has vacationed together for more than a weekend trip to the lake. I'm sure it will be an experience worth writing about.
My fellow Road Scholar, Chris, started bugging me to write an update about our trip to BarcelonaEngland. ever since we got on the plane to fly back to I figure I better write the update and get Chris off my back before an entire year goes by since the trip. In case you’ve been in a Road Scholars vacuum, the delayed update is due in large part to the topic of another TRS blog: The Speed Bump Chronicles. But I’m not here to make excuses, I’m here to tell stories; and this story will have to be told mainly in pictures because, quite honestly, I don’t remember much of it. That’s a function of both how much time has passed and how much of a good time we had.
Most of these were new to me, a couple were not. They are all, in my opinion, lesser known in the U.S. and by virtue of being listed here, they were phrases I actually heard someone in the UK use (although the example does not necessarily reflect the context in which I first heard the phrase).
We were in luck, there are two shows on Saturday, one at 9 and one at 11. Tickets were about $100. A little steep, but hell, we can say we’ve ‘been there’. Out of curiosity, I asked if it said what the show was. What I heard was “yada yada yada, featuring topless dancers”. A hundred bucks? That sounds very reasonable. Mark, does that—yes, you think it’s reasonable too? Whoa buddy, sit down, we gotta finish our dinner first big guy! OK then, we think that’s very reasonable.
Unless you are a food critic or married to someone who doesn’t cook, dining out is supposed to be a treat, a social event. When you dine alone you are reduced to either people watching or talking to yourself, and both of those can make you seem a little creepy in a restaurant. Today I found myself dining alone in a pub in Salisbury after a drive-by of Stonehenge. All that free time sitting at the table by myself got me thinking. How lucky for you all.
There’s been a bit of a donnybrook here lately over boarding trains without having a ticket. The train companies have come under fire in the media for imposing fines (in addition to the fares) to people who board without tickets, even when they board from stations with no attendants and no working ticket machines. There was no way I was jumping on any train until I was triple sure I had the right ticket for my destination. Unfortunately Portchester is a small station with no attendant and only one ticket machine and there was already a woman using the machine when I arrived at the top of the stairs. The train left. I was not on board. I wasn’t really concerned, I did some homework prior to embarking on this adventure and knew that departures to London were fairly regular and frequent. I bought my ticket a few minutes later without incident, but The Road Scholar in me was thinking “this is not a good start”.
So it turns out that Jen just missed the dog. All the nausea, sickness, misery—she missed the dog.
OK, maybe it was a little more than that.
The roundabouts were making her dizzy. She felt that staying here any longer would get her nowhere. It would be like going in circles, as it were.
It also might have had something to do with the lack of ice. It wasn’t just the hospitals, getting ice in restaurants and hotels was equally as challenging, and when you did manage to get something “ice cold”, it contained exactly three cubes. Every time, exactly three. It was uncanny.
By the time Friday rolled around and we got in to see the doctor, Jen was back in a black spin. She was throwing up every thirty minutes and was once again dehydrated and malnourished. The appointment with the doctor—or consultant as she was called—was scheduled for 10 minutes. Since we were being seen as a “private patient”, the charge was 30 pounds. I wish I made $360 an hour. Ten minutes was about how long it took for her to test Jen’s urine and send us off to the hospital. This time it was St. Mary’s where there was no “accident & emergency” department, but there was a gynecology ward. This time they admitted her.
I don't know where the last two weeks went, but already I find myself back in England. We (this time I brought my wife) have been here almost a week already and it turns out that, as clichés go, "getting there" is less than half the battle and the moron who called Chicago that toddling town can kiss my ass.