the end of europe. | sept 25 2004, 12:16 in four hours, i'll be flying out from heathrow, destined for LAX before heading on to Auckland and finally down to Christchurch, arriving monday morning.
twenty months, eight days. good times. and now for the next chapter... see ya soon.
oooft. seven. | sept 19 2004, 15:28 oh, how i love banter. here i be in stirling, just north of glasgow and edinburgh, living in a bonny student chalet in the shadow of the rather almighty, slightly lord-of-the-rings-esque wallace monument.
touristy days, at times, with plenty of happiness back at the flat in between times and at night times. in fact at all times there is happiness. that's bonny. i've been playing an x-box game called ty, tasmanian tiger, complete with really bad australian accents, and all the lingo. It's provided many laughs, indeed it has. tomorrow i'll perhaps head for glasgow to see what it's like, or some other town perhaps. yesterday we ventured off in the car to calander, a little almost lochside town fifteen miles out of stirling. we hiked up to the bracklinn falls and then later, to the falls of levy. Both were flooded due to all the rain of late, and both had us fixated on the power existing within them. rather humbling, standing metres from a deafening waterfall where thousands of litres a second are tumbling over into the precipice below. later we stumbled across a sewage plant - mmmmm lovely.
kilts? haggis? where? | sept 15 2004, 16:26 11 hours from london to glasgow, and then a drive from there to pete's girlfriends 21st birthday dinner at her grans. surreal start to a scottish trip, but by all means a spectacular demonstration of scottish hospitality. They're such a lovely bunch up here, everyone is nice, helpful and happy. People even smile at you in the street. bliss.
kilts and haggis. | sept 12 2004, 23:49 tomorrow i leave here at 7:30 and head for london city. At 9 I'll be heading for glasgow on a huge coach ride. i'll endeavour to post some scottish tales soon...
ukservations. | sept 9 2004, 19:00 we knew we were almost at roscoff, not so much because of all the signs saying ROSCOFF, but more for the countless signs advertising wine and beer supermarkets selling discounted alochol to brits before they head back to british shores. brittany ferries is a british company based in plymouth. all the staff are french. the majority of passengers are brits. you hear them everywhere, cackling, hawhawing (excuse my onomatopoeia) and exploiting their vocal diversity. it's disturbing that a country that invented a language can get it's pronounciation so drastically wrong. male youths, with one hand firmly embedded in their pants nigh on permanantly, a cap skewed off their head and garments bearing oversized unionjacks or ENGLAND, wander around the ferry for the first hour, giving each other dirty looks and loudly voicing their often obnoxious opinion of any female they pass. the fathers complain about the prices, the french food, and scowl at their children across the restaurant. the mothers readjust their cleavage, lower their pants a little more and whine about something irrelevant. soon the tough faces of fathers gradually begin to turn green as the swell rises. the little racks of paper bags empty faster than i can find words to describe the event. i devour a huge demibaguette stuffed with brie and walnuts, sitting outside on the rear deck soaking up a few more sun rays. the wind picks up as we near the open sea so i head inside to the reclining seats and read for a while, sleep for a while, read a little more, check out the duty free store, sleep a little more, and eventually the seven hour journey came to and end as we docked in plymouth. an ugly taxi. expensive water. a backwards facing seat on the train. some woman ignoring the five empty seats around me and requesting me to move so she could sit in her reserved seat. meh. a salmon salad, avec peas, how odd. running 43 minutes behind schedule. arriving at paddington and swapping to another train. then there was another problem with the rail and we had to switch lines meaning we wouldn't stop at my stop, or the one after, meaning i had to switch trains again and ride back the other way only to finally arrive home to find no one here and dave away in manchester at a conference. sheesh. chatting for too long, sleeping around four until half eight, waking, not being able to get back to sleep, going for a walk to ealing broadway and amusing myself along the way by watching all the people. brits are amusing, they should make it into television to amuse the rest of the world. now i think i'll go make a thai stirfry and fall asleep. goodtimes.
the end is nigh. | sept 7 2004, 15:46indeed, all good things must eventually come to an end. but bonus of course is that the adventure continues, and new opportunities unfold before me. i'm fairly confident, unless something quite stupendously magnificent comes along, that i'll be heading home near the end of this month. for the meantime i plan to skip away to london, spend a little time in scotland and perhaps even manchester, should that connection amount to anything. then i'll fly home to a land where i hope summer is gradually packing away it's winter clothes and emerging for a bountiful season. then i'll be the fortunate recipient of not one but two glorious summers in a row. bliss.
living on a campsite is akin to relaity television. several of the group members share their tales of promiscuity daily, others argue, there are fights, tears, and even, from timem if we're lucky, laughter. some of us just amusingly watch it all from an outside perspective and chuckle at the goings on like little school girls. who needs a television when you live with a load of brits? fab.
i've moved out of my old tent and into a mobile for the last two nights on site. my contract ended, so i was voted out of courier street, and moved in with sandpiper cordi. personally, i think i should have made that move some time ago, but nevermind.
i leave tommorrow. come 8am i'll be packing my stuff into a little french car and being driven by a little french couple to a little ferry port called roscoff in the north of brittany. we then must endure a horrendous seven hour crossing of the channel all the way to plymouth where we'll board a train for home. i waited until now so that i could travel with dan, cos he's leaving tomorrow to go back to england to be with his girlfreind. dan doesn't like cleaning bathrooms.
busier than a toaster. | sept 1 2004, 15:20 ok, so, it's been a while. not a lot has been going on though - just work, and lying on the beach. we always seem to be working when this internet place is open, and so it has become increasingly difficult to find a time to come down and do some typing. my my. but her ei am finally - between a minigolf session and an italian pizza party. only a few more days here before heading off someplace else... though i am not too sure just where yet. blech. it's no fun having no home.
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