vanessarama.net

Hellooooo! I am home! I need a shower so this will be brief, but we are all still alive, all in wonderful spirits and all had a fantastic time. There are many great stories, fab coincidences and wonderful photos to share and I will be sharing them all over the next week or so. I LOVED Britain. I loved almost every place we went, wanted to stay longer everywhere, met some lovely people, and am already planning the next trip!
I must apologise for the lack of updates. There are no internet cafes in the UK - or at least there don’t appear to be any in the smaller towns. The few we found were all closed by the time we found them Also, I did end up getting quite sick - in fact, the day after my last post my cold got bad enough that I completely lost my voice for a week. I missed out on seeing Bath because I was so sick I had to stay in bed We all got sick, actually, and dubbed ourselves Team Cough’n'Snot. We’re all better now although there is still plenty of coughing going on.

What I’ll do over the next week or so is post up a detailed diary of our adventures, including photos. I will have that shower now, but will leave you with a few lists.

My favourite parts of the UK: Derbyshire, North Wales, the Lake District and Scotland.

My favourite town (apart from London): York

Critters we saw: SQUIRRELS! Highland Coos! Lots of dogs! A fat pussycat at the Tower of London! Robins! Blue tits! Devil goats! Really cool sheep in many colours and styles!
Favourite pub names: The Three Ferrets; The Royal Goat; The Cross Foxes; The Headless Woman; The Three Legged Mare; The Cat’s Whiskers; Hole in t’Wall.

New foods tried: Black pudding (much dreaded, only eaten after being plied with booze, but actually not bad); haggis (yummy with tatties and neeps!); clotted cream (OH MY GOD, words cannot describe it)

Favourite placenames we saw: Labour in Vain Hill, Wheat Honey, Wrynose, Withered Lane, North Piddle.

Shower now.

Despite our vows to get a bit of a sleep-in this morning, the furry alarm clock woke me at 6:20 AM demanding food, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I finally got up around 7 after deciding I was never going to get back to sleep. I’ve had a headache most of the day, which I think is just nerves.
Oliver is in the cattery, and we have been thoroughly guilt-tripped by the reproachful looks and desperate attempts to get back into his carrier. Poor baby. I hope he settles down OK.

We’re all packed, and the house is tidy for Andrew, and all the gizmos are charged up. Now all we have to do is shower, call the taxi, and get to the airport! We’re meeting Adam and Lou there, and we’ll all check in together. I feel weirdly in limbo. Wheee!

I have loaded up on podcasts for the long plane flight. Here are my favourites.

BBC World Service Documentary Archive have some absolutely fantastic stuff. In particular, their series on the New Arab World was fantastic, but I’ve also been enjoying Making Cities Work, By Their Own Hand and Communications Revolution.

Fly With Me and Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase - Joe Deon is a pilot for a major US airline, and Betty is a flight attendant with a major US airline. They both have pleasant voices and lots of amusing (or astounding) tales, stories from other pilots and flight attendants as well as their own. Ranges from the hilarious to the touching. I have laughed out loud on the train listening to some of these.

Hometown Tales - “featuring your town’s local legends, ghost stories, folklore and much more”. This is the one to listen to in a lighter mood

Cast On - this is the best of the knitting podcasts, in my opinion, and mainly because Brenda has a sly sense of humour and a lovely speaking voice.

I’m loading up on past episodes of all these to take on the plane with me.

Two sleeps to go. Two sleeps! This last week is going by so fast. I am hoping to get Ben’s mum’s scarf finished in time; I have about 25 repeats and I need 40. If I can get a lot done tomorrow on the train and in the evening, then I can wash it and block it overnight and it can be wrapped and made ready!

I feel woefully unprepared, even though I know I’m not. We’ve spent so long leading up to this week, and now it’s just shooting by… and we are leaving Australia just as spring is in the air. Still, it’ll still be there when we get back… mostly. It strikes me that in a few days I will be on the other side of the planet. The Other Side Of The Planet. It doesn’t seem real.
Oliver has laryngitis and is on antibiotics; fortunately the guy at the cattery doesn’t sound too fussed about having to give him pills. I guess they’re used to it.

At the moment Andrew (our housesitting friend) is round learning the intricacies of the home entertainment system, the ducted heating, the microwave and the odd arrangement of the light switches in this house. Oh, and picking up the key. Rohan’s just taken about twenty minutes to type out a document detailing how to change the region code on the DVD player. Ahahahaha.

I picked up some pounds today! Large notes, and papery, not like our plastic fantastic money. Rohan’s co-worker, the one who recommended the Edinburgh B&B we’re staying in, gave him nine pounds in change from their last trip. One of my co-workers gave me twenty-seven pee and some stamps

Still to do: print out all the booking confirmations; buy flash cards for the camera; pack; get Oliver and his vaccination certificate to the cattery; work out the complicated dance of meeting up with Robin and Kenneally and Alys and possibly Diana in London; work out with Adam and Lou when and where we’re meeting up at the airport on Friday night; work out what book(s) to take on the plane. Darling Ben sent me a brand spanking new true crime book - a classic old mystery dating back to the 1940s - but knowing the way I suck up true crime voraciously, it wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours. In fact, I would probably finish it at the airport! I am thinking of taking along something dense and English-themed, like a history.

AHAHAHAHA! Rohan is now showing off his knowledge of London on Google Earth! “That’s the Royal Albert Hall… and the London Eye, we’ve got tickets to that on Sunday…  and that’s the Gherkin, that blows up in ‘The Christmas Invasion’… ” Rohan LOVES the Gherkin.  I predict many Gherkin photos.

At last some rain on the roof, possibly the first real soaking rain in months… and we discover that our roof leaks. Ah well - not much to be done about it now, just warn the house sitter and make sure there’s a bucket there

I had an email exchange at work this afternoon with someone who was sour about Australian foundations being unable to fund overseas, saying that we are parochial and that “the footballers get it all”. I have mixed feelings about even responding to those kind of emails. On the one hand I don’t think I’m going to do any good. In a practical sense I can’t do her any good, because she can’t legally get funding from an Australian foundation for her current organisation. It is undoubtedly easy for people who are volunteering or working in a charity to feel as if the world’s against them, they’re fighting a losing battle, and nobody understands their cause; their passionate commitment can make them blind to the priorities of others. I probably won’t change that.

On the other hand, I feel a deep-seated need to defend my sector… or at the very least to point out that Australian foundations don’t actually fund footballers either. And I also feel strongly that people shouldn’t be labouring under misapprehensions of any kind; that’s the way bad information gets spread around. I don’t want someone talking wildly inaccurate stuff when a bit of effort from me will clarify the matter.

Eight sleeps to go before the UK! I’m very excited. We now have a rough schedule worked out for London, and will refine that probably on the weekend. I desperately need to get moving on the thank-you present for Ben’s mum, who is putting us up for a couple of nights. It’s a cashmere scarf in a lovely shade of green - two strands of pure cashmere in the good old Crest O’the Wave pattern. But I need to shake down and do it!

Like most people who take the same train every day, I see the same people in my carriage every morning. I have nicknames for many of them: The Turtle, Copperhead, Pouty Man, Old Adam (so called because he has a striking resemblance to an older version of my friend Adam). I wonder if to some people I am “the knitter”?

My train knitting project is nearing completion at last. It’s a simple 2-row lacy pattern in two strands of purple laceweight cashmere from the lovely man at ColourMart, who is the finest purveyor of knitting crack on the planet. My main regret about the upcoming UK trip is that we won’t get to visit him! However, I have plenty to keep me going. This purple train project is almost wide enough to be a wrap, or else it’ll be a very big lacy scarf. It is using an entire cone of laceweight, which means it’s cost me about $40AUD - not bad for pure cashmere.

Trip planning is going OK. Our friend Andrew has agreed to stay in our house and make sure the mail is collected and the place looks inhabited, which is a big relief. Also I bought a pair of good walking boots from Rivers yesterday - $40! Bargain, for one week only.