I'm sitting in a random cafe in London, trying to arrange with an old friend who I haven't seen in a very long time (unless she is the girl I thought "gee, maybe that's Shayna" in Edinburgh the other day, which apparently is vaguely possible as she was in Edinburgh that same day). I wasn't going to be in London at all today, I was going to go to Stratford. But I'm in London, which is nice. I like London. I spent the day at the British Museum, going all several different tours, one about the Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, really, and all sorts of bits of stuff from Mesopotamia) and one that was a Highlight tour, so it sort of took you all over the place, and then one on Ancient Egypt. And now I'm going to go check my email again.
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(1)
12:04:44 PM,Friday 1 August 2003
If non/ex-Johnnies (such as Cassie) want a postcard, I will need an address. (Cassie, however, is the only person I bought a present for, so I won't necessarily feel all bad about not sending her a postcard.)
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11:55:40 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
But now I am in London, and it feels oddly like I've gone home. Now I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do with Shayna this evening, and figure out what I'm going to do with my day. I think I'm going to go run around the British Museum.
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05:51:44 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
So, in Glasgow, there are two train stations. If you come in from the north, you get sent into one of them, and then if you want to go to London, you have to go to the other. There is a free bus that is supposed to show up every 10 minutes. I waited for that damn bus for twenty minutes. I had half an hour between the train that brought me in from Oban and the train that was to take me to Euston Station, but my backpack had issues I had to sort out. So, the bus showed up at 10 to 5, when my train was leaving the other station. I went to the other station, cause I figured I should go there to try to figure out how to get to London. I stood in line at the ticket-enquiry place and nearly cried, cause I looked at a time table, and there were no more trains to Euston except for a sleeper, but I'd already booked a place in London, and didn't feel like not sleeping in London. And I asked the guy, and he said, oh, well, at 6 there's a train to King's Cross, it'll get there around midnight. So I sort of took a deep breath, found a bookstore, bought some British Harry Potter books (the bookstore was in the trainstation) and the 2nd Bridget Jones book, bought a sandwich and some potato chips, and sat down and waited to find out which train I was supposed to get on. I read the entire Bridget Jones book on the train, with time to spare. The train ride was a bit surreal; it started out like a normal train ride, and then it got late, and people started falling asleep, and then these people got on, quite not sober, and made a lot of noise. And then disappeared.
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05:50:39 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
So, I went on a boat ride this morning, which was a total blast. We saw lovely scenery, a lighthouse, a castle, and seals. It was so exciting. And I got totally soaked, cause it was a very fast boat.
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07:18:51 AM,Wednesday 30 July 2003
I ate in a pub this afternoon, when I pried myself away from the computer (which I have settled back onto), mostly because it was next door and also because the very nice woman working here said it was nice food and it was raining. And it was nice food. And then the rain stopped, so I went off to find a place to stay tomorrow night, cause the hostel where I'm going to stay wasn't open, and eventually I found one. And I got chocolates that look lovely.
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12:35:21 PM,Tuesday 29 July 2003
Odd thing about book titles. Everyone knows that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the same as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, although know one seems to really know why the change in titles, the assumtion is that the publishers figure Americans are idiots and won't notice the difference. What is bizarre is taking a book called Northern Lights which actually has something to do with the Aurora Borealis and changing its title to The Golden Compass when there is no golden compass in the book anyway.
I'm sorry. I'm probably still a little bitter that anyone managed to get me to read Philip Pullman again, when I hated The Tiger in the Well so much. But Elizabeth has always given me good advice on books before, so I read her Northern Lights while I stayed with her.
They were selling mead at a gift shop I wandered into yesterday, and I didn't get it, and now I really want it.
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12:32:27 PM,Tuesday 29 July 2003
One of the oddest bits of this trip is thinking I'm seeing people I know. I keep seeing people from the back, or out of the corner of my eye, and thinking "oh my god, it's ((insert name of person, Nat, Jenna, Martin and Johanna Bodnyk spring to mind))" and then realizing that it's ridiculous. Yesterday I thought I saw Shayna in Edinburgh. And Shayna was in Edinburgh yesterday, so it's all strange and vaguely possible, but I had no idea what time it was, so we can't be sure if it was just me being weird or not.
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(2)
10:06:30 AM,Tuesday 29 July 2003
And so I am in Scotland. Well, I've been in Scotland for nearly a week now, but now I am back on my own. I am on the Isle of Mull, which is lovely. The train went up through the Highlands, and I spent what seems like probably most of the trip cursing trees for being in the way of my view of the lovely mountains. And now I sit here, trying to plan bits of my trip, like when I'm going to see Shayna, and whether or not I'm going to Stratford, and where I'm going to sleep on Thursday (and Friday, for that matter.)
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09:36:42 AM,Tuesday 29 July 2003
I found, today, a postcard for St. John's College, Oxford. I've been unsure whether to keep it or send it, and which Johnny to send it to.
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11:42:36 AM,Tuesday 22 July 2003
I spent rather a while this morning trying to figure out how to find Shayna using the Internet, this included going to classmates.com. And typing random names of people I remember from elementary school into yahoo's white pages. I found nothing, and this makes me sad.
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11:36:35 AM,Tuesday 22 July 2003
Also, for an extra pound, I got to sleep in a room with four people instead of 6 or 8 or whatever, and they were all girls, and quiet. And I went to sleep before 10, and woke up around 9. I haven't felt this well rested in a while. Now, the key is, don't wreck it by doing the not eating thing.
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06:07:23 AM,Tuesday 22 July 2003
Tomorrow I will go to Scotland. So, for those of you I said I'd write a postcard to from Scotland, tomorrow I might actually get a postcard and write on it and send it off and all that stuff. I ate a crepe with white and milk chocolate on it, and drank this interesting drink that was orange-tangerine-lemon for breakfast, and that made me feel better.
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06:04:33 AM,Tuesday 22 July 2003
I have been feeling vaguely Douglas Adams-ish today. Not particularly like I have to go read his books (although I stareted reading Salmon of a Doubt on the train from London yesterday, and that might be contributing to this general feeling) but I've been wandering around, feeling quite broke, in a strange place. At some point I thought of going off and having a hard cider (as I despise beer), and then it occured to me that I haven't eaten a real meal in several days (yesterday my mom and I split a bad omelet, and then before I got on the train I got pitas and cheese and gingerale and chocolate and shortbread, and I ate shortbread and a pita and cheese). Last night Jamie and I were sitting in her room, and she saw my large bottle of ginger ale, which was turned against a bag, so that all she saw was "dry gin" and was all shocked. She said "You have a large bottle of gin?" To which I replied "--Ger Ale, yes." And we both laughed, and I pointed out that gin is clear, and the ginger ale was closer in colour to tequila or whisky,b ut she's never tried any of them. That I had a large, more than half empty bottle of ginger ale made her feel much better than the thought that I might have a large, more than half empty plastic bottle of gin. And so now I am off to figure out what to eat, and where I'm going to go from Oxford, and how long I'm going to stay in Oxford.
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(2)
09:07:50 AM,Monday 21 July 2003
I got an email from Johanna saying how nice it was to see her, and that I really should consider coming to live with them in Stockholm for a month or two at some point, that she wants to show me prettier bits of Sweden than the Avenue in Gothenburg (which, frankly, was boring and hurt my feet after about the first time), and that Josefine loves playing with the blue bear we picked out for her in Bath (because I'd forgotten the baby present Mom had picked up on Vermont of the softest teddy bear ever, it's covered in alpaca) and we got a blue bear because my teddy bear (which everyone has always told me was a mouse, but it is a bear because I say so) is blue, and we thought it would be cute (and we couldn't find a Curious George toy which was Connor's thing). It made me feel happy and loved, which I really needed. And I got an email from Elizabeth telling me I'm free to come up and stay for a few days and take day trips to places like Edinburgh and Glasgow and stay at her house, and we can hang out and all sorts of stuff. One of the day's I'm likely to be up there is the day of her older child's birthday party, so I got a book (at the Alice Store that's across from Christ's Church where Alice used to buy barley sweets and which Tenniel used as a model for the sheep store) of Alice with puzzles for pictures. It's totally cool, I think, and it borders between book and toy. My mom said I should get a book, but I figured that they have lots of books, so I didn't really want to get a normal book, and then the Alice Store was presented to me. Christ's Church is a lovely school. The Hall was amazing. I took a picture of the Alice/Dodson stained glass window, and the portrait they have of Locke. (It was used for Harry Potter, too.) It's just so...wow.
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08:56:43 AM,Monday 21 July 2003
My school won their lawsuit against the state of PA, which makes me extremely happy. The state might still appeal, but the Governer has issued a statement (or his spokeswoman said) that he disagrees with the law on constitutional grounds.
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04:23:49 AM,Monday 21 July 2003
My plans changed, suddenly. I'd had a reservation at a hostel in Edinburgh, and for whatever reason, I thought I had plenty of time to try to find Jamie and throw stuff in her room before heading off to Edinburgh. I blew it. I went back to the trainstation, having not found Jamie, but having left the stuff in a locked office closet with her camp people (who were very sweet, and told me where she definately was, and gave me tea, and all sorts of nice things), and said "I need to go to Edinburgh" and he said there were no more trains out of Oxford, and there would be no more out of London either. I nearly cried. I asked about getting to Thurso in the morning, and it turns out the first train that leaves Oxford towards Thurso leaves at the ungodly hour of 6:40, but perhaps even more alarmingly, it doesn't get there until 9:30 at night. And I didn't have a reservation to sleep anywhere there: I was taking it on faith that I could find the hostel and they would have a bed, that I could then find the bus to take me to John O Groats in the morning, and from there find the ferry that would take me to Orkney. At one point, I even thought this is what I was going to do. I sat in Jamie's room for hours and hours, waiting for her--she had left me a note saying she would be back around 6:15-6:30. At 9:15 I went looking for her, and found her running a scene. I slept on her floor, because I figured I was paying for a room in Edinburgh, I didn't want to pay for one in Oxford as well. At about midnight I decided to completely change my plans: I would stay in Oxford and do tourist stuff, then (probably) go to Edinburgh and do tourist stuff, and then visit Elizabeth, and then go to Glasgow, then Carlisle, and after that I wasn't entirely sure. (Which is not entirely true: I have this little piece of paper with dates and days of the week and days on my train pass written down. I will be in Stratford on the 1st of August, and in Cambridge the day before that.) I'm thinking of going to Wales, but I don't really know what one does in Wales: the tour book makes it look dull. And I thought of going to Cornwall, but I've been unable to tell if it's a beach town or a tourist thing with castles, and I have no bathing suit if it's the former. And so I sit at this Virgin Megastore in Oxford, because it seemed terribly important to check my email, and it's the cheapest place to do so in Oxford (except maybe the public library, you never know), as it's £1 for an hour and you get to keep your unused minutes, which is all novel and cool. I'm going to stay in Oxford another night, but I'm not allowed to stay at Jamie's, because I'm distracting, and she's not actually supposed to let people sleep on her floor, so I walked into a youth hostel and they had a room for me. And they have laundry, and I feel like I haven't had clean clothes in ages and ages, because washing your clothes in the sink doesn't make them feel incredibly clean.
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04:12:27 AM,Monday 21 July 2003
Today, I took my mom off to Heathrow, to help her with her luggage. She gave me her leftover pounds, and for whatever reason, she gave me Άζ18. I don't really know what to do with the Euros. I bought a pocketknife, by Victorinox, with most of the pounds, so I can do things like eat cheese. And now I'm considering taking a train to Oxford, figuring out where we're going to go together, and when we're going to go back to London, and then going back to London and taking a train to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is frankly more important, because I have a hostel reservation, and I can just lug the yarn around with me. So I'll see what train schedules are like, and figure it out.
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07:44:17 AM,Sunday 20 July 2003
The grounds crew for British Airways at Heathrow went on strike last night, so London is flooded with something like 80,000 people who were trying to to leave London. Isn't that bizarre? (My mom thinks this whole "blog thing" is odd.)
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04:24:10 AM,Sunday 20 July 2003
I just got back to London from Gothenburg, Sweden, where I thought of Mirabai. We met up with Johanna, who used to be our au pair, and who is like Connor's second Mommy. She has a two year old baby named Josefine, who is absolutely charming. Josefine found that she could play with us, and was very quickly learning things (we sat at a soccer game where they'd brought bread, and she took the tie that had been onh the plastic bag and came over to me and asked me in Swedish what it was, and I said "a tie" and she said "tie" over and over, it was very cute) and who is an amazingly happy baby--I think the only time I heard her cry or sound anything other than happy was when she was scared of thunder. It was a blast. I like London better, though. I recently reread Good Omens and Neverwhere. I like Neverwhere better everytime I read it.
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01:57:15 PM,Saturday 19 July 2003