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Sunday 30 November 2014

Ode to Autumn

Red as luscious lips the leaves have turned,
Only to fall from the sky, ending their lives
With the colour of passion and desire
Burning hot on the horizon.


Orange, the happiest colour, the 
hue of sunsets and sweetest fruits
Bathed in the afternoon light
on the trees and shrubs around me.


Brown and dry and crackly, they 
litter the ground
Perfectly crunchy under foot
As I hopscotch down the street.


Daisy-yellow and sunshine bright
Lining the streets, as far as the eye 
can see, brightening my day
with their sunny disposition.


The world around me, transitioned,
from one filled with colour to one
that is bare; naked branches,
no leaves rustling in the breeze


As winter approaches.


Monday 24 November 2014

Is Wales a country?

I rolled over and checked my alarm. 9am. Perfect - a Friday morning sleep in. I pottered around, got myself some breakfast and a nice cup of green tea and started off the morning with a lovely Skype call with my beautiful family in remote Western Australia. It was Erin's birthday and it was great to see everyone's faces (even if they were mostly made up of 12 pixels).

After the call, I finished packing. I went to put my ticket in the front pocket of my bag. Wait, where's my ticket? I searched high and low. I messaged Cory.


Panic first, logic later.
It was time to set off for the station and begin the adventure to Wales.

***
Wales had been in the pipeline for a short while but was mildly cursed. Difficultly pinning people down. Finding the right date. Taking a day off. Finding accommodation. Where to go. What we should do.

It finally all came together, entirely with thanks to Cory and Nicole and thus 6 of us traipsed off to Wales for a weekend adventure.

***
4 of us boarded the coach, and we took our seats. 2 were missing. "Have they read your WhatsApp message yet?" Suddenly, on breezed Cory and Charlotte, flopping down into their seats. Naturally, I already had my phone out ready for the group-bus-we-are-going-on-an-adventure selfie.

The next 4ish hours…passed…slowly. Traffic was frustratingly packed. We passed Earl's Court station and Hammersmith station. "Seriously? Couldn't they have just picked me up from here an hour later?", I exclaimed. Frustrations aside, we spent the next few hours alternating between chatting, dozing and discussing bridges. Oh, and receiving death stares for talking too loudly and abrasively. I'm looking at you, lady.

I had a moment on the bridge crossing England to Cardiff when I realised it had been months, all the way back in Spain, that I last saw the ocean (that was not from the view of a plane). And just like that, we were in Wales.
  1. The governments of the United Kingdom and of Wales almost invariably define Wales as a country. The Welsh Assembly Government says: "Wales is not a Principality. Although we are joined with England by land, and we are part of Great Britain, Wales is a country in its own right."
Wandering to the hostel, Nicole the Key-Bearer  collected the keys and we wandered through the main stretch of Cardiff to our apartment. Let me just say we were incredibly impressed with our lodgings. Top work, Nicole! Spacious rooms, comfy, enormous couch, fully decked kitchen with coffee, tea and hot chocolate - and dishwasher.

We spruced up and made our way out into the night. Cardiff reminded me a lot of Adelaide (interestingly, Becki said the countryside of Wales reminded her a lot of New Zealand. It seems to be a "remindy" kind of place). There was a large, no-cars-allowed strip mall (a la Rundle Mall), decked out with gorgeous fairy lights, big stars and Christmas trees. The night air was chilly but fresh, and we found a cool looking pub with illegible Welsh words and ordered our first drink.

I tucked straight into the local Welsh cider (potentially an error in judgement as it was very strong) over a hearty roasty dinner. After food we made our way outside to discover it was raining - and quite heavily. We rounded the corner and stopped, staring at an Aussie and a Kiwi flag - pinned up backwards. We asked the lady at the door why the flags were up and, more importantly, why were they backwards?

'If I had put them up, they wouldn't be backwards' she replied and invited us down the stairs into what turned out to be a very cool cocktail bar. We all ordered some fancy cocktails and sat and chatted for quite a while. Some selfies, cocktails and one concussion later (stupid lampshade getting in the way of my head) we decided to move one and find another pub.

Here's where it gets a little embarrassing. It was raining, hard. The night was dark and stormy. Not all were dressed appropriately for the weather - when suddenly, we saw a comforting sight.

Walkabout Cardiff.

Yes, my friends, we concluded the evening at the Walkabout in Cardiff. There was an…interesting mix of people within. But the drinks were cheap and the music pumping, so we got our wiggle on until we decided it was time to sleep and get ready for the hiking on the morrow. 

***
Saturday morning. I, for one, awoke with a headache. We donned our hiking gear and the girls wandered to the shops to get some breakfast. We left for the Brecon Beacons later than we had intended, but organising 6 people to mobilise can be a difficult task. The journey to the national park was relatively straightforward - a train and then a bus. Easy peasy (even if we did miss the bus by about 35 seconds the first time around).

Saturday was a glorious day in more ways than one. Wonderful people. Perfect weather (and by perfect I mean..perfect. Uncharacteristically perfect, especially for Cardiff). Beautiful scenery. Plenty of lols. Mud and sun and squelchy ground and waterfalls. We didn't quite follow the path as planned which resulted in climbing over a fence..and then over it again. The first to go arse-up was Nicole straight into a mud puddle. Good thing I didn't put an actual bet on because I was positive it was going to be me.

Up and over the fence..
Crossing plains and over mountains, we looked like the Fellowship. We were the Fellowship.
We took hundreds of photos. We posed, and posed some more. We sang Hakuna Matata at the tops of our lungs. We slipped and slid and washed off in the water. We admired the rushing rapids and the waterfalls and the beautiful scenery Wales had to offer.

We are the Fellowship.

At one point, Cory, Sam and myself went ahead up a very treacherous path and found a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The serenity was amazing, and we sat and took in the splendour as the sun was setting above. It started to get a little chilly and the sun was getting a little scarily low - we did not want to be out in the Welsh countryside in the dark, alone and freezing to death. We rejoined the group and together made our way back down to the bottom of the mountain, tired, cold but happy.

Stahp. You too pretty.
We had decided to have a night in Saturday night as our apartment was so amazing that we wanted to spend some more time in it. Back in Cardiff, we went on a group shopping expedition; and collected all manner of snacks (including a wheel of camembert that Sam baked - words cannot describe the deliciousness) and copious amounts of liquor and then went and found some dinner.

For the remainder of Saturday night we …. [Insert Saturday night here]

***
Funnily enough, I woke up with a raging headache and a belly full of woe. That'll teach me for mixing sangria, champagne and vodka. Sam and Charlotte were shining stars who made an enormous breakfast fry up for us in the morning - eggs and bacon and baked beans and french toast - marvellous! 

Bellies full, we checked out and said goodbye to the awesome apartment that had been our home for the last 2 nights. Checking out already! We were all very sad that the weekend had gone by so incredibly quickly. 

Today we were going to see Cardiff Castle, the castle in..Cardiff. It's kinda hard to miss, and at night they had it all decked out with enormous glowing stars and Christmas trees. It was a grey day, but dry and not too cold - we really did get the perfect weather. The clouds only added to the atmosphere. After purchasing our entry tickets into Cardiff Castle, a lyrically voiced young Welsh man asked if we would like to "watch the video". Charlotte piped up with an enthusiastic Yes! and the man, slightly surprised and pleased, led us into the adjacent room.

"When you leave, leave through the door on the other side," he said, before flicking a switch, which darkened the room and began the slow descent of a wide wide screen from the ceiling. What happened next was approximately 15 of the weirdest minutes of my life. It was an educational video about the history of Cardiff Castle…I think. What I do know is that I am none-the-wiser about the history of Cardiff Castle, except that in the year 1100 some modern girl went back in time (or did she hallucinate?) with a book…

We spent quite a bit of time exploring the castle, the battlements and reading the history of how the castle was used in the various World Wars. We look a lot of dramatic pictures, watched squirrels mating and climbed very tight, very high, very precarious steps to the top of the battlements.

Autumn colours

After we had finished exploring the castle, we were supremely hungry and we found a place for lunch. Lunch took hours, with our poor waitress receiving no end of troubles on her first day - wrong orders, dropping trays and then a whole party partaking in a dine-and-dash promotion.

The bus ride home afforded us some much needed sleep. It was now the end of our journey as the Cardiff Clan. We had drunk together, hiked together, laughed together and danced together. It was an amazing amount of fun and I look forward to another adventure with those smiley happy people.

Wales, you took me a little by surprise. Everyone had told me your weather would be dreadful, but our sunny dispositions brought the sunshine with us from London.

***
Footnote: After returning from Wales, we found some of our pictures from the Walkie had been uploaded onto the Facebook site. Noticeably missing was our one group shot. Immediately I thought we must have been so disastrously unattractive that we were unable to be posted publicly. Then I had a change of heart - we were, in fact, so incredibly good looking that we would have shamed and embarrassed the other patrons in that classy establishment, and thus the Walkie did not choose to post our picture for fear of making the clientele sad.


xx

Rushing rapids

The wishing tree

All the autumn colours.

Friday 14 November 2014

All the happenings and the doings, from red poppies to gender bending

Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny i was goin to hoperate agin close to your ospitle just as i was going to dror mi nife along of er bloomin throte them cusses of coppers spoilt the game but i guess i wil be on the job soon and will send you another bit of innerds
Jack the Ripper
O have you seen the devle with his mikerscope and scalpul a-lookin at a kidney with a slide cocked up.
It was a dark, still night. There was a gentle drizzle falling and our hoods were pulled against the chill of the cold air. Hands in our pockets we stood, transfixed, as in the glow of a street lamp our tour guide described in gruesome detail the horrific murders by the notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper.

Throat slashed to the bone.
Sliced open, guts removed and thrown over her shoulder.
Womb missing.
Positioned knees up, with her personal affects arranged around her bloodless corpse.

We stood where her body was found. She was just one; in each case the mutilations more gruesome. We retraced Jack's footsteps as he ran away from the crime scenes.

Luckily, I did not faint during the graphic retelling - we had been warned in case we were a sensitive nature. Now, I am of a sensitive nature, but I'm also horribly curious, and now I endeavour to research as much about Jack the Ripper as I can which will likely result in a month's worth of nightmares. Was it the Freemasons? Were they covering it up? Why only prostitutes? Was it a doctor - the precision of the slices…was it a mad man? Were the women being silenced? 

***
Of late I have been quite the little London tourist. Jack the Ripper tour, preceded by a delicious curry on the famous Brick Lane (butter chicken, naturally). 

A couple of weekends prior, I saw the fireworks at the affectionately known Ally Pally - Alexandra Palace - in (dis)honour of Guy Fawkes. I had to research this as well - why the bonfire? Why the fireworks? He was hanged. It didn't make any sense! The fireworks were lovely if very cold, and my attempts to warm up by drinking copious amounts of mulled wine and cider didn't work. Nicole and I had staked a place early in the day with barely a soul to be seen. Come 7pm, we had children tripping over us, people trying to sit on our blanket and just..people..everywhere. 
"Be as big as you can, Nicole!" I said, "Let's stretch our legs out."

At one point, I even tapped a man on the shoulder as he had moved directly in front of my folded legs. "Excuse me, but my legs go there." I'm such a bitch.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

The Tower of London. I'm sure you all saw it in the news; over 888 000 ceramic poppies were laid in the moat to represent each of the lives lost in WWI. Thanks to Nicole and her friends, I was given a ticket to see inside the castle walls. It was a wet, rainy day. I was testing out my new raincoat, and it kept me nice and dry (£4, charity store - think it's a kids size). Naturally, London's underground was at a standstill due to engineering repairs on the tube lines". Damn you, London underground. I both love you and hate you and like you and loathe you! Grrrrr.

The amount of people visiting was unbelievable. We waited in the rain by the little clock symbolising that a tour was to start in 5 minutes, when it was announced that due to the weather, no tour would be running. No matter, we would read the signs - all of them!

The Tower of London has a very interesting and long history. We saw the bedchambers of age-old kings, and scratchings in the walls where prisoners were held. We saw artefacts and weaponry and the beautiful red poppies through the windows. At one point, we thought it would be a good idea to join the queue to see the Crown Jewels - the line is moving fast, right? An hour and a half later, we were at the front of the line under the "No photography allowed" sign. I'll admit, and I had wanted to see the Crown Jewels, that I was a fraction frustrated. Nevertheless, the jewels were beautiful, the crowns, tiaras, rings and sceptres, the beautiful gold workings on the punch bowls and other ceremonial dishes.

On the tube on the way home, I flipped to the news on my phone. "Huge crowds have been to see the Tower of London poppy garden despite warnings to stay away until after half-term and to avoid a Tube station closure."

Oops. That explains the sheer number of people, then. Typical ;)






Seeing as it has been almost a month since my last update, there have been a great number of little things that have happened too. Of course, I've seen another two shows; Forbidden Broadway (my face hurt from laughing so much) and Matilda - a masterpiece with obvious music and lyrics by the love of my life, Tim Minchin.




I attended a travel company's brochure launch, and slapped down my £10 deposit on not one, but two, half-price tours (the 2nd one may have been assisted by cider). I'm putting plans in place for my epic trip of next year once my contract is up. So far, the sketchy details are:
  • A week (or two?) in Greece. I'm desperate to see the history and culture and I love the ancient mythology.
  • 9 days in Egypt. Yep. That's a thing that's happening.
  • A week in Italy, where I will eat until I look like a piece of pizza.8 days sailing the Croatian islands, jumping off boats and celebrating my 20-somethingth birthday (Still south of 30!)
And then back home to London where I will be well and truly broke and exhausted.

There has also been Halloween. Gender bending, I donned a beard and went as a lumberjack. Every girl needs a beard! When my beard became too itchy, it became my chest hair. It even became 80's bush for a little while… this is what happens when Sasha drinks too much cider, kids! I'm surprised at how big Halloween is here in London. Lots of kids trick-or-treating, and so many people dressing up! The BritBound Halloween was great fun as usual, and we sailed up and down the Thames with Big Ben and the London Eye as the perfect backdrop.



Oh golly. So much has been happening, and there is so very much to come. December will probably be the death of me. I love you all. Remember that, ok?

Exhaustingly yours,

xx