The score is tied...
Squeeze play...
And he gets the bunt down! Run scores!
Eric can stay in the UK legally past tomorrow. His application for a visa renewal is in the mail, just a day before his visa expires.
The crowd goes wild, as the runner collapses after crossing home plate.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
This is going down to the wire
So I received the statements from my bank in Minneapolis via FedEx yesterday. And they were just photocopies. Which are explicitly disqualified from consideration by the UK Border Agency. So now I wait for yet another FedEx from the States which is supposed to get here by 12:30 tomorrow.
One thing about the postal strike here: The Royal Mail website tells you which parts of town will be affected on any given day. How very British. So there's no point in trying to mail off my application tomorrow afternoon from a collection point anywhere in my part of town, but Central London post offices are supposed to be functioning, though with longer lines, I'm sure.
I did get my bank here to provide me a letter stating my balance, so hopefully that will suffice to take the place of the statement that's stuck in transit by the strike.
Oh, and that possibility of hand delivering my application? The office isn't in London, as I'd assumed all along. It's in Durham, which is just a caber's toss from the Scottish border. So that's a no-go, too.
Hoping for smooth operations tomorrow. Else I have to leave the country on Saturday.
One thing about the postal strike here: The Royal Mail website tells you which parts of town will be affected on any given day. How very British. So there's no point in trying to mail off my application tomorrow afternoon from a collection point anywhere in my part of town, but Central London post offices are supposed to be functioning, though with longer lines, I'm sure.
I did get my bank here to provide me a letter stating my balance, so hopefully that will suffice to take the place of the statement that's stuck in transit by the strike.
Oh, and that possibility of hand delivering my application? The office isn't in London, as I'd assumed all along. It's in Durham, which is just a caber's toss from the Scottish border. So that's a no-go, too.
Hoping for smooth operations tomorrow. Else I have to leave the country on Saturday.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The visa blues
My visa expires in three days, and I still can't file for a new one. Hopefully tomorrow.
I've been surfing the anxiety wave for what seems like weeks now. I've read and reread pages and pages of regulations, filled out government forms (two kinds, since the UK re-did their forms in the midst of all of this), contracted with an agency in Chicago to help me negotiate an expedited passage through this (to no avail), burned through an international calling card, arranged for a trip to and stay in Chicago that won't come to pass and (the good side of this) been in touch with friends back home who were willing to help, gotten all geared up for a quick visit to home that's not gonna happen, and seen deadlines come and go while I waited for other information--deadlines that have required yet further waits for new documents because all my bank statements have to be no more than 30 days old. So now I sit at home in London waiting for a FedEx package which will bring me fresh bank statements from the US in the next few hours. And I hope for mail delivery today (there's an on-again, off-again postal strike here) and the arrival of the most recent statement from my bank here. After a long flirtation with plans to go to Chicago to get this all handled in a 48-hour period, I just found out night before last that that's a no-go. And last week I found out that there aren't any walk-in appointments to be had before my visa expires in all of England, Scotland, and Wales.
Once I finally receive these financial statements that are en route, I have until the end of the day Friday to post it or hand it in. And then I wait again, hoping that I get my passport and visa back in time to use that nonchangeable, nonrefundable ticket to come home for Christmas.
Oh, and school starts on Monday.
So that's my life for today. (Except that some mail just now arrived, but without a local bank statement. And so this stretches out for at least one more day. Out of a possible two.)
I've been surfing the anxiety wave for what seems like weeks now. I've read and reread pages and pages of regulations, filled out government forms (two kinds, since the UK re-did their forms in the midst of all of this), contracted with an agency in Chicago to help me negotiate an expedited passage through this (to no avail), burned through an international calling card, arranged for a trip to and stay in Chicago that won't come to pass and (the good side of this) been in touch with friends back home who were willing to help, gotten all geared up for a quick visit to home that's not gonna happen, and seen deadlines come and go while I waited for other information--deadlines that have required yet further waits for new documents because all my bank statements have to be no more than 30 days old. So now I sit at home in London waiting for a FedEx package which will bring me fresh bank statements from the US in the next few hours. And I hope for mail delivery today (there's an on-again, off-again postal strike here) and the arrival of the most recent statement from my bank here. After a long flirtation with plans to go to Chicago to get this all handled in a 48-hour period, I just found out night before last that that's a no-go. And last week I found out that there aren't any walk-in appointments to be had before my visa expires in all of England, Scotland, and Wales.
Once I finally receive these financial statements that are en route, I have until the end of the day Friday to post it or hand it in. And then I wait again, hoping that I get my passport and visa back in time to use that nonchangeable, nonrefundable ticket to come home for Christmas.
Oh, and school starts on Monday.
So that's my life for today. (Except that some mail just now arrived, but without a local bank statement. And so this stretches out for at least one more day. Out of a possible two.)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Distress, fresh air, inspiration
All along through this drawn-out school accreditation/certification process that had to be completed before I can even apply for a student-visa renewal, I've been comforted by the knowledge that I'm fine staying in the UK and starting classes so long as I can get my application in before the end of the month. That much is still true. Even when I found out that for some unexplained reason there'd been a week's delay in even telling me that the letter I needed from the school was available for me to pick up (the fact that I was apparently the only one whose letter wasn't mailed out notwithstanding), that was no more than an aggravation. What I hadn't figured on, however, was what I found out when I picked my letter up: there's a good chance I might not get my passport back from the Home Office until after Christmas, meaning I wouldn't be able to go home for the holidays. This is distressing.
So now I'm trying to figure out if I can avoid paying the nearly $1000 expediting fee to get the thing processed in person. Ouch.
More than ouch. Way more than ouch.
And to add to the whole thing I have to go back to school tomorrow to get the letter reissued because it says the school year I'm applying for an extension for ... ended in July 2009. There are other frustrations that this extra delay has set in motion, but I'm sure you get the point.
Anyway, since there was nothing more I could do about the application on Saturday, I took my bike on the train again and went to Essex for the day. Cold, windy, and hilly, but a tonic for my spirits. I stopped in a few towns with great names, like Saffron Walden (a few others I've been close to on my rides these last two Saturdays: Tiptoe, Sway, and Ugley), visited some very old churches and a windmill, walked a "turf maze" (what we'd call a labyrinth), got lost a few times, and finished the afternoon in a small town pub that seemed so far away from London as to have absolutely no need for the big city at all. I came back exhausted, with deadened legs, and in a much better mood.
Tonight a housemate and I went to the Barbican and saw a show called Raoul, by James Thiérrée. Amazing, inspiring, fascinating, magical, delightful--if you ever get the chance, catch his show. Londoners aren't prone to giving standing ovations, but he got a long and enthusiastic one. It seems unfair to identify somebody by their relation to somebody else (you know, like Jesus, son of God), but Thiérrée is Charlie Chaplin's grandson, and the show had that kind of lyrical, graceful, acrobatic quality to it. If Chaplin were creating theatre now, this might be the kind of thing he'd do. Thiérrée is an amazing physical performer, so fluid in his movements and endlessly inventive. He has a background in circus and acrobatics, which you can tell, but it's not a three-ring circus kind of thing at all. It's really hard to describe. You might call it Lispa to a sublime degree. Highly visual, imagistic, not dependent on language at all. He shook like a leaf, he flew, he became a horse, then an ape. He danced, he used music magically, he played with the audience. There were larger-than-life puppets--a fish, a crustacean, a fossilized bird, a jellyfish, an elephant. OK, that last one was only life-sized.
It was basically a one-man show, but he had an alter-ego (another actor) who briefly came and went and then became Thiérrée or back again. Usually you could see how they did it. Once, in apparently full view, he/they did it in a way that neither my housemate nor I could figure out. And then as a great comical counterpoint, there were times when a prop guy would come out (carrying a huge ladder for example) and Thiérrée would try futilely to hide him.
It really was a tour-de-force. And an inspiration for the coming year.
So now I'm trying to figure out if I can avoid paying the nearly $1000 expediting fee to get the thing processed in person. Ouch.
More than ouch. Way more than ouch.
And to add to the whole thing I have to go back to school tomorrow to get the letter reissued because it says the school year I'm applying for an extension for ... ended in July 2009. There are other frustrations that this extra delay has set in motion, but I'm sure you get the point.
Anyway, since there was nothing more I could do about the application on Saturday, I took my bike on the train again and went to Essex for the day. Cold, windy, and hilly, but a tonic for my spirits. I stopped in a few towns with great names, like Saffron Walden (a few others I've been close to on my rides these last two Saturdays: Tiptoe, Sway, and Ugley), visited some very old churches and a windmill, walked a "turf maze" (what we'd call a labyrinth), got lost a few times, and finished the afternoon in a small town pub that seemed so far away from London as to have absolutely no need for the big city at all. I came back exhausted, with deadened legs, and in a much better mood.
Tonight a housemate and I went to the Barbican and saw a show called Raoul, by James Thiérrée. Amazing, inspiring, fascinating, magical, delightful--if you ever get the chance, catch his show. Londoners aren't prone to giving standing ovations, but he got a long and enthusiastic one. It seems unfair to identify somebody by their relation to somebody else (you know, like Jesus, son of God), but Thiérrée is Charlie Chaplin's grandson, and the show had that kind of lyrical, graceful, acrobatic quality to it. If Chaplin were creating theatre now, this might be the kind of thing he'd do. Thiérrée is an amazing physical performer, so fluid in his movements and endlessly inventive. He has a background in circus and acrobatics, which you can tell, but it's not a three-ring circus kind of thing at all. It's really hard to describe. You might call it Lispa to a sublime degree. Highly visual, imagistic, not dependent on language at all. He shook like a leaf, he flew, he became a horse, then an ape. He danced, he used music magically, he played with the audience. There were larger-than-life puppets--a fish, a crustacean, a fossilized bird, a jellyfish, an elephant. OK, that last one was only life-sized.
It was basically a one-man show, but he had an alter-ego (another actor) who briefly came and went and then became Thiérrée or back again. Usually you could see how they did it. Once, in apparently full view, he/they did it in a way that neither my housemate nor I could figure out. And then as a great comical counterpoint, there were times when a prop guy would come out (carrying a huge ladder for example) and Thiérrée would try futilely to hide him.
It really was a tour-de-force. And an inspiration for the coming year.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Gathering solitude like a squirrel gathers nuts
A beautiful season to be in London, made all the more precious by remembrance of how awful the winter is. As I bike around I keep thinking of how a former parishioner used to take walks in the rose garden at Lake Harriet this time of year, aware of the autumnal passing of time.
Just a few months ago it didn't get dark till after 10. A couple of weeks ago as I washed coffee cups at the end of my work day a little after 7 (a sign of the awesome responsibility I bear in my day job), I was looking out the window at a gorgeous sunset of deepening salmon, orange, blue, and purple behind the London Eye, which is kind of the luxury skybox of Ferris wheels. This past Monday around 6:30, I stood on the Millennium Bridge over the Thames (aka the Wobbly Bridge from the way it shook as people walked across it when it first opened) watching the last colors deepen.
I continue to spend a lot of time by myself, maybe storing up the solitude while I can before things finally launch in a few weeks: the solo bike ride in the New Forest last weekend, a mostly solitary birthday (haircut, reading the paper in Trafalgar Square, a stroll through the National Gallery, Evensong at St Pauls, dinner and the Millennium Bridge before meeting friends for a pub quiz in the evening). It's not that I'm antisocial (I enjoyed buying coffee for a stranger that morning), nor is it that I necessarily want to be alone, but there's something in me that's gravitating in that direction. It may be bad timing--more and more people are getting back into town now and it seems that there are more occasions for potlucks and parties--but the upside is that my solitary ways are giving me more room for reflection.
When I had coffee with Thomas a few weeks ago, the conversation turned at one point to what I might do after I finish here. I don't have anything specific in my sights yet, but I've been thinking I want to be involved in storytelling in some way. I've always been drawn to stories, certainly more than to doctrine, and he asked a great followup question: What kind of effect do you want to have on people? (And then yet another: And who are those people you want to have that effect on?) Those are questions I'll keep coming back to during the year. It's helpful to have longer-range questions like those in mind during the close and intense focus of Creation times in the Lispa school calendar. I think I'll be fighting an uphill battle by trying to keep inserting those questions into group work, but I think it'd be helpful if we remembered to keep those kinds of things in mind. Why just aim for cleverness if you're going to be trying to create something that goes deeper? I want to help create something that will evoke wonder, discovery, and an awareness of possibility. It may be it's not so much through story as through fertile and evocative images. (To do both, of course, would be of great reward! Personal, if not financial.)
The year ahead seems like a laboratory in which to try out ideas and approaches for whatever will follow. My questions aren't necessarily others', I know, and trying to get agreement or a shared direction among strong-minded creatives is indeed a bit like herding cats (while being one of the cats yourself). Still, I don't want to get completely subsumed in immediate goals and concerns this year.
The year is going to rush by--if it ever gets started! Here's to finding moments of reflection and insight in the midst of the coming long days of activity (and short days of sunlight).
Just a few months ago it didn't get dark till after 10. A couple of weeks ago as I washed coffee cups at the end of my work day a little after 7 (a sign of the awesome responsibility I bear in my day job), I was looking out the window at a gorgeous sunset of deepening salmon, orange, blue, and purple behind the London Eye, which is kind of the luxury skybox of Ferris wheels. This past Monday around 6:30, I stood on the Millennium Bridge over the Thames (aka the Wobbly Bridge from the way it shook as people walked across it when it first opened) watching the last colors deepen.
I continue to spend a lot of time by myself, maybe storing up the solitude while I can before things finally launch in a few weeks: the solo bike ride in the New Forest last weekend, a mostly solitary birthday (haircut, reading the paper in Trafalgar Square, a stroll through the National Gallery, Evensong at St Pauls, dinner and the Millennium Bridge before meeting friends for a pub quiz in the evening). It's not that I'm antisocial (I enjoyed buying coffee for a stranger that morning), nor is it that I necessarily want to be alone, but there's something in me that's gravitating in that direction. It may be bad timing--more and more people are getting back into town now and it seems that there are more occasions for potlucks and parties--but the upside is that my solitary ways are giving me more room for reflection.
When I had coffee with Thomas a few weeks ago, the conversation turned at one point to what I might do after I finish here. I don't have anything specific in my sights yet, but I've been thinking I want to be involved in storytelling in some way. I've always been drawn to stories, certainly more than to doctrine, and he asked a great followup question: What kind of effect do you want to have on people? (And then yet another: And who are those people you want to have that effect on?) Those are questions I'll keep coming back to during the year. It's helpful to have longer-range questions like those in mind during the close and intense focus of Creation times in the Lispa school calendar. I think I'll be fighting an uphill battle by trying to keep inserting those questions into group work, but I think it'd be helpful if we remembered to keep those kinds of things in mind. Why just aim for cleverness if you're going to be trying to create something that goes deeper? I want to help create something that will evoke wonder, discovery, and an awareness of possibility. It may be it's not so much through story as through fertile and evocative images. (To do both, of course, would be of great reward! Personal, if not financial.)
The year ahead seems like a laboratory in which to try out ideas and approaches for whatever will follow. My questions aren't necessarily others', I know, and trying to get agreement or a shared direction among strong-minded creatives is indeed a bit like herding cats (while being one of the cats yourself). Still, I don't want to get completely subsumed in immediate goals and concerns this year.
The year is going to rush by--if it ever gets started! Here's to finding moments of reflection and insight in the midst of the coming long days of activity (and short days of sunlight).
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Refreshed
Ah, yesterday I got the kind of restorative trip out of town that I've been wanting. Took my bike on a train about an hour and a half southwest of the city and spent the day in the New Forest. Though much of it is forested, it's anything but new: a tract of land set aside a thousand years ago by William the Conqueror. Now a national park, there are small towns scattered throughout it, as well as crushed gravel bike trails and footpaths. Covered with forests of pine, oak, and fern as well as open moors, it's the kind of place that welcomes a switch from the fluorescent green biking jacket to a brown wool sweater, when you're off the paved roads anyway. Wild ponies are a regular sight, as well as free-ranging pigs and horses of the domesticated kind. I spied a couple of deer, too.
I biked from Brockenhurst to Lyndhurst in a meandering loop of 20 miles or so before whiling away the last hour at a pub as I waited for the train back to London. A lovely day that did my soul good.
Lyndhurst seems to be the main hub of the area. It's a lovely if highly commercialized little town with a charming hilltop church. It has its quirks, too. Here you can arrange for a remarkable variety of coveyances to transport your loved one to their final resting place. There are the traditional horse-drawn carriages in black, of course. Or perhaps you'd prefer the all-Volkswagen cortege, consisting of the VW van hearse and stretch Beetles for the family. There are Land Rover hearses for the dearly departed who loved that rugged off-road experience. And, my favorite, how about a stylish motorcycle sendoff? Your choice of a Triumph, Suzuki, or Harley with a sleek hearse sidecar. I was finishing reading that book on eccentric Britain yesterday between legs of the trip, so somehow this just seemed a normal part of things.
I biked from Brockenhurst to Lyndhurst in a meandering loop of 20 miles or so before whiling away the last hour at a pub as I waited for the train back to London. A lovely day that did my soul good.
Lyndhurst seems to be the main hub of the area. It's a lovely if highly commercialized little town with a charming hilltop church. It has its quirks, too. Here you can arrange for a remarkable variety of coveyances to transport your loved one to their final resting place. There are the traditional horse-drawn carriages in black, of course. Or perhaps you'd prefer the all-Volkswagen cortege, consisting of the VW van hearse and stretch Beetles for the family. There are Land Rover hearses for the dearly departed who loved that rugged off-road experience. And, my favorite, how about a stylish motorcycle sendoff? Your choice of a Triumph, Suzuki, or Harley with a sleek hearse sidecar. I was finishing reading that book on eccentric Britain yesterday between legs of the trip, so somehow this just seemed a normal part of things.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Homeland security, UK style
A bit of excitement on Cleveleys Road this week. Late one night my housemates with rooms at the front of the house heard some shouting and commotion in the street. Apparently a couple of guys got arrested in relation to a murder at or outside a "social club" a couple of blocks away. The next day our street was blocked off and police were taking the names of everybody who came and went. The day after, half the street was still blocked off and a cop told me they were still looking for "a few things"--the murder weapon, maybe? (Or have I watched too many police shows on TV.)
Apparently there's a Turkish gang war going on in this part of town (again, according to what the cops are saying). It's probably stupid of me, but I find myself taking some comfort in that. It seems less random, more targeted. Yes, I know, people get caught in the crossfire, and every thug is some mother's son, but I feel less threatened than if there were some solitary madman out there. It also seems that police must be hovering out there all the time, ready to come out of the woodwork and swarm a neighborhood when something like this happens. It's kind of impressive, really, but seeing how at least a rowdy few of the Metropolitan police force got out of hand at last spring's G20 meeting here (one man was dealt a fatal blow by a policeman, unprovoked), "impressive" also can have an ominous aspect to it. London's a curious city. It seems pretty safe overall, even when there's been a murder around the corner, but you're also repeatedly aware of how many CCTV cameras there are. Word is that you're almost always on a TV screen somewhere when you're out and about.
I mentioned the other day that the beginning of school has been delayed into November. The reason is that the Home Office--kind of like the State Department, if I understand correctly--determined that all schools that admit international students had to be reaccredited this year. Some apparently were schools in name only and thus served as an easy way for us foreigners to get into the country. In the US, you'd expect such an action would be out of fear of some perceived terrorist threat. Here I think it was more because of the bad economy. "British jobs for British workers" has been an occasional rallying cry on the right, and among unions. Anyway, several thousand schools had to be reaccredited, including Lispa (the i and s stand for International School; most of the students come from outside the UK). Accreditation involved lots of paperwork and a site visit, then the Home Office decided it too had to do a site visit for each of the 4000-some-odd international schools, and then the slow-grinding mills of bureaucratic paperwork have to churn out a certificate. Cud moves faster through a cow.
The upshot of all this is that people like me can't even start the process of applying for a student visa or the extension of one till the Home Office issues a certificate to the school. We're still waiting. I'm here legally until my current visa expires, three weeks from tomorrow. So long as I can file the forms to apply for a renewal before 31 October I'm OK to stay. But pity the incoming students from outside the EU. They can't even start the process to get their visas till we all get the letter that opens the door to the process. And if they don't already have a visa, they can't enter the UK till they get the whole thing processed and returned to them. How one buys an airline ticket in advance in that kind of situation I don't know.
The other part of this is that, according to new and related legislation, by applying for a visa or visa renewal, all of us are applying for a national ID card that will have certain biometric measurements encoded in it. Whether I'll need to carry that with me at all times is unclear. Then again, I was surprised that the cops who were blocking off my street the other day didn't ask for any ID at all, just my name and address. After a year here I had just that morning stopped carrying my passport around with me. But I suppose once I get this ID card I'd better have it with me.
Apparently there's a Turkish gang war going on in this part of town (again, according to what the cops are saying). It's probably stupid of me, but I find myself taking some comfort in that. It seems less random, more targeted. Yes, I know, people get caught in the crossfire, and every thug is some mother's son, but I feel less threatened than if there were some solitary madman out there. It also seems that police must be hovering out there all the time, ready to come out of the woodwork and swarm a neighborhood when something like this happens. It's kind of impressive, really, but seeing how at least a rowdy few of the Metropolitan police force got out of hand at last spring's G20 meeting here (one man was dealt a fatal blow by a policeman, unprovoked), "impressive" also can have an ominous aspect to it. London's a curious city. It seems pretty safe overall, even when there's been a murder around the corner, but you're also repeatedly aware of how many CCTV cameras there are. Word is that you're almost always on a TV screen somewhere when you're out and about.
I mentioned the other day that the beginning of school has been delayed into November. The reason is that the Home Office--kind of like the State Department, if I understand correctly--determined that all schools that admit international students had to be reaccredited this year. Some apparently were schools in name only and thus served as an easy way for us foreigners to get into the country. In the US, you'd expect such an action would be out of fear of some perceived terrorist threat. Here I think it was more because of the bad economy. "British jobs for British workers" has been an occasional rallying cry on the right, and among unions. Anyway, several thousand schools had to be reaccredited, including Lispa (the i and s stand for International School; most of the students come from outside the UK). Accreditation involved lots of paperwork and a site visit, then the Home Office decided it too had to do a site visit for each of the 4000-some-odd international schools, and then the slow-grinding mills of bureaucratic paperwork have to churn out a certificate. Cud moves faster through a cow.
The upshot of all this is that people like me can't even start the process of applying for a student visa or the extension of one till the Home Office issues a certificate to the school. We're still waiting. I'm here legally until my current visa expires, three weeks from tomorrow. So long as I can file the forms to apply for a renewal before 31 October I'm OK to stay. But pity the incoming students from outside the EU. They can't even start the process to get their visas till we all get the letter that opens the door to the process. And if they don't already have a visa, they can't enter the UK till they get the whole thing processed and returned to them. How one buys an airline ticket in advance in that kind of situation I don't know.
The other part of this is that, according to new and related legislation, by applying for a visa or visa renewal, all of us are applying for a national ID card that will have certain biometric measurements encoded in it. Whether I'll need to carry that with me at all times is unclear. Then again, I was surprised that the cops who were blocking off my street the other day didn't ask for any ID at all, just my name and address. After a year here I had just that morning stopped carrying my passport around with me. But I suppose once I get this ID card I'd better have it with me.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
All England, all the time
Off to Brighton today, just £11 for a round-trip ticket. With school beginning soon--it's been delayed till 2 November, but still...--and the days getting shorter alarmingly quickly, I'm determined to use this month to get out of London at least once a week and also to do some special things in town. Come November, I'll be in class every weeknight and -afternoon, and apparently some Saturdays as well. So now's the time.
I checked out a book from the library yesterday about those only-in-Britain eccentric events, like contests in chasing a wheel of cheese down an incredibly steep slope, shin kicking, bog-snorkeling, and this thing called "mob football," in which about a hundred drunken men form a scrum around a leather tube on a muddy field and push each other back and forth in a knot of bodies for hours until the tube (with mob attending) is finally pushed through the doors of any nearby pub, where they all apparently keep sharing pints till they fall down drunk. OK, I added that last part, but the preceding weirdness is all true. I don't expect to find any of that in the coming month, but what a country to explore, eh wot?
Mostly I just want to get out of the city from time to time.
Off to the train station. Maybe this little post will break my recent writer's block.
I checked out a book from the library yesterday about those only-in-Britain eccentric events, like contests in chasing a wheel of cheese down an incredibly steep slope, shin kicking, bog-snorkeling, and this thing called "mob football," in which about a hundred drunken men form a scrum around a leather tube on a muddy field and push each other back and forth in a knot of bodies for hours until the tube (with mob attending) is finally pushed through the doors of any nearby pub, where they all apparently keep sharing pints till they fall down drunk. OK, I added that last part, but the preceding weirdness is all true. I don't expect to find any of that in the coming month, but what a country to explore, eh wot?
Mostly I just want to get out of the city from time to time.
Off to the train station. Maybe this little post will break my recent writer's block.
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