The trip - part 1

I discover yet again that the airlines exist to torture large people. Trying to squeeze the six foot something, 200 and something pound bear into a Y class seat is murder. For a start my shoulders are wider than the seat...grrr. Airline executives should be forced to spend several hours per day in their own damn seats.

We made it to Ballina eventually via Heathrow, Stansted and Knock. The wedding went very well and the party afterwards was a blast (as far as I remember). By the following morning it was already the talk of the town. I guess in this very conservative Catholic part of Ireland they don't see that many weddings celebrated by a druid.

The mediaeval thing worked well although how the girls stayed in their tops must remain a mystery. No doubt its one of those arcane feminine physics things. As promised I was good and didn't bring out the monk's habit and the chicken feet until the party.

The food was great which was more than a little surprising. When I worked in Ireland (OK twenty years ago) the food was generally appalling. The coffee is still pretty dodgy though.

And so to England...

Railways used to be the pride of England. Since privatisation they are pretty much a third world joke. That's a preamble to saying it took five hours to get from Stansted to Christchurch on a train that was clearly much older than I am. Ella was right!

... to be continued

The trip (part 2)

We get to my folks and then relatives start arriving at an alarming rate. Fortunately, all things considered, they are the more tolerable branches of the tree. We quickly fall into a pattern; bugger off to do touristy stuff during the day returning to booze it up at the parents with assorted relatives.

I guess the highlight of the touristy stuff was Salisbury Cathedral, particularly the amazing Prisoner of Conscience Window by Gabriel Loire at the east end of the nave. We also did Stonehenge and the Navy Dockyard in Portsmouth.

The weirdest thing was our visit to the Royal Signals Museum in Blandford Forum (odd choice I know but my grandfather served in both the RE Signals Service -WW1 and the Royal Signals - WW2). The museum is inside Blandford Forum camp which is an active base so we had to be photo ID'd, timed in and out etc. First time that has happened to me visiting a museum.

The party itself (parents' 50th anniversary) went very well and the lemur coped splendidly with the assembled hordes.

...to be continued...

The trip - part 3

So having survived the parents we headed off to visit Paul in Kingston. Dumbo here confuses Kingston and Richmond and ends up at the wrong station duh! I think we had a good evening drinking with Paul but I can hardly remember. The flash bastard has bought a pub (only way he could find one he couldn't be thrown out of). Anyway next morning he pissed off to a conference in Manchester leaving us with the flat to ourselves...cool!

Did touristy things for two days; wandering around London, walking up the river to Hampton Court etc. We found this great Malaysian place in a side street in Soho. Awesome curry lakhsa. Random useless and probably boring observations: Graffiti on trains and tubes seems to be much worse than I remember. Guardsmen in full dress look silly with SA80s (rather like wearing camo and carrying a pike). Cellphone use has reached epidemic proportions, even quite small children seem to be hard wired to their phones.

But bejazus, England is expensive. It seems like most things cost as much in pounds as in Canadian pesos. The beer is good though.

Book recommendations

A couple of recent reads that I would recommend to those who like that sort of thing.

England, England by Julian Barnes. A dodgy businessman decides to buy the Isle of Wight and turn it into an upscale tourist destination for those who find seeing the real historic sites of England a bit of a hassle. Funny, twisted and unpredictable plus Barnes is a more than decent stylist.

Berlin, The Downfall 1945 by Anthony Beevor. Like his earlier (and equally excellent) Stalingrad this book draws heavily on Soviet sources that have only recently been available to historians. For the first time in the West, documents showing the real attitudes of the Red Army command and the NKVD to the mass rapes perpetrated in conquered Germany are explored quite comprehensively. A compulsive read for anyone with any kind of tolerance for military history.

More from the trip

I almost forgot...

Went to the gents in this pub/cafe in Ballina and there was the usual condom vending machine except this time the brand was, I kid you not, Willie Shaghappy.

How could I forget that.