A Very English Complaint About the Weather

It's not that the weather here is bad, nor that it is particularly good. What is so damn irritating is that it's changeable. Dressing every morning involves a skilful act of layering, so that when the clouds disappear, you can shed one (or more) cardigans and jumpers and refrain from sweating too much, and then when the clouds cover up the sun again – as they inevitably do – you can pile all the woollies back on, plus a beanie for good measure. Oh, and never, ever go anywhere without an umbrella. Just because it's sunny now means nothing. After the third or fourth time, you learn.

Last Monday was beautiful. You can't imagine how beautiful it was, comparatively speaking. We're drawing towards the end of October, smack in the middle of Autumn, in cold and rainy Wales, and the sun was shining, the clouds didn't hover once, and it was so warm that I was walking around the city in a singlet top and jeans. Granted, I was also wearing a scarf, but that was almost entirely due to aesthetic purposes. I came to the somewhat premature conclusion that perhaps Autumns weren't all that cold this far south.

Of course, then we haven't had a dry day since. And there have been moments when I doubted that my warm woolly coat would keep me warm even til the end of November. But I think I underestimated it. I think with the right combination of jumpers and scarfs, I might get away with it until February in York. We shall see.

I've always been one to appreciate a rainy day. Of course, in Newcastle, they're slightly less frequent than in Swansea, and rarity tends to make something special. Now, I'm just getting a little tired of walking everywhere with the damp patch at the hem of my jeans climbing higher and higher with every puddle I walk through.

But then, I was walking home through the park the other day. The trees still wear most of their leaves, but there is a thickening layer of gold on the ground. It wasn't raining, but it had been, and the bark on the trunks had soaked up the water to become a rich, dark brown, almost black. Against the dark of the tree trunks and the white-grey of the clouds in the sky, the green leaves stood out, washed and bright. A gust of wind swirled the fallen leaves up in the air and for a moment I just stopped and watched. Somehow, everything looks richer, more alive after a little rain.

Third Nomad

It seems I can't sit still. Well, I never could, hey? But at least here and now that's how I'm supposed to be. Weeks are for Uni work, and weekends are for jaunting all over the countryside. The weekend before last (and, yes, I do realise that I am being a little slack in the update stakes, but life is for the living, yeah?)I went on a little overnighter to London to visit Brett for his birthday. Which was a mixed-emotion event. On the one hand, it was absolutely awesome to see Brett. You know, I'm doing really good here, there's nothing like the overwhelming homesickness that crippled me during parts of my Slovakia experience, not even close. But then, its just so comforting to see someone from home. And its easy in a way that new faces and new places just can't be. On the other hand, the place I stayed was full of Aussies and Kiwis, and at the moment, that's just too much of a good thing. That environment seemed to bring out the traits of our cultures that I am least proud of: our tendency to get loud and drunk and to fill a place with ourselves, forgetting that there are other people and this is their place more than ours. And I just kept wanting to ask them all: If you just wanted to be drunk, loud Australians, spending all your time with drunk, loud Australians, why did you come here to do it?

But I realise that this is probably the exception, not the rule, to their stays. That, having been on the road, living amongst foreign people and customs that this is probably their respite. Their chill out moment, where they too just long for the ease of familiarity, just for a little while, before heading out on their way again. And I realise that there may come a time when I want this respite as well.

And I can't deny feeling elated by hearing Machine Gun Felatio sing Pussytown on the Antipodean-friendly jukebox.

So, for the first time in six weeks, I heard an Aussie accent. I heard a whole bunch of them, and Brett and I proceeded to celebrate his thirtieth birthday in the pub below the youth hostel that we were camped at. When the pub got too full and happy hour finished, Brett and I strode out into the night and caught the tube to (somewhere I forget) where we met Janine and Sned. Brett went through uni with Janine and I worked on a production of Ubu Roi with her last year and they are on their way up North to Janine's native Scotland, only here in London for the night. And so we sat and had a few beers with them and spoke of plans for future travels and gossip from home. Then, after sleeping in the bunk with a roomful of snorers, I had breakfast of jam and toast and the biggest cup of the blackest tea I could find in the bar downstairs. Brett and I then wandered around the streets of Shepherd’s Bush before I had to catch my train back home again.

Standing around in Paddington Station, feeling slightly sorry for myself after a night of beer and interrupted sleep, I get a phone call from Jess and we speak for an hour of gossips and goings on. It was so very lovely to hear her voice and catch up on what everyone has been getting up to, but I would really hate to be in charge of her phone bill at the end of the month...

And then this weekend just gone, I went to visit Cardiff Castle. Like most castles I have visited so far, Cardiff Castle is made up of many parts, some dating way back to the times of William the Conqueror and some parts more recently renovated. Part is still in use today, for weddings and receptions and to receive Prince Charles and other dignitaries when they visit Wales. They have rooms in this part of the castle set up as they would have been in the Victorian era, which was when the last of the renovations were made by an architect named William Burgess. This guy specialised in highly ornate, Eastern inspired decorations. Painted ceilings, patterned floors and gold leaf abound. My favourite was the Arab room, which was a sitting room for the Marques’s wife and, funnily enough, was inspired by the architect's visits to the Middle East. It had beautiful patterned floors in coloured marble and what they called Harem windows, carved so that you can see out from inside the room, but it's very difficult to see in from outside.

Afterwards, I wandered the streets of Cardiff for a couple of hours. The shopping streets of Cardiff are all interconnected by little enclosed arcade streets with boutiques and cafes and quirky little gifts stores. I resisted many a temptation in the two or three recycled clothing stores I found. Aren't I good? Then I spent around a quarter of an hour standing and watching an electric string trio grin cheekily and whirl their way through show tunes and jazz numbers and finally four and a half minute’s worth of the history of music.

And tomorrow is Thursday, my day off. I have a day of cultural enlightenment planned for myself in which I will visit the Art gallery (the main one, and any others I can find on the way) and then a trip to the Marina, to visit the Dylan Thomas Museum and the other museum that I know is down that way, but the name of which currently eludes me. To end the day, I plan on sitting in cafe Mambo, or the Monkey cafe, sipping tea, munching on a cookie and updating my (much, much neglected) paper journal. Can't wait.

But.

So, Geraint got back from York on Monday and spent the rest of the day with me. Afternoon sex, and deciding against a movie because Swansea hasn't got Serenity yet. Pool and Guinness in the Bryn; music and Guinness at the Uplands Tavern; and cheap girly vodka drinks and dancing to rock & roll at Envy til two in the morning. There was hand holding and drunken frolicking and so much dancing, and I feel comfortable with him, and little tummy-tickling feelings when I look at him and I had an wonderful, awesome night.

But.

But I just don't think it's any more than that.

Which may be due to the fact that I'll only see him once or twice a month between now and Christmas, and the knowledge that ultimately I'm going to be moving on in February. Or it may be because he reminds me too much of the boys I used to go to school with, and I've just moved on from there. Or maybe we just don't have a strong enough connection.

But he's lovely. He's caring, and intelligent, and considerate and light-hearted and good-humoured, and so far I've had nothing but a good time with him. And really that's all that matters, right? And in consideration of the fact that we're hardly going to see each other, its a good thing that I haven't fallen head over heals for him, isn't it? I think I've finally made it the place where I want to keep it casual and I'm happy with that.

A friend, to help me explore Wales, and certain parts of its culture.

And I got a part. I think its only a small part, and I think this because my character’s name is merely "The Reporter" and my name was fifth from the bottom of the list. I haven't read the script yet, so I could be wrong, but we're going to go with that. She's a character in the German play, The Visit and our first rehearsal, a script reading is on Monday evening, so I guess I'll find out more about the character and the story then.

I'm glad I got a part in The Visit, for a few reasons. Firstly, because I miss the theatre and I want to be a part of it again. It gives me the chance to meet people and be involved in the society. And it was probably better to get a part in this one, rather than Streetcar because The Visit will be performed in early December, thus not interfering at all in any travel plans I may make, whereas Streetcar would involve me needing to still be in Swansea in February, when Jess and Darko and I should be making the start on our journeys. So its all good!

Auditions

So, I joined the Drama Society. You know what I’ve learnt? That Crazy Theatre People are the same the world over.

Last Thursday, we had our first Social – which meant getting dressed up like we were from the eighties (sigh) and heading out into town. Yes, people in public saw me with big teased hair, badly coloured eye makeup and far too many bangles up my arms. I am so ashamed.

We went to a very funky little cafe called Mambo where we had the entire downstairs room to ourselves and we proceeded to drink two-for-one cocktails and play silly drama-type drinking games.

I would just like to side step a moment here and point out that Britain has never heard of RSA. Nope, not at all. Pubs here will go to any lengths to get you totally trashed and violent and poor. Two-for-one cocktails, they’ll make your drink a double for an extra 20p, they don’t cut you off when you’ve had to much and I CAN BUY A DOUBLE VODKA AND REDBULL FOR £2 PEOPLE!!!! But at least they give you a little plug thingy to put in your bottle to stop people spiking it.

But anyway, back to the Drama Society. Tuesday night was auditions for two plays: A German black comedy called The Visit and A Streetcar Named Desire. I didn’t think I’d done too well, because I find it difficult to show my full potential in auditions. I know I could be the best damn Stella you’ve ever seen, but I find it hard to show you that when I’ve had fifteen minutes to prepare and I’ve never met you before. I think I did a little better on the audition for The Visit, simply because it was a more light-hearted script and it gave the opportunity to show a wider range of emotion than did the Streetcar piece. Well, last night I had a call-back for Streetcar, which was... interesting. Rather than being another audition as such, it was a workshop, which involved torturous dance style physical warm-ups, group discussions, improvised scenes and, of course, the all-important group audition staple: a game of stuck-in-the-mud. Again, I don’t think I really had the chance to show what I can do to my full potential and I’m not quite sure what the director was looking for in our efforts last night. So, I’m not holding my breath, but I am, however, now off to check the noticeboards to read the cast lists. Wish me luck!

Childsplay

I think it needs to be said that I believe I was sorely deprived having been denied the ruins of castles as I was growing up.

Having woken up (late) on Saturday morning, and facing a day without plans or designs I decided that maybe it was time to do one of the things my Lonely Planet Guide to Britain suggests is a good thing to do when in Swansea. So I caught a bus to Mumbles, the little village just outside of town. The village's real name is Oystermouth (which is really a bastardisation of the Welsh name for the village which I have forgotten), but sometime in the village's history it was visited by some French Sailors who nicknamed the town "Mamelles" in reference to the two suggestive lumps of geography in the coastline. The English then misquoted that as "Mumbles" and it stuck. This little village therefore has the dubious honour of being named after French Boobies.

But anyway, I caught the bus to Mumbles and had a wander around this pleasant, touristy, little seaside place and eventually found my way up to the ruins of Oystermouth Castle. Here, I got to climb turrets and stroll around battlements and lurk in basement chambers, and as exciting as it is for me to do this now, I kept thinking of how much the ten-year-old, or eleven-year-old me would have loved this. How, if I lived in close proximity to a site like this, it would have become my haunt. I was a very daggy child (not too much has changed?) and totally oblivious to the social standing I would have been losing, I would have paraded around this place as if I were the Lady of the Castle. Dragging my two sisters along for the game, we would have imagined grand balls and banquets, and arranged for diplomatic missions of the utmost importance to be carried out. We would have organised the great household, wooed non-existent Princes and given birth to great Kings and dynasties. Or, if I could lure some of the local boys into my game of fantasy, we would have staged epic battles and sieges and I'd have brandished my sword beside them as a warrior Princess.

All these things were done, of course, for I had a wild imagination. But instead the backdrop was the Australian bushland, and we built out stately homes in the roots of the paperbark trees. And whilst I wouldn't change that for anything, wandering through the foundations of a building that has seen all that we imagined, I wished that I was ten or eleven years old again, just for a moment, so that I could stand in the ruins of the room above the gate and order the drawbridge to be drawn and the portcullis to be lowered and for my soldiers positioned around the battlements to let fly their arrows and cauldrons of boiling oil. Instead, I listened to a very enthusiastic man talk about its history and the families that had lived within its walls, and I tried to imagine it being built, structure by structure over the centuries, before its roofs crumbled and the windows were blown out and before grass lined the floor and creepers climbed its walls. I think castles are my favourite form of architectural sightseeing. Churches are often better preserved and splendid, but castles are somehow just more romantic.

Strange, Sometimes.

I always knew it supposedly happened – I'd read about it in Cosmo's Top Flirting Tips, for one thing – but I don't think I really believed that people did it. Not real people. Movie people, maybe; trashy romance novel characters, definitely. But to a slightly hippy, slightly out-of-place Australian girl in jeans and boots in a bar full of mini skirts and sequins? You don't expect her notice a boy on the other side of the bar room, and, finding him attractive, catch his eye and smile. And, having done that, you don't then expect him to smile back, and make his way across the people-filled room to introduce himself. I mean, the eye-contact-and-smile technique doesn't really work, does it? It’s a glamour magazine ploy.

Well, the alcohol probably helped. Emma, my new flatmate had just moved in, and we'd spent all afternoon – she, her friends and I – trying to understand the instruction leaflet to her new Ikea furniture and failing miserably. So, what can you do in a situation like that but buy a couple of bottles of wine and bang a little harder with the hammer. By the time we’d made what came out of the box look somewhat like the display model at the store, we'd finished the wine, and a couple of the beers and someone suggested absinthe shots at the apartment across the road. I think that was the turning point.

So when the guy with scruffy hair and natty shirt came over, I was full of Dutch courage and confidence and bravado and introduced myself. And he said, in a thick Welsh accent, that his name was ‘Giz’. I may have snorted into my drink, and asked him ‘exactly what sort of a name was “Giz?”’

‘A nickname, obviously.’ He replied.

Obviously.

‘Short for what?’ I asked, and he said something incomprehensible in Welsh, starting with a ‘G’.

‘ “Giz” it is then,’ I replied.

We danced, and attempted to yell a conversation over the music. Eventually, we gave it up, and just kissed. I lost the girls I had come in with, and he lost the lads he'd come in with and so we went to another club (and he paid for me to go in, and bought me a drink, and, like a true gentleman, he wouldn't listen to my feminist-styled complaints that I could pay for myself.)Here, he danced with me, and I was happily surprised to find that he could dance, not just sway on the dance-floor, vaguely in time with the music. We kissed, and when the lights came on, without really meaning to, I took him home.

It's strange how some things work out. I knew nothing about him when I caught his eye across the barroom, nothing except that he was a cute, slim boy who smiled at me when I smiled at him. He could have been a bogan, he could have been boring. By law of averages, he should have been English. He could have been a sleaze and he could have been only interested in a one night stand. Instead, the guy I woke up next to on Friday morning was entertaining and warm and open. He's travelled and seen amazing parts of the world. He tells interesting anecdotes in a thick Welsh accent, knows the local area and talks casually of showing it to me. And he wants to take me out again, so that the eye-contact across the bar becomes a meeting, not just a hook-up. And he takes me out dancing again, and doesn't mind when I drink a little too quickly causing me to freak out in an overcrowded club that smells of sweat and pot smoke and he doesn't complain when I ask to be taken home. He promises to call when he gets back from Japan next week, and then calls from the airport before he leaves.

It’s funny how sometimes you things just happen. I'm not used to it, but I guess you have to fluke it sometimes.

Here, here. Here.

I started this journal so that I wouldn’t have to email everyone all the time. Instead, I find that I neglect my journal by spending all my time online emailing people. Sorry, poor journal and dear readers. So, this is an update. Nothing poetic, just the facts.

I’ve been in the United Kingdom for a month now. Been to London (you heard about that), and an archaeological dig in Arram (and you heard about that) and York (gorgeous buildings, so much history, good ghost stories). And I went and visited the rellies in Somerset. I’d forgotten how many there were! And they all wanted to meet their Australian cousin. I was taken out to dinner, and taken to the castles and taken on a walk up the Glastonbury Tor.

And now I am in Swansea. I’ve been settled here for three weeks now, although I have done a few jaunts around the countryside in that time. It all just kinda fell into place really. I’d been off the train for two hours and decided to take a walk to uni. At uni, I saw a poster advertising for a flatmate wanted and I gave the girl a call. An hour later, and I was sitting having a beer in the local pub and I had a house and a contact. Liz has been great, showing me around the place and helping me settle in. But she doesn’t live with me, she had to move back to Cardiff to study at the uni there. Instead I live with two English girls, Emma and Hannah, who are lovely and we’re all getting along alright so far. And the third housemate is a Welsh girl named Hayley. I don’t see much of her – she’s not a student , she works full time, and when she’s at home she’s hiding in her room. But I get along well with her when we sit and chat while she watches her soaps on TV.

There are very few Welsh people around though. It seems like nearly everyone I meet is English – especially at the uni. Which is kinda strange and a bit of a bummer. I did really want think there would be more Welsh people around. You know, seeing as it is Wales and all.

Its fresher’s week this week at uni. During the day there are uni things to do, like enrol and go on campus tours and sign up for clubs (Tomorrow, I join the Theatre Society, I am hanging out to be in a production again). At night, everyone in town goes crazy, meeting up with all those friend they haven’t seen in months and all the big nightclubs throw huge parties. There are so many people out and about – it all gets a little overwhelming. I hope to find somewhere a little more chilled out once all this settles down. Classes start next week, and frankly, I’m pretty keen to go. I’ve picked my subjects and they all sound really exciting. I won’t deny it, I am a history geek.

And I’m enjoying it here, especially now that I know some people (and I’ve even had a date!)Brett’s now in London, and I’ll be visiting him soon. It’ll be good to see a familiar face, although I think I’ve forgotten what the accent sounds like.

And so that, as they say, is the facts. Feel updated now?

Swansea

There is beauty here, too. You just have to look a little harder to find it. The outline of a three pointed autumn leaf stencilled in brown on the side of a townhouse wall. The clang of an old-style bell at the front door of a renovations shop. The broken stairs covered in a green, bushy creeper. The smell of saltwater and so many shells that they crunch underfoot. The surprise at finding castle ruins in the midst of all the modern shops. A Narnia-like little path over a creek, through the trees in the park, which blocks of the sound of the traffic and changes the world around you.

I said this was an ugly little city. I may have lied.

Near Beverly, Yorkshire

Things I learnt while working on an archaeological dig in Arram:

– That despite the entire UK being small enough to fit twice into NSW with room left over, something as simple as travelling from London to Beverley, which should really only take about three and a half hours, takes over five hours, and involves two buses and three trains.

– That all Brits, whether they follow cricket or not, upon hearing my accent, like to rub it in that they are beating us at Cricket. I’d just like to say, it took you eighteen damn years! I wouldn’t gloat just yet.

– That staying in a Fourteenth-Century-Dominican-Friary-cum-Youth-Hostel practically all by yourself sounds awesome, but is damn creepy come midnight.

– That archaeologists are really passionate about archaeology. After six days with these guys, I think we had a total of five conversations that didn’t revolve around a dig. Four of those five conversations were about where we were going to go for beer tonight.

– That archaeologists find putting the Australian in the tent marked ‘beer tent’ pretty damn amusing.

– That dirt ain’t dirt, apparently. There are many, many types of dirt, and just as many words to describe them.

– That after digging at the same bare hole for two days, finding a bit of broken Roman Pottery at the bottom is very exciting.

– That it’s pretty exciting to look out over a trench and suddenly see the blobs of different coloured dirt resolve into a picture. You finally know what everyone else was talking about, and can see where the Iron Age hut and its surrounding pit used to be. It’s like watching one of those 3D pictures coming into focus.

– Holding something in your hand that was made over 2000 years ago is awe inspiring.

– That there is a huuuge difference between the East Yorkshire accent and the West Yorkshire accent. Apparently.

– That to a German, the Australian accent sounds a lot like the East Yorkshire accent.

– That archaeology is fifty per cent geology, fifty per cent history, and I’m not such a big fan of geology.

– That I don’t think I am archaeologist material, I think I’ll stick to the book side of history.

– That the East Yorkshire archaeologists find it very amusing to regale the Australian with stories of ghostly monks before she has to go back to the Friary at night....

– That I want to come back to Yorkshire.

Corsets, and Tumblers on Ropes

This morning I wake up early because the French girl on the other bunk has been snoring all night and it's impossible to sleep in. My sleep cycle still hasn't synced to the northern hemisphere anyway, and so I am awake and alert. And I pull out the guide book whilst munching on the hostel's breakfast of jam on toast and decide that today is the day I visit Shakespeare's globe.

I am in love with the Underground. I purchase an all day ticket, and then my journey is easy. I cross vast distances all under the city and pop up next door to my destination. Or sometimes not. The closest station to the Globe is London Bridge, and I climb up the stairs there, and then have to make my way through large walled in markets and past little cafes and wine bars to the side of the Thames. I stand, perplexed, for ten minutes outside of a bar called "Walkabout". They claim to be Aussie and sell kangaroo burgers. I am disturbed.

The Globe is easy to find, and not as expensive as some other attractions. A slightly bored looking guide takes us around the rebuilt theatre. It’s built to the same specifications as Shakespeare’s Globe and using the same techniques as would have been used in Elizabethan times, although it’s not in the same location as the original. We stand in the pit in front of the stage and then we climb to the highest galleries. It’s an open air stage and the clouds look like they're about to open onto us – very authentic. I buy a ticket for the afternoon's matinee of Pericles and then wander around the museum.

In each year's season, the Globe puts on about five or six productions. Some of them are Shakespearean, some of them are not. Some of them are modern performances, and some of them are produced just as they would have been in Shakespeare's day. That means no light but what the sun provides, few props, costumes made from fabrics available in Elizabethan times, in Elizabethan style using Elizabethan methods. And girls’ parts are played by men. In the museum, they call everyone's attention to a small stage. Here, a costume mistress and her assistant bring out the outfit the actress playing Ophelia wore in last production of Hamlet, and offer to dress someone in it to give an idea of what the actors go through, and also what Elizabethan women went through. Of course, I volunteer myself to be dressed.

I am taken backstage and given knitted silk stockings and a linen chemise. Back onstage, my stockings are cross-gartered and leather shoes are put on my feet. I am strapped into a corset - a real corset - and I have to sit tall or I can no longer breathe. Next are hooped petticoats and a roll of fabric which ties around my bum to give me hips, and then a heavy skirt and jacket. Linen cuffs are tied to my wrists, and a linen cap to my head, and finally I am dressed. As if I were to be sitting in my chambers all day and not greeting people. I can barely move, and even sitting down takes preparation and thought – care to arrange my skirts just so – and this is the Elizabethan equivalent of tracksuit pants and slippers.

It takes nearly as long to undress me as to dress me, and when I am finished it is time for the show to begin. I am seated in the galleries, because I am too tired to stand in the pit. The play is a modern version of Pericles, but there is still very little set or costumes, and the only light is the sun (behind the clouds). Half the cast is a troupe of acrobats and to indicate a ship on sea during a storm they swing and hurl and climb and tumble on ropes hung from all around the theatre. The actors interact with the audience and the whole thing is much like it would have been in Shakepeare’s day - big on music, and sound and spectacle. Nothing at all like seeing a civilised production of Julius Ceaser at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre.

Afterwards, I catch a train back to the city, and wander through the streets. I find a little Italian restaurant and have pasta and wine for dinner. The place is tiny, yet the head waiter is manic, taking everything on himself whilst the rest of the staff stand behind the counter polishing glasses. I am stunned to see someone at the next table light up a cigarette. Apparently, you can still do that here.

With jetlag, I went to bed early, it is going to be a long journey in the morning. I think tonight, I will sleep straight through the snores.

London, Now.

I’m in London, still, and I am very, very tired. Today, I looked at the tombs of Kings and Poets, stroked the stone carvings of their faces. I strolled along the Thames, bathed in the accents around me, and smiled big, silly, ecstatic smiles to be on the other side of the world, looking at things that were old before white man had even heard of Australia. There is nowhere I have to be, except where my feet and sense of adventure lead me. I have no obligations yet, and sitting sipping tea I pondered a guide book like the touristy traveller I am almost ashamed to be, and picked, based on proximity, the sites I would like to visit, and visited them. The Temple Church was closed until further notice, but rather than disappointed, I simply shrugged my shoulders and found something else to visit. In the evening, I ran late to see a production of As You Like It; I giggled though the first half, and struggled to keep my eyes open through the second half as jet lag hit. Tomorrow, I’m going to visit Shakespeare’s Globe.

Love you to wee bitsies and I mean it when I say I wish you were here.

Hyperactive Jetlag

I’m here. I am so out of it. My body does not have any idea of what time it is, nor what state is should be in therefore is compensating by just being exhausted. I want to walk around. After nearly thirty hours of travel time, I never want to sit again. I want to curl into a little ball and sleep for the next three days. I want to cram everything there is to do in London into three days. I can’t wait to go exploring.

I wanted this, my first entry from a new country, to be interesting and exciting. I wanted to tell you about the fully-veiled Muslim women I saw in KL airport, about the Egyptian men in turbans, how there was three distinct smells between the plane and the customs desk at Heathrow (detergent, sharp and overly clean in the halls; curry-stuffy and hot in the line up for passport check, surrounded by Indian women in sari’s; and an exotic perfume that wafted by me in the wake of a hidden Muslim woman). But I am too tired for length and eloquence. I just wanted to let you all know that I am here and I am safe. Tonight, I sleep. Tomorrow the adventures can begin.

Looking Forward.

I’m even looking forward to the plane trip. Two hours in a cramped car with emotional best friends and excited parents, followed by two and a half hours of agitation in the airport, torn between wanting desperately to get on the plane, and get the adventure on the way, and wanting to spend every single last second I can with my favourite people. I’ll check in, make sure they’ve got my vegetarian meals and try and get a window seat, or failing that and aisle seat, or failing that, anything but a seat in the centre of the plane. I’ll pick around the duty-free stores with Dad and Jess, and Mum’s maternal instincts will override her anti-commercialism and she will panic that I haven’t packed enough underwear, jumpers, chocolate biscuits and buy them all for me. I won’t want to go through security until I have to, but I’ll also worry the whole time that I’ve left it too late and I’m going to miss my flight. Through the gates, and it wont hit me yet that I am on my own. That won’t happen for hours yet. Not til I am exhausted and hungry and smelly from travel and then I’ll just want the comforts and ease of home. It won’t be until I want it, that I’ll realise what I can’t have.

But back to the flight: for the first hour, it’ll all be very exciting: the take-off (hopefully watched through the window next to my seat) will keep me entertained for its duration, then the exploration of the radio and movie channels, and the in-flight magazine. My flight is a late flight, so I doubt it will be long before they hand out the blankies and the eye-patches and switch off the cabin lighting. I can’t tell yet which will be strongest – my excitement which will keep me awake, or my instinctual sleep mechanism that sends me into unconsciousness as soon as I board a moving vehicle. I’m hoping I’ll be able to sleep; time flies when you sleep.

Eight and a half hours later, I will land in Kuala Lumpur. This will be the test – seven hours in KL airport. Not long enough to actually leave, it is long enough to be truly annoying. But I am looking forward to this leg of the journey, too. I’ll arrive at 4.45am local time, just in time to find a cafe for a morning cup of tea and breakfast. I look forward to searching out the suitable cafe, settling in with a pot of tea, pulling out a journal and watching the other travellers go past. When I can no longer stand sitting still, I’ll take a walk around the airport to stretch my legs. Last time I had a stop over in an airport, I had a huge bag stuffed with carry on luggage. This time I anticipate having nothing but a small and light backpack, no trouble at all to sling over my shoulder. I will browse through the shops and allow the multiple languages to flow around me, drowning out my native, boring, common and egotistical English, no longer the all important only language. I hope to find an internet cafe, and leave you all long emails, telling you of my so small adventures in the hours since I left your side. Once I have nothing more to say, I will find a table in a cafe again, perhaps the same one, and I will have lunch and still more tea. In such ways I will pass the time in KL

The last leg of the journey is also the longest. Thirteen and more hours, in my little seat by the window (I am being optimistic here). And now all my tricks for self entertainment will come out. The long and trashy novel, the 150 hours of music on my personal music player, writing in one of three travel journals, whatever movies I haven’t already watched, and when all else fails, solitaire. Perhaps there will be someone interesting to talk to sitting next to me. And hopefully I will be able to sleep.

At six o’clock at night I arrive at Heathrow. After all the rigmarole of clearing customs and baggage collection, I have a trip on the tube to the centre of London. Here, I have a bed in a hostel booked for me, and three days in which to sleep, sightsee and adjust. Then it’s up north. Camping in the rain and searching for ancient Roman remains.

A month and a half ago, I was nothing but eager excitement, but now as the time approaches I swing from one state to its opposite: at times I am boldness and adventure and anticipation. At others, I am nervousness and anxiousness and I am missing you already. But as I draw nearer to the date, I am reassured by all the little pieces I have planned falling into place. I am calm now, and ready.

I am missing you already.