UK 7. York. It smells of dripping

I went to York last weekend. And what a lovely city it is. Ancient, historic, small enough to negotiate on foot, and with a smell not experienced since Dave and I rode through Footsgray last summer. I don't know if it's the river, if there's a rendering plant upwind, or if the weekend before last had been the annual roast-lamb cook-off.

Anyway, it was the first place I'd done the tourist thing at for a while (hence the near total lack of news from me) and I give it the big thumbs up. Not only was it a gloriously sunny day, but the Minster has great views from the tower which is, unfortunately, caged to prevent falls, and this takes some of the fun out of it, I think. Also, it doesn't have a tour-guide like Ely cathedral, so you have to skip up the 275 uneven steps on your own. (I only counted 271, but I'm never sure whether or not to count landings.)

The Minster also has a tremendous crypt display that explains the Roman and Norman history of the place. (The Norman construction techniques I described in an earler email were about to bring the whole place down in the 1960s, and foundation work uncovered quite a bit of history.) Emperor Constantine was crowned there around 307 (?), there are Roman artifacts and little wooden models, an original wall painting and an original Roman culvert that still flows to the river. Like any body of water / hole in the ground that is part of a display, the culvert is full of tourists' coins. Step around the corner to the next vertical level of excavation and you're in the middle ages, showing foundations and an original well (no water, plenty of coins). Another corner, and there is the OLDEST stained glass window in the country: mid 12th century, great condition, lots of colours. Breath-taking.

Also breath-taking in York, but for different reasons, is the Jorvik Viking Centre. Basically, whenever anything gets built in York that needs serious foundations, Norman, Viking or Roman ruins are uncovered. In this case, they decided to earn a pound or seven point two by recreating a little Viking village with sounds, smells and, oh joy, animatronic people! And they didn't stop there. Rather than walking around the recreated streets in your own time, looking at original stuff in a suitable setting, (as you do at the exemplary York Castle Museum, a strangely captivating collection of everyday items from the past few hundred years, whose living room displays full of china figurines lead you to the inescapable conclusion that the English have no taste whatsoever), you are transported along in suspended plastic cocoons that provide audio comentary and twist at the right moment to point out what to look at. The joke's been made before, but this is truly the It's A Small (Viking) World Afterall ride.

And for that, I felt decidely ripped off. Sure, it had animatronics (unfortunately, there were no animatronic animals: the wizzing dog was quite inert), but it lacked original artifacts, dictated the time spent and had a really cheesy time machine gag at the start of it.

I bet the kids love it, though.

**

Meanwhile, this country is getting cold (morning ice) and dark (dusk a bit after 3:00) and as a result it doesn't feel at all Christmassy. Oh, and they're STILL going on about the rugby world cup. Give it a rest! Of course, they won't: they're still going on about WWII, and you know my position on that.

UK 6. A public service announcement for foreigners

There are some things the Brits (or should that be the English? I wouldn't want to offend anyone) just don't have a full working understanding of. As a public service to those of you either living here or thinking of coming here, I have provided a short list to help you understand. Don't be deceived by the length: I wrote it on a train rather than arse around at work. I don't have time for that!

1. Hot weather

It was quite warm here in August. It maxed at around 37°C one day and was in the high twenties quite often. Now, many Brits holiday in the Mediterranean and Australia and know what a hot day is. None the less, this freak occurance of pleasant weather brought the country to its knees. It was really quite funny. Train tracks buckled (I promise you this is true), delaying the already third-world public transport system; thousands of people got sickeningly sunburnt (keep your clothes ON in public! See Public Decency in a later chapter (if I write it). And use sunscreen! That burning sensation you feel - it's you BURNING!); and, perhaps most difficult of all, people had to stop complaining about the miserable weather. On the upside though, they quickly started complaining about the nice weather instead. There was a letter to the editor of The Times that I was sure, up until the last sentence, was meant to be ironic. "It's hot", the lady wrote, "the garden is wilting, the trains aren't working, I have a right to complain." And then, just when an Australian author would end with a joke, sarcasm or wit, she ends with "yours sincerely..."

There was also a half page article in the Times one day explaining why the hot weather sucked. The best reason was that studies (including one that used the LA "Rodney King" Riots as an example) showed a link between high temperatures (ie, above a scorching 26°C) and riots. Social problems in winter are manageable, the article seemed to suggest, but come a burst of sunshine and the heat drives people mad, resulting in violence and mass public unrest. As an afterthought it was conceded that just maybe the drinking of barrel-loads of lager in the hot sun might also be a contributing factor.

2. Lager

Despite the huge consumption of the stuff in this country, especially when it's time for a bit of social tension, English-brewed lager is terrible. Which is odd, considering how proud of their beer the English are. But of course, that's the warm, flat, unrefreshing stuff that doesn't taste very nice that they're proud of. And it's good to proud of something, and I'm sure it's just an aquired taste. But the lager! Even the English admit they can't do it properly. Rule of thumb: if it's from a tap, it's been locally brewed (despite names like Grolsch and Carling) and will taste like it's been in the barrel a decade or two too long. Avoid it. Stick to imported stuff. What I'd give for a Cascade right now.....

3. Washing

In Asia, Australia and America people wash in clean water. In England they wash in dirty water.

I had thought that ablution-related inadequacies stemmed from this country's developing-world water infrastructure (eg, 30% of water is lost to leaking pipes, which makes you wonder what the sewerage system is like), but closer investigation found it's an entirely optional state of affairs. Consider the following:

1. Basins have two taps
2. Showers are rare

The only logical explanation is that a constant supply of clean water is in some way considered inferior to soapy water. One theory put to me is that a bath is considered more luxurious as, no doubts, are such ostentacious displays of wealth such as separate hot water spouts. A penchant for comfort makes sense considering the other peculiarity of the English bathroom: carpet.

It seems a bathmat is too high maintenance so it's carpet by the bath, under the basin and around the toilet to catch any stray drips and give the place a homely smell. An old-persons-homely smell.

4. Fashion

If you want to go incognito in this country, especially outside London, the following fashion tips will help.

A. Football strip passes for fashion. So buy a socer team jersey and you'll pass for a Pom. You are not, of course, to wear these to play sport, only on the street. Tucked in with some nice pleated chinos and you've hit the pinnacle of high fashion!

For the ladies, you too can go for a team top, or why not try tracksuit pants with high heels?

B. If your strip is in the wash, however (look, even a washing machine has a rinse cycle! Your bath DOESN'T) don't despair. French Connection sells nearly half of all clothes in the UK, so you can still fit in with one of their T-shirts carrying an hilarious play on the abbreviation FCUK. FCUKWIT is my favourite. (For further insight into the wonders of English wit, I refer the reader to Mark Twain's essay "How To Tell A Story".)

UK 5. Notes on Peterborough

THE CITY

Peterborough is a city by virtue of its cathedral, a beautiful medieval job that used to carry the bones of Catherine the Whatever, one of Henry VIII's birds. She was exhumed and shifted to Westminster, though, so there is no longer any significance to the building other than its architecture which, although striking, is similar to all the other ancient cathedrals dotting this country.

Without the cathedral the place would of course only be a town. It has about 150,000 people (more on them later) and all the excitement of Wangaratta on 70s Disco Nite at the Albion. This makes it a peaceful place and in 5 minutes on the bike you can be in the countryside admiring the views of the flat fields of crops and the River Nene (a bit like the Yarra only less brown). Also, Peterborough is one of the major stops on the train lines so you can get places pretty quickly: London is just under an hour away and only costs £31.00 ($77.50) return off-peak. It's rather flat, though, so I'd probably choose Wangaratta over Peterborough because Wang is so much closer to the mountains. And the roads are more conducive to cycling, being wider and surfaced with tarmac that doesn't melt over 25°C.

THE FLAT

I've rented a flat. It's on the river. Well, the building's on the river, with beautiful views. I face towards the cathedral, instead, which is fine because I don't need to worry about not having an alarm clock as the delivery trucks for the Asda supermarket across the way provide that service free of charge. It's a spacious enough flat, with room enough to turn around in, but not enough to swing a cat, at least not without serious injury to the cat. I need to duck through the doors, but that's the same everywhere in this country, and the hot water service hasn't quite come to terms with what its role in the overall plan is. Naturally, the bathroom is carpeted because its a wet area and the shower was only there thanks to the previous (Australian) tenant. I had to provide my own shower curtain and rod, though. My landlord is quite mad, but a friend here says his is the same. He explains everything. In detail. It took 2 1/2 hours to show me the flat. It's a single bedroom flat. I'm not exaggerating. "Vis is da winda, an' y'see it's got vees andles wot you can turn, like vis, and push an da winda opens. And ven, watch carefly, like, if ya want jus a bit a air comin in, you can pull da winda shut again, but not all the way or you wown get any air in. Oh, an I almos forgot, vair are keys ere and you put em in this bit of da andle and turn em in da lock so you can't open it, like." And on and on and on and on and on. Again, I am not exaggerating.

So this place was furnished and the first thing I did was to buy new linen (I realy don't like my linen furry), remove the lace curtains (tasteful) and the lampshapes (ditto), and the porcelain doll on the bedside table. ("Vat's one of dem porcelain dolls wot was poplar in da Edwardian times which is when my ability to recognise taste clearly ceased to be a goin concern.") There was even an iron and a board (designed for midgets with one leg shorter than the other) and a plethora of unstable chairs. Oddly, there were no plates on the wall.

There's a also a vacuum. Fascinating! I hear you cry. But wait. This vacuum is clearly in as much confusion as the boiler about what it's meant to do, and so Emerton, my insane landlord, who's a cleaner, by the way, demonstrated how to use it. With the shortest, narrowest attachment to get the most suck, bent double, doing a room a day, or maybe just half an hour a day, so that after 5 days you can repeat the cycle, not forgetting to vacuum the bed after use because I like to go to bed filthy because no-one likes showers in this country and baths (sorry, barves) are much more popular, if less effective at making you clean.

The shower is wonderful, though. Bless the previous tenants' Australian hearts. It's a pump with a built in heating element so the boiler (tepider?) doesn't even enter into the equation. These things excite you after two weeks at Mike's place sitting in the bath with a handheld nozzle and near zero water pressure and NO SOAP. (Thank god I had my own. I know I haven't been reading the papers, so you have to tell me if a new study has shown soap to be bad for you. It's as rare as hen's teeth in this country, it really is.) Anyway, my shower has something resembling water pressure, if you kinda squint and look at it from a distance.

THE LOCAL POPULATION

I think I should perform a public service whilst I'm here and locate and destroy that centre of Peterboroughian entertainment: the Ugly Tree. It's clearly a public safety issue, judging by the number of people who have fallen out of it (nearly everyone), not to mention a public health and well-being issue, judging my how many branches they hit on the way down (nearly every one). Tattoos are hugely popular, too, as are cigarettes and being overweight. Everytime I come back from London I step off the train and a part of me gives a cry and goes into a coma. I think it's my libido.

I've got to get transferred to London.

To find out why, stay tuned. I haven't a lot to say about the place other than I blundered across a charging of the guard at Buck House and got to follow it up to St James Palace, which was cool; it's vibrant and exciting and full of life and international (really international, not international like Sydney likes to think it is); and the high foreign population raises the BQ well into the positive; and there's more work there; and stuff to do; and museums and art galleries and shopping, even. (Actually, that's it, you've heard why, now.) Which reminds me. Peterborough, according to my Lonely Planet, likes to advertise itself as the shopping capital of England. No, really! This is like saying Wangaratta likes to advertise itself as the surfing capital of Australia. I guess it's because Pboro has a bunch of chain stores like Marks and Spencer, Woolworths and the Pound Shop. Woo-hoo. And they all shut early, too.

Anyway, everyone's back in the office so I'd best sign off for now. Once more, apologies for any advertising placed on this email by my IT department. Feel free to write and remind me that there is an outside world and that maybe I'm not stuck in the godforsaken third world hell hole for ever. Geez I've got to get to London.

UK 4. Beauty Quotient

I thought you might appreciate this handy new tool I developed just this morning. We've all heard of Intelligence Quotients (IQ) and Emotional Quotients (EQ). Well, now there is the Beauty Quotient (BQ).

***

The Beauty Quotient provides a means for men, (and women with appropriate substitutions), of assessing the average beauty of a city's inhabitants, vital when trying to determine whether it's worth visiting in order to go on the pull. It is an absolute scale, allowing different cities to be compared quickly and easily.

Scoring:
This is based on the system of keeping count in Black Jack and has no sensitivity beyond the basics. Only count people of a do-able age. Score as follows:

Pretty girls +1

If you have to think about it
(or you would need 3 or 4 pints
before she were pretty) 0

Ugly girls
(or if you would need more than 4 pints) -1

Bonus Points:
As an option, use Bonus Points: +2 for someone so hot you'd do her right there, in the shopping centre, maybe in the photo booth; -2 for someone so repellant she could legally be shot for sport and the good of humanity.

Tally:
Keep a running tally of the score. If the BQ is positive, enjoy the city. If negative, leave.

***

Currently, I'm on -3 for Peterborough, but have only been at it since this morning and have spent most of the day in the office. Cambridge would be positive (probably around +3, from memory).

(Buenos Aires scores +8. No jokes. I was walking down the street there one day and there was a five storey poster of Mila Jovovich advertising makeup and I thought to myself, "she looks kind of plain." NJL 6/10/6)

UK 3. Ely. A History Lesson

Well I never thought I'd say this about a tour of a dead person's house, but Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely is great.

Not only does it have animatronics (and you know how I love those. No furry animals, though), but it has informative commentary and good displays that you can touch, smell and even try on. (There was a load of period hats and other clothes in one room.) There was even a recipe card for ye boringe olde Englishe foode so you, too, can live a malnourished life like the Lord Protector of England. (He died a natural death, but was exhumed, hanged and beheaded, just to make triply sure that he was no longer a going concern.)

The only thing I'd have liked more of was history of the Revolution and republic, not knowing much about it, but they assume visitors will already know it all. The video presentation, for example, just talked about Oli the bloke. They made this as authentic as possible, though, narrating it in the character of a servant with a fierce and incomprehensible regional accent. This really helped the viewer understand how Mr C must have felt when he asked his servant something and was none the wiser afterwards. Of course, it may be that Cromwell had a similar accent and so understood everything his servant said. It's unlikely anyone understood *him* in this case. This would mean the entire civil war thing was probably just due to a communication breakdown.

This tour was capped off by one of Ely Cathedral, a real beauty and dating to the 11th Century. Unfortunately, Henry VIII, when he wanted to "dump his slapper", as they said in those days, caused the split with the RC church. He then ordered the dissolution of the monasteries and the removal of all the colourful paints that once covered the interiors of cathedrals to be scraped off. I hadn't realised before that these places weren't just big, barren stone places, but were actually kitted out to be friendly and welcoming. Some traces of colour are still left, but after several hundred years it's a tiny bit faded.

The Victorians came through and revitalised the place some time later (it had apparently gone to the dogs) but there is a lot of original Norman left in the structure. The Normans, though, weren't the best in this department. The place has hollow walls filled with rubble, which is causing them to bulge. Also, various bits fell down several times. Mainly roof structures, but also the northwest transept in 14something. They never rebuilt this bit (current replacement cost £54m), and this is a little surprising considering the medieval love for rebuilding. Take the bridge at Avignon (Pont St Bénézet) for example:

This guy (a shepherd called Bénézet) says the Virgin Mary tells him in a vision to whack up a bridge across the river at such-and-such a spot. He does this, but it collapses. No worries, I'll bung up another and she'll be apples (he says to himself, in the idiom of the time). Not long after, that also crashes into the Rhône. (He became a saint for this. Whether it's because he had a vision or if he's the patron saint of unstable bridges, I don't know. If it's the latter, the designer of the bridge at Tacoma Narrows must be vying for his patron saint job! But if you just need to have visions, then my mate Mark in Brisbane must be the holiest guy in town.) This goes on for around 500 years until someone finally has the brainwave: Maybe this spot isn't too flash. Let's leave the half-a-bridge up and charge people a fiver to get to the middle of the river only.

Hope you enjoyed the history lesson. (A tad longer than I'd planned, but that's what happens when you procrastinate.) Let me know if you didn't and you'll never hear from me again. Ha ha!

UK 2. Peterborough and Cambridge

DATELINE: Peterborough and Cambridge 8/6/3
With a population of 65m people you'd think the English could avoid inbreeding. (I mean, the rules are fairly simple - if her parents were yours too, don't shag her.) But no. If looks are anything to go by, brotherly love, or "frucking", is alive and well in this part of England.

(Disclaimer: Not ALL of England. And I'm not saying all English people fell out of the Ugly Tree. Far from it. All my English friends are great looking people. Just that this city seems to have a few people who didn't just fall out of the aforementioned tree, but hit every branch on the way down. It's not like Marseilles where a bloke might get whiplash walking down the street. Anyway, it's a friggin joke so stop taking everything so damned seriously!)

What I've also learnt in the last few days is that Viz, like Dilbert, is a documentary. See the attached photo VIZ fat slag.jpg. Nuff said (if you've ever read Viz).

Actually, I exaggerate (No! Surely not, Nick. Next you'll be saying you use gross generalisations): England does have some very beautiful people. A lot of them are clearly of foreign extraction (eg the Indian stunner on the train) and as for the good-looking Whities, I suppose they choose to congregate where the opportunities are. Such as anywhere other than Peterborough. Cambridge for example.

Cambridge is crawling with talent, and not just the Isaac Newton kind. His statue is actually in the chapel at Trinity College, alongside Tennyson, Bacon and others. (How was that for a smooth segue?)

Naturally I did what anyone with my interest in science would do: I admired the statue of Newton, then went for lunch and a beer at the Great Eagle - Watson & Cricks' favourite pub. This was almost as great as the old Melbourne Uni routine: skip lectures and have lunch and a beer at the Prince Alfred - Dave's favourite pub.

(Of course no historical outing is complete without a loud American and the Great Eagle had one of those. What is it with them? Can they not control the volume or is it a function of their accent? Or are they somehow convinced that not only can the person they're talking to not hear them, but that someone out the back can't either?)

There was also time for a bit of a stroll along the Cam, looking at people in silly hats playing dodgem-punts while trying desperately to look relaxed and not at all scared of falling in, and past the lawns at The Backs (ie, the back of the colleges. Good name. I guess Tennyson came up with that one) where students were busy practicing their accents, ("Bee Emm Dubble You... Imm Dubble Ewe..."). The punting business must be pretty lucrative, though. You buy a punt and a pole and rent them out at £8/h and the best bit is, you don't even need to do the pushing! You get the clientele to do its own. Which often they can't, resulting in dodgem-punts and pained expressions.

Later, I went to Evensong at King's College Chapel. Crossley tipped me off about this with his DVD of the place. The organ was great and the choir sounded wonderful. The music really resonates in the chapel. Maybe they could cut down a little on the audience participation and readings, though. The spoken word does not fare as well acoustically as the music, as evidenced by the totally incomprehensible lesson, which went something along the lines of:

'...and the lord baketh huntoo sheen blatherwren dawg leeglebroth finsley common: "breaketh thee two eggs in bowlingstowmarket elmswell thurston bury st edmonds mixing until smooth warblemeister throat gobbler add raisins, hellfire & bramstroke dullingham harwich needham market into a hot oven for thirty minutes. Amen.'

In all, Cambridge is a top place. Lots of history, nice buildings. It would be a great place to go to uni. And the weather on the day was superb, which really made it. My rating: 4/5

Here's a riddle to end on. There are two 3D maps of the old part of town on the main drag so you can identify various old buildings. The names of the buildings are embossed on the side on these bronze maps, in English and Braille. I mean, what's the point? Think about it.

UK 1. Moving to the UK - the flight

DATELINE: Airport Lounge, Bangkok. 4/6/3
9 1/2 hours down and I've become familiar with films I never expected to, largely because I let them slide by at the cinema and wouldn't normally hire them on video. Those of you that saw my Matrix Reloaded review might be keen to see what kind of treatment I give to "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days"; "The Tuxedo" and "I Spy". Well, bad luck. (Oh, alright. Briefly: HTLAGITD: light, few laughs, delivered on expectations - adequate; TT: light, few laughs, fights weren't up to Jacky Chan's normal standard; IS: Dumb, few laughs, several unexplained jumps in the plot, no wonder it bombed. Saving grace was Famke Janssen, and Phil knows why.)

Bet no-one expected anything yet. But I have another couple of hours to go and there's not a lot to do.

DATELINE: Somewhere over Euorope, 5/6/3
There's a special kind of sleep that you can only get on a plane. It's the kind when you dream that you're in traction. (or the Spanish Inquisition if you're in Economy).

So I board the leg to London & manoeuvre my way into the empty front row of the top deck. Now, these Thai planes (or this one, at least) don't have in-seat personal entertainment systems (that's bad) but the armrest b/w the seats is removable (that's good). So by around 5am Melbourne time I'm laid out like a pretzel, punching out the Zs. That's 8pm London time, so that should give me about 8hrs of kip.

Cut to 01:30 (London time) and my neck's stiff and my back's sore and if I stay awake now I'll be operating on shift worker hours & won't last the day. Back to sleep.

By 03:30 I've stopped dreaming of traction & am now dreaming of something much worse - work! (and my back feels broken. Something to do with fitting 193cm of Nick into 110cm of seat.)

At 04:30 the sun is up, I've just woken from that dream where I'm back at uni with just days to go but haven't even started on my major project, breakfast is on the way and I figure I'm now on skier's hours and can go the distance.

It's now 05:30, I'm fed and watered, have had about 8 hours sleep and have missed most of Shanghai Noon. Lamb is on the MD player & Jackie Chan & Owen Wilson are having a naked pillow fight. I need a shower and a change of clothes but am reduced to wiping my face w/ a moistened towellette. Is this what it's like to be English?

(Actually, YES! I'm staying in a place with a bath, substandard plumbing and a handheld showerhead. GAAA!)