10-13 October 2008
If you'll all forgive me for not posting in a while, let me fill you in on some of my more notable activities in recent weeks. Unfortunately, this won't be too exhaustive of an account, but it'll have to suffice. So, let's begin.
Two weekends ago, I met up with Chris DeArmond in Bournemouth in Dorset. Now many of you are probably wondering: what and where is Dorset? Dorset is one of the historic shires or counties into which England has been divided for administrative purposes since the reign of King Alfred the Great during the Ninth Century. Mostly rural with a population that is among the whitest and the oldest in England, it's perhaps most famous for its beaches which have been a popular destination for the English dating to the eighteenth century and because it's the region where Thomas Hardy located the overwhelming majority of his novels and short stories; it lies squarely at the heart of his mystical country of "Wessex." Not exactly the most common destination for American students, a fact I now understand; but it was beautiful--an earthy, friendly place with rolling hills and open fields populated by sheep and lowing cattle.
I left early from Norwich on Friday the 10th, traveling by rail through London. I had to miss my seminar for "Modern Germany, 1866-1945," but I don't mind really. I read some of The Pianist (which, in a small sidenote, I found fairly compelling) and A.J.P. Taylor's The Course of German History (which I found intriguing, but infuriatingly dated and prejudiced) on the train, so it's not as terrible as it might otherwise appear. I reached Bournemouth around two o' clock in the afternoon, and I have to admit that I was a little disoriented when I discovered there was no place really handy where I could purchase a street map of Bournemouth. I wandered around for a while--DeArmond's flight from Malaga wasn't scheduled to arrive for another two hours--and I stopped for a bite to eat at the McDonald's in the Asda Supercenter across the street from the rail station and I probably paid too much for a municipal bus pass. (I know this because as I was exiting the Bournemouth Information Center, having paid 15 pounds for a 5-day pass, I heard an acquaintance of the man who just sold me my pass exclaim, "Hey! I thought you also had 3-day passes for 9 pounds?")
Eventually around quarter till four, I boarded the shuttle to the Bournemouth International Airport. John F. Kennedy International or DIA, it was not. As I wrote in my moleskine at the time (please forgive the overall self-indulgent tone):
Of course, I am certain that an element of my discomfort arises out of the fact that I am alone, seated on a planter outside the most pretentiously and most inaccurately named Bournemouth International Airport. [...] I do believe that Walker Field [the airfield in Grand Junction]--hell, the Montrose County Airport--is O'Hara International Airport next to this place. There's no sitting area in it whatsoever, only ticket counters, baggage claim, and security checkpoints.
Fortunately, the flight from Malaga arrived on time, and with it, DeArmond. It was funny seeing him for the first time since May--we didn't embrace or really show any signs of excitement. I was just seated casually flipping through Taylor's diatribe against the German nation like I might a copy of the Dickinsonian on the cushies back home, and he walked up and exclaimed, "Hey, Chad." The rest of Friday wasn't terribly busy: we ate dinner at a restaurant along the beach, and then managing to discover and check in our hostel at our scheduled time of 7.00 PM, we visited a nearby pub called "The Goat and the Tricycle" where we enjoyed a couple of pints before heading over to Subway for a quick sandwich. Chris had difficulties discovering any ATMs that would accept his debit card, so I ended up paying for everything on the first day. We went to bed relatively early, around eleven at night, because we had to rise early to catch the bus to Dorchester.
Morning arrived, and since I hadn't been able to purchase a street map at the rail station, we left the hostel around six-thirty to give us sufficient time to find our way to the rail station where we were supposed to pick up the eight-thirty bus to Dorchester. We stopped periodically at the different bus stations and looked over the maps on display there; using them, we eventually found the Bournemouth Town Square where we could pick up the eight o' clock bus to the rail station. Chris found an ATM that accepted his card, a discovery which made us both happy. I certainly heaved a sigh of relief since it meant that I wouldn't have to withdraw any more morning from my checking account (I had brought 225 pounds with me to Bournemouth, and between bus passes, dinner, beer, the hostel, and Subway, I had managed to spend roughly 150 pounds of it.)
The bus ride to Dorchester was uneventful--and realistically, the day wasn't that terribly eventful, either. From ten o' clock in the morning till six o' clock in the evening, Chris and I just wandered across Dorchester. We walked from the town center to Thomas Hardy's Max Gate on the outskirts of the town--sadly, it was closed to guests till April 2009 for renovations--and I think we traveled to three of the four corners of the town. We passed the Corn Exchange, several of the town's lovely old churches, the Dorset Military Museum, the ruins of a Roman town house, traced the old Roman town walls, visited the statue honoring Thomas Hardy, and followed the riverside path along the River Frome at least one-and-a-half to two miles north of the town's limits. In the course of things, we stopped for lunch--I had a proper English fry-up, Chris had a panini and chips--and also had a quick drink before boarding the bus for Bournemouth. For dinner, we bought a couple of pints from an off-license liquor store and a 16" pizza which we consumed happily in our room at the hostel (although we later read that we weren't technically supposed to do either of those things). We also had a couple of pints at "The Goat and Tricycle" before retiring for the day.
On Sunday, we rose around nine-thirty in the morning. Chris wanted to experience the festival of meat that is a full English breakfast, so we managed to locate a Wetherspoon's pub called "The Moon in the Square" which was still serving breakfast at eleven o' clock. The food wasn't too spectacular, although Chris and I did manage to have fun mocking how everyone was drinking beer before twelve o' clock ("What a bunch of alcoholics! Oh my god!" I think he incredulously exclaimed to me at one point) and quietly thinking of mean-spirited techniques for soothing a screaming toddler at a nearby table. Those of you who know us well can rest assured that if that child's mother had heard us, she would have probably beat us to death with a stroller. We followed our breakfast with a stroll along the western beaches which were absolutely gorgeous. I am not a great fan of the ocean, but it was amazing. We returned to the hostel around three o' clock in the afternoon, rested till six-thirty, went to dinner at McDonald's, and then returned to "The Moon in the Square" for a pint.
And that's when this trip's signature moment occurred. "The Moon in the Square" was the first stop in a short pub crawl that was supposed to begin in the Bournemouth Town Square and end at "The Goat and the Tricycle" near our hostel. A fitting adieu to England, wouldn't you think? Particularly since neither Chris nor I had drank anywhere near the amount that we had originally anticipated. Well, the second stop was supposed to be "The Baker's Arms," this small pub located roughly halfway between the town center and our hostel. Chris and I had passed by it a few times since we arrived in Bournemouth, and to me, it seemed to be a pleasant place to visit, a good place possibly to mix with the locals. And even though the beer selection consisted of Kronenberg, Guinness, Wetherspoon's Old Thumper, and Strongbow and was really pathetic, it initially seemed like that assessment was accurate. When we first entered the pub, Chris and I both hesitated, but this elderly gentleman motioned to join everyone at the bar, and before we knew it, we were engaged in friendly conversation with a man whose name I think was Adrian who was a reporter and who had actually travelled in the States quite extensively.
I find that as soon as I find an Englishman or Englishwoman who knows anything of the States, I get a little giddy. Sadly, in my initial excitement at the friendly reception, I didn't notice that there were some unusual characteristics to this pub:
1. Disney's "Mary Poppins" was showing on the television, not a football match like you would see in most British pubs.
2. There were show tunes playing gently in the background.
3. There were no women in the bar whatsoever, and all the men seemed to be dressed very casually, in an almost effeminate manner in some cases.
4. There was this elderly man from Liverpool who was incredibly drunk and incredibly obnoxious who kept throwing his arm over my shoulder, complimenting me on my accent, and warning me (and Chris, too) to keep our distance from our journalist acquaintance because he wanted to shag me because I was under twenty-one.
Does anyone want to hazard a guess about what type of bar I had chosen? Well, as soon as I realized that "The Baker's Arms" was in fact a gay bar, I pounded the remainder of my beer and politely excusing myself, I followed DeArmond to the restroom, so that we could decide what we should do. Of course, I no sooner entered the restroom than Chris cried from the stall, roaring with laughter: "Chad, you idiot! You picked a gay bar. I'm going to tell everyone about this. Oh my god, Chad, they want to hook up with us! You moron!" Now my friend Chris is, in fact, gay, but even he was uncomfortable with receiving the attentions of men who were on average twenty to thirty years our seniors. So, as soon as we had the opportunity to do so, we left. Everyone was very friendly, and I must admit that as I reflect over it now, I can't say that I greatly regret the experience. I certainly didn't appreciate it when my drunken acquiantance suggested that I wore lipstick because my lips were so red after I finished my beer or when he continually invaded my personal space by throwing his arm around my shoulder. (I'm very English, in that I don't always like to be touched. Friends and family members can get away with it. Complete strangers who tells me to have "a big fat one" can't.) But it's an experience like any other. I just wished that I had apprehended the signs a little sooner than I did.
We followed our adventure at "The Baker's Arms" with stops at "The Goat and the Tricycle" and back at "The Moon in the Square." Chris joked about returning to "The Baker's Arms"--but I'm afraid that I was something of a spoilsport for the remainder of the evening. I just continued to chastise myself for having been so unobservant, and it provoked probably my worst fit of my "Black Dog" in two months. Fortunately, I managed to recover my spirits before the next morning when Chris and I rose, departed the hostel, and proceed by forced march to the rail station. There I waited till the shuttle to the airport arrived before I crossed the street and boarded the eight-ten into London. Passing through London, I was tempted to visit the South Bank, "The Bricklayers' Arms," or perhaps one of the other sites that we'd visited while we were there. Perhaps the Victoria & Albert Museum or the British Museum. However, I hadn't brought my Oyster Card with me, and I really did want to get home to Norwich. I pulled into the Norwich Rail Station around one o' clock in the afternoon, and on the #35 bus, it took me till two o' clock before I was able to slide my key into the keyhole of my flat and settle back into life at UEA.
If you'll all forgive me for not posting in a while, let me fill you in on some of my more notable activities in recent weeks. Unfortunately, this won't be too exhaustive of an account, but it'll have to suffice. So, let's begin.
Two weekends ago, I met up with Chris DeArmond in Bournemouth in Dorset. Now many of you are probably wondering: what and where is Dorset? Dorset is one of the historic shires or counties into which England has been divided for administrative purposes since the reign of King Alfred the Great during the Ninth Century. Mostly rural with a population that is among the whitest and the oldest in England, it's perhaps most famous for its beaches which have been a popular destination for the English dating to the eighteenth century and because it's the region where Thomas Hardy located the overwhelming majority of his novels and short stories; it lies squarely at the heart of his mystical country of "Wessex." Not exactly the most common destination for American students, a fact I now understand; but it was beautiful--an earthy, friendly place with rolling hills and open fields populated by sheep and lowing cattle.
I left early from Norwich on Friday the 10th, traveling by rail through London. I had to miss my seminar for "Modern Germany, 1866-1945," but I don't mind really. I read some of The Pianist (which, in a small sidenote, I found fairly compelling) and A.J.P. Taylor's The Course of German History (which I found intriguing, but infuriatingly dated and prejudiced) on the train, so it's not as terrible as it might otherwise appear. I reached Bournemouth around two o' clock in the afternoon, and I have to admit that I was a little disoriented when I discovered there was no place really handy where I could purchase a street map of Bournemouth. I wandered around for a while--DeArmond's flight from Malaga wasn't scheduled to arrive for another two hours--and I stopped for a bite to eat at the McDonald's in the Asda Supercenter across the street from the rail station and I probably paid too much for a municipal bus pass. (I know this because as I was exiting the Bournemouth Information Center, having paid 15 pounds for a 5-day pass, I heard an acquaintance of the man who just sold me my pass exclaim, "Hey! I thought you also had 3-day passes for 9 pounds?")
Eventually around quarter till four, I boarded the shuttle to the Bournemouth International Airport. John F. Kennedy International or DIA, it was not. As I wrote in my moleskine at the time (please forgive the overall self-indulgent tone):
Of course, I am certain that an element of my discomfort arises out of the fact that I am alone, seated on a planter outside the most pretentiously and most inaccurately named Bournemouth International Airport. [...] I do believe that Walker Field [the airfield in Grand Junction]--hell, the Montrose County Airport--is O'Hara International Airport next to this place. There's no sitting area in it whatsoever, only ticket counters, baggage claim, and security checkpoints.
Fortunately, the flight from Malaga arrived on time, and with it, DeArmond. It was funny seeing him for the first time since May--we didn't embrace or really show any signs of excitement. I was just seated casually flipping through Taylor's diatribe against the German nation like I might a copy of the Dickinsonian on the cushies back home, and he walked up and exclaimed, "Hey, Chad." The rest of Friday wasn't terribly busy: we ate dinner at a restaurant along the beach, and then managing to discover and check in our hostel at our scheduled time of 7.00 PM, we visited a nearby pub called "The Goat and the Tricycle" where we enjoyed a couple of pints before heading over to Subway for a quick sandwich. Chris had difficulties discovering any ATMs that would accept his debit card, so I ended up paying for everything on the first day. We went to bed relatively early, around eleven at night, because we had to rise early to catch the bus to Dorchester.
Morning arrived, and since I hadn't been able to purchase a street map at the rail station, we left the hostel around six-thirty to give us sufficient time to find our way to the rail station where we were supposed to pick up the eight-thirty bus to Dorchester. We stopped periodically at the different bus stations and looked over the maps on display there; using them, we eventually found the Bournemouth Town Square where we could pick up the eight o' clock bus to the rail station. Chris found an ATM that accepted his card, a discovery which made us both happy. I certainly heaved a sigh of relief since it meant that I wouldn't have to withdraw any more morning from my checking account (I had brought 225 pounds with me to Bournemouth, and between bus passes, dinner, beer, the hostel, and Subway, I had managed to spend roughly 150 pounds of it.)
The bus ride to Dorchester was uneventful--and realistically, the day wasn't that terribly eventful, either. From ten o' clock in the morning till six o' clock in the evening, Chris and I just wandered across Dorchester. We walked from the town center to Thomas Hardy's Max Gate on the outskirts of the town--sadly, it was closed to guests till April 2009 for renovations--and I think we traveled to three of the four corners of the town. We passed the Corn Exchange, several of the town's lovely old churches, the Dorset Military Museum, the ruins of a Roman town house, traced the old Roman town walls, visited the statue honoring Thomas Hardy, and followed the riverside path along the River Frome at least one-and-a-half to two miles north of the town's limits. In the course of things, we stopped for lunch--I had a proper English fry-up, Chris had a panini and chips--and also had a quick drink before boarding the bus for Bournemouth. For dinner, we bought a couple of pints from an off-license liquor store and a 16" pizza which we consumed happily in our room at the hostel (although we later read that we weren't technically supposed to do either of those things). We also had a couple of pints at "The Goat and Tricycle" before retiring for the day.
On Sunday, we rose around nine-thirty in the morning. Chris wanted to experience the festival of meat that is a full English breakfast, so we managed to locate a Wetherspoon's pub called "The Moon in the Square" which was still serving breakfast at eleven o' clock. The food wasn't too spectacular, although Chris and I did manage to have fun mocking how everyone was drinking beer before twelve o' clock ("What a bunch of alcoholics! Oh my god!" I think he incredulously exclaimed to me at one point) and quietly thinking of mean-spirited techniques for soothing a screaming toddler at a nearby table. Those of you who know us well can rest assured that if that child's mother had heard us, she would have probably beat us to death with a stroller. We followed our breakfast with a stroll along the western beaches which were absolutely gorgeous. I am not a great fan of the ocean, but it was amazing. We returned to the hostel around three o' clock in the afternoon, rested till six-thirty, went to dinner at McDonald's, and then returned to "The Moon in the Square" for a pint.
And that's when this trip's signature moment occurred. "The Moon in the Square" was the first stop in a short pub crawl that was supposed to begin in the Bournemouth Town Square and end at "The Goat and the Tricycle" near our hostel. A fitting adieu to England, wouldn't you think? Particularly since neither Chris nor I had drank anywhere near the amount that we had originally anticipated. Well, the second stop was supposed to be "The Baker's Arms," this small pub located roughly halfway between the town center and our hostel. Chris and I had passed by it a few times since we arrived in Bournemouth, and to me, it seemed to be a pleasant place to visit, a good place possibly to mix with the locals. And even though the beer selection consisted of Kronenberg, Guinness, Wetherspoon's Old Thumper, and Strongbow and was really pathetic, it initially seemed like that assessment was accurate. When we first entered the pub, Chris and I both hesitated, but this elderly gentleman motioned to join everyone at the bar, and before we knew it, we were engaged in friendly conversation with a man whose name I think was Adrian who was a reporter and who had actually travelled in the States quite extensively.
I find that as soon as I find an Englishman or Englishwoman who knows anything of the States, I get a little giddy. Sadly, in my initial excitement at the friendly reception, I didn't notice that there were some unusual characteristics to this pub:
1. Disney's "Mary Poppins" was showing on the television, not a football match like you would see in most British pubs.
2. There were show tunes playing gently in the background.
3. There were no women in the bar whatsoever, and all the men seemed to be dressed very casually, in an almost effeminate manner in some cases.
4. There was this elderly man from Liverpool who was incredibly drunk and incredibly obnoxious who kept throwing his arm over my shoulder, complimenting me on my accent, and warning me (and Chris, too) to keep our distance from our journalist acquaintance because he wanted to shag me because I was under twenty-one.
Does anyone want to hazard a guess about what type of bar I had chosen? Well, as soon as I realized that "The Baker's Arms" was in fact a gay bar, I pounded the remainder of my beer and politely excusing myself, I followed DeArmond to the restroom, so that we could decide what we should do. Of course, I no sooner entered the restroom than Chris cried from the stall, roaring with laughter: "Chad, you idiot! You picked a gay bar. I'm going to tell everyone about this. Oh my god, Chad, they want to hook up with us! You moron!" Now my friend Chris is, in fact, gay, but even he was uncomfortable with receiving the attentions of men who were on average twenty to thirty years our seniors. So, as soon as we had the opportunity to do so, we left. Everyone was very friendly, and I must admit that as I reflect over it now, I can't say that I greatly regret the experience. I certainly didn't appreciate it when my drunken acquiantance suggested that I wore lipstick because my lips were so red after I finished my beer or when he continually invaded my personal space by throwing his arm around my shoulder. (I'm very English, in that I don't always like to be touched. Friends and family members can get away with it. Complete strangers who tells me to have "a big fat one" can't.) But it's an experience like any other. I just wished that I had apprehended the signs a little sooner than I did.
We followed our adventure at "The Baker's Arms" with stops at "The Goat and the Tricycle" and back at "The Moon in the Square." Chris joked about returning to "The Baker's Arms"--but I'm afraid that I was something of a spoilsport for the remainder of the evening. I just continued to chastise myself for having been so unobservant, and it provoked probably my worst fit of my "Black Dog" in two months. Fortunately, I managed to recover my spirits before the next morning when Chris and I rose, departed the hostel, and proceed by forced march to the rail station. There I waited till the shuttle to the airport arrived before I crossed the street and boarded the eight-ten into London. Passing through London, I was tempted to visit the South Bank, "The Bricklayers' Arms," or perhaps one of the other sites that we'd visited while we were there. Perhaps the Victoria & Albert Museum or the British Museum. However, I hadn't brought my Oyster Card with me, and I really did want to get home to Norwich. I pulled into the Norwich Rail Station around one o' clock in the afternoon, and on the #35 bus, it took me till two o' clock before I was able to slide my key into the keyhole of my flat and settle back into life at UEA.
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