***Dave Does the Blog

A few weeks before we left on vacation, Katherine somehow started using a little phrase in conjunction with her opinion on courses of action being proposed. “That would make me so happy” or “That would make me so sad.” It’s cute as hell, let me tell you.

And, once quoted to the party, it became a tag line for quite a number of discussions.

Another popular line was a childlike intonation of “Dirty,” voiced whenever someone else made a double-entendre.

Of such things are inside jokes made.

Continue reading “UK03 – Wednesday, 19 Feb 03”

Margie didn’t sleep well Monday night, so she muttered something, as I tossed and turned at 7:00a (the sheet too cold, the comforter too hot), to the effect that she was probably going to sleep through breakfast. I decided at that ponit to get up, shower, dress, and go downstairs, maybe to type up some notes. There I found Doyce in the lounge, and he averred that the Abergavenny Coliseum had not been bad eating, aside from discovering too late that they could not let people take away bottles of soda.

Jackie came in a few minutes later, and we chit-chatted about the day, finally deciding that the best course would be to drive back to London direct, and do something there. A Ripper Walk, or a show, were mentioned as possibilities.

Continue reading “UK03 – Tuesday, 18 Feb 03”

Lori was back on her feet, and we got a decent late morning start. Target: Caerphilly Castle.

Continue reading “UK03 – Sunday, 16 Feb 03”

We usually tried to pick up the BBC or ITV morning news when we got up. The big items on that day were the large peace protests/rallies in the UK, etc.

One thing I found interesting was the involvement of the press in all this, up to and including the Sun printing off placards for protesters to carry. Interesting. I mean, I’m used to that for sports events, but not for political rallies.

Continue reading “UK03 – Saturday, 15 Feb 03”

It became clear from discussions that morning that going for a walk or a hike was out. Energy levels were flagging, especially after some of our marathon walks in London. So rather than take the longish (5.5 miles) walk between Tintern Abbey and Chepstow Castle, we went to both places individually, by car.

Jackie rode with Margie & me, navigating. We got to Tintern Abbey with no problems.

Continue reading “UK03 – Friday, 14 Feb 03”

Margie and I had bets on that we wouldn’t leave the B&B for Wales until 11a. It was actually later than that, though it wasn’t so much because of the natural inertia of trying to get three couples moving in the same direction, but because it took over an hour for us and the Testerfolk to get our car hire at the EuropCar near Vic Stn. I think they had to actually go out and buy some cars for us, since the general “Passat” class seemed to be lacking.

(It’s possible some of the problem was due to our booking via AutoEurope. But it wasn’t that they didn’t have our bookings, it’s just that they were terribly slow about getting the frelling transaction finished and us out the door.)

Continue reading “UK03 – Thursday, 13 Feb 03”

It seems appropriate, as we leave the city of London, to discuss the whole “Ugly American” thing. We never felt much impact for being Americans in the UK. Nobody seemed to be particularly pro- or anti-us (or -US).

It didn’t even often come up, at least not in anything addressed toward us. We did have a lady in the grocers at Chepstow, Wales, ask if we were Canadian (figuring, probably rightly, that an American would not take offense at being mistaken for a Canadian, while the reverse would not be true). And once, standing in front of a shop window near Leicester Square, while we were chatting away at the art there, a woman pressing by us commented, “Please don’t bomb Iraq.” (It’s not my department, lady, nor, I fear, were it, would your comment deter me. But I digress.)

There was a permanent demonstration camp on the square opposite Parliament speaking to the subject of Iraq (guess which side they took). And, of course, we managed to be in Wales (fortunately) the weekend of the Massive Demonstrations in London and Elsewhere on the Iraq subject.

By and large, the discussion about Iraq in the UK seemed more along the lines of how long the Blair government can maintain its position, backing Washington, in the face of apparent widespread disagreement with the policy (vocal disagreement, perhaps; it’s not clear to me that most British hesitance over the subject isn’t along the lines of “They haven’t done anything to use yet,” which is understandable, if tragically shortsighted).

Aside from that, I think we managed to not be bad tourists. We were loud, of course. Doyce and I alone can project as though we were on stage, and when everyone got caught up in the revelry, it was probably disturbing to others if indoors. Heck, a couple of times at castles and such out-of-doors, when I wandered a bit from the group, I was a tad dismayed by how far our boisterous voices carried.

But we also tried to be polite whenever dealing with the locals, and self-deprecatingly admitted where we didn’t understand the customs or expectations. I think we did okay, if loudly so.

When we mentioned to Rachel, our hostess at Woodville House, that we were going to South Wales for some days, she seemed mildly incredulous (she often had a rather bemused and/or dumbfounded expression regarding things we were thinking of doing). She did suggest tghree places to eat out there which, of course, we never did, but I’ll record them here for the record:

• The Gryphon, near Brecon
• The Walnut Tree, “of course,” though with the note that it’s very expensive.
• The Castle Hotel in Hereford (which is where she was from, which might explain some of the incredulity), near the cathedral.

Maybe next trip.

Continue reading “UK03 – Wednesday, 12 Feb 03”

We encountered many surreal things in the UK. Strange customs. Odd foods.

But nothing was quite as weird as seeing the tail end of a Clifford the Big Red Dog episode with all the characters speaking with English (or Scottish) accents.

Nuff said.

Continue reading “UK03 – Tuesday, 11 Feb 03”

Slept pretty well, all things considered. Did wake up about 3:00a, local time (as I found out the next morning, everyone else had, too). Had a hard time falling back off after that — little squirrels whispering of the wonders we’d see and do the next day kept chattering in my ear, and, besides, it was only 8:00p back home. For a bright shiny nickel, had I known where my Palm keyboard was, I would have gone downstairs and used it. As it was, I would have run into Doyce down there. But I didn’t, so I didn’t, and drifted off about an hour later.

Continue reading “UK03 – Monday, 10 Feb 03”

The other four were heading off later in the day on a Northwest flight, by way of Minneapolis (of course), to Gatwick in London. Not us. To go east, we had to first go west.

That’s because both of our sets of parents live in California, and they’d bravely volunteered to timeshare Katherine whilst we were in Old Blighty. So we were taking a Frontier flight from Denver to LAX, passing off Katherine like a football, then hopping an American non-stop to Heathrow.

Continue reading “UK03 – Saturday/Sunday, 8-9 Feb 03”

So back last fall, the church Margie and I go to had a big fund-raising auction, wherein various parishioners donated things and then folks bid on them. It was wildly successful (and much fun).

Leading up to the auction, we’d been chatting with Doyce & Jackie about going in together on a bid for one of the weekend or week vacations at condos or timeshare resorts that people had donated. As we were discussing how much we were willing to jointly bid, Jackie noted, “Hey, you know we could fly to England for that.”

So that’s what we decided to do instead. (And just as well, since the auction prices on those items ended up pretty high) Along the way, Dave (DaveG in this narrative, for obvious self-referential reasons) and his fiancée Lori decided to join in the fun.

After consultation on how finely we wanted to split up the trip, and how often we wanted to pack and unpack, we decided on some days in London, some days in the south of Wales (which Margie and I had enjoyed on our last trip in ’99), and then back to London to fly home.

So …

Hmmm. I don’t think I cleaned my coffee cup well before I left.

We’re back!

The vacation was a good one, all things considered. The trip home was less than charming, but only on the annoyance-meter. More to follow on that, as well as a detailed travelogue, courtesy of my Palm, my Palm keyboard, and ten-odd hours of travel time from Heathrow to LAX.

I’ll probably be a bit slow on postings this morning — I have this silly notion that I should check my office e-mail first, call up various people who I work for or who work for me, and by and large get caught up on job stuff, before I start to tell the tale. But told it will be, and pictures should follow by the weekend.

By the way, Doyce probably already has a bunch of stuff up, so you can check out over there, too, if you want a sneak peak.

Good to be back, good to be blogging. See you in a bit …