Barbara & Tom walking and eating from Edinburgh to London

30-June-06

I felt like I'd had a good night's sleep when the alarm rang four hours after I went to bed. We scurried around making sure we weren't forgetting anything and eating as much as possible of the food that wouldn't travel.

The taxi was waiting when we hauled our bags out of our basement lair and into the rain. Not RLS's "meterological purgatory" but a soft warm rain. The cabbie was very interesting when we could understand his brogue and intercom system. He expressed his sympathies that we were going to London.

The train is as empty as it should be at 6:30 in the bloody morning. We're hurtling backwards through the rain, a mere ten stops from Birmingham. The gray skies make the green fields, the white sheep, the pnk primroses, even the stone fences, seem all the more vibrant. I already miss Scotland. I need to reread our genealogies because my heartstrings twang here the way they do on a spring day in Denton. I wish I could go back to the Royal Mile for the cup of carrot-coriander soup (and endure the tourist crowds - someone even wore an Oklahoma Sooners sweatshirt yesterday), climb again to Arthur's Seat (my feet revolt at the mere mention - another reason I'm Scottish, revolting at the drop of a tam), listen to the brogue, stroll the Water of Leith. I loved Oxford. Painswick was a delight and a wonder. Edinburgh was "The Capitol of the WORRRLLD" How can London possibly top that?

I dropped my mp3 player and now instead of playing music and radio shows, it says "file system error". I can't think of any way to recover. I'll have to listen to The Pink Panther and the Queen Latifah movie on my flight home. Maybe I'll just throw myself from the train.

The trip from Edinburgh to Birmingham was pretty. We each had a row of seats to ourselves. Barbara slept and I cleaned up the most obvious errors from my journals. (Feel free to help me correct the rest.) We had a brief layover in Birmingham and a luxurious ride on a Virgin train to London. They even served tea (for Ł1.79). We found an ATM and a taxi and made it to our dormitory. I'd forgotten that this was the first day visitors can book rooms and the staff had no idea what to do. However, we made it to our rooms in less than an hour.

It's hotter than hell, cooler if you open the window and listen to the kids play on the playground and the trains grind by. The room is about the size of a sleeper on the train but not as nice. No wonder college students get depressed.

We took a quick walk around, found a bite to eat (nicoise salad and spinach gnocci) and came back for the Germany-Argentina game. I took a shower and a nap. After Germany won in some sort of tie-breaking kick-off, we took another stroll.

We went through Waterloo Station, somehow I'll have to learn to navigate it to go to the airport. We crossed the Jubilee Bridge and walked down the other side of the Thames. There were big brass sphinxes with a plaque describing the damage done to the sphinxes and the pedestals by bombs in WWII.

We walked back across the Millenium Bridge, described as a ribbon of steel in the daytime and a razor of light at night. (I think that was it, a panhandler blocked part of the inscription.) We toured the Tate Modern museum starting with the restaurant. We wanted a meal but settled for wine, a mango smoothie, and mexican potato salad tapas with tiny little pita breads.

The rest of the museum was interesting enough. A couple of passable Picassos a boring Rivera and a Monet where he seemed to have erased most of the waterlillies. My favorite work was a film of a young girl (the artist's daughter)reading some text on the use of color. She obviously didn't understand any of what she was reading and I hope that was the point.

We walked back along the Thames and it was crowded with couples walking around. The bars and restaurants were overflowing. I had to find something before going to bed and finally came across a place with empty tables. Barbara's cake and my steak sandwich should have been superb given the price, but, other than the price, they were forgettable. We'll have to find a better way to eat in London.

Back to the deserted dorm. I wonder how much this is like living in one of those concrete apartment buildings in the former USSR. The elevator and the stair lights aren't working (although we didn't exert much effort into making them work). The small fridge has a tray of cool water in the freezer and a partial loaf of bread and hunk of warm cheese. The children are gone from the playground but the trains still squeal by on the elevated tracks. There goes one now.

This isn't horrible. It's a very interesting and not uncomfortable experience, just very unlike our three previous stays. Ray Wylie Hubbard keeps echoing through my brain, "you can put up your dukes or you can bet your boots I'll be leaving just as fast as I can."