Sore Roots Trip Log--Day 7: Passengers will please refrain
Robert & Laura
Sore Roots Trip Log--Day 7: Passengers will please refrain
Sat, Apr 14, 2012
Whew! A long day that starts at a boarding school in the countryside near Kingham, Oxfordshire and ends up in a luxury hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland. And we learn a surprising thing about Edinburgh.
After editing yesterday's trip log, Laura got to wondering where Robert was. Here it was five o'clock and there was no sign of him! Did he fall in the well? Take a wrong turn in the maze and end up in Professor Snapes' experimental potion class? Too bad she hadn't actually READ the trip log she just edited, or she would have known that Robert was…
…off fooling his teacher into showing up in the classroom at 5:00 pm so we could give her a parting gift. While waiting for her, a couple of bassists get into a conversation about odd British town names. Robert took notes. According to our local sources, these are real towns (and Jules was quite keen on moving to any of them, just so he could say the name a lot):
- Lick Bottom (near Devan)
- Scrubby Bottom
- Sitting Bottom
and everybody's favorite:
- Shit-em
Robert's bass teacher (and we're not sure if we've mentioned this before, but his teacher is Missy Raines who is apparently quite famous, but not quite at the John Paul Jones level of famosity) finally shows up (how dare she be late to her own spoof!) and we proudly present her with:
Tada! A British tea-kettle!
"Wha?" say the guys in the class, "We thought you was gonna get her a scarf thing?"
Well, it seems that Maggie--who's organized the entire thing--got to talking with Missy and found out that she really wanted a proper tea kettle so that's what she got. And this thing is so British it leaks oil. It looks exactly like every tea kettle in every British movie you've seen and the damn thing weighs about ten pounds (and cost 80 pounds). But Missy is so happy, so we feel like we've done already for our five pound investment.
[Throughout the week, whenever Missy talked about some piece of equipment she uses, she put in, "But they don't make it any more." Friday morning she mentioned that her quite elaborate metronome wasn't made any more, and Robert asked if she owned ANYthing made in this century and she admitted that she didn't. After we gave her the kettle, one of the bassists piped up, "Now you own something made in this century!"]
Last night was the "Tutor's Concert" where the various Tutors in various groupings got up and showed what they could do, from a 12-tone banjo piece to an Old Time/Bluegrass mash-up (to purists, Old Time and Bluegrass are very, very different and you can't mix the two of them without risking a disaster of Biblical proportions; to regular folks, Bluegrass has banjos, but otherwise it's the same ball of wax).
We were still feeling the effects of the previous night's five-hour Student Concert Extravaganza Marathon of Music, so we turned in early to try and get ready for this morning.
6:00 am
We're up, early but not bright, so that we can get packed up, and clean up our room (which isn't THAT bad, but anyplace Robert spends a week ends up with a layer of detritus that needs mulching).
7:45 am
All week, the catering staff has been struggling with trying to figure out how to serve 300 people and breakfast has been a particular challenge. It's been tasteless bacon and textureless sausage, along with no fruit and Spaghetti-O's.
While waiting in line with the four other people who manage to be awake at this hour (every day there's fewer people), Robert notes that nobody asked for a round of applause for the caterers (although we applauded the sound crew, the tutors, the student performers, the stage monkeys and ourselves).
One chap says, "Yeah, they started a collection for the caterers, but it came back with less than it started with!"
8:00 am
And breakfast is fifteen minutes late. But--there's coffee! And not bad coffee (although after a week of instant and tea bag coffee, our taste buds may have atrophied).
The mustard is also Chinese hot mustard, although it's not labeled as such and Laura's sinuses are now wide awake.
9:45 am
One of the organizers of Sore Fingers, John, drives the van back and forth from the school to the train station (probably all day) and we're in the first batch, because we've got some traveling to do today. Robert leads the first batch dropped off at the train station in a Hip-hip hooray cheer for John, because "We're acclimating, mate!"
Periodically, a British lady tells us about the stations that our train will stop at. We (and everybody in Texas) have always pronounced "Hereford" as "Her-ferd" because that's the proper way to say it. Here in England, they say "Hair-e-ford" (three syllables). We're inclined to believe the Texans because Texas is WAY bigger than England. And has more Hereford heifers in it, too.
10:20 am
Since we left the train station at 10:00 am, we have had three apologies for the crowded conditions of our train, with some folks having to stand up. They've very sorry, but we'll be changing to a high-speed train in Oxford to make up the time. (Or something like that--for some announcements, Laura turns to Robert and says, "I didn't understand a single word of that--what language was he speaking?" "English," replies Robert).
Although there are modern, cool, high-tech bathrooms (or "toilets") on the trains, there's still a sign in each one: "Do not flush in the station." This is unsettling enough to contemplate, but it inspires Robert to start singing
"Passengers will please refrain
from flushing toilets while the train
Is in the station, darling I love you
We encourage constipation
While the train is in the station
Moonlight always makes me think of you!"
Laura ends up seated next to a plastics expert, who is now retired and they chatted about poison gases for a while. This leads to a conversation about how King Charles distilled urine for the phosphorus in it, and painted his party guests with it, so they would glow in the dark.
As he ends the story, he says, "They're all dead now, of course."
12:30 pm
Paddington Station, London.
Boarding of our 12:30 train has been delayed by ten minutes, because it was very dirty when it came in and at about 12:25, they tell us what track it's on and we by the time we get there, it's sailing merrily down the track.
We find a customer service agent who explains that although the boarding may have been delayed, the train left on time and we should have been on it. "But we didn't know what platform it was leaving from!" we protest. Yes, but the train left on time, and we should have been on it.
The British: terrible polite, but not always terribly helpful.
It's not a big deal to get the next train (they run every half-hour, and the tickets are all high-tech magnetic stripy things that they still hand-punch once you get on board) and it does give us time to sort out lunch (<== when we left America, we would have said "organize some lunch," but now we're assimilating, mate!).
2:00 pm
Grantham, England
We're on the proper train to Edinburgh zooming right along. One disconcerting thing about train travel is when the train goes through a tunnel: the air pressure increases or decreases so much that your ears pop. We're not sure why it happens (air displacement by the speeding train?) but it's not much fun and we're happy when we're well out of London because there aren't any more tunnels.
The countryside is very flat, with lots of hills.
We did chat with some blokes who explained the whole "ham" thing to us: it's not a pork fetish. It's short for "Hamlet" (not the guy who starred in the play where everybody ends up dead, but the English word for small town). Since saying "Grant Hamlet" was somehow a lot of work back in the Dark Ages or whenever the town was founded, it got shorted to "Ham" and lost its lowercaseness and ended up being Grantham, or Kingham or Whateverham.
We feel better because, seriously, we haven't seen a pig here, yet.
2:50 pm
York, England
We've been to the New version of York. It's better.
3:40 pm
Durham, England
One thing you never see in the U. S. is a small town with a castle looming over it. And an ancient, hugely ornate stone church. You get both those in Durham.
3:50 pm
Newcastle, England
A pretty big city with lots of stuff--and not just castles and bridges. The landscape has been seriously sheep-ridden with just about every field filled with sheeps and their frolicking lambs (so-o-o cute! even at 50 MPH).
In England, even the buses are polite. We see a bus with the sign: "Sorry, Not in Service."
5:05 pm
Dunbar, Scotland
We've been going along the coast for a bit, looking at ocean and waves and lighthouses--beautiful. According to the map, Dunbar is the closest rail station to Robert's grandmother's birthplace. Robert waves and we move on.
6:00 pm
Edinburgh, Scotland
Laura found us a ritzy hotel (5 stars!) for cheap (yay, Orbitz!), right in downtown Edinburgh. On the map, it's a wee little distance, so we figure we'll walk to our hotel from the train station (plus, hey, Robert's part Scottish and "it's only a wee distance!").
Coming out of the train station, we knew we had a 50% chance of turning the correct way. And, sure enough, we choose wrong and cross the Waverly bridge and head off in the wrong direction for a bit before we turn around and head back the correct way.
And here's a tip for anybody who's thinking of doing the same thing we did: don't.
That short little bit of street labeled "Cockburn" (*snicker*) turns out to be pretty much straight up. And the only difference between the street and the sidewalk is that the cobblestones on the street are bigger. So lugging your rolling luggage straight uphill, while invigorating, is more invigoration than we're really in the mood for.
6:30 pm
Yay! We find the Fraser Suites and they are just so eager to serve us. They've recently remodeled and apparently hired all new staff, because the guy behind the counter (not native, by his accent he sounds German) keeps remembering things to tell us.
"Oh, wait! Here's a letter from the general manager for you! Now you're all set! Oh wait, you'll want a key won't you? Wait, did I have you sign this paper? Oh wait!"
One thing he neglects to mention is how to turn on the lights in our room. Laura finally (!) figures it out, and it's an ingenious Scottish solution: how do you make sure people turn out the lights when they leave?
You make them insert their door key into a slot in the wall to turn on the lights! And the key has to STAY in the slot, or the lights go out. When you leave, you take the key with you and the lights go out behind you!
Bloody clever! And speaking of Bloody Mary's guess where our next stop is?
Robert & Laura
Sore Roots Tour