I.A.M. Musing About…

So… then what happened?

Yes, more about the trip to England… Now we’re into day three — Huzzah! — and on to Day Four by the end of this, I might add (mostly due to the fact it all blurs together without enough to differentiate betwixt things).

So…

We’re at Monday now, and Steve and Hilary [aka: “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, according to Steve; and he’s not entirely wrong] have gone off to Italy to visit with her daughter who’s visiting there herself. I’m given the run of the place while they’re gone. Bwahahaahahaha!

The local constabulary has already met me on Saturday afternoon, so they’re wise to me already. Bit of a problem, that.

The Monday passed with me looking for news on the rider of the motorcycle at the Police Station, but they couldn’t tell me anything due to “confidentiality concerns”. I certainly understood, but I hadn’t thought “is he dead?” would be a huge problem to get an answer for. At this point I didn’t even know his name, for Heaven’s sake! I could have asked him on Saturday afternoon, I suppose, but I thought that his lying on the roof of a car at the time signalled something of it being an inopportune moment to bother with paperwork concerns.

I then hied me t’ward some lunch along Ely Street at a place I had spotted the day prior with some claim about the finest Fish & Chips in Her Majesty’s Realm (they didn’t go that far, but it was certainly the best example I could find without any motor-vehicle and a GPS unit). Through the door, and then all the way down a very long hallway, hang a right, pull at the door… pull at the door… pull… at… the door…

Read the notice on the door…

…and discover that Monday is the one day in the week they’re closed. Ah.

So, around the corner to the Gatwick’s back area where the pub is and have a large piece of fish and a pint… Another? Well, why not…?

Just before the visit to Warwickshire’s Finest, I stopped in at a fine book shop near the station and bought many grand volumes, including the first three Michael [Marshall] Smith thrillers, the second two in hard-cover, and a few many others all for something just under £20 if I recall correctly. Granted, they’re still in someone’s storage in England due to the finances all buggered from the accident, but… someday I’ll enjoy reading them!

So I had something to read over my nice pub lunch.

Then off to Twelfth Night, which is reviewed here: iamiam.ca/musing/archives/2007/434/rscs-12^th-night

The next day dawned brightly (I really had wonderful weather for much of my stay in the UK — odd for September there), and I showered.

A word, briefly, about the location I am in. It does not lack for a grand history, you see. See above there for that ærial photo, and click to make it big. Steve’s place is marked sort-of generally, as is Shakespeare’s birth-place. Normally, I would be concerned about ‘security issues’ and not be so specific, but you’ll learn in a minute that this place is nigh-on impossible to gain ingress to — or egress from — unless you’re supposed to.

The location at which I slept was something around 80 meters from the place that the Bard of Avon was brought into the world! Did this have any noticeable effect on me? Sadly, no. But the digital broadcast of Doctor Who was a wonderful thing… doubt that’s got anything to do with it, but one takes it where one can. Series 3, “The Master Returns” episode “The Sound of Drums”, by the way.

So the building is maintained by the Shakespeare Memorial Trust, as it’s all a part of the historical centre of town, and who knows how old this place is? Well, Steve does, and he probably told me, but I was probably either jet-lagged, full of absorbed history to the ears, drunk, or all three at that point. “Old” is probably description enough. Tough to remember that, being from an area where it’s rare to have what Jennifer & I have: a house bought by her Father, when it was brand-new: 1954. And they’ve always lived there. No one else has ever lived on this property, in any building. Ever.

So, there’s some context, eh…? Man used to a new-ish house being normal, in a building that’s probably older than the country he’s left for the first time about three days ago.

Let’s return to me now…

oops!

Let’s return to me just after the shower.

I’m happily catching-up on e-mail and talking to our printers about the tour I’ll do in a few days at their plant, and suddenly I hear what I swear is someone coming into the flat.

That can’t be… Steve and Hilary are in Italy. It’s an echo from the street being weird.

Those are feet on the stairs, I’m sure, though…

And those are voices in the hall-way near the kitchen…! Auugh!

I now leap into the hall and defend the place as only I know how: facing the two brigands, I gently enquire “Can I help you?” (being Canadian, and stereo-typically polite).

It turns out that when I had my shower, I got a bit of water on the floor, which quickly disappeared so I didn’t see it on the floor when I got out. It then leaked… somewhere through the floor… into the storeroom of the shop below… which is where they were from. They knew that Steve was away for a few days — he works there, you see, and Steve rents the flat from the store’s owners — so the two people standing before me thought that something had gone amiss in the plumbing or something as they hadn’t heard about me being there while Steve and Hilary were away.

All fine and dandy now, I’ll be more careful in future, hail well and farewell, and they let themselves out.

An hour or so passes.

I am conversing with Guy Adams via MSN’s Messenger thing, and he is advocating that I go to Baguette Barge to get some sort of late-lunch. I claim I don’t have time for that as I’m going to be talking to Jennifer via Skype in awhile, so I’m going to grab something at Subway a few doors away. He is agast that — having finally arrived in the Cradle of of Literature as God Intended [England], I’m going to eat some North American tripe like a subway sandwich…?! I finally give in and say ‘yes, fine, I’ll go to Baguette Barge, leave me be’ and so off I go down the stairs…

And then I’m back to tell Guy I can’t go to Baguette Barge. ‘Why not?’ he reasonably enquires of me. I can’t get the door open, I explain.

“Ha ha ha, how nice to hear the old Goons’ joke”, etc.

“No no, I really can’t get the door open.”

“What…? What do you mean?”

Well, I explain that I really can’t open the dor, nor can I re-lease the lock. One thing leads to another (including me e-mailing him a photo of the lock due to me not making sense of what I’m seeing and what I know makes sense to do but can’t accomplish) and afterwards it turns out that the Yale company’s Night Latch model [see illustration, left] has been double-locked using both the catch on the inside [to the right of that knob] and then the key outside, thereby making it impossible for me to leave the flat. The key has locked the inside switch into place, making it impossible to un-lock the door without standing on the outside using the key. Right now, all we know is that I’m unable to open this door and leave the flat.

Thinking like a New World Man, I do not panic as all residences have two exits in case of fire… right?

“Ah,” says an ancient voice in my mind, “but when was this place built, Boy?

I… um… err… a… a long time ago…?

“Yes… well done. So, how many exits were built?”

Um… ‘however many they damned well felt like building that day’…?

“Yes…!”

So… I then try using the “James Bond Polar Route” [photo, left; click to enlarge] by going out the kitchen onto the patio, then jumping across the gap onto the edge of the roof of the shop next-door, then around the corner of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library using some scaffolding handily standing there ‘In Case of Trapped Canadian’, down its ladder, along a path, over a wall just past Steve’s shop’s warehouse/parking area, then down a waste-ground space between the two buildings… and arrived at a locked gate with pigeon spikes on the top of it.

Damn.

So, I return via the way I came — resisting the temptation to wave through the windows at the people who are blithely doing research in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library oblivious to the Canadian walking to and fro outside, and who is going every so slowly insane — and re-examine the while situation once more calmly.

I see no way out of this, short of hurling myself out a window onto the paving stones of Henley Street some dozen or more feet below.

I reject this as being potentially a cause of the injuries I escaped during the auto-accident on Saturday prior.

I then discuss the photo of the lock with Guy; is there something I’m missing there? Is there some sort of secondary release that will permit me to throw the catch on the inside and release me from this historical cage of a comfortable flat? At this point we didn’t have the faintest idea how the thing wouldn’t permit me to leave, as we forgot about the use of a key activating a sort of secondary securing system that over-rides the inside button/catch/switch/thing. No matter how much I attempted to gently lever the catch into an ‘up’ — or ‘freedom!’ — position, I soon realised it was fruitless and that a call would have to be made to the shop downstairs and ask them to come next door with their keys, thereby letting me once again breathe that sweet air of God’s Own Country [England] whilst standing upon the street like a True Citizen. I wasn’t happy about having to distinguish myself like this again, but I had no other choice.

After waiting for the polite laughter at the other end of the line to subside (and I couldn’t blame them, really; hell, I was laughing at the ridiculous situation myself), they came and let me out of my kennel, and I knew full-well that I would never be able to return to Stratford without causing the story to make the rounds again, but at least now I had something to talk to Jennifer about other that the accident. I go next door and get a subway, cursing the fact that I am now consuming the same food I can get by walking down to the bottom of the hill at home in the Tundra of Canada.

I return to the flat and wait for the top of the pre-arranged hour to speak to my wife, and wait for her to come on-line.

And wait.

I text-chat to Guy and re-assure him that all is well and I am now eating a foot-long Vegetarian [he mis-understands what I mean] on Honey-Oat with a Snapple™ and a foil bag of chips [he mis-understands again]. He shames me.

“By the by, when are you speaking to your delightful wife?” he enquires of me.

Theoretically a half-hour ago at 5:00 pm, I reply, so that I can talk to her at 8:00 am before she goes to work at 9:00.

“You mean ‘talk to her at 9:00 am’, right?”

No no, she’s left the house by about 9:15, so that wouldn’t be long enough to chat.

“But that’s almost an hour ago.”

No, it’s just after 8:00… right…?

“No, I think you’re still subtracting nine hours as though you’re going to talk to me, but you’re not in Spain yet; it’s only eight hours from GMT to your area.”

…ah. That would explain why it’s now 5:45 and she’s still not there.

I check e-mail, to discover that she’s e-mailed me a couple of times to ask what she’s done wrong on her end and I’m not there…? Now she has to go to work, so perhaps we can connect in a few days…?

I beat my head against the desk at the utter futility of my attempts to accomplish things.

Leaving the flat, I walk down the block — dashing quickly past the shop downstairs so that no-one rushes onto the pavement to point and laugh at me, something I expect to have happen at any moment — and enter the co-op where I already today purchased postage and had noted the chocolate and wine selection without doing anything about it. Now is the time to do this, I realize.

I return to the flat with three large bars of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate, two bottles of French Red Wine, and a six-pack of German Lager.

I don’t think I paid more than £10 for the lot. It’s this transaction than made me realise that this country has been built for me. I profess my love for the land and decide to never leave.

I eat something at the Garrick Pub again for dinner, then return to the flat to drink wine and eat chocolate while watching the above-mentioned episode of Doctor Who via digital broadcast on the large-ish flat-screen and decide that, in fact, the best thing is to never leave this flat and shall have Steve and Hilary adopt me as their Cuban House-Boy.

I sleep, thereby ending “UK Day IV”.

It is good.

Tune in next time; when you’ll hear the Silly Canadian Man ask the pertinent question:

If one’s heading along the M5 to the exit marked ‘Rugby’, isn’t arriving in Birmingham signalling that one’s going the wrong way…?

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 8:22 pm and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA, FantasyCon, Guy Adams, Personal, TECHNOLOGY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.