I.A.M. Musing About…

After a fitful sleep caused by my body-clock frantically trying to enquire about what the hell was going on, please? After all, I had only got about four hours of sleep on the ‘plane, it was now being asked to go to sleep at about 13.00 according to what it last dealt with, and now is expected to sleep for about eight hours or so and awake at about 23:30 ready to face a day of whatever was being thrown at it.

Frankly, you can’t blame it for the complaints being levelled as a result.

However, I ignored it, knowing the only way to make the time change work is — according to Margaret Atwood on some CBC Radio programme years ago, anyway — is to sleep a little while flying, eat lightly when served (not that the amount one consumes is really something one can control), drink as much liquid as one can and avoid any alcohol, then after landing eat the meal following the local schedule, and continue as necessitated by continuing to follow what everyone is doing around you. Continue with bedding down at the usual time you would at home — following the new time obviously — and rise as usual the next day at appropriate hour.

Following this, one ought to be on top of it all after about 36 hours or so. The wall, if one is going to hit one, will strike sometime around 72 hours after starting the régime. That’s the last you’ll see of the fatigue from the change, but the degree to which you’re floored at that point will depend directly on how far you’re shifting the time of your day; if you’re going one zone east, it’ll be nigh-on invisible. If you’re shifting to the opposing side of the globe and the exact opposite of the sun’s passing then it’ll probably result in you suddenly finding a point that you need to down a bucket of coffee or tea, followed by a Red Bull or three, then a handful of both Vitamin C and E, and then possibly finish by stuffing your nose into a pile of fine Colombian flake until your nasal passages are red enough to light the room and the street on the other side of the curtains.

Depending on a number of other factors, that’s pretty much the smartest manœuvre you can manage for yourself, and about the quickest way to get through the ‘jet lag’ or ‘travel fatigue’ with as little pain as possible, not matter what direction you’re travelling; although the western-bound journey will find you better able to adjust, whether or not you’re ‘headed home’.

So, in keeping with this survival and adjustment technique, I had a nice big Traditional English Cooked Breakfast (fried eggs, bacon, sausage, stewed tomatoes, baked beans, toast and marmalade, orange juice, spot of coffee) and then headed out to discover this town of Warwick and take advantage of the 48-hour mark’s adrenaline-driven high.

Sunday was a beautifully, sunny day, and a perfect one for wandering and gazing at buildings, poking about in shops, learning the local layout, and assorted messing about getting briefly lost as interesting things drew you in their direction before taking your bearings.

Starting out with the intention of wandering first around the grounds of Warwick Castle and approach the massive landmark from the south-east and work my way around to the sunny façade to get an image with heavy blue sky and minimise the deeper shadows of the overhangs. Sadly, the entrance to the car-park is clearly marked as being ‘no pedestrian traffic’. So I satisfied myself with taking some shots of the woven fence just inside the gate (which was way cool, and I’m planning on asking Jennifer whether or not that was amongst the things she was taught at Windsor Great Park during her training, or if it’s something of a ‘handicraft’ that has nothing to do with gardening per se.

Following that temporary set-back, I headed along West Street and headed into town, shooting what caught my interest. Upon reaching the West Gate, I happened upon a nice fellah and his little dog, and he told me an assortment of fascinating things about the immediate surroundings:

• the wood timbers of the houses were installed green so that they’d curve as they dried and thereby pull against each other, and strengthen the structure due to combined tension (which I probably learned in Eng. Lit but forgot);
• Warwick, like all great cities, had a massive fire that wiped out a vast chunk of the buildings,which accounts for almost of the construction inside the city proper consisting of brick and mortar while the greater area saw vast use of timber, plaster, and lathe that pre-dated the fire, including the Inn I’m staying at, which was established in 1472;
• the post pillar next to the West Gate is likely a replacement cast mid-20^th Century, while the one at the East Gate is more than likely the original installed in the mid-Victorian era when the Post Office was being initiated in a formal fashion;
• the big black shields in the wall on the north side of the street with the Warwick County Bear — complete with spear being shaken — was the result of making the best of a bad situation when it was discovered the wall was collapsing slowly, and thick beams had to be installed as a stabilising force, and the beams’ shafts had their ends covered with the county emblem;
• the cathedral I would eventually locate a ceremony taking place in front of, was set-up by Cardinal (Woolsey…? don’t remember) who also was the chief accuser of Joan of Arc, “’cause he really had it in for her,’ according to the man, ‘because she was common, so — he being the richest and most influential man in England at the time — there was no way that someone not from high enough could seen to be communicating with The Lord without being punished for ‘lying’. She ‘hadn’t earned the right to be Holy’, you see.”

…and provided the news that he was from the Waddington Family (yeah? Right name?), the oldest family in Britain — dating from four-hundred-something-or-other I think — who were at that time ruling over the lands. The family pre-dated the Norman Invasion, and lost to the ‘new comers’ now on the throne. The mountain in British Columbia is named after his relative who engineered a passage through the Rocky Mountains for the CPR, and at his own expense. He died there of typhoid, and the mountain was named in his honour.

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