We're away!

As I write this, we’re sitting on a ferry of dimensions my younger self would describe as ‘freaking huge’ preparing to depart England for Calais and France. It’s taken longer than we’d hoped to get to this point, the delay being due to problems in arranging insurance. We found ourselves in confounding vortex of non-coverage, Aussie insurers laughed at the idea they might cover traffic accidents in Tunisia and British insurers hung up the phone when we conceded we weren’t UK residents. We were rescued however by a little known rogue insurer operating out of Rotterdam that offered to take care of all our problems for a modest pouch of gold. It took a number of days to iron out the kinks regarding payment etc. so in total it’s taken about 5 days longer than expected to get out of England’s uncomfortable chill.

Not all of our time has been spent dethawing our fingers during this interim though. We’ve had a few great nights out, including one afternoon with Rachel, and two English friends Paul and Katie supping the local English insanity juice. This beer was not your normal ale, Matt and I can’t fully explain its effects but it gave me a complete inability to control my own actions and imparted rather distressing episodic amnesia. Hours later, I realized I was in a darkened stairwell in my hostel trying to decipher an online news article on my laptop. What happened? No one can know. All I can say is that I’ve been drunk before and this was not like that.

We were facing the prospect of another night in Bath, when we got the offer to celebrate Australia Day in London with a few of the friends we’d gone out with last week. I was looking forward to getting on the road so we packed up and headed back to the City. Getting there was a bit of an ordeal, it was close to zero and we had to stop every 30 miles or so to get sensation back in our hands. Matt’s hands were looking all grey and splotchy and I said that didn’t look good and thought I was glad I wasn’t him. Getting to London we stayed with the aforementioned friends in the Bronx of London, Brixton. Every day is a new nightmare in Brixton, where your knife is your only friend... or so we’d heard. It turned out to be quite pleasant spot really, and we had a great night drinking Fosters and talking about our favourite Aussie animal grudge match, kangaroo vee wedge tailed eagle, or numbat vee sugar glider.

So England is now behind us, I can see the coast of France, and we’re preparing to attempt to ride down to Paris or even Orleans.

A haiku:

Matt’s hands
So splotchy and grey
His guitar falls silent...