Londonward

So here I am, in Lima. Took long enough. My internal clock is hopelessly lost, but at least I’ve managed to sleep a little bit in the last 48 hours. I think I’m feeling like late afternoon (minus the sleep) like it is in London, but really I’ve just woken up next to my snoring brother and it’s a morning around 9am. I don’t envy my mother who decided to go to work, if even for only half a day. At least my program for today is just chilling and maybe some food.

This is the view from the place I’m staying at. You can really tell from the lushness that summer is here in the Southern hemisphere from. The air is humid but not unpleasant, though the sky is the flat grey “donkey belly” they promised. All the flowers smell really intensely sweet. It’s a world away from cold, stone-and-soot-coloured London.

I’ve decided to eat well on this holiday. Considering the culinary crapfest the last three weeks’ crunchtime in London was, I think my body deserves some healing. Lots of fish, lots of fruit, lots of vegetables. No fried stuff. God knows what my cholesterol level looks like now. You can see the Pacific Ocean in between the two tall buildings in this next photo showing the view from the place the other way, though it is just a slightly more bluish grey tint around the horizon. I’ll get some real photos of it up soon I’m sure. It really does look Latin American around here, and I’m not sure what it is, especially considering this neighbourhood is modern and I have never been to the continent before.

Speaking of food, Continental weren’t too bad. I mean yeah, it was airplane food and there rarely was enough considering we left at 7am with with my brother with nary a panini in our bellies and arrived at 2am local time. I wish we’d had time to grab something at Houston, but it’d probably have contradicted the paragraph above. Everything on the way to the gate smelled either sweet, processed or otherwise unhealthy. But I did like how the meals came with a salad and they passed around mid-flight snacks of little sandwiches and crisp packets. They seemed to know the way to keep me content. Most of the cabin crew had Southern drawls, and one lady told the person boarding ahead of me “to just go right ahead, darling” and that his seat would be “there smack dab in the middle of the cabin”. Immediate and quite pleasant. Oh, and the seating choices we made but weren’t sure were actually confirmed turned out to have been saved, meaning we sat in glorious legroom luxury. Will have to do the same on the way back.

Adjustment. To the time difference, the climate, the language. I’ll take today easy.

Of course, being used to little sleep, I am wide awake only some 6 hours after coming home last night. Because of various living configurations, I had never been out with my brother before. I think he had a good time, though, as did I. I first snuck him into the staff party with me. It actually felt really cool to arrive and within minutes get whisked around with “Hi! Great to see you!” as if they had been expecting me. After the free bar had shut and the vodka luge was dry (not least because I was goaded to having more than 1) we finally made it to a pub. And to another pub. And then home via a fast food joint.

I’m hoping that the configuration of the plane we’re taking to Houston is the new 777 one rather than the old one, but there seems to be no way to tell. To spare you from clicking the links, the new one has power sockets in all seats with no need for fancy adapters. That would make the rush for the check-in to get seats on the few powered-up rows that much less hassle.

Oh, and another interesting thing about the flight. Looking at the one going out today, it is (surprise surprise) late by about 45 minutes. I started thinking - what if we don’t make our connecting flight to Lima? Who’s responsible for putting us up for the delay? Surely they wouldn’t let us book flights without them being manageable transfer-wise? I don’t know, I don’t do this often.

It feels weird being at work after my last lecture of the term. Usually I do procrastinate by looking at stuff on the web but now that I really don’t have anything pressing to do it suddenly feels strange.

I am getting a little excited now (finally!) about the trip I’m about to take. I’m going transatlantic for the first time to spend some time in Peru, but I haven’t had the time or energy to really devote to expecting it and imagining what it’ll be like. Still have no clue what to expect to be honest, but at least it’ll be (half) a world away from London.

It’s the little things that get me excited: I’ve checked online and the airline we’re taking, Continental, does PC plugs which’d mean I’d get to faff around on my laptop should the in-flight entertainment get boring. Considering we’re spending the better part of 24 hours inside that aluminium tube I’d say that’s likely. The weird thing is they want you to get some sort of adapter, which I’m taking for granted can be bought at the airport itself. Well, I hope so at least, as getting my laptop to charge would allow me to charge my mp3 player which gets a pathetic 3.5 hour battery life.

Speaking of which, I’d need to update my music so as to not skip every third track. If I just had time and the hard drive space to swap stuff around…

As you can tell the sorts of preparatory things for the trip have been on the lowest of low flames on the back burner for the past few weeks. I haven’t thought about packing yet, nor of the amount of reading that I’d reasonably be able to do. I have an academic text and some literature, but originally thought I’d print a load of articles off to do over the break as well. It’s not like the reading is ever done. All of this has come on rather suddenly, though, and I haven’t prepared at all.

I finally got to see a bit more of these misty isles and can happily say that Shropshire countryside is fantastically beautiful.

Despite late trains and impossible-to-make changes we managed to make it to Shrewsbury at 2:30am on Saturday night. The motorway between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury was completely obscured by fog that rolled in from the hills like in movies. The cab driver kept commenting in his funny Wolves accent how he couldn’t see anything in front of him. High beams, low beams, made no difference. I just hoped he would make it back safely once he’d dropped us off at “Shroosbury”.

After a lazy morning and a mindblowingly delicious and calorific breakfast (at 12:30) I got to explore a bit of Shrewsbury’s winding streets which was nice. People were rowing on the river and doing their Christmas shopping and just generally seemd more relaxed than in London. I think I needed that, to be somewhere a bit slower and calmer.

The real objective of the weekend away was a birthday party at the home of a friend of a friend of mine. Snugly set amidst hills near the Welsh border in a charmingly named area called “The Bog” the cottage was awash with warmth and people by the time we made it there. A coal-fired stove radiating heat to the room and warming the mulled wine were exactly what I’d imagined there to be in a house like that. The people were a nice mix, too - from theatre types to old university friends of the birthday girl.

It was also magical to go outside from the clamor of chatter to walk through the garden and listen to absolute silence all round, being surrounded by the frosty mist that obscured all light from the stars above. Being apart from the world for a moment like that felt really good.

A lot of us ended up sleeping on the floor on various combinations of camping mats, cushions, sleeping bags and blankets. Luckily I hadn’t gone too overboard the night before so waking up to a cold crisp morning wasn’t terrible at all. Nine of us went off on a walk over hill and dale to a fabled pub that supposedly only takes 45 minutes to get to. But because we stopped at each ridge and cattle grid it took the troupe much longer than that. I was also really glad to have brought proper warm clothes for the hike, as the wind up there was biting. The food, though - wow. I didn’t mind splashing out on honest grub where the portions are big, and that this was.

Since the entire area didn’t have any cell phone reception, and because our walk had taken just a tad too long getting back in time for the train became a challenge. Thankfully our gracious hosts were willing to drive us back to Shrewsbury in time for our train.

What a weekend. I’m so glad I got to go. Life is pretty good right now.