Jonny Numb

The two times we’ve traveled internationally, me and my partner have kept a journal of unique locales and landscapes, along with our impressions of whatever random things we feel like capturing “for the record.”

While I contemplated typing up my excerpts from the journal here, I thought it might be easier to compress the highlights in the form of handy-dandy, bulleted list.

Because who doesn’t like lists, eh, guv? (Beats having to decide where one paragraph ends and another starts, amirite? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, saynomore!?)

So…with that said, let’s take a whirlwind tour of some British Landscapes…

Thoughts on Air Travel:

• I don’t think I’ll ever like air travel – it’s like being stuck in soda can with wings for an unnatural period of time. Me and my S.O. were sandwiched in the middle of a row for the flight over and back, which always turns into a Saw-styled game of “get up to pee or die – make your choice!”
• In-flight movie selection ranked (from best to worst): Blade Runner 2049 (rewatch) > Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) > Pet Sematary: Bloodlines > > > > > > > > > > > Caddyshack

• We sprang some extra coin for seats with additional legroom, which was nice.
• No individual overhead temperature control for the seats – BOOOOOOOOO!
• On the trip home, sat next to a nice actuary from Surrey who was headed to Philadelphia on business (Rittenhouse Square area).
• Try as I might, I just can’t sleep on planes.

Thoughts on Guided Tours:

• For guided tours, one of the impish pleasures is coming up with nicknames for your fellow travelers (no, I’m not revealing any). I will say – one person in particular reminded me of Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos.

• Our Tour Director was an intimidating fellow at first glance – he would stop talking if people broke out in side-conversations – but I quickly grew to respect his temperament, his emphasis on timeliness, and his very sarcastic sense of humor. For those who learned how to approach him without fear, he was very helpful in recommending places to visit in our free time (shopping, museums, historical sites, etc.).
• We arrived a day prior to the start of the guided tour to account for any potential travel snafus (luckily there weren’t any).
• Try as I might, I just can’t sleep on buses, either.

Thoughts on Edinburgh, Scotland:

• Just lovely – we were within walking distance of shopping, restaurants, and even a cat café (Maison de Moggy)!

• Get your Harry Potter fix here!
• We had a nice view of Edinburgh Castle (built atop an inactive volcano!) from our hotel-room window, and had a proper tour of the grounds on October 15^th after a brief bus tour of the city proper.

• We were guided through a “close” that led to a writer’s museum and was used as a filming location for Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein adaptation.
• Also on the 15th, we took part in a dinner show that included Scottish song and dance (including a bagpiper and accordionist).
• By the third day of the tour, I’d had haggis (in some form) three times. Also: I now know I like haggis!

Thoughts on Chester:

• I became fascinated by the Tudor architecture in Chester (I like how some buildings have the appearance of “sinking” – or imploding – due to age and the materials used in their construction).
• Snowdonia – the land of so many sheep, rolling hills and mountains, waterfalls, and miles upon miles of no visible human beings! Real Lord of the Rings-style scenery. Reminded me in the best of ways of the days when we’d spend hours traveling through Iceland, with nothing but the fascinating, undisturbed landscape to fill our senses.

Thoughts on Caernarfon, Wales:

• While in Wales, we got to explore the towers, passageways, and side-rooms of Caernarfon Castle, which was very cool.

• The “charity shops” we entered were smaller than the typical U.S. Goodwill or Salvation Army, but the organization and quality of items was much better – little to no junk. And, like souvenir shops, there seemed to be at least one on every corner. I picked up two CDs (Fatboy Slim and Ennio Morricone) and a 2025 planner from CATS Protection, which was maybe a block away from Caernarfon Castle.
• Perused several W.H. Smiths (equivalent of a Borders or Barnes & Noble) and picked up a couple magazines in Wales that I think are exclusive to the UK (if not, I can at least point to them and say with confidence, “I picked these up in the UK!”). Additionally, I will associate the chain even more with this Monty Python sketch than ever:

Thoughts on Random Things:

• Bathrooms are interesting – the stalls have the “water closet” aesthetic I remember from Iceland (ceiling-high walls and doors; plenty of space), but the urinals were these bizarre pod-shaped things (like caved-in H.R. Giger Alien eggs) that tended not to have the “courtesy barriers” we have in the States. The toilets have no handles – unless they auto-flush, you have to press one (or sometimes two) buttons mounted in the wall above the commode to flush.
• With few exceptions, the weather “held” rather nicely for the duration of the trip – only 2 or 3 out of the 10 days were rainy and windy to an annoying degree.
• To that end – I packed all of the white undershirts in my closet, but didn’t wear any.
• Coffee – local shops seemed to only have 1 size for their “to go” cups, which perhaps made sense, as the coffee overall seemed much stronger. Costa Coffee – a chain over there – makes a strong mocha. Starbucks is also prevalent if you want that gooey and sugary (but not as sweet as what you’d get in the States) flavor.
• After our say in Edinburgh, the on-street bins seemed to disappear, requiring us to hold on to any accumulated trash until we entered a restaurant. Sometimes, we simply collected our non-food waste in a plastic bag and deposited it whenever we ran across a bin. Interesting contrast: despite the number of trash cans lining the streets in American cities, there always seems to be so much litter.
• So. Many. Souvenir. Shops.
• Chain grocery/convenience-stores: Sainsbury’s, Tesco Express, and Marks & Spencer (more highbrow – imagine a more aesthetically pleasing version of Whole Foods).
• Chain restaurants: Greggs – a celiac’s worst nightmare (my S.O. needed to get porridge because everything else was comprised of bread in some form). A McDonald’s would also periodically pop up at the travel plazas.
• “Comfort stop” = “bathroom break”.
• Soda bottles have interesting caps that don’t twist all the way off – probably to prevent loss/dropping of said cap to keep soda contained. A small yet clever idea.
• Fish and chips are good, but sticky toffee pudding is BEST!

On Meeting a Longtime Online Friend:

• I had the great fortune of meeting longtime online friend Gore Blimey (of The Trilogy of Terror podcast) while in Chester. He brought me some uniquely “English” foods (including marmite!), we ate dinner at a nearby Toby Carvey, and continued our conversation on Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool, the Terrifier series, how our “fake” online identities are truer representations of “our selves” than the profiles that use our actual names, and how our actual podcast audiences usually turn out different than we could ever imagine (in a good way). We drank Cokes in the hotel lounge until it closed at 11:45, and continued the conversation for an additional hour beneath the awning next to the hotel’s revolving-door entrance while a steady, cooling rain poured down beside us. An excellent, very fortune meeting with a genuinely great person.
• Gore kindly drove us to a local Toby Carvery for dinner. As we pawed through a bag of English food offerings he’d gifted us, the father from the table behind us (who sounded exactly like character actor Ralph Ineson, from The VVitch, The First Omen, and the UK version of The Office, among many others) came over to proclaim his love for marmite, after which his wife deeply apologized for the recommendation. Apparently, “it’s a bit marmite” is an English saying for things that are extremely divisive.

Thoughts on Stratford-upon-Avon:

• Briefly walked through Shakespeare’s birthplace, had a late-afternoon pick-me-up at the lovely Shakespaw Cat Cafe (we were missing our fur-babies at this point), and rounded out the evening with two delicious pies from Red Hot Mama Pizza.
• We were feeling fatigued at this point, and sat out the group dinner that was on the itinerary.

Thoughts on Oxford:

• Our day in Oxford presented the most inclement weather – wind and rain lashing sideways, soaking the exposed parts of my hoodie (I threw on a poncho when it rained) – so we ducked into the Ashmolean Museum for a few hours. It figures that the Ancient Egypt section – including a mummified cat – was my favorite part. I also find myself a bit more in awe of historical artifacts and their respective ages than I did when they were being forced down my throat on field trips as a little kid.
• While rain spit and wind blew it horizontally, I heard the chimes of a nearby church – or the college campus, maybe? – and this triggered a bizarre and obscure recollection. In his review of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, Roger Ebert noted that the opening scene is set at Harvard, but really takes place somewhere else. When I arrived back in the States, I checked the Wikipedia page for the film and, sure enough, the Harvard scenes were filmed at Oxford University. So it was neat to be in the presence of that bit of film history.

Thoughts on London:

• Even a major city like London seems less built-up and crowded than the high-profile American cities I’ve visited (but it’s still plenty crowded, even on a weekday).
• The government has made it all but cost-prohibitive to commute by car into the city – therefore, the traffic lanes tend to be crowded with daredevil bicyclists.
• Major cities I’ve visited, ranked in order of cleanliness: Reykjavik > Montreal > Toronto > London > Philadelphia > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Manhattan

• Taxis in London are expensive – we almost took one from a fish and chips restaurant back to our hotel, until we discovered the cost would be 80 pounds!
• Whilst searching for said fish and chips restaurant, we wound up taking a footbridge across the Thames, and passed The Royal National Theatre and the British Film Institute (which appeared to be hosting a premiere of some sort).
• Therefore, we used the Underground on two occasions to get back to our hotel – I think with another day or two, we would’ve been pros at “the tube.” Additionally, the subways are very well-kept. And I’m not sure if this has been adopted Stateside, but the process to gain entry to the platforms is simple: swipe a credit card at the entrance/exit gates in the Underground. No need to fidget with metro-cards.
• There were panhandlers in London, but they sounded like they were auditioning for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• By the last day, I finally got the hang of how to “look” at traffic before crossing the street.
• Time constraints, trip fatigue, and cost kept us from visiting the infamous Tower of London, but our super-cool bus driver, Steve, took us on a brief ride around its perimeter following the closing-night group dinner.

• Nice to know irresponsible people let their dogs shit on the sidewalk in the UK (I know because I stepped in some)!
• To that end – cobblestone roads/walkways everywhere. I strongly recommend hiking shoes unless you want to wreck your feet. By the time we reached London, my dogs were barking something fierce.
• Got to walk through a giant park in London, take a picture of Big Ben (even got to hear the 10am chimes), and watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, which was actually very cool!

• Our tour guide for London (named Duncan) was the best of the bunch, blending humor with historical facts – pointing out the Whitechapel District (where Jack the Ripper did his dirty work) and Fleet Street (where the fictional Sweeney Todd did his). Humorously, though, he seemed very reluctant to use the flag with the tour-company name as an easy identifier for the members of the group who couldn’t keep pace, instead opting to wave his Evian bottle above his head.
• PHYSICAL MEDIA IS ALIVE AND WELL…across the pond, anyway! While I walked through Assai Records in Edinburgh and Fopp in London, I ultimately didn’t purchase anything (I’m more a CD than vinyl fellow, and my lack of a region-free Blu-ray player put almost all of Fopp’s movie inventory out of bounds). That said, a walk to the three-story HMV in London proved fortuitous, as I picked up a stack of CDs and a gift for a friend. My music pickups weren’t necessarily rare or exclusive to the UK, but replicated the endorphin rush I feel when going into a store and walking out with a bag full of unexpected treasures. The CD section was substantial, and included a healthy selection of such UK-native artists as Killing Joke, Gary Numan, and even the long-defunct Alien Sex Fiend!

• Additionally, it slipped my mind that poverty row director Andy Milligan had resided in England for a spell, filming several of his low-budget quickies there.
• The Proper English Breakfast is comprised of a bunch of things I actively avoid putting in my breakfast – tomato wedge, runny egg, sauteed mushrooms, baked beans (tomato sauce, not brown sugar). That said, I tried it on the second day, if for no other reason than to say, “I tried it!” It was only near the end that my food-prejudiced mind considered that everything should be clumped together and eaten as some kind of big mess!
• At the closing-night group dinner (at Roast, which was beautifully decked out in Halloween-season decor), I finally got a chance to try a local beer – the restaurant’s own lager – which was quite good!

Conclusion:

A good trip. A lot of rushing. More of a “sampler” tour of many things that gave me and my partner ideas for areas we might want to focus in on for future visits.

Until next time, friends!