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The week before we left.

So apart from the interesting news that riots had broken out in Moscow, (what with us having an extended stop at Moscow,) in the week before we left, we also had the added interest of Barnum our dog doing one of his usual stunts. He became quite ill. He always gets ill around holiday time, it’s a hobby of his. So we took him to the vet. It turned out to be his teeth, he had three rotten ones that needed extracting, which went some way to explain his awful foul breath. Not only were they rotting, but the bacteria produced were also affecting his heart, he’s had a “heart murmur” as long as we’ve had him. So he was booked in, two days before we left, to have his teeth out. After his opp, we duly picked him up from the vet, and got the instruction that he was only to eat raw steak in chunks for the next week. this, apparently was to stop the holes in his gums filling with stuff which could rot. He was given antibiotics and some heart meds. As he was staying with the mother in law while we were away, the feeding of steak wouldn’t be a problem, as she loves spoiling the dogs. Also the meds wouldn’t be a problem as she’s somewhat obsessed with medications.

Oh, we also got a bill for $900, which wasn’t exactly what we needed, not right before our holiday.

The day before we left, I collected our hire car from the city centre. We had found that the one way hire of a car, including gas, was cheaper than three bus tickets to the airport. The girl at the hire place, though pleasant, had a better moustache than I could ever grow. I was dead envious.

Reece, Bethy’s boyfriend came round for them to have an emotional farewell. We left them to it.

While out driving, getting last minute bits and bobs together, me and Lee-Anne pulled up at road lights, they were on yellow. The reason I didn’t shoot through on yellow was there was a cop in the outside (turning right) lane. A good three seconds after the lights turned red, a SUV shot through. The cop looked at me, I looked at the cop, we both laughed our heads off, he stuck his lights on and off he went. A couple of hundred yards down the road I gave him the “thumbs up” as he bollocked and booked the SUV driver.

I then went to the bank. I had informed them a week in advance that I would be extracting a fair chunk of our savings in cash, so as to take advantage of the exchange rate. They had forgotten this, and had no $100 bills in stock. “Would you mind having it all in $50’s Mr Thomas?” I ended up with a wedge thick enough to make most rappers blink with envy. I also got some Chinese Yuan to use in Shanghai. No one would change dollars for Rouble though, you can only get those in Russia for some strange reason.

That evening we had our supper, the now traditional “leaving for the UK” Turkish Pide, at Mary’s (mother in law’s) house. We gave her the meds for Barnum, and the vets list of instructions for his medications, feeding and things. She gave us our Xmas presents from her and her sister, which happened to be a generous helping of UK quids, with strict instructions to get ourselves presents with them.

 

Saturday. 17/12/11

We awoke at 3.00am as we had leave to drive to Sydney Airport at 5.00 am. I’ll happily admit I was so dazed by this early start that, while making Lee-Anne a cup of coffee, I put  orange juice in it instead of milk. I made her another. Luckily I was awake by the time we left, as, coincidentally, a roo hoped across the road in front of us, not 200 yards away from our house. This had happened to Mary when she was driving us off on our last UK holiday. They know you know.

We had our trusty GPS with us, formerly known as Sean, henceforth it would be known as Billy, as we’d added Billy Connolly’s voice to it. The drive up, through a  beautiful, warm,  crystal-clear, watercolour morning, was uneventful, but did make me wonder how well I would cope with UK winter driving. Thanks to Billy we drove straight to the hire car return bays at the Airport. We then drove straight out again, as we had forgotten to top up the tank, and they were asking $2.40 a litre to refill it for us. We found a garage, topped up at $1.57 a litre, and drove back.

The airport was packed to the gills, we found the Qantas check in, we’d done our check in  online, grabbed some magazines and waited. There were groups of girls dressed as angels and singing carols, while wondering though the place, which gave it a nice Xmassy feel.

Flight 1. (days and dates lose meaning here for a little while.)

Our first flight was with Qantas, so nothing too dramatic should happen, or at least that’s what I thought. I watched a few movies and some TV shows. “The Guard” I can highly recommend. Lee-Anne watched “Red Dog,” which made her cry. The food was good, and they served “James Squire” beers with the meals, so “no worries!” All was calm and normal until we got within 30 minutes of Shanghai, then a fight broke out at the back of the cabin. Yep, a genuine bit of “up tables” kicked off,  which was entertaining to say the least. Two Chinese guys had a “full and frank exchange of views” over where they should leave their water bottles (or that’s what we gathered.) The air-hostesses did their best to diffuse the situation, and shushed us all into sitting down. I got strict instructions off Lee-Anne not to go and “help”. Apart from that we landed in Shanghai without bother.  Though Shanghai customs officers are a bunch of arses, sour faced bitches with the warmth and humanity of frogspawn.

We then had 6 hours wait in Shanghai airport, which, at that time of night, was to all intents and purposes, shut.

Luckily we had a some of the left over Pide meals from Mary’s house secreted in our rucksacks. I kid you not! So in the middle of the night, in Shanghai, we had a feast of (cold) deep fried zucchini balls, which were fab. I washed mine down with a  bottle of “Quality Mellow” (iced tea) purchased from a the only open shop. Just to round it off, I bought, and ate, a bag of “Gourmet Roast Chestnuts,” which were foul. The reason I was filling up was that I had been reliably informed by the agency we bought our tickets off, that Aeroflot do not do vegetarian meals, and we had a 10 hour flight ahead of us.

On the TV screens about the airport a classic Kung Fu movie “The Deadly Duo” was playing, and, although this was total shite, it passed the time and was good for a chuckle. The basic plot seemed to be that everybody hated these two brothers, so they spent the whole movie kicking lumps out of everyone they came into contact with. I know how they were feeling, I was feeling a bit that way inclined myself by then.

Eventually the queue started forming for our second flight. So we joined it. Looking around at the other people I got the impression that some, most even, had been spending their roubles in the Shanghai Xmas sales, and had forgotten to check in their boxes of purchases at the luggage check in.

Second flight.

Amazingly all the Ruskies we had seen, which seemed to be mainly middle-aged male gangsters and incredibly beautiful seven foot tall gangsters molls, were not toting their luggage up the wrong aisle, this was their hand luggage! I couldn’t believe my eyes, each person had more in hand luggage than we had as our total luggage for our five week holiday. I fully expected to see people bring live goats and boxes of chickens onto the plane. There were a few raised voices when this lot was being stowed I’ll tell you. Though as the raised voices were all Russian it sounded like a shouting contest in which people were only allowed to talk backwards.

Adding to this impression was the plane itself. It was an ageing Tupolev, it was like stepping back in time to about 1978. There was no seat back TV screens, just TVs at the ends of each aisle. The air-hostesses looked like the Russian shot putting team from the 1956 Olympics. Oh boy, ten hours of this! Fun and games to look forward to then.

On take off the landing gear had some difficulty retracting, and when it finally made it into the hold there was a massive “THUD!” which we felt through our seats. Not exactly reassuring.

The first incident of the flight happened when a fat guy tried reclining his seat, and ended up with his head on Bethy’s lap. To be fair he did apologise profusely, in fluent Russian, and kept his seat near vertical for the rest of the trip. Then the TV ”entertainment” fired up. I found it hard to believe that the first offering was “Home Alone” dubbed in Russian. “Home Alone” wasn’t even funny in 1990. Luckily the tape snapped. Yes, the tape, it was on whatever the Ruskie version of VHS tape is. And it fucking snapped.

Then they showed a Russian (melo)drama about some woman who robbed the bank she was working at in order to keep her boyfriend screwing her. Or at least that’s my interpretation of it, it may have been Dostoyevsky’s critique of Western capitalism for all I know. It was a couple of hours/days long, and  featured some blonde, or at least badly dyed peroxide blonde, who spent her screen time staring into space wistfully, while it snowed. We then had some prehistoric Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Following this they switched the TVs off, and turned all the lights out. Nighty night kiddies!

I was woken buy a shot putter thrusting a red hot tin tray into my hand. It contained a fruit omelette for breakfast. I ate it, and wished I hadn’t. Luckily I had some zucchini balls left so I ate those too.

“Ooh look it’s snowing,” said Bethy pointing out of the window. “Snowing” is too delicate a word for what was happening outside, it was a blizzard. Then I remembered the noise the landing gear had made, shit! I didn’t mention this to the two girls, though Lee-Anne definitely gave me a; “So the flights were cheap then eh?” look.

With another hollow, bone numbing, thud, the landing gear went down, much gripping of seat arms was engendered. We landed sideways, the plane turned  left, then right, then back left, and skidded to a halt. I have never been thrown about so much on a landing, or been so glad to be on the deck. The round of applause the pilot got from all and sundry was truly heartfelt.

Moscow customs was a doddle, no one really seemed to give a fuck. We walked miles to the new terminal F. There I bought some Vodka, a litre and a half of it, for the equivalent of $4.00 Au. I noticed that everything was priced in Roubles or Euros, and vowed to come armed with armfuls of Euro on the return trip.

 

Third flight

Our next flight was on a Airbus 320, modern, clean and surprisingly half empty. This one also came without entertainment, but as it was only a four hour flight this wasn’t too distressing. I read a book and caught up with a bit of sleep.

Sunday 18/12/11

We arrived in London before we left Moscow. I cannot get my head around that either. We left Moscow at 9.40 am, and arrived at Heathrow at 9.35 am, despite flying for four hours. Fortunately for us customs was virtually empty and we sailed through the checks, and gathered our luggage. I got my new Aussie passport stamped with a British entry stamp which pleased me extraordinarily, to be entering the UK as a foreign national for the first time.  Little things etc.

So here I was, once more back in Blighty.

We took a minibus over to the car hire place, only to find our car wasn’t ready for us. This turned out to be a very good thing. They told us we could either wait a couple of hours for our car, or we could, for a very reasonable price, upgrade to a bigger car. We took the upgrade, and got a  very nice Renault Clio Diesel. This was such a blessing, as even in the bigger car, we were hard pushed to fit us and all our stuff in, a problem which increased exponentially when we hit the sales. But I get ahead of myself here. Christ only knows how we would have coped with the smaller car, we’d have had to buy a roof rack, or more likely a trailer for it.

We loaded up the car. It had its own built in GPS, but we never worked out how to use this the whole time we had it, and, as we had paid heaps to put Billy on ours, we were intent on using him in any case. Lee-Anne tried setting Billy for our first stopping place, Kingham.  He couldn’t find it, and claimed it doesn’t exist. It was only after a load of faffing about with it that we realised it was still programmed with Australia as it’s location,  and was trying to find Kingham on the map of Australia. No wonder the poor bugger was confused. We reset it for the UK, and soon he was happily burbling directions at us in broad Scots.

We passed two crashes, which had reduced the M 25 to a crawl, the delay gave me plenty of time to adjust to British driving mode, or “Kamikaze mode” as Lee-Anne prefers. Overhead a couple of buzzards soared, I whopped with joy and pointed them out to the girls; “You won’t see many of those, catch a view of them while you can!” No points for guessing what happened next. The bloody motorway was lined with buzzards. Soaring buzzards, buzzards resting on lampposts, buzzards eating dead sheep, buzzards screwing in the hedgerows. It would seem they’ve experienced a renaissance since I left. Lee-Anne decided  that they needed an eradication program to get the numbers of them down to manageable levels.

We stopped off in the lovely town of Chipping Norton to grab ready meals from Sainsbury’s. I was hoping to spot Jeremy Clarkeson or David Cameron buying beers or porn mags in there, as they are locals. No such luck though.

Eventually we found our way to Cook’s Cottage in the gloriously twee village of Kingham.

We let ourselves in, lit the wood-burner, and  ate our ready meals. I hit the Russian Vodka, it tasted like Listerine flavoured petrol. We managed to watch a bit of TV, but soon the days and days of travel caught up with us, and we crashed early.

 

Monday 19/12/11

As sod’s law would have it we were all awake like larks at 5.30 am. Not much to do at that time of day in Kingham,  so we watched the news on TV , lit the fire again, showered, and had some breakfast. Once it was light we decided to drive into Oxford.

After paying a mint to park, (eight bloody quid,) we realised we were all ravenously hungry. Not surprising really, as we’d lived off cold Turkish food, Aeroflot breakfasts and chestnuts for what seemed like four days. Lee-Anne spotted a pasty shop, “That’ll do nicely!” Oh god a real pasty at last, not one of my homemade efforts, or the jokes they sell in Aus as pasties. Heaven. We decided to go to Oxford indoor market, as we had fond memories of it from the last trip. Good call, the place was so Dickensian Christmassy that I nearly cried. The butchers stalls were works of art in themselves, and all had birds, hams and even whole boars hanging up outside them. Lee-Anne was entranced as the way the meats were presented, and the sawdust on the floor, evoked vivid memories of her grandfather’s butchers shop. I was waiting outside a butchers when  an oldish guy came up and started inspecting the boar carcase which was hanging there. “Nice, but I couldn’t eat a whole one,” I commented. I thought he was going to choke he laughed so hard. (It’s the way I tell them.) 

Also there was a cake shop, a cake shop which did the most fantastic handmade decorative cakes. Though the windows you could watch the girls at work making them, fantasic to watch. Also in the window was a huge cake sculpture of the “Radford Camera,” mindblowing.

Leaving the market we searched for a phone shop in order to buy sim cards for our phones, and a dongle for the laptop. Research on the net had lead me to believe that “3 Mobile” were our best choice. research on the net isn’t always bloody right. The first “3 Mobile” shop we tried, the girl there was so bloody gormless and useless that we called it quits after a short while and left. We stopped at a cafe, had a coffee, and had a think about this. Foolishly, we (I) decided to try another “3 Mobile” shop; the guy there was more use, but thought my accent was Australian. The twat. We bought sim cards for two phones, a sim card for the i-pad, and a dongle for the laptop, we also bought 15 quids worth of credit for each of them. “”3 Mobile” have 98% coverage in the UK,” claimed the bright boy selling them.

We drove back to Kingham, which we found to be located in the 2% of the country not covered by the “3 Mobile” network. A guy knocked on our door wanting to read the leccy meter, but we didn’t have a clue where it was hidden, so we told him to come back next week. By which time we would have left.

I strolled up the village to check out the pubs, there was two of them, one good one and one which looked a bit too posh. The good one was shut. Another evening of ready meals, nasty vodka, and British TV then, no sweat! Actually if you’ve ever seen Aussie TV, you’ll know what a  wonderful thing British TV is, and why watching it for us was a great pleasure. We watched “Vanity fair,” Bethy loved that, and “The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff,” a wonderful Dickens parody which had me rolling on the floor. Or maybe that was just the nasty vodka?

Tuesday 20/12/11

We decided to have a day in Stratford up Avon, to do the cultural thing. We drove out of Kingham, keeping an eye on the mobiles. Eventually Lee-Anne found she had a phone signal, so she decided to phone her mother. Except the phone told her she had no credit, this despite having fifteen quid’s worth put on it the day before. Trying Skype on the phone was no good either, thus contradicting the guy who sold us the sim cards, who had reliably informed us that; “Skype will be great for you to make cheap international calls”. Not wanting to lose the luxury of actually having a signal, she decided to add credit to the phone. Much to her disgust she was told that her Aussie credit card was no good for topping up the sim, and she’d have to use a UK card. One of which we didn’t have.

Eventually we arrived in Stratford. An old boy was sat in a booth at the car park, taking the parking fees. He chatted happily about Stratford with  such knowledge and depth of information, coupled with enthusiasm to spare, to the extent that I was seriously considering not bothering going into the town and staying just to listen to him.

Eventually I dragged myself away, and we made a beeline for Shakespeare’s birthplace.  Some guys were singing carols, busking, in the main square. When I say ‘singing carols”, I mean proper singing, with four part harmonies and medieval pronunciation, they must have been choristers or something. Bethy was enraptured. Me too, truth be told.

Shakespeare’s birthplace itself isn’t cheap to get into, (although the admission price includes three other houses of note,) but it was all worth every penny.  The highlight of the tour was the costumed attendants, these gave you a brief introduction to the different areas of the house, and answered questions on Shakespeare and his life there. The first one of these was wonderful, she was dressed as a pantry maid, and was a font of all knowledge, she made the whole thing come alive.

Having been set up to expect this level of service, later, when we were upstairs, Bethy asked the geezer doing the spiel a question about some of the ancient graffiti on the windows; “That isn’t graffiti,” was his terse reply.

Yes it fucking is! Tell me, is this graffiti or what?

Mind you, later in the holiday Clarkie also tried to convince us that it isn’t technically graffiti too. But he’s a twat, so we ignored him.

Sated on Shakespeare for a while, we decided to get some lunch. The pub opposite the birthplace, “The Garrick” was famous. It was also heaving, (not always a good sign,) but the menu looked good too. So we found a “wait here to be seated” sign, and waited. And waited. And waited. And then decided to fuck off somewhere else.

Not a hundred yards down the road, “The Falcon” was  empty. It was every bit as “Olde Worlde” as the Garrick, but unburdened by customers. We got served quite quick, which was nice. We had the traditional English meal of onion rings and chips there. I also had my first proper pint in years, nectar. I found not only was my phone working, had a signal, but also it had credit on it! Whatever next? This gave me the opportunity to phone and text everyone I knew, in order to leave rude messages, and to pass on our contact number. Which I did. Except I gave them all the wrong number, transposing a 7 and a 4. This was to cause my mum no end of grief over the coming weeks, as every bugger phoned her to get the right number. Oh, the guy whose number I had given out to everyone wasn’t too pleased either, apparently.

We did the last house, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, and strolled along the Avon. Swans swam serenely on the river, and squirrels played hide and seek in the trees, and it was all quite fucking wonderful.

Driving back I found myself behind a Maserati, the look of terror on Lee-Anne’s face when she realised what sort of car it was was a picture; “Taff’s in a hire car, it’s brand new, and he’s behind a Maserati! Time to hang on for dear life!” She needn’t have bothered. What I had actually found myself behind, (on a single track road, doing 45 in a 70 limit area,) was some ancient old boy, who was obviously out for a spin in his pride and joy. Not really a Maserati driver then. When I eventually got to overtake him, he looked about 108 years old, and knocking on death’s door, poor old sod. But at least he gets to drive a Maserati.

That evening we dined at the Tollgate Inn in the village. They served a very nice pint of “Old Buttocks” or something, and the food was first rate. I think they undercharged us for the meal, which enamoured me even more to the place. The only down point of the place was the food was served by some tasty older bird, who obviously found waitressing beneath her, and who’s smile could have cleaned the glasses there. Don’t marry a publican if you don’t want to end up as a barmaid then love. She was compensated for a by a herd of six foot tall, blonde, “posh totty” types who paid a brief visit into the bar, necked some lethal looking cocktails and went off to ravish Mellors.