Birthday and time in Aylesbury

Seeing as my birthday was this Monday, I decided to go and visit my grandad and mum at grandads house just outside of Aylesbury. I left on Friday at 18:00 from Exeter to go to Oxford (via Reading). Fortunately, whilst I was on the train I ran into Donna, a friend of my old roommate, Matt. I invited her to sit with me and we managed to while away the time on the train, which was running fairly late because of te floods near Exeter (which has washed away a lot of the gravel beneath the railway tracks and has needed repairing!). As a result of these delays, I arrived too late to catch my second train from Reading to Oxford, but fortunately the next one was not long in coming. There I also got chatting to a fellow passenger, a teacher at a school near Exeter, who was going to visit her sister who was studying in Oxford.

The following day we decided to celebrate with a birthday meal and I finally got my new laptop, which I will hopefully be able to start up and get working soon enough, as I'm far more comfortable working with a Windows computer than with a Mac! We went out for a couple of walks, during which I managed to get a few nice photos of the autumnal countryside nearby. We then had a quiet evening in, during which I slowly tried to improve my piano skills. Sadly, however, once I decided to record myself playing just to see how bad I sounded, I realised how bad my playing is. However, as only practice makes perfect, I guess its just a question of carrying on trying to play every time I go home!

On Sunday I packed up all my things fairly quickly and after breakfast the three of us walked down to the bus stop to see me off. The bus arrived at Oxford in good time and catching my train from the station there was fine. I got it as far as Didcot Parkway, but once there, I realised that the next train which I was scheduled to catch was only going as far as Bristol Temple Meads as from there onwards the lines were under repairs from the flooding. I decided to try and do something about it once I had arrived there. There was, however, no alternative way set up to get down south, so I was forced to hang around the station until another train turned up which WAS going as far as Plymouth.

This train also proved to have an interesting passenger - I chanced to sit next to a chap reading a copy of the December 2012 edition of the National Geographic, and as I glanced at it I realised that the article he was reading was all about shamansim in Russia and other parts of Asia. Interested about this link to my dissertation, I inquired what issue it was and pointed out my reasons for wishing to know this. After this initial chat, we got into a conversation. It turned out that this chap, Zach, works as a tree surgeon and thatcher, and had just got back from Hawaii. Eventually, he asked me what I was studying, and upon my telling him, he asked me whether I knew a James Kearns, who as chance would have it was one of my lecturers three years ago, and was Zach's uncle.

Due to the delays, I got back about two hours later than expected, but was still keen to watch Love Actually with the housemates over a pasta dinner. Unfortunately, the weekend took its toll on my ankle, which has once more swollen up and is looking rather more bruised, which meant I was unable to attend a couple of my lectures, and went to the NHS walk-in centre, where a surly man told me that it was nothing to worry about. At least that was some relief.

Just to check out how the river is doing, Ed and I headed down to the quay and got a few photos before heading back, bumping into Rémi on the way. The river had, in any case, dropped back to a normal level, despite my having seen the floods near Tiverton the day before on the train back.

Football on Duckes Meadow

Somehow this week I got roped into playing for the 11-a-side Sunday football team which my housemates have set up as part of the University's squad. Despite not having played football in at least four years, I could have done a lot worse. Despite knowing that the pitches had been inundated a week ago, and we've had bouts of torrential rain ever since, last night we were given the go-ahead by the Athletic Union, which resulted in the four of us calling on as many people as we knew to come and play for us.

Despite this, and in the knowledge that we were going to be playing football on Sunday, Ed, Loz, Nick and I headed over to the Christmas market in town to have a look around and try and spot anything which was worthy of being purchased as a present. Having found nothing which attracted our eye, Loz, and I, who had headed out a bit earlier called the other two and got them to join us in drinking some mulled wine by the cathedral.

Sunday dawned looking fairly acceptable, but for once the weather forecast seemed to be spot on in its prediction. At 14:00, just when we were due to kick-off, the rain started coming down, turning an already muddy field into a wet and slimy hellhole... We had eventually managed to assemble a team of 13 players, two of whom Ed had managed to rope in at the last minute by playing in one of their matches in the morning, one who had been out the night before, and three or four helpless cases such as myself.

I started off on the bench, but was subbing for one of the other chaps soon enough, and managed to get through the second part of the first half. Unfortunately, about 10 or 15 minutes into the second half, I unsuccesfully tried to nick the ball off some other chap, which ended in a collision - his foot with my ankle. After hobbling around the pitch for another 5 or 10 minutes, I took myself off and applied cold water (followed by a bag of peas at home) to bring down the swelling.

The end score was 3 - 0, with us on the losing team. However, finishing did mean that we got to come back round to ours, sit down and watch Good Will Hunting, following in a series of rather serious films, including Saving Private Ryan on Saturday evening.

Flooding in Exeter

A lot of sad news in my technological world - my laptop has finally decided to pack up and die, which means that the previous post wont have any photos on it until I can get it fixed or somehow retrieve the photos I'd saved on it! Further to this, I've finally decided to send my camera off to be repaired, so any photos which will be going up from now on will definitely have to be taken from my mobile's camera, which isn't that bad either...

Over the past few weeks, the weather in this corner of England has been decidedly unpleasant - culminating in some torrential showers last weekend, its been pretty miserable the whole while, and with the rather strong gales, we've dedicated most evenings to staying inside, and much of the days too, only venturing out to get to lectures... Enough to say that two people have died in the Southwest (one here and one in Bristol) due to the rather extreme weather conditions - the Exe has swollen to several times its usual size, and several trees fell over, following the winds on the weekend.

In slightly more cheerful news, the weekend also brought with it the birthday of the youngest member of our house, and several of Jaime's friends from Bermuda came round to celebrate. Also, as my computer has crashed, I've managed to borrow Ed's MacBook for the couple of weeks I'll be needing it before I get mine fixed or get a new computer, so hopefully my Mac skills will suffice for that long at least!

Finally, in preparation for the half marathon which we've all signed up to in Plymouth in April, I decided it would be a good idea to start training. Hence, yesterday I wandered up to the sports park of the university and went for a 10.5km run in just over an hour on the treadmill. Why this seemed to me to be a good idea at the time, I couldn't say. Needless to say, for someone unused to that sort of strenuous exercise, it was a rather foolish idea and today my leg muscles have been in rather a lot more pain than they're used to. Hopefully, I'll be going up again soon in order to get my fitness up to scratch, if not for the half-marathon, just because no longer really being able to go climbing, it'll be a good way to do some exercise...

Weekend in Guildford

So, after getting back this weekend from my little trip to the west of the UK, I've been pretty much bogged down with work of one kind or another... Finally, however, I've managed to get a short respite, and therefore, it should be a great opportunity to put a new entry into this blog.

On Friday afternoon, not long after finishing lectures, I wandered down to the train station and boarded a train for Guildford (with one change at Woking). Depsite having become accustomed to long train journeys (3 days, 4 hours from Irkutsk to Vladivostok whilst in Russia), (21 hours standing from Ruzhou to Guangzhou whilst in China), train journeys in the UK are not quite as exciting... Perhaps it is the banale normalcy of it which makes it seem somewhat less exciting, or perhaps it is simply the fact that it is in no way as exotic, nor am I, for that matter, as in those far off lands I was seen as exotic, having travelled there all the way from Europe.

Nonetheless, travel has made me accustomed to sleeping on far rougher surfaces than a seat on a SouthWestTrains train, so after briefly trying to get some work done for this week and reading some trashy magazine which someone had left behind, I stuffed my bag and coat under my chair and nodded off. Some time later I awoke again to find that people in the carriage had come and gone. I wished I could have fallen asleep again, but sadly, this was not to be, and I was forced to listen as a little boy explained to his younger sister how the world came to be. I make no claims to be a scientist of any repute, but I'm pretty certain his theories were wrong. They all seemed to end in a lot of death for some reason too, which I found amusing in a morbid kind of way. Upon telling his sister that he had no intentions of being pretentious, but he just loved science, he then carried on to ask her what she wanted to know. Her answer: "I want to know how to make tea!". Sadly, her brother was having none of it, and went on to try some riddles he had clearly just learnt on her. Being about six, the sister couldn't have cared less as to the answers of these riddles.

Finally, however, after being delayed in Woking station for a few minutes, I arrived in Guildford, and met Tom in the car park. The entire weekend had been planned out for me to go and visit my friends Tom and Eva in Guildford, as I hadn't seen either of them for quite some time, at least 18 months, probably more. The following day (for I had arrived fairly late at night, and we went straight to bed), we decided to go to the manor and ground at Polesden Lacey as the weather looked fairly promising. We took our time getting ready, and hence left a bit late - we sat around speaking to Tom's mum about knitting techniques - but we arrived at a good time, and went through to the actual manor house. After wandering around and having a brief guided tour which told us about the lady of the manor, a Mrs. Ronald Greville, we had a quick lunch-break and then went for a wander around her sizeable estate.

After wandering the grounds (our subject of conversation being obscure points of English grammar), we wandered back and drove back into Guildford. Once there, we went for a drink at their local pub, the Kings' Head, and then back to the house to watch Dr. No over a plate of pasta.

Sunday morning dawned far sunnier than Saturday, and therefore, not wishing to waste any time, and making the decision not to go climbing indoors, we went to the car and drove off to another National Trust site, the Winkworth Arboretum, located fairly near to Godalming, where some of my good friends went to school. There, I decided to join the National Trust, which will hopefully get me, in the months to come, to go to National Trust sites around the country, particularly in the South West and in Buckinghamshire. As you do in an Arboretum, we wandered the woods and we were amazed at some of the dazzling shades of red and yellow which covered the trees. We followed a long route around the arboretum which ended up going round an ornamental lake at one end of it, and then went back up to the starting point. Here we stopped once more for a coffee before driving back. Getting back to Guildford, we sat for a short while before I had to set off back to Exeter (bus to Basingstoke, and train onwards from there to Exeter). The sunsest from the bus was spectacular, but unfortunately, being inside a moving vehicle and having dirty screens to cope with was not ideal to get a parting shot of the Guildford skyline.

Ottery St. Mary's

Having drifted away from the previous blog, A Year of Snow, I feel that as I gradually update that with my few final news snippets, I may as well get another blog under way following my triumphant return to England in this new ground-breaking blog, A Year of Rain. To sum up the past few months before writing those into either A Year of Snow of another blog, I shall briefly mention that I travelled alone from Irkutsk through Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore before flying back via Egypt and Germany. An incredible trip which any faithful readers may be able to read about whenever that is posted (don't hold your breath).

Back in the UK, little has really changed since I departed - we have a new conservative government, which appears to be a phenomenon recurring throughout Europe, but otherwise all is well - once I arrived back, I was almost instantly swamped with work, but managed to work in a few visits to see some friends, and to eventually fly back to Spain and spend a few days with my family there before coming back to my new base, Exeter. More on that later though - for the moment, I have been living in relative peace and quiet here in the South West, so nothing much can be said of such a peaceful existence - hence, instead of updating this blog with the frequency with which I often did in Irkutsk, I shall be updating it only once a week or so - whenever anything of note happens.

As it is, one of those incidents of note was yesterday - despite being Guy Fawkes' Day, I decided to stay in and get some work done, especially seeing as so many students were probably going to Ottery St. Mary's to watch the show there anyway. Eventually, however, I got coerced by my housemates into going, and it really was worth it, despite my having gone three years previously. Ottery St. Mary's is a small, rather traditional English town throughout most of the year, but on Guy Fawkes day, they celebrate a rather odd ritual, the 'The Flaming Tar Barrels' - throughout the night the men, women and children native to the village race through the crowded streets holding barrels of flaming tar aloft.

Dangerous, maybe, but also a great deal of fun, and not something any visitor to the South West should miss out on if coming at this time of year. We drove down in two cars, Em driving Nick, Sian and myself, and Ed driving Charlotte, Loz and Mateo, although we met plenty of people there as well, bumping into other acquaintances time and again. After driving in and parking, the eight of us made our way down to the massive bonfire dominating a field just outside of the village next to a large attraction park. We stood and watched a while before carrying on down into the village.

Almost instantly, when we hit the main crowds, we became separated, but I managed to keep track of Charlotte, Loz and Mateo, and walked around with them for most of the night. After witnessing a few of the children's tar barrels, we decided to head back to the bonfire to get warm before the main events (the men's tar barrels, which, being the largest, are also the most impressive). The bonfire had died down a fair bit, allowing us to get closer and catch some more of the warmth from the flames, which we did, despite having to trudge through a muddy field to get to it!

Once we were done there, we wandered back up to the village and followed three or four tar barrels before we met up with Sian, and shortly afterwards with Ed and Emma, whom we had offered to drive back. After another brief meander through the village, we headed back towards the bonfire, where we decided that it was time to head home.