In which we Survive Tiredness

Janes Journal Page Notes:
Refuge from Insanity...

Too few true listeners gives rise
To our need to listen to ourselves,
Pen to paper, eyes to words we go,
Souls opening and exposed,
This is our refuge from insanity.

Journal entry:
Yesterday was a lost day. Jet lag will do that to you, along with swirling emotions.

Our arrival in Manchester was perfectly smooth and simple. Very English queue at Customs. One long line across the room under the “E.U. and British Passports” sign which ended at 3 or 4 agents. Off to the left was one lone agent sitting at the front of the snaky but empty line for “All Others.” All of us cattle mooed ... er, moved along in the one line with me wondering why we were in the E.U. line at all. Finally, I broke out of line to go towards the lonely Customs man and asked if we were supposed to be there. "Yes," he said, somewhat sniffily. So we quickly merged to the front of the line with him. He looked at our passports, ran them through the scanner, asked why we were traveling ("Family wedding"), and waved us through. Forty seconds at most. No one followed us. Weird. There were other Americans (and Asians, at least) on the plane.

Our suitcases were already on the conveyer belt. I took a quick look around to see if Elizabeth was perhaps waiting for her bags still. Nope; the other conveyer in use wasn’t for her flight. Yes, "the other"--this is a much smaller airport than Heathrow!!

Once we wound our way out into the Arrivals Lounge, Beast headed directly for food: he had not been able to eat on the flight and was ravenous after skipping lunch at home the previous day as well. Unfortunately, the money that one of my coworkers gave me from her last trip over here a few years ago doesn’t work anymore. Had to first exchange it for a “new” £20 note. Then he could eat.

While he did that, I stayed with our three bags and looked around for Elizabeth. It’s not that big of an airport, but there are three terminals. We had established before leaving home that her airline doesn't use at the main terminal, where the main Meeting Place is. It is actually called The Meeting Place: it said so over our heads! No Elizabeth. Hmmm. Finally got smart and checked her flight number: it had been delayed and had just landed, about an hour late.

Beast having been fed, he had brainpower enough to go to the Hertz counter and start getting our rental organized. Again, I was deputized to guard the bags. Alone--Sparky went with Dad. And there we were for quite some time, probably twenty minutes. I had no idea what was going on; Sparky was sitting on the floor fifty yards away from me, near the car counters, lost in his manga. Beast was out of sight behind a pillar.

Elizabeth arrived as I stood there. None the worse for wear; they had sat on the runway at Boston for an hour after she called us. We had a quick conversation, and then I went to see what the problem was with the car.

The problem was there were no cars. There were some "on the way" but they couldn’t tell us when those would arrive. If we hadn’t already put money down on the reservation, through www.autoeurope.com, we probably would have just gone to Avis (or somewhere) and gotten a car from them. Since we had dropped $150 already, we waited. For almost two hours. We had a false alarm at one point: a car had been returned and they planned to give it to us after it was cleaned up. It turned out that it was too damaged to rent (both doors were banged up), so we resumed our wait.

We were rewarded at last with a two-level upgrade and a brand-new Toyota Avensis (?) with only five miles on the odometer. Yes, brand-new. I wonder if they just went and bought a car for us to rent! It does pay to be nice and patient.

Jean had warned me to be careful upon leaving the airport; they got lost after picking up Marie and Jan the previous week. We aren‘t sure how; it‘s pretty straightforward, and I had printed off gazillions of maps and directions, so we were all set. There is a GPS in the car too, but we didn’t have a chance (or mental capacity?) to figure it out. After the two-hour delay at Hertz, we figured we should just get to Wakefield and check in with the relatives. We finally arrived at about 12:30, just as people were really starting to get concerned. They had lunch ready for us, so we ate some sandwiches and chatted a bit.

They showed us our digs as well. The sleeping arrangements for this weekend are very confusing. Jean did a spreadsheet to get it all sorted out for the whole family. But the short version for us is that we were staying with BA. and her friend in their cottage one night, and then moving to an actual hotel room for the duration.

The Parklands Hotel is a residence hotel. There is the main building with proper hotel facilities, and then there are about four attached cottages--basically, homes converted into rental units. The hotel calls them "cottages," which in my mind conjures "cabins" or at least detached buildings scattered about (artistically, of course). They aren't any of those things: cabins, detached, scattered, or artistic. Jean & Reg are in one, and Ben’s family are in another just like it, two doors down, separated by one that is actually used as a residence.

We use the back doors (the front doors exit directly onto the street, and are apparently never used as they are burglar-alarmed) which are approached either through a paved garden area (Jean & Reg's) or an enclosed porch ("conservatory"--oh, honestly!). They give way directly into the kitchens, small but fully-functional with limited dishes and utensils as is normal for rental kitchens. The fridge is in the closet under the stairs in each house, along with ironing boards, etc. There’s a window in there in Jean and Reg's. Weird.

Beyond the kitchen is the sitting room: sofa, chairs, coffee table, side table, faux fireplace (although it may be an electric fire), TV. No room to change your mind! We are 18 inches from the sidewalk. The normal thing; hence the ever-present net curtains.

You walk through a door into the front entrance hall and up some typically British alpen stairs: watch your head and apologize for your large feet as you trip over the midget treads. Turn at the top, and you are in a narrow hall, matching those narrow stairs, with four closed doors, two on the left, one on the right, one straight ahead.

Sparky is in the first door in a tiny room with a definite floral theme: single bed, wardrobe, small nightstand. Those and Beast are about all that will fit in the room. We are next door to him in a slightly larger room, only because there is room for two single beds, along with the wardrobe and a nightstand (which is too big to fit between the beds!). Across the hall are BA. and her friend in a room similar to ours, I guess. We are facing the street; they face the garden.

The fourth door is the bathroom, which again in true British style isn’t much smaller than the bedrooms due to the presence of a large warming cupboard. Tub with shower (quite complicated, we’ve been warned), pedestal sink, and a toilet crammed into the back corner. This is the brightest room upstairs!

Decor: uhm, I said '50s. Reg mumbled something about '30s. OK, I can accept that. Fairly modern plumbing and decently solid beds, though, which we immediately put to use after schlepping our bags upstairs. Said bags barely fit in our bedrooms!

After lunch we did try to sleep. Beast got some dozing in, Sparky totally sacked out, and I? Well, I dozed for a bit, but started having those panic/'what if' dreams after about an hour. I’d had tea for lunch: probably not too smart. I read for awhile, but didn’t want to chance waking Beast (who says he didn't "really sleep" anyway--yeah, ok). I went downstairs and did a crossword in the sitting room until our agreed-upon wake-up time. I wonder if I'm going to spend the vacation waking people up?

We went to Jean & Reg's cottage for dinner. Just as we were heading over, BA. returned from setting up and decorating the marquee (tent?) for the reception. They freshened up and brought their prepackaged lasagna over to heat up after Jean's prepackaged lasagna finished. The oven wouldn’t have held all three 4" x 8" lasagna pans at once. There were ten of us; we ate small helpings of lasagna in shifts as it was warmed up. Most of us were too keyed up to eat anyway.

After dinner we chatted for awhile, but Elizabeth, Beast & I needed a walk. We also needed to find a cash machine so we could put money together for our wedding gift. We had a nice hour-long wander to two grocery stores where we also bought lunch goodies, beer, and Coke. The first grocery was Netto’s--basically Aldi’s, and a bit low-rent; no ATM there. They directed us to Morrison’s "up the road" (yeah, about half a mile!), which turned out to be a proper "American" grocery store. VERY busy--but then it was closing in an hour or so. Imagine: grocery stores that close at 8 p.m. every night! We saw lots of nice houses, with the occasional Clueless-Homeowner Special. On the whole, though, Wakefield seems quite nice.

We returned and spent an hour or so talking some more until all us travelers just had to hit the sheets. I think we realized we needed to go to bed when I asked BA. to repeat herself twice and then said, "No, speak English!!" Oy, what a dope.

I crashed for most of the night. Beast doesn’t fit in the bed; it’s too short for him to stretch out as he usually does. Sparky...well, you could almost hear him through the walls he slept so hard.

{N.B. The date and time below is wrong; I wrote most of this on 16 July, but I'm trying to keep the information on each day matched to that actual entry.}