The long-awaited England post

[ftmichael]

By now you have probably despaired and thought that I would never post about my trip to England. Despair no longer, for the post is here!

I was in England recently for four weeks - from 12 January to 09 February - and while we thought we were going to have regular internet access, we did not. Coming home, getting settled, and sorting through nearly 300 photos has taken a bit of time, plus it's been hard to motivate myself to write such a long post! I hope you all will forgive the delay. A separate photo post will be along shortly. (Don't worry, I won't include all 300 pics!)

12 January:

nflutist very kindly drove me to the airport and saw me off on my Air France flight to Paris. I cannot recommend Air France highly enough. The staff do speak English, although I was able to follow and respond to the bits of French from the flight attendants well enough to get by, which made me feel quite accomplished as my French is actually pretty minimal - I spoke it as a toddler because my mother was a French teacher in a previous life and she used to speak it with me, but she stopped when I was still quite young, and I pretty much lost all my French by the time I was 6. Until I recently started listening to Coffee Break French to try and relearn it, all I could reliably do in French was sing my ABCs. The food on Air France is amazing - I felt like I was in First Class - and it was quite a pleasant flight. I mostly watched Eddie Izzard on my iRiver and tried to sleep a bit.

In Paris, I checked that my departure time was still the same, waited in a long queue to go through security again (hell if I know why, since I didn't leave the terminal!), walked past the Cartier and other ridiculously posh shops (it felt much less like an airport than a posh shopping mall), found my gate, and looked around one of the far less posh shops near the gate, with the magazines and souvenirs with the Eiffel Tower on and chocolate bars and so on. Fortunately I had some euros, so I got my mother a little paperweight with the Eiffel Tower and the word Paris on it (in that past life of hers, she worked for a summer in France, but it wasn't in Paris and I don't think she's been back to France since) and went to sit and wait for my flight to start boarding. I was debating getting my mother a French magazine to help her brush up her probably-very-rusty French, and was halfway back to the little shop when they announced that my flight was boarding, so I had to leave it and go back. The flight to Manchester was obviously much shorter and not a problem at all - I tried again to sleep, but I don't think I managed it even though I was quite tired by then, as it was the wee hours of the morning Boston time.

At Manchester Airport, after getting off the plane but before reaching the baggage claim, I arrived at Customs, nervous but hopeful, and watched a few students arriving for spring semester go through before me. The woman who would be interviewing me gave them each a smile, asked what they were studying and where, and sent them on their way. When I came forward, she was all business - she wasn't mean, but she definitely didn't smile. She asked what I do for a living, when I was expected back at work, and if my return ticket was bought. I showed her my expedia.com itinerary with my return flight information, but she didn't ask for the letters from my employers or anything else, so I kept them tucked away. She asked how long I was staying, and I said four weeks - and she gave me a bit of a once-over. She asked if I knew anyone in the area, and I said I had a local friend who was going to show me around. She asked my friend's sex and nationality (male and British), how long I'd known him (five years), how we met (mutual friend), and the mutual friend's nationality (British). Nathaniel and I had discussed all this in advance in case there was a problem, so that our answers would match up if they dragged called him in for interrogation questioning, and I was really glad we'd done that!

The Customs official then asked me what I was planning to do while I was here - the one question, I think, that I hadn't anticipated, and so I had no good answer. Nathaniel and I had a big long list of things we hoped to do, but no definite plans as such, and I didn't have our list of ideas with me so I had to try to remember things under pressure, which I'm crap at doing. I said I wanted to see Manchester and Blackpool and Liverpool, maybe go up to the Lake District, possibly Edinburgh ... she wasn't looking impressed at all. She kept asking what my plans were. I mentioned that I'd like to see a football match and she asked what match; I said I didn't know, and she said 'Oh, so you've not bought tickets yet'. Of course I hadn't - I'd only just arrived, and as I said, we didn't have any definite plans because so much was going to depend on the weather and how we felt each day and so on. I didn't want to say that because I didn't think it would go over well, but I was at a bit of a loss and I clearly wasn't impressing her. I really wanted to say something flip like 'Relax, I'm not going to overthrow your government during my four-week holiday', but I'm not a damn fool. She asked where my friend lived and what his name was, and I told her, and she looked at the card I'd filled out prior to landing with the address where I'd be staying and said 'Oh, so you're not staying with him then'. I hastened to tell her that I was staying at a B&B (and neglected to mention that he'd be staying there with me, of course - nope, not my boyfriend, really not going to get married and stay here forever, look, here's my return flight info again!). She had my passport in her hand and when she asked for Nathaniel's contact info, my heart sank a little lower. I made a bit of a show of digging out a printed e-mail he'd sent me that had his mobile number in it (of course I wouldn't have his number in my phone or memorised 'cause he's not my boyfriend, no we're not eloping, look! I have a return flight booked! Here's the info!) and read her that, and she said she'd be right back and walked off with my passport and Nathaniel's number. She'd told me I could have a seat until she got back so I parked myself on a seat a few feet away and angsted. (An American friend tells me that Customs officials are not allowed to take your passport out of your sight. I'm not convinced that that's true outside the US. Does anyone know if that's an actual rule anywhere, and specifically if it's a rule in the UK?)

See ganimede's post for the exciting saga of Nathaniel's interrogation!

The conclusion, however, as you might have guessed, is that she returned and handed me my passport and said I could go. It was so abrupt that I was startled and asked if that was it and I could go, as if she hadn't just told me that, and she said yes. I hoisted my backpack on my shoulder and made a quick getaway to the baggage claim on the other side of the doors, safely in the UK to do all sorts of dodgy things like ... sightsee. And snuggle my boyfriend. And ride in a car that drives on the left side of the road. Oh the scandal. It's a good job the governments of the world have officials who are paid to interrogate the likes of me; you don't know what I'll do next! I might even buy some crisps!

I got my bags and got through the next set of doors to see my gorgeous boyfriend waiting for me. Given the drama with Customs and the fact that I didn't want to get us stabbed, I refrained from jumping on him and snogging him right there. We were both anxious to get out of there so we went straight to the car, and I finally got a Nathaniel hug before we got in the car, but otherwise we were entirely restrained. We commiserated about the Customs official as we drove to Asda to get essentials, and I had some energy stuff that Nathaniel had brought me to keep me awake for the rest of the day. We got to the B&B and checked in (see Nathaniel's post for our pros-and-cons list for the B&B), and spent the rest of the day settling in and unpacking and exploring the B&B a bit. I was too worn out to do much of anything else!

13 January:

We went back to Asda to do a proper shop, as before we were just killing time in there before we could check into the B&B, really. Fortunately we found that it's only about a 15 minute drive from the B&B, so we could get there pretty easily - very important since it has not only the Asda, but also the Horwich Parkway train station. Nathaniel found a Official Town Guide for Horwich (which contained a map) hidden on a windowsill behind a No Smoking sign, so we decided to walk down (quite literally down, as we were on a big hill) to Horwich town centre and look around. It had a bunch of shops, so we walked around for quite a while! There were four grocery stores - an Aldi, a Co-op, a Somerfield, and an Iceland (which only sells frozen groceries) - which made our lives considerably easier than if we had to drive out to Asda when we just needed a pint of milk or something. Our ten minute walk down to the town centre became a 20 minute hike back up, though. It was a bit steep in parts too, which gave us both some brief leg pains, but it wasn't too bad. And the view really was pretty. We played Guitar Hero III together for a bit, then had seriously delicious Chicken Tonight peppercorn sauce on our chicken for tea. Chicken Tonight isn't available in the US anymore, I don't think, which is a damn shame.

That night, Nathaniel tried to go online with his laptop, which is when we found out that the B&B's website, which said 'the apartment includes wireless internet', neglected to mention that 'includes' apparently means 'has available for an extortionate fee'. £2 for 15 minutes, £5 for an hour, £10 for 24 hours and £30 (which can buy you two months of internet service in your home) for a week. We were both pretty irritated about that, because we'd specifically wanted a place that had both internet and a washing machine included. If we'd known we had to pay extra, we would have gone elsewhere. Nathaniel was worried about what he was going to do for work, since he's currently working on getting their website up and running, and we also couldn't check our e-mail (including Nathaniel's work e-mail) or LJ or anything, or use the internet for entertainment in the evenings. We both were very grateful for the internet access on Nathaniel's phone, which was enough for us to access things like the weather - very important when you're trying to plan your day!

14 January:

Nathaniel suggested we go to the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester, which sounded like fun to me, so off we went. We had to park up in the retail park (where the Asda is) and walk back to the train station, as the tiny car park and the slightly larger overflow car park at the train station were both full. A return ticket to Manchester was just £3.20 though - sweet. MOSI is both huge and free, so we had plenty to keep us occupied. It's five buildings clustered together, so we went to the main building first and started with the Textiles exhibit. Part of it was about the cotton industry - cotton was Lancashire's major export for a long time, so it had a lot of machines from the old cotton mills. Nathaniel knew a bit about that already, but it was all new to me - perhaps a bit embarrassing since there were plenty of textile mills in and around Boston back in the day, which I don't know much about either! It was cool to learn a bit about Lancashire history though. From there we went to the Manchester Scientists exhibit, which was quite cool as well. We stopped in the café for sandwiches, which we unfortunately had to buy (for £lots), then went to look at some of the other stuff. As we were leaving the main building, we discovered a TARDIS hanging out near the entrance for no discernible reason. Nathaniel remembered that MOSI had had a Doctor Who exhibit in 2007, so it must have been left over from that. We moved on from the TARDIS to the 1830 Warehouse (which sounds rather appropriate). It had an exhibit on electricity, which we found out had to be reached from a little side entrance. It was completely empty - all four floors of it - which was kind of creepy, but also kind of cool. It was deathly quiet, but the museum and exhibit were definitely open, even though we didn't see any staff. We wandered round it and found the main entrance, and saw the People's History section - a temporary exhibit being housed at MOSI while the People's History Museum is being redeveloped - which was quite interesting. They had a badge maker, which I've always wanted to try. With Nathaniel's encouragement, I made a classic badge: I came to Manchester and all I got was this lousy badge.

From there, we went to the Underground Manchester section. Nathaniel and I both were expecting it to be about hidden tunnels or something like that - stuff that had been found under the city, with all sorts of interesting anthropological stuff. So what was it about? Toilets and sewers. No wonder it was empty. Some of it was a bit interesting - different ways they made pipes, first out of wood and later out of metal - but it was also creepy, given that it actually was underground and there was absolutely no one else there and we first walked into find a mock up of a graveyard with a funeral taking place, complete with a recording of voices playing on a loop. We didn't get to see all of it, though, because at 4:45 someone came along out of nowhere and told us we had to leave because they were closing - even though they didn't close until 5. Nathaniel was disappointed that we didn't get to see the Air & Space Hall, the Connecting Manchester exhibit (communications stuff - printing, sound recordings, telephones), or the Station Building, which had photography.

We got back to the B&B and had the last of the peppercorn chicken in wraps for tea! I really loved that sauce. Maybe Nathaniel can send me some jars of it or something. (The jars are glass. Eep.)

15 January:

We had a day in, and given our lack of internet at the B&B, we decided to try our luck at the library. The librarians weren't too sure about letting us use the computers since we weren't members of the Bolton library, but Nathaniel mentioning that he had a Lancashire library card seemed to do the trick. She logged us on for an hour - we each got our own computer, fortunately! - which was nice, but seemed to be just enough time to delete e-mails we didn't care about, glance at a couple of others, and maybe post to say that we were alive but had to get our internet at the library so we'd be rather sparse online. At least we could do that much, though!

Back at the B&B, I played Guitar Hero World Tour for a while, while Nathaniel read in the kitchen. Sometimes it's nice to do our own thing, especially as we're both so Introverted.

16 January:

We went off to the National Football Museum at Deepdale in Preston, which was lots of fun. This one's free as well! It has lots of audio and video, which was excellent - I like exhibits that are more interactive. At one point a reporter with a camerman in tow came over to us from interviewing someone else, asking if he could get our opinions on the fact that Manchester City was trying to sign on some player called Kaká. We had to admit that we knew nothing about that, so he wandered off.

The coolest part of the museum, arguably, was this little part where you go up some stairs and into a little booth-thing that juts out over a corner of Preston North End's actual pitch, so you can see right into the stadium. Having never been to a proper football match (and having only ever been to one professional sporting event - a Red Sox game when I was ten), I was pretty impressed with it. There were groundsmen out mowing the grass and preparing it for a match, which was pretty cool. I had wanted to see a match, but the tickets were too expensive. Sad story.

17 January:

It was really nice out, so we went to Manchester and wandered all over. We started off walking down Oxford Road and went past the BBC Manchester building - and saw the TARDIS in the window! We went in and asked the security guard if we could take pictures of it. They were super nice and gave us BBC lanyards, and told us about a tour we could come back and take of the studios and stuff. We took the phone number for it but didn't ever manage to go back for the tour. Another time!

We wandered to the (gay) Village, which was pretty dead as it was daytime and apparently it only comes to life at night, but at least I can say I've been there! From there we went up to Piccadilly Gardens and the Arndale Centre, and then the Printworks, which is mostly restaurants and a big Odeon cinema. We stopped in at the Odeon to see what was playing, and found out that The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was playing on Tuesday morning for only £3, so we decided to come back for that.

I picked up some postcards at the Tourist Information Centre, and we rode the Metro (for free, since we had our train tickets) back to Deansgate train station and rode the train back to Horwich. The train was absolutely packed - although still not as bad as the Green Line during rush hour! - and we squished in with everyone, then had to push our way off as no one closer to the doors was getting off at our stop. At Horwich Parkway, so many people were trying to get on the train that we were nearly swept along back on board! We managed to get off the platform and found a crowd of football fans and a ton of police waiting for us. Apparently there had been a Bolton match that had just let out, which we hadn't known about. There were police with dogs and mounted police as well, plus more police on top of that, all to make sure the people got on the trains without starting a riot. If a small group of Yankees fans came to a Yankees-Sox game at Fenway, they wouldn't need half that amount of security to keep them safe, and that's saying something. We decided to check Bolton's schedule before making any more train journeys.

18 January:

We wandered into Horwich town centre, stopped at the Co-op for milk and mash, then went back to the B&B. I wrote postcards while Nathaniel did some work on his laptop, as best as he could with no internet! Fortunately he was able to do graphic designing for the website without too much trouble. We had cottage pie for tea, which is a favourite of mine! Yum.

19 January:

We went in to Preston to see the Harris Library and Art Museum. They had an exhibit about the history of Lancashire, which was very interesting. It was hard to take it all in! We were stopped by a nice woman doing a survey about the exhibits, so I got to take that and answer various questions about my time there and what I'd seen and so on. It snowed a little while we were inside, which was pretty, and when we got back to the B&B, we had adventures trying to park on what had become a rather icy slope. There was a driveway of sorts - a flagged (like this) area in front of the house, rather than alongside it, so that two or three cars could park side by side on it - and it sloped very steeply from the street down to the house. Nathaniel wasn't sure about parking his little car on there with it being a bit icy out (there wasn't much snow on paved surfaces, just a dusting on the grass, but there was a layer of it on the driveway too), but decided to give it a try. He parked and put on the emergency brake, and as soon as he took his foot off the brake pedal, the car started to roll down the hill. He had to stamp on the brake again. He pulled the emergency brake as hard as he could, but when he took his foot off the pedal again, the car started to move again. He tried putting the car into reverse, but it couldn't get a grip due to the slight amount of snow under them. I tried scraping the snow out from under the wheels, but I couldn't get it all, and it wasn't enough to get the tyres to grip the driveway. I asked if Nathaniel knew of anywhere I might find sand or salt or something, and Nathaniel remembered seeing a package of salt on the windowsill by the door, next to a thing of de-icer. I ran inside and brought out the salt and poured it carefully under the front tyres, particularly the passenger-side one, which was slipping the most - all while poor Nathaniel sat there with his foot firmly on the brake pedal. It took a few tries and most of the bag of salt and revving the engine as hard as Nathaniel dared, but we finally managed to get the car to inch back up the drive. Poor Nathaniel was sore from having to yank on the emergency brake and keep stomping on the brake pedal. We parked on the street from then on, even when it looked like it might be okay; neither of us wanted to risk anything like that again. A few days later, I noticed a black streak on the driveway where that passenger-side tyre had been. Burnt rubber. Good times.

20 January:

Back to Manchester! We saw The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which was excellent and very hard to watch. It took a little while after the film to become interested in anything else again. We went to the Manchester Museum, which was a bit of a walk across town, but well worth it. The walk gave us time to start to get out of the depressed funk that the film left us in. We only got to see half of the museum before they closed, unfortunately. We had the tuna sandwiches we'd made earlier, then went to see the Live Animals exhibit, which mostly contained various lizards and snakes - and the most adorable tiny orange frogs. I think they were poison dart frogs, but of course now I can't remember. There are two Animals exhibits, so of course we did Animals 2 first, which was all birds and sea life - shells and coral and so on. Then we went to the Egypt exhibit, which was huge and contained a ton of cool stuff, including maybe a dozen mummies - mostly wrapped, but I think a few were partially unwrapped - and the skeletons of two brothers who were physically quite dissimilar, and one of whom was preserved rather better than the other, but testing had revealed that they were indeed brothers. Interesting stuff, but I worried a bit about ghosts from disturbed tombs. From there we went to the Mediterranean Archaeology exhibit, which was smaller but still full of interesting stuff. I feel like I should have taken notes! It's hard to remember it all now. We would have kept going, but the museum closed then, so we wandered over to where Nathaniel works. They have a pretty nice space there, so we hung out for a little bit until a few of Nathaniel's co-workers turned up, and I got to meet them, which was lovely. Finally, quite tired, we made our way back to the B&B, and had stuff on toast. Nathaniel had his with baked beans (as is proper) and veggie sausages, and I had mine with ravioli from a can, because I'm odd like that.

21 January:

Another day in. After all the walking we did the day before, you can hardly blame us! I played Professor Layton and the Curious Village on Nathaniel's DS while he read. I always have fun playing with his DS when we're together, but not enough to buy one of my own! Why should I buy one when I can just borrow my boyfriend's?

For tea we were a bit stumped as we hadn't defrosted anything to cook, so we tried to find a chippy but couldn't find one nearby. We looked at the takeaway menus that had been left for us and decided to go to Jolly Crofter, after we'd worked on the jigsaw a bit. My first time in a proper English pub! I had a burger which turned out to be at least as big as any burger I've ever had in the US. It was quite tasty though! When we got back, I finally got to watch Channel Izzard (when Eddie Izzard took over Channel Four for four hours in 2001) after being teased with it by Nathaniel for five years. It was brilliant.

22 January:

Another day in with a trip to the library for an hour of internet, as became our Thursday custom. We went grocery shopping, then came back and made honey mustard chicken for tea. It was very tasty, but I think Nathaniel enjoyed it more than I did. I wanted more of that peppercorn sauce! It's too bad Nathaniel didn't really have any interest in having that one again.

23 January:

We met up with apple_piye, then went to Preston and visited the Museum of Lancashire. The museum had lots of cool stuff, including a huge temporary exhibit about transportation, because the first bit of motorway in the country (the M6) went through Preston and it was the 50th anniversary of its opening. They also had an interesting exhibit about the Second World War, complete with a fake 1940s British street and Anderson shelter. I got a ruler with pictures of British military aircraft for D11 in the little shop, since he's interested in military technology and especially military planes. Nathaniel and Apple and I all got free goody bags from the nice staff there, even though Nathaniel didn't buy anything! The bags each had a kids' activity book, mousepad, ruler, box of ten coloured pencils and a leather keyring. We were all very pleased with that!

On our way home, we stopped by a Polish deli that Nathaniel had been to ages ago and liked, and found that it had grown significantly in size! They must be doing good business. We wanted pierogies and had an issue at first, because of course everything was labelled in Polish, but then I pulled a bag of pierogies out of the freezer and checked the back, and found several other languages - including English. So we were able to tell the different types of pierogies apart and find ones that Nathaniel and I would both like: potato and onion. Then we dropped apple_piye off at home and came back to the B&B, where we had the last of the honey mustard chicken in wraps, and made strawberry Angel Delight for dessert. I had brought some M&Ms, which we put on top. I mixed mine in and Nathaniel was disgusted at the pinky-brown colour it turned. It still tasted the same!

24 January:

I woke up with a sore throat, which usually means I'm getting a cold. That made me a bit nervous, but Nathaniel had some CVS cough drops from his last trip to Boston, so we brought those along with us on our trip to Jodrell Bank. We had adventures on the motorway, trying to figure out where exactly we were going, but finally we managed to find it. We had our sandwiches in the car, then walked round. The Lovell radio telescope was very impressive, and fortunately it was bright and sunny even though it was a bit cold, but there was unfortunately much less to Jodrell Bank than we thought there would be. They had a little 3D cinema, so we got to see a short 3D film about Mars.

When we made it back (which was fortunately easier than finding it in the first place!), we stopped by the Co-op in Horwich town centre for stir-fry sauce and brownie mix, because Nathaniel had been craving cake. Then we went back to the B&B and made stir-fry and brownies, both of which were excellent. Nathaniel introduced me to the game Pass the Pigs, which was entertaining, and we watched Hunting Venus, which he loves and I had never seen.

25 January:

Woke up with a cold. Bollocks. We decided to have a day in and hope that the cold would pass quickly. Nathaniel made pink lemonade, scrambled eggs, and toast for breakfast, with tea for me (because I'm American) and coffee for Nathaniel (because he's English). How can you not get better with such tasty food? We had to go back out to the Co-op for Lemsip and some cans of soup, and potato wedge mix, but then we came straight back and settled in for the day. I played on Nathaniel's DS quite a bit, and we worked on a jigsaw puzzle we found in the wardrobe. We watched Kevin and Perry that night - another film that Nathaniel likes (Kathy Burke as horny awkward teenage boy = win) and I hadn't seen, although I'd seen clips before. Tried to go to bed early but we're not very good at that, it seems.

26 January:

We trundled off to Blackpool to go to the Doctor Who museum, as their website had said they're open every day. So of course we arrived to see it completely shut, with a metal grate down over the entrance. A friendly bloke working in a stall nearby told us that the museum is only open on weekends during the off-season. Stupid lying website. We took advantage of the fact that we were there, though, and walked all over town, up and down North Pier, into arcades, etc. I spent £1 at an arcade on the little roulette wheel they had (10p at a time), which was entertaining. We went from there to the town centre, where Nathaniel remembered the WHO shop, which isn't part of the museum and was open, so we had a look round. I got a present for my cousin's boyfriend, as requested, which I hope he'll find amusing. (His birthday's in April.) He's a big Doctor Who fan and she said she'd pay me back if I could find something that she could give him for his birthday.

We sat outside to eat the sandwiches we'd packed, and then went off to find a rock shop so that I could get some rock for my kids. The rock - which is a long cylinder, like a very fat candy cane without the curved end, and not like what Americans call rock candy - has writing in it which goes all the way through the length, and you can get it with various names in. They had a load of flavours without writing, but the ones with names were all peppermint. D15 doesn't like peppermint sticks, so I didn't get him one, but I found D14 and D11's names easily and got them each one, along with one that said 'Cool Dude' for another friend because they didn't have his name. I think my name was sold out - surprise - and they didn't have Nathaniel's name, but he wasn't bothered because he doesn't like rock at all.

We wandered round and took pictures, and managed to not spend any more money, which I think was quite impressive given that we were in Blackpool. By 3:30 we were ready to go back to the B&B, where we made sausages with BBQ sauce and potato wedges. So tasty!

27 January:

Woke up feeling worse. Arsebollocks. I was all bunged up, which is standard fare when I have a cold, and we had another day in. I played lots more on Nathaniel's DS in the bedroom while he got worked done in the kitchen. I did logic puzzles for a bit, but being all bunged up is not conducive to solving logic puzzles, so I gave up after a while. Nathaniel has loads of beautiful photos he's taken on his laptop, and he wants to turn some of them into greeting cards to sell, so we looked through them together and I told him which ones I thought would work best as cards, and then Nathaniel let me play on his laptop for a bit! It was wonderful for me as I'd been going through some computer withdrawal. I played FreeCol while he heated up leftover sausages and made naan, and then we watched a couple of episodes of Red Dwarf and the DVD extras, which was great fun. Again with the late night though.

28 January:

I was feeling a bit better, so we went to Manchester for the day. We went to the Jewish museum, which was a bit of a walk from the train station, but it wasn't bad at all. The museum is in an old Sephardic shul (Yiddish for synagogue; rhymes with 'pull'), which was interesting for us as we'd never been in a Sephardic shul before! There was a bunch of interesting stuff about Jewish life in Manchester and the north of England in general, and we got to hear the nice guide talk to a school group about basic Jewish stuff like Shabbat. It amused me to hear how he kept trying to make Shabbat sound really fun, so the kids would stay engaged ('You aren't allowed to write, so you're actually forbidden to do homework! How does that sound?'), and how it got harder for him when he mentioned that you couldn't use any electronics. He didn't mention that you can't play music, or the other list of things you can't do. He kept saying that Shabbat was a day for you to play with your friends, but as I've always understood it, people who strictly observe Shabbat spend the whole day at shul praying. I'm pretty sure he was Orthodox and talking about Orthodox practices, although I'm not positive. He certainly wasn't Reform, anyway.

After the Jewish museum, we walked back to the Printworks Odeon to see about seeing Milk on a two-for-one deal that Nathaniel can get on Wednesdays through Orange, which is his mobile phone provider (called Orange Wednesdays - go figure). We were just barely too late for the 2 pm showing, so we went to Caffé Nero nearby and hung out and rested a bit, then to Quiznos (the first time for both of us, and very tasty!), and then just out for a bit of a wander round until we could go back to the Printworks for the 5 pm showing. Milk is excellent.

And then we had issues catching a train. I managed to jot some notes during the whole thing:

7.30 - Leave cinema. Adventure begins.
7.33 - Realise train leaves from Piccadilly in 15 min or Victoria in 1 hour. Decide to ride Metrolink to Piccadilly.
7.35 - Get on Metrolink.
7.39 - Not sure what stop we are at or if we've gone too far. Commence panic.
7.40 - Get off at Piccadilly. Run to board. Realise it's the arrivals board. Run to HUGE departure board. Try to find Blackpool North as screens keep changing. Find that 19.46 train is at platform 14. RUN.
7.44 - Moving sidewalks all broken. Run more. Uphill. (In the snow. No shoes.)
7.45 - Reach platform 14. Train is closing doors. N asks staffer on platform, who is talking to staffer on train, if this one goes to Horwich. She says "yep, but it's too late now." Train leaves. WTF.
7.46 - Train pulls out. We die of can't-breathe on platform 14.
7.48 - Search boards for next Blackpool North train. There isn't one.
7.50 - Ask nice different staffer on platform (first one has vanished into the ether) about next train. He takes us to his office and checks on computer. Next one is at 8.46. We could take one to Preston and change to go back to Horwich, but we'd get in 15 mins later than if we just wait. We decide to wait.
7.55 - We go to the toilet (30p each) and now N is on a Quest™ for a muffin. We buy drinks at Sainsbury's but they have no muffins. The Quest™ takes us to Upper Crust who have double chocolate muffins for £1.75 but N determines that they do not fulfil the terms of the Quest™, as Upper Crust do really yummy lemon and poppyseed muffins and as soon as he remembered that, that was the kind he wanted. Next to The Pasty Shop which has no muffins. Superdrug has McVities blueberry muffins, which apparently also do not fulfil the terms of the Quest™. M&S has only bags of 4, which quite obviously would not do for a one-man Quest™ (M isn't hungry). Boots has no muffins. Then N spots the perfect place: Phineas, a bakery or something that has a sign proclaiming 'MUFFINS'. It is shut. We are forced to admit defeat.
8.20 - arrive back at platform 14. Wait patiently. Write this timeline.
8.46 - Train is delayed 9 minutes.
8.55 - Board train to Horwich. Adventure over.

29 January:

A relaxing day in after our adventures the day before. We went to Asda, then came back and I wrote postcards, then went to the library for our weekly internet fix. Nathaniel's internet died, after half an hour, so a librarian logged him in again and he got another hour - so he had an hour and a half total! Jammy sod. We walked back up to the B&B and had chilli and rice, then watched the Jonathan Creek Christmas special before bed. It's hard to have early nights when there's so much fun stuff to watch!

30 January:

I was feeling much better by this time, but now Nathaniel woke up with a bad cough. Brilliant. It wasn't too bad, though, so we just went to the chemist for some cough medicine and then we were off to Stockport, where they have the old air raid shelters open for people to wander round. I'd never really seen anything like them - obviously the Second World War affected the UK very differently to how it affected the US - so it was very interesting for me. It was a bit creepy in there, and we both worried a bit about ghosts, but I kept reminding myself that this was not a place where a load of people had suffered or died - it was a shelter, meant to keep people safe over a short term if there was an air raid. At one point we both jumped when a door opened in the wall and a woman came in, sweeping sand back into the tunnels from the lobby or something - the whole tunnel complex is carved out of sandstone, and it gets on your shoes and you track it all over when you leave. We gave her a bit of a fright too, as she hadn't realised anyone was there. She was very nice and asked if we had any questions, then went back to her sweeping so we were alone in the tunnels again. After wandering the tunnels - most of them were unfortunately blocked off, only to be accessed through scheduled guided tours, but there was still a decent amount to see - we came back to the B&B so Nathaniel could rest a bit, and we had the leftover chilli with jacket potatoes, and ice cream, which was good for poor Nathaniel's sore throat.

31 January:

Back to Blackpool to see the Doctor Who museum! The front of the museum is very small, but of course it's bigger on the inside - 5,500 square feet, as it happens. It goes quite a way back, and it's all labyrinthine so you feel like it's even bigger, because you're not sure where you are inside it or how far you've gone. Most of it was about Classic Who and there was only one small area for New Who stuff, which was a little disappointing as I remember essentially nothing from my time watching Classic Who as a little kid - I tried to focus on the stuff from the Third Doctor era, which is what I watched as a kid, to see if I could trigger any memories, but I couldn't. Oh well.

More disappointing was the lack of working lights in a few displays, the lack of information cards in a few others, and the grammar and spelling mistakes in every single info card. I am pretty sure I found at least one error in every card, and there were a lot of them in this huge museum. They read like they'd been written by an 8 year old; this wasn't just typos that anyone could make (but which still shouldn't be in something done professionally anyway). I honestly have not read anything written with such bad spelling and grammar since I worked with 8 year olds - and most of my 8 year olds wrote considerably better than whoever made those info cards. Plus, the info cards were obviously typed! Spell check anyone? What the hell. I tried to not rant at Nathaniel or let it spoil the fun of being there for either of us, but it really drove us both up the wall. I don't see how anyone could be so careless, especially with something as popular and important to people as Doctor Who. I wanted to write all over them with red pen, but they were wise to my tricks: the info cards were mounted inside the displays, behind the glass, so no one could tamper with them.

Also disappointing was the amount of the museum that had photography forbidden. There were a few things that were very light sensitive so it's understandable that they wouldn't want people using flashes, but as for the rest, I'm not sure what the deal was. Maybe the BBC thought people would take pictures and try to sell them somehow, even though it probably would have been obvious that it was a picture of a museum display. The result, of course, was that I have very few pictures of the museum at all. I did manage to get several pictures of Bessie, the Third Doctor's car, for my mother - she had a car called Bessie at the same time the Third Doctor was current, even though to this day she's never watched Doctor Who.

I picked up another small gift for my cousin's boyfriend, figuring it was cheap and kind of fun so there was no reason not to. (As it turned out, she gave him his presents a bit early, and he IM'd me to say he loved the Who stuff! It was a Dalek-shaped bottle opener that says 'Exterminate!' when you open a bottle with it, and a little clock that just says Doctor Who Museum on it.) Leaving Blackpool, Nathaniel drove through Lytham St Anne's so I could have a look round. It's a pretty seaside town where rich people retire, apparently. It was nice to drive through and see, even without walking around. There aren't really any attractions as such, or anything to do if we walked around it; it's just pretty.

We went to a Chinese restaurant to get fish and chips (like you do), because I couldn't visit England and not get fish and chips. I'm not a big fish fan but it was quite tasty! And we got a ton of chips. We couldn't finish them all, sadly. I felt really bad about wasting food, but they couldn't really keep - they go all manky and gross and we wouldn't wind up eating them anyway. After tea, we played some Guitar Hero III together. I love being a rock star with Nathaniel. We're so cool.

01 February:

It was Chinese New Year so we went into Manchester for the festivities in the afternoon. Nathaniel had never been to a Chinese New Year celebration, and I'd only been to one or two in Boston, I think. We just barely missed the train in to Manchester, so we had to wait about 45 minutes for the next one. When we got to the Town Hall, where things were supposed to be happening, the dragon parade was starting. There was a crowd all around it, and we're only small, so we didn't get to see much of it before it went off down the street to Chinatown. As it left, it started to snow! So we looked round the stalls in the snow. Most of them were selling yummy-smelling food, and I wanted to buy everything, but I managed to restrain myself. There was one stall, though, where a guy was doing artwork of people's names in Chinese style lettering, with a dragon (symbol for male) and/or a phoenix (symbol for female) if you wanted. It was really, really cool, and Nathaniel and I decided we wanted one with our names on it. It was £1 per letter, which isn't bad unless you want two names that have 16 letters in total. We wanted both names plus two dragons, but there wasn't space, so we got one dragon at the bottom and our names running top to bottom next to each other above the dragon. We had to wait for it to be finished as this guy was pretty popular (surprise), so we wandered round a bit until the dragon parade got back. We tried to take some pictures of it, but there were a load of people again, plus obviously the dragon was bouncing all over the street so it was hard to get a good shot. Oh well.

We went to meet up with ticket_to_zen at nearby Taurus on Canal Street, in Manchester's gay village (which is very quiet and relatively empty during the day, but which I'm told is very popular at night). Had a lovely hot chocolate there and chatted about activism, which was really nice for me, as I was on holiday and hadn't had much reason to shop-talk with other Trans activists (my Trans-activist boyfriend notwithstanding, obviously).

We were going to go straight back to the B&B, but we walked past Frankie & Benny's and decided to go there as a bit of a treat. It's billed as an Italian-American restaurant and it's one of Nathaniel's favourite restaurants. I found something on the menu that was labelled 'An American classic' but which I had never heard of, which amused me. I had a really nice pasta bake with chicken and cheese, which was lovely because Nathaniel doesn't like pasta so I hadn't really had any since I got to England.

From Nathaniel's notebook, written down at my request:
Sunday, February 1st - 5.17pm - Frankie & Benny's, Manchester
Me [Nathaniel]: My brain tells me I need 3 things: food, internet and you. Otherwise I will DIE. A long horrible death. With sharp pointy things. And a squid.

After tea, we got to see fireworks! We were just walking back from Frankie & Benny's to the train station when we realised we were in Chinatown and there was a sectioned off area with a load of people, so we figured the fireworks would be starting soon and we might as well check them out. Chinatown doesn't seem to have any big open space for setting off explosives, so it was done in a small (to me, although apparently big enough to be safe) car park surrounded by tall buildings. It was a rather different experience, seeing fireworks relatively low to the ground and in front of buildings instead of the sky! The amount of smoke they produced wasn't a surprise, but it was still not something I was used to, because I'm used to fireworks in a big open space where the smoke dissipates far above the onlookers. It wasn't bad, though, and didn't seem to aggravate Nathaniel's asthma or anything, so that was okay. It's no wonder they had to make sure the surrounding buildings had closed their windows before they could start, though! After the fireworks, it was back to the B&B and off to bed!

02 February:

Back to Manchester once again for the second half of the Manchester Museum. We saw loads of cool fossils and rocks in glass cases (shame there weren't really any we could handle), including a few things that were billions of years old. The geology bit was quite small, but still had some very cool stuff. The fossils bit was quite big and had a T-Rex skeleton towering over us a 300 million year old tree stump, complete with quite a network of roots still intact, as well as a load of other cool stuff. We just had time to look over their also-small exhibit on race in past and present Manchester, which was interesting, but it felt like they could have done a lot more with it, I think. It seemed pretty basic, like it was geared at young kids and not so much at adults. But maybe most adults need it to be that basic, at least to start with, to open up dialogue and so on. When the museum closed, we walked back to the train station, stopping at one shop along the way to see about getting batteries for Nathaniel's little remote control K-9, but they were a bit expensive so we didn't bother. Once we got back to the B&B, we heated up our butter pies and had those for tea. We'd had a hard time finding any! Nathaniel had looked for them in Horwich in the first week, but they didn't seem to have any, so we had to pick some up at a shop on the way back from his house. They were super tasty. Americans don't eat enough pot pie - or maybe it's just that I don't. We don't have the same kind of variety though. It's mostly just chicken pot pie here, which I like, but it'd be nice to have different kinds. Maybe I'll have to actually learn how to make pot pie. This boyfriend will make a proper chef of me yet.

03 February:

Thursday again, so we had our day in and rested from our week's adventures. We went back to the library for internet, and I picked up some more postcards. We stopped by the co-op for milk and sandwich meat, then went to the post office so I could send out the postcards I'd already written. Back to the B&B for more Guitar Hero (after some of those pierogies from the Polish deli, which were delicious), and then I played Ratchet & Clank while Nathaniel read for a while. For tea we made curry, in true English fashion - dopiaza this time, which I already know and love, with naan and rice. So tasty.

04 February:

Off to Liverpool! While I have no problem with the Beatles, I am not really a fan as such, but I was still very much looking forward to seeing Liverpool - for its own sake rather than for the Beatles aspect. Nathaniel is a huge Beatles fan, so we still did some Beatles stuff, but we also just wandered round and looked in shops and so on. Liverpool really is lovely; it reminded me a lot of Burlington, VT, right down to their Church Street looking much like the Church Street in Burlington. It had a very open feel, with lots of open space and views of the sky, not so urban as a lot of other cities like Manchester or Boston, which have their buildings much closer together. And it was so quiet! It felt quite peaceful. Manchester or Boston or any number of other cities are bustling no matter the time, but in the middle of a Friday, Liverpool was pretty quiet - there were people around, just not tons of them.

We sat on a bench on the Albert Dock to eat our sandwiches, and a load of pigeons decided they were our new best friends and that they had no reason to respect our personal space. I had to swing my legs a few times to get them to back off. Then they took to sitting behind our bench where we couldn't see them, waiting for us to drop something that they could sneak under the bench to take. Damn pigeons.

I picked up various souvenirs at the shops on the docks, and we had a good time looking in all the shops even when we didn't buy anything. We hit some traffic on the way back - presumably because it was Friday evening - but finally made it back to the B&B for leftover curry and Jonathan Creek. We also caught most of a special on Terry Pratchett and Alzheimer's Disease, which was very interesting.

05 February:

Off to Southport! We went to the Park and Ride and tried to find a place to pay for a ticket to stick on the car, but couldn't find one. Nathaniel figured we'd pay on the bus anyway, because that's how the Park and Ride near him works. Getting on the bus, we tried to pay there, but the driver said 'No, it's free with the price of parking' so we just went with it. Free parking! (Cue Eddie Izzard saying 'This is not Don Corleone, this is Don Crap'.) We wandered all over and just looked round. A lot of stuff was shut, and it was a bit cold, but it was still very pretty. We found an open arcade and played more roulette. I spent 20p for the privilege; I think that was worth it. We took a bit of a scenic route walking back to the car, along the waterfront, and found a little pond that was just frozen over - it wouldn't have held our weight. We scouted around for rocks - I'm so used to the ground being full of rocks, good old New England soil that it is, that it was completely weird for me to see nothing but dirt and to have to really go find rocks. We managed to get a few, and had some fun chucking them at the ice to see whether they'd go in or bounce off. Depending on the angle and the force, some did indeed bounce off while others went straight in, leaving just a small hole where they'd gone through but otherwise leaving the ice pristine and uncracked. Continuing along, we decided to stop at Morrison's (supermarket) for cereal and bread, but they didn't have the kind of cereal or bread we wanted, so we moved on. We drove back to Horwich, stopping at a Sainsbury's (supermarket) on the way, and picked up cereal and bread there. We made some chicken with mash and sweetcorn for tea - easy stuff, and very tasty!

06 February:

We decided to drive up to Ambleside in the Lake District, which was one of the things I'd really hoped to see while I was in England, because it's supposed to be so beautiful. The stories are true: it was gorgeous. It was sunny and not too cold, so we got lots of good pictures and wandered all over. There were a load of sweet shops and tea shops; we looked round a couple of sweet shops and watched some people making chocolates, which was quite cool. I managed not to buy a load of sweets, although there was plenty of yummy-looking stuff. We found a really cool music shop that stocks a load of vinyl records, and Nathaniel managed to restrain himself and not buy anything, which was highly impressive. We did stop in at a Greggs so he could get himself a cup of Heinz cream of tomato soup, as it was getting a bit colder out, and I even had a few sips to warm me up even though I don't like tomato soup at all. I think I made some interesting faces each time I tasted it. We drank it on the way back to the car, then made our way back to Horwich!

07 February:

We went south this time, to Chester, which is 'the only city in Britain that retains the full circuit of its ancient defensive walls'. Unfortunately there were no maps of the city available for free, so we paid £1 and got one that came with a little guided walk, with all various things labelled on the map and then described. Not a bad deal. There were nearly 60 things on the walk, all crammed together - Chester is a much tighter squeeze than Liverpool! It didn't feel overcrowded, but it was busy and we didn't have to walk far between each cool historical landmark. Nathaniel has the map now, so I can't list all of the things we saw, nor do I imagine you'd want to read about them all since there were so many. We went up on the walls and looked down, and walked along them, saw damage to the outside of the walls from ancient gunfire, saw some Roman constructions (besides the walls, obviously), a variety of architectural styles in assorted buildings, an excavated (and closed off, visible through a huge window) basement of a Roman barracks ... there was so much cool stuff. We felt like we would need at least a week to walk around and explore! There were all these hidden walkways and alleys and stuff that we didn't get a chance to look at.

When we went to St John's, part of which is still standing and part of which is in ruins, we met some extremely friendly squirrels. We saw someone else hand-feeding one, and several others came right up to us, one at a time, to see if we had food. I've never had a squirrel get that close to me, even on Boston Common, where people commonly feed squirrels and occasionally do hand-feed them. I was a little worried that one might jump on us if it thought we had food, but they all seemed content to look us over, decide that we were not going to feed them, and go away again. Nathaniel loves squirrels, so he was delighted to have so many chances for close-up photos. We also saw a couple of war-damaged pigeons - one had a middle toe missing, and the other was actually missing an entire foot. It walked around on its leg stump and hardly even limped; I guess the leg was just long enough that it could retain its balance while walking. When it stood still, it just stood on one foot. It was a little grisly, but I had to respect the pigeon for just carrying on and not letting itself be bullied or killed. And I say this as a die-hard pigeon-hater.

We were worn out by the end of the day, but we managed to cook some more curry - tikka masala this time, proper English food - and naan, finish the jigsaw puzzle (!), and watch Red Dwarf and QI. I became a big fan of QI on this trip, and a sort-of fan of Top Gear; I have zero interest in cars and Jeremy Clarkson is a twit, but the show was very funny. Nathaniel and I agreed that Richard Hammond is an excellent role model for FTMs everywhere, as he's maybe five feet tall and looks like he's 12.

08 February:

After all those adventures, and because it was my last day in England, we needed a day in! We hung out and enjoyed just being together in a quieter way. Nathaniel made French toast for breakfast, which I hadn't had in ages and was so yummy. I played a new game Nathaniel had got (Trauma Centre, from psychokitten76) for his DS and packed, and we played more Guitar Hero III together.

For tea we wanted to go out, but everywhere was shut because it was Sunday, plus it had started snowing while we were being rock stars and England doesn't do well with even a dusting of snow on the roads - or near the roads, for that matter. People took days off sick rather than go out when there was a dusting of snow on the grass, and I was there going 'But the roads are clear! And even if they weren't, you have treads on your tyres! That's what treads are for!' (It reminded me a bit of being in Washington, DC in 2003, when they got about two feet of snow overnight and had no plows at all - the roads and sidewalks and driveways were all indistinguishable - so everything ground to a halt, and a friend of mine from Maine wound up on their local news saying 'If I were from here, I would be really embarrassed right now'. But that's a story for another day.) This time there was actually some snow on the roads, though, and Nathaniel didn't want to go skidding all over greater Bolton in his little car looking for someplace that was both open and appealing. We wound up at Pizza Hut, which was packed with people who'd had the same idea as us. Maybe it's just that I haven't been to Pizza Hut in a very long time, but I found this one to be far nicer than any I've been to! I had another pasta bake sort of thing, which was excellent. The Pizza Hut near me is quite small and I don't think they have the same range of things available, which is probably a good thing or I'd spend way too much money there.

09 February:

We had to get up early and get everything packed into the car, put the key through the mail slot for the B&B owners, and head for the airport. I got checked in and we had a bit of time to find food, and Nathaniel showed me that Tim Hortons has indeed made it to the UK. He got a muffin, and I got a small salad, and we had a little time to eat those before we had to go to security. Saying goodbye to him was so hard, as I knew it would be, but it was a bit different this time because I was the one who had to walk away. I managed to drag myself away and go up the stairs to security, and then watch him through one of the little windows that were there until he walked away to find a place to sit.

Security wasn't a problem, fortunately, and I made it to my gate with time enough to buy a drink. I was sat near a Spanish family, and I tried to understand what they were saying as a way to test my Spanish, but at the same time didn't want to eavesdrop. Oh, the angst. We boarded and took off at 11:30 or so, I think, although I didn't really know what time it was. It was a short 50-minute flight to Amsterdam; 20 minutes to take off and get up to cruising altitude, 10 minutes cruising, then 20 minutes descending into Amsterdam. It hardly felt like we'd gone anywhere at all.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to look round Amsterdam's Schipol airport at all; I power-walked to my gate, had to go through security again, answered a few questions about who packed my bags and whether I'd left them unattended and so on, and then had a few minutes to sit before boarding. Unfortunately, going through security meant that there was nothing but chairs and toilets accessible to me, which I hadn't realised. I thought there would be some opportunity to spend euros before I got on the plane, but alas, no.

The flight seemed very empty - they called for VIPs and people with small children to board, then called everyone else at once! No 'rows 20-30 only, please' or anything like that. And the plane did remain very empty; in my 8-seat row, there were three people. I guess not a lot of people want to fly from Amsterdam to Boston for some reason. I was thrilled to see a kid with a Red Sox cap; that was what really cemented it in my head that I was going home, I think. It was all a bit of a whirlwind until I got settled on the plane at Schipol, so I hadn't had much time to think about it. I had my own little television screen and there were a few games available on it, so I spent a great deal of the flight played BeJeweled and Mah Jong and solitaire. I'm surprised that entertained me as well as it did, for a 6-hour flight! I didn't want to sleep on the plane, or I'd never get to sleep when I got home that night. I was already missing not only Nathaniel, but England as well, so I was very pleased when the pilot said we were flying over the UK, and actually over Manchester again as well (making it even sillier that I had to fly from Manchester to Amsterdam before flying to Boston).

When I arrived in Boston, after picking up my bags (which were the first bags out - usually they're among the last!), I was questioned by a customs official about what I was doing in England ('just visiting' satisfied him, fortunately) and then sent over to another official, because on my little form I'd checked off that I had fruit with me. The second official was super nice and very casual, which was a pleasant surprise. When I told her that the fruit in question was raisins that came in the cereal I had, she said that was entirely fine. She asked if I had any nuts or seeds, and I said the cereal had some of those too, and she asked if I was going to plant them. I said definitely not, and she was like, 'Psh, you're fine then'. So really no problem. I was so relieved.

As soon as I got out of customs and into the main airport, I saw Caden, who apparently had arrived just five minutes earlier. He gave me a big hug, which he said was from Nathaniel, which was so nice and made me miss my boy all the more. Then he took me home and I unpacked a bit and got online, because it was much earlier than I'd expected it to be - my plane landed about an hour early, and customs didn't take as long as I thought it would.

Cookies for anyone who read all that! Pics post hopefully coming soon.