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I love this girl.
Tamara and Rob’s wedding was Saturday in Bedford, and it was, as they say, brilliant fun. The ceremony was short, beautiful and to the point, the vicar made a few comments about how much wine was to be drunk at the reception later, and then we all headed over for said reception.
Admittedly, the catering staff was crap, and it took over two hours to serve bangers and mash. After finally receving our table’s very cold potatoes, Tamara’s friend Martha declared ‘Don’t worry guys! We just need to get more drunk!’. And so more wine was poured.
After the meal and the speeches, the floor was cleared for the barn dance.
The barn dancing was led by a man who sparked the following debate, which lasted all night: Does he look more like Kenny Rogers or George Lucas? You decide.
Some of the barn dances went fairly smoothly; others were complete chaos and almost ended in injury. If ever someone was without a partner, Martha would run off and reappear with a random 72-year-old man on her arm, ready to dance. At one point, searching for a partner for someone, she yelled, ‘I’ll get the vicar!’. And so she did.
We waved Tamara and Rob off at the end of the night. They left early this morning for their three-week honeymoon in India. (Part of the trip will be spent on a basically deserted island).
I couldn’t wish more happiness on anyone.
I’ve now worked three shifts at the reception desk at the posh hotel down the road, and my job has been to…sit at the reception desk. For long periods of time. Doing not much.
Occasionally people check in, and I enter them into the computer, and occasionally people call and ask questions I can’t answer, and I find the GM and he answers them for me. Occasionally the bar staff comes by to tease me about how little I do. I look for odd jobs, like taking empty glasses off tables into the kitchen. I wear a white blouse and a black blazer and look entirely unlike myself.
The hotel hosts a lot of wedding receptions, in the summer one every Friday and Saturday at least. I’m going to start taking a book to work, so I don’t creep people out by having nothing better to do then stare at them all while they mill around in their wedding garb and large hats.
I’ve also taken to writing down amusing conversations in my spare time:
#1: I’ve actually had this exact conversation twice, so far. It goes like this: I’m introduced to a man in a suit.
“Really,” they say, upon hearing my name. “I’ve got a laptop called that.”
“That’s Acer,” I explain. “ERRRRR. My name is Aasa. AHHHHH.”
My name does not work well in a British accent.
#2:
“Why would you come to Britain?” one of the bartenders asked.
“Why not?” I said.
“Britain’s a shithole,” he said. “It’s full of nothing but drunks and tramps and crime.”
“I think it’s quite lovely!”
“No,” he said, looking at me skeptically, “It’s a shithole.”
#3: At Friday’s wedding
A woman in her mid-40s bursts into the washroom. I’m washing my hands.
“Are you good at putting wigs on?” she blurts.
“I’ve never put a wig on before,” I admit.
“I’ve just won this, and I need to put it on.”
She holds up a bubble-gum pink novelty wig in a plastic bag. I help her put it on.
“That’s no good,” she says, appraising herself in the mirror. “You can still see me own hair! Maybe that’s what this hair net is for!”
She takes off the wig, tucks her hair under the hair net, and I help her back on with the pink hair.
“Right,” she says, “I quite like that.”
#4: At Saturday’s wedding, overheard from my desk
The groom’s father comes down the stairs, and announces to a friend at the bottom: “I’ve just had an orgy!”
“Really!” says the friend, to the elderly gent. “With who?”
“With all of them!” he says, gesturing to the three women and two men descending the stairs behind him.
From across the room, the groom looks up and sees his mother, who’s now crossing the room towards him.
“How was the orgy?” he calls.
I’ve had a lovely job since I got here in mid-June. I live and work here, Narly Oak Bed and Breakfast, owned and operated by Tamara’s parents, Tom and Mollie. Tom is an ex-Major in the British army, who insists on calling me ‘The Colonial’. Mollie is a sweetheart who is involved in every committee, event, and council in the village of Clapham and nearby Bedford, it seems.
I help make full English breakfasts in the morning, if there’s a lot of people staying (bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, tomato, mushrooms, fry bread, cereal, toast, tea or coffee, whew). I make the beds and clean the bathrooms and do laundry. In the afternoons I walk the dog and read the paper and drink coffee, and it’s all pretty nice.
I’ve been looking for a second job, though, because this one pretty much just provides me with room and board. I distributed resumes (CVs), around Bedford, at cafes and pubs and things. I stopped at one recruitment agency (there are many) because it had a sign in the window that waitresses were needed. I had a meeting with an agent there, who said they mostly need waitresses for weddings occasionally, and she would let me know if more things came up. Things like a position at a local factory that assembles pregnancy test kits. Yup.
On our way home the other day from Sainsburys, Mollie pulled into a hotel a few minutes from the B&B so I could take a CV, on the off chance they were looking for people. We arrived at home. The phone rang 3.4 minutes later, and a man named Niel asked if I’d come in for an interview. Was I just looking for waitressing work? Would I be interested in shifts at reception? Yup.
I went in for an interview on Friday, and he offered me a few shifts a week on the spot, answering phones and booking rooms and such. My first shift is Thursday.
I’ve done a lot of lounging over the past two weeks. I’ve spent some time wandering around Bristol, then two days last week wandering around Bath, and am looking forward to being in Ireland tomorrow and having other people to wander around with: namely my brother, Jeff, the red-headed step-child, Dustin, and Boy-Whose-Father-Invented-Trivial-Pursuit, who I’ve not yet met.
Bath was intensely lovely (there!), and I paid too much to wander around the 2,000 year old Roman baths, and was glad I did. The fire alarm went off when I was half way through the museum, and I had to evacuate and go back later (it hadn’t burnt down).
The water has turned green, but the baths are still in immaculate shape and wander throughout the building. The Romans had heated floors in their steamy massage rooms, for crying out loud.
The baths are right beside the Abbey, (you can see it in the background), right beside which is a square with rotating buskers. On the other side of the baths people gather around buskers who do magic shows, or juggle knives while wearing pink tutus on top of giant unicycles.
I sat in the square and read “Northhanger Abbey”, because Jane Austen used to live in Bath, in this house (#4):
Bristol is a big busy university town were Tamara works for a law firm, and is also an excellent place to wander. I wandered through the markets one day, and sat under a tree eating lunch in Queen’s Square on another. At the Watershed Media Centre I attended a lecture on the United States’ use of torture against detainees, I walked up to Cabot tower in the park (John Cabot discovered Newfoundland), and went to the Empire and Commonwealth museum, with its extensive exhibit on the history of the slave trade. (A lot of explorers launched their ships from Bristol, and it was the hub of trade, in both goods and people, after that).
Now! My cab will be here soon to take me to the airport, from which I will catch my flight to Dublin. It is quite possible I will be spending much time in pubs over the next two weeks.
It was pointed out to me, shortly after arriving in England, that I say ‘awesome’ a lot. Also, ‘totally’. I’m not sure when I started talking like a teenage surfer, but I’m trying to replace these words in my vocabulary with things like “lovely” and “brilliant”.
At times I feel like I must speak a foreign language, like when Tamara and I went grocery shopping, and she asked if I liked ‘bitty orange juice’. When I looked at her quizzically she pointed at the OJ carton, which instead of ‘Pulp’ said ‘With Bits’. Another day I went to the store with a grocery list, which consisted of ‘fresh tagliatelle, large pot creme fraiche, bacon – 8 rashers’.
Here’s a compilation of other words I have to work into my daily speech:
- lorry: semi (truck)
- squash: concentrated juice
- washing-up liquid: dish soap
- toff: a ‘posh’ person
- jacket potato: baked potato
- chemist: pharmacy
- punch-up: fight
- tea: a meal, usually supper
- boot (on a car): trunk
- bonnet (on a car): hood
- pants: underwear. Can also be used as a mild swear word, as in “Oh, pants!”
- trousers: pants
- bollocks: bull-shit
- proferittarolls: cream puffs
- courchette: zucchini
While taking a London bus to Kirstin’s when we arrived, I saw a sign that said “As of June 1 2008, drinking alcohol will no longer be allowed on public transit”, which of course prompted me to go “You mean you can drink on public transit NOW?!”
Anyone who wants to come on a London transit booze-cruise with me in the next few days, please let me know. If you can’t make it before June 1, don’t worry, the new rules only apply in London; I’m sure some other British city will be glad to have a roaming group of Canadians on its subway with cases of beer.
Since I got to England, I’ve felt as if everything is just a little bit off-kilter, like the world has shifted just a few degrees left. Our language is the same and the culture is so similar, but I feel a bit like a blundering idiot at the moment, not quite sure what I’m doing.
Take my arrival in Nailsea, where Tamara lives. I took the train from London and Tamara was picking me up at the station near her home. I knew the stop, when the driver announced it I got my bag, got up, and stood at one of the doors. The train stopped. The door didn’t open. I tried to find a handle to open the door – there wasn’t one. I thought maybe the train was just pausing before pulling up to the platform, I thought the doors must open automatically if there is no handle or button to open them, I thought surely the man standing in front of me by the door also looking like he was about to disembark would get off and I would just follow him.
None of those things happened. The train pulled away.
The man standing beside me saw the stricken look on my face.
“What stop did you want?”
“Nailsea.”
“You just missed it.”
“I KNOW.”
He informed me that to open the door you have to slide down the window and open it from the outside, and besides, you have to be in one of the front carriages to do that, this one was locked.
Shouldn’t there be a sign or something?
I got off at the next station, took the first train back the other direction, and fretted all the while that there was no way to tell Tamara why I hadn’t gotten off the train. Back at Nailsea I found a payphone and apologized profusely to her for causing her frantic stress.
“I’ve always said that was going to happen to someone,” she said. It made me feel a bit better about not being able to get off a bloody train.
Crossing the street is also a hazardous activity for a foreigner. I was expecting this, having been to Australia before. In London, and some places in Bristol, there are large white letters painted on the street at intersections saying “Look Right” or “Look Left”, with arrows, to help us folks who sit on the left side of the car from stepping out into traffic.
I spent two nights in London before getting to Tamara’s house – the first at Kirstin’s (who’s from Kyle, and is a teacher here), and Anna’s (my cousin from Calgary). I managed to see exactly no sights in London, which is how I wanted it. I knew I had very little time there, and will be in the UK for awhile, so I have time to go back and do a proper tour.
Instead, on our first night, Kirstin took us to the lawn bowling club down the street, of which she is a member, for the Friday night meat raffle. I won porkchops, and we drank a pint in the company of excellent old British men.
The next night Anna cooked me supper (tea?), and then took me for a pint at her local pub; it’s on a boat docked in the habour, and called The Wibbley Wobbley.
It turns out pubs in London close at 11 p.m., and they mean 11. We still had half a pint left each, but with the staff ringing the bell, flicking the lights on and off, stacking the chairs on the tables around us and giving us accusatory stares from the door, we decided to give in and leave our remaining drinks on the table. The next day she took me to the Greenwich markets before I caught the train.
I’m so grateful to have people that I know here, and to have Tamara to look after me. We met years ago, when we both worked at Second Cup in Calgary and she was in Canada on a working visa. Now she’s a lawyer in Bristol.
So far Tamara has secured me a job at her parents’ bed and breakfast, is allowing me to stay at her house for two weeks, gave me a pedal bike to ride this summer, a rain jacket, and her old cell phone so I didn’t have to buy my own. She prints me off maps and writes directions on them for me, and translates things into ‘Canadian’. I don’t know what I’d be doing without her.
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