Monday, 28th of June, 2004

Well yeah. So I'm home. How'd that happen? Somehow I mislaid my girlfriend along the way – Ange's still in London, then going on to Belfast/Dublin/Ireland, and then to Paris, before stopping over in Singapore for a day and then finally getting home. Three weeks tomorrow. In the meantime I shall have to find other things to keep me from getting too lonely!

So Thursday's Camden experience was relatively uninteresting. Don't know whether I'm just not so interested any more, but Cyberdog seemed on the whole rather try-hard, and there was just too much of the whole anarchist-hippie-leech thing going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm a left-libertarian-greenie, but hey. Markets are always full of cynical people who just want to make a buck out of you really… Um.

So we get to Friday – my last day overseas! We got up, like, heaps early to check out of the hotel, as my old friend Michael was picking us up around 8am so we could get out of town before the traffic hit. On Thursday arvo/eve I'd juggled everything around to work out the best configuration, ending up with my vinyl purchases and pretty much all CDs carefully placed in the Sónar bag we got with our Sónar Pro passes, as my second on-board bag. My laptop-backpack was stuffed full as well, in an attempt to:
a) keep my suitcase's weight down (what with the books and comics I'd somehow picked up on the way as well) and
b) do the above while also bringing home a selection of things for Ange (so as to keep her luggage within weight restrictions too – more stringent for her Ireland leg) and for various other special people *g*

Mike has been living in the UK for almost 4 years (coming home at the end of this year, hurrah) and showed us where he used to live in Bayswater before heading out of town, eventually up the M1. It was really quite an easy drive, stopping briefly at a pit-stop kinda place for breakfast on a bap (so to speak) and arriving in Nottingham by 11am or so… Having only visited Nottingham by train in the past, I had to get my bearings – but a visit to Information got us sorted out, and we found Market St, home of the wonderful Page 45 comics, as well as Nottingham's Selectadisc and another second-hand record store.
Page 45 is always worth a long browse, and despite having pretty much run out money, I found a few goodies to take home with me (including a couple of "free comics day" comics that they were selling for the cost price of 26p. "Free Comics Day" is an interesting concept meant to attract more people to buying comics; none of the stores in Sydney can be bothered with it, so we missed out on a few great little anthology single-issue comics…)
Selectadisc is great too, but like I said, I'd pretty much exhasted my spending muscles and couldn't bring myself to purchase any more. A relief to the fans really ;)

Following Nottingham we decided to go back via Coventry, which is a surprisingly modern and heavily-developed city with spaghetti-junction overpasses galore. Stuck in the middle of that is the old town, hanging together somehow despite having been bombed in the blitz. You can walk around the old Coventry Cathedral, which was thoroughly destroyed – although the impressive spire still stands. We agreed that the new cathedral is pretty ugly and uninspiring, despite all being atheists. A walk around town brought us to the statue of Lady Godiva, but unfortunately it left almost everything to the imagination – what's the point of that?

We then headed on to visit Banbury, the town where Mike is currently living, where I plugged my laptop in and hopped into his wireless network for a last-minute email-check. On the way in to Heathrow we finally hit some real traffic, but I still made it to check-in in time. The queue was pretty huge, and the flight was full – what's more the computer where I was checking in had some weird error, so that whereas I started off having a middle seat to Bangkok and an aisle from there to Sydney, she couldn't print out the first boarding pass, and ended up having to move me somewhere else to print me out – the upshot being that I had a middle seat the whole time! Gnarg.
Dinner at an Italian place downstairs, and then I had to say goodbye. Was sad to see Mikey for one day and then not for another six months, but at least he'll be back then! Angela I was now not going to see for slightly longer than I'd just spent with her, so that was no fun at all… Long goodbye, and now I shall have to live with SMSes, emails and occasional phone calls for the next three and a bit weeks.

After travelling with Ange for so long, that made the trip back even harder, but I finished Ted Chiang's amazing Stories of Your Life and Other Stories and read quite a bit of David Langford's pretty extraordinary Different Kinds of Darkness collection too, whilst listening to a few CDs and half-watching some stupid stuff on the personal entertainment screens. I managed to move about a bit, slept maybe 5 hours max over the 24-hour trip, and moved myself finally to an aisle for landing only.

On arrival I was greeted with the longest customs queue since the USA. It took literally about half an hour of listlessly standing around, gradually moving forward, to get past the passport check and pick up my suitcase, only to queue again for the next check (just like in LA). Finally I reached the outside world, where Mum & Dad were waiting to pick me up (in my own car, complete with new battery which is a bit of a relief) and take me home. Covered bed in stuff as I unpacked, moved things around, and after sticking as-yet unlistened-to bits of vinyl on turntable I ended up falling asleep for probably a few hours more.
I somehow managed to listen to a few things as well, and filled up my CD and record bags before heading off to a family dinner and then to FBi for my first Utility Fog in three weeks – lots of fun, despite not having Ange there in the background. Played heaps of new stuff and still have heaps to get through next week! Got some lovely phone calls and all was fine.

I am now most lethargic on a Monday arvo, although listening to the delightful Paul Pimmon's "Paul's Playlunch" at noon was a beautiful thing…
So I'm home! Howzabout that? Stay tuned for book reviews soonish, and no doubt some morsels about Ange's exploits over the next few weeks…

2 Responses to “Tour diary entry #6, I guess”

1. Michael says:
   July 4th, 2004 at 7:58 pm

   Pete! You left out seeing the incredibly awe-inspiring "Banbury Cross". How could you?
   On a personal note, at the time seeing Peter and Ange didn't make me sad at all, 'cause I was so excited to have some proper antipodean contact again! Miss you now though, Peter. But all will be well come Decemeber. Yay!

2. Peter says:
   July 4th, 2004 at 8:01 pm

   Oh no! How could I forget the 2-second glimpse I had of Banbury Cross! The horror.
   Yay for December :)