I Know Now What I Knew Then

Yesterday a neighbour stopped me in the street as I was walking home:

“Alright mate, haven’t seen you around for a while”
“Heeyyy! Yeah, I’ve been in Japan for a year teaching Eng-”
“That’s great so me and the wife we had a garden business”
“Um…Right, yes, I see your van parked out here, with the banners, how long have you bee-”
“But we’re winding it down see – we have another income stream that pays us whether we work or not! And this is backed by a major British Plc! It’s a great opportunity to work from home and make money!”
“Ah. Umm...”
“I've got a DVD in the house, come and have a look, you can make loads of money just by recommending your friends!”
“Ah, well you see-”
“It’ll only take a minute…”

He’s a friend of my mother so I had to be polite. But then he took my arm, to lead me. I subtley shook free and he looked at me askance. The rest of the conversation was markedly less friendly.
See, I’m not a toucher. Many times good friends have hugged me or laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and I tense up. A psychologist would say I wasn’t held enough as a child. It's nothing personal; try as I might, I just do not know how to respond. I once tried to be more ‘touch-feely’ by laying a friendly hand on a friend's back, but being unused to this kind of thing I over-did it and ended up caressing his shoulder which, you can imagine, was not good. So anyway - I’m sorry, I’m just not a toucher.


I have seriously missed the comforts of Toyama since being home: my friends, the carefree lifestyle, the unqualified respect, the reliable trains, the martinis, and the bowling. I can't do much about these things, except for the bowling. A few weeks ago Robin and I headed down to Cardiff's premier bowling establishment. Sorry, Cardiff's only bowling establishment.


Yeah, bowling!


Strut. See me strut?


Do not click on the image to see the score.

We also went back to Swansea, to see how the place had changed since our halcyon days of university. It was a dump back then, but we were all far too drunk to care. Swansea has had all sorts of money poured into it since then for regeneration projects and I have to say, well, it is pretty much still a dump.


Where the money went: the cutting-edge 'Technium' at the university.


...nobody wants to go shopping though, right?


Look at the lovely, um, the lovely fountain.


Oh, hey everyone! It's okay - they've got a Starbucks!

Walking around the city centre I was struck by how many people there were with prams and children running around all over the place like they owned it. It’s the same in Cardiff – people with kids everywhere. Well, young women with kids. Okay - teenagers. Teenagers with their illegitimate children. Anyway, I’m not anti-child, but these little, er, darlings are everywhere, swearing their lovely little heads off – seriously, words I didn’t even know when I was fifteen – and their parents are chasing them around screaming at them about how exactly they’re going to f***ing batter them if they don’t f***ing behave. I don't know. Maybe it’s because they didn’t get enough love when they were kids themselves. Maybe they weren’t held enough; they're not touchers. When I have a family of my own I’m going to make sure to touch my children all the time.

La Rica Robusto

In Japan my blogging friends and I used to refer to ‘great blog material.’ For example:

"So in school today I had to make two kids have an English conversation. Except they can't speak. At all. Seriously it was like 'urrrch-ch-ch' and then 'urch urchhh-guh-guh'"
"No way! Special school right?"
"Seriously, and the teacher's like, 'So, so, velly good' and I'm like, 'WTF mate?'"
"Great blog material though eh? But hey, this is a great cigar right? Am I right?"
"I'll say."

The other day I went to London for the JET alumni reception where Robin and I were to meet up with some really groovy people whom we hadn’t seen in a while. Robin, having the return part of a coach ticket, had left earlier in the day and I was waiting for the noon Megabus - the poor man’s National Express. After a while reading, finishing up Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, I noticed a slight uneasiness developing in the crowd of backpackers and students I was waiting with. The bus was an hour late. It had still not turned up an hour later. In fact it never did. By the time the next bus arrived at 3pm only I was left waiting, because really, where else was I going to go?

“Excuse me, I was meant to be on the 12 o'clock bus that didn’t turn up, it’s alright to get on this one though right?”
“No sir. You have to pre-book. It says quite clearly in the small print.”
“Yes, I did, but your bus never arrived”
“Sir, you cannot get on this one bus. If you phone the number, which is clearly displayed on this sign, you can book a seat on the next bus, which will be departing at this stop at seven o'clock. It says very clearly…”
“…In the small print yes. But my thing is at 6.30”
“I can't help you sir as you see as the small print clearly says…”
“…Right!...The small print…I get it.”
“Yes”
“….…”
“Sir?”
“….…”
“Umm, sir?”

And I stalked off, to where I had no idea. I stopped behind the next bus-stop to thrash about a bit in disbelief. I felt a bit silly, especially when I noticed an old lady looking disappointedly at me.
“The busses issit love?" she crooned. "It’s alright love, we all ‘ave bad days don’ we."

I finally got to London at 9.30, too late to get to my hotel and ditch my stuff, but in time to meet everyone in a pub after their five hours of free wine at the reception. Swines. For those of you reading from Japan, and indeed those of you now elsewhere: it was real nice seeing those people again. Back in the 'yama we would still have several good hours to go, but London is not kind to those broke or loaded with luggage and we had to leave, it seemed, too soon. Laurie saw me off nicely with a glass of very good red, because, well, she's a lovely human being.




London is a very expensive place to stay and so our hostel was more picturesque outside than in. The lift had a mind of it's own and scraped up and down the walls in a frightening manner.

Outside:


Inside:


People in London live in small cramped apartments and pay through the nose for it (at least that was my experience) but it's all worth it for this:


Hyde Park

JET re-union aside, picnicking in Hyde Park was the highlight of the weekend. I miss that about London - the park, the papers, and a bottle of wine. And it never seemed to rain. London parks are a lot more welcoming than Tokyo's:



Still, great blog material. ish.