Days LIV, LV, LVI, and LVII

We all took it easy at the Nyall Court compound on Saturday morning. I had a bit of a lie in myself! Around mid morning though we started to decorate for that evening’s Halloween party with Emily and Chris and their friends. We put up many different things that Em bought when she was last home at the Dollarama.

In the afternoon we picked up Em’s workmate Jenn and out went out to do some shopping. We went to Tesco’s Extra (which is pretty much your run of the mill hypermarket)… but look at the deals… make up kit 90p! Long sleeve white shirt 4 pounds! Glow in the dark fangs 7p! Four pack of mars ice cream bars 1 pound! Okay… so that last one really doesn’t count but I did share them with the rest of my car-mates.

The guests started arriving around 7.30 pm and so did the fun. Emily was Marie Antionette, Chris was an executioner, Jen was Wednesday Addams and I was Dr. Horrible. Or at least as close as I could be, given that there was no dentist or barber’s outfits to be found! The place looked great and we were ready to party.

Emily had set up some party games, and probably the most fun was had during something I’ll call Project Runway: Halloween. Each group of four had 30 minutes to dress up their chosen subject in a Halloween costume made entirely out of newspaper. Our group had an absolute ball – we just laughed hysterically the whole time. We didn’t win but really who cared.

The guests were a great bunch. Most of them were teachers and their spouses from Emily’s school with a good couple of ex-pat Canucks (yours included) thrown into the mix. The party progressed with great food and drink, more games including bobbing for multiple apples, and wound up around 1 am in the morning.

Thank goodness, then, that day LV started with a one hour fall back. That made it a bit more tolerable to get up and get out and catch a train around 8.25 am. And this will become key.

The train route was Gidea Park to London Liverpool Street, and then a tube to London Paddington. I made good time, and then proceeded to lose time fighting with the automated ticket machine. Also key.

I got on the train to London Paddington. And it was the wrong line – the Metropolitan wouldn’t take me to Paddington, so I got off at Moorehead and switched to the Hammersmith and City line. Here’s the third key.

I get off the train at Paddington and about to head up the stairs when I look up and am, as the Brits say, gobsmacked. There, walking down the stairs, is a former coworker from the school I work at! I am a big believer in things happening for a reason, and a bit of fate thrown in for good luck. We had a quick catch up chat and switched emails to hopefully meet up again in London later on when I was passing through.

I hopped on a train around 10.30 am at Paddington and found myself in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, about two and a half hours later. I met up with my friends Ruth and Gareth and we headed over to see the rally car exhibition that was going on by the quay. It was really cool – the first thing we saw was stunt driver, Paul Swift, drive on two wheels of a four wheel car! And he was nice enough as well to pose for a quick picture, as you can see.

We then headed over to the stunt car area, where we could actually sit in these cars that I don’t think I would ever be able to afford.

Following that we found the Citroen tent where we played a virtual car racing game which I was pants at. But there was free hot chocolate! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I always say. Plus it turned out one of the workers had a friend who was a teacher that lived one half hour away from me back in Canada… unfortunately we weren’t able to stay and meet her as she was running behind.

Harry Ramsden’s was our next stop. While this restaurant offers a chance to clean the biggest plate of food to win a place on their wall of fame a la Great Outdoors, I stuck with an order of chips. Three teenage girls were fascinated with my accent and promised to watch my upcoming tv appearance. Whilst eating the chips, we passed by an eight foot butterfly, her hopefully captor and a man juggling… so he let me have a go!

After all that we continued the exciting afternoon jaunt to Barry Island, where we had a nice walk along the beach (even though it was quite windy). When we got back to the house we all crashed for a bit, as it had been a long day already!

Following an excellent dinner – sorry, ‘tea’! - of beef stew and rice pudding with homemade jam, we settled in for a night of Singstar. We must have played for about two, maybe three hours (actually it was two – after we finished off the X-Factor results show). Ruth and Gareth are as hard core as I am about this game and we had quite a few laughs – especially when we got to the Rock Ballads version and I proceeded to crank out the Literal Video Version of I would do anything for love(but I won’t do that). And screeching out Black Velvet.

Singstar: the only game where you almost guarantee you will be the best if you sing really really loud.

Day LVI featured as its main dish a cooked breakfast including, among other things, black pudding. Someone was going to tell me what was in it – but I figured that wasn’t what I wanted to hear (it’s actually got blood in it – fact). Following some more Wiiing where I hit 20 points on basketball, Ruth’s parents came over. We had a small chat, and then the five of us headed over to meet up with Mark and Sally in the ‘Pont’, near Swansea.

How I know Mark is a testament to the written word. When I lived in the Mumbles, at which time I was about 6 years old, I received a chain letter. This was back before the time of email, so there was no chain lettering of how to order little blue pills, or how a Nigerian prince needs your money. The letter said to send a postcard to one person, and that you would get 80-100 back. Well, sufficient to say that I didn’t get 80. Not even double digits… I got one. From someone named Mark who lived in Wales.

That was 1984 – so Mark and I have been corresponding for 25 years now. We’ve met in person twice in Canada when he and Sally were visiting, and this marks the fourth time that I’ve been to the UK and had the chance to meet up.

It was quite exciting to pull into the drive and meet Mark and Sally’s children – neither of whom were born when I previously visited. Will is 7 and Tom is 3 and they are about the nicest kids you could want! Mark and Sally had prepared a nice spread of lunch including wonderful cakes… the orange ones were a personal fave.

Following lunch the group of us headed out to the Mumbles Pier. As we got closer certain parts of the area started looking familiar from my last visit here in 2002. We parked and then much to the amusement of Tom and Will especially we headed over to the arcade. Will played a few racing games, then we played skittles (read: bowling). It was quite difficult for me to get in a good rythym – the balls were five pin size but there were ten pins that weren’t really ten pin size, and there wasn’t much lead up space, and you used your own shoes. After a while I just figured it was best to whip the ball down the lane.

On the way out as is my tradition I played a dance machine, and sufficiently impressed the crowd. Next was ice cream… then the day continued with a mad dash to find a Barclay’s cashpoint machine (called “hole in the wall”, natch),

getting soundly beaten by Will on a Playstation racing game, discovering the kids were surprisingly good at Singstar Disney,

and once they headed to bed, a few rounds of Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Party Edition which uses the Buzz! buzzers and should be ported across the pond. We got to a million… although here’s a fact, we had to use a dictionary to look up what a “thaumaturge” was – I actually was right in my reasoning but we wanted an official source to confirm that it indeed was a sorcerer (playwright is one of the choices – but that’s a “dramaturge”).

On Day LVII I was awakened by Tom when he decided to jump on my bed! I let him type his name on Bort (my netbook) and then let him hear the synthesized speech: he was quite excited! After breakfast and a visit with Sally’s parents we headed down to the Mumbles so I could meet up with a friend from my dive club back in Canada for a dive.

And imagine my surprise when the dive site ended up being at the bottom of Plunch Lane – the street where I lived way back when! I was tickled pink at that fact, and at the fact that Steph and her aunt had arrived from Swindon safely. We then met up with Dave, the owner of Bay Divers, as well as his assistants Tony and Leigh, along with Dave’s daughters who were doing shore support. I was very impressed with his philosophies, as they were very similar as mine, so I felt very comfortable diving with his organization instantly.

I’d love to tell you the dive went great, but unfortunately that’d be a lie, because we got in the water, realized it was too rough (which we were told later was extremely rare) and we had to call the dive. Which really stunk… but you can’t put a price on safety. Yes it was horrid that we had to lug all of the gear here there and everywhere but what are you going to do? Nevertheless the six of us then sat down, had some hot drinks, and swapped diving stories. Dave was even nice enough to drop me off at my next destination. While we didn’t get to dive, I was SEVERELY impressed with their organization, would highly recommend them, and will most certainly come back to dive with them again. And perhaps one day they’ll come and dive on our side of the pond!

Dave dropped me at Ed and Pauline’s house. Ed was my dad’s rotary mentor when he first came over in 1977 and they have been great friends ever since, and have always warmly welcomed me in when I have come back to visit. They also made sure to call Nerys, their daughter, her husband Johnathan and their new baby Alice – six weeks! – to come over for dinner. Again much swapping of stories was done, and many laughs were had. Alice even loved my Mr. Bean and Kermit the Frog impressions – oh, that kid is so nice… she doesn’t know any better!

I apologize dear readers for the long post but what are you going to do? I hope you are enjoy the blog and I will continue to entertain as much as I can!

Cheers,
Vick.