Although the librarian hasn’t traveled very much she has
lived in Croatia for 12 months of her life, she loves to travel and experience
different cultures. Before this vacation started I felt quite a lot of responsibility
to make certain that the librarian would be able to able to enjoy the best of
what England has to offer, I spent quite a lot of time on the internet trying
to squeeze the most of the 15 nights we’d be in the country of my birth.
The most important reasons for my visit was to spend time
with my parents and also my eldest daughter Amy. My parents had booked a
Pullman service lunch on a North Yorkshire Railway steam train for the middle
Sunday of our trip and this meant that I had to plan one week “up north” and a
second week “down south”. Once I’d realized this I could start to plan
individual days of sightseeing and the jig saw didn’t take long to come
together once this reality dawned.
The librarian could be a member of the Three Degrees, she has
a history degree, a masters in library science and an education degree on top
of that she’s also a great singer! Wife 23 was a proud graduate of the
University of Georgia with a degree in physical therapy, among the talents she
nurtured at the height of UGA’s party school reputation was drinking, dancing, intermural
sports, cheerleading and hangover recovery. She continued to perfect those
talents throughout her life, wife 23 was a party animal and full of the joys of
life.
In the past I’d also taken wife 23 on a similar trip to the
UK, I’d no idea how different these trips would be. Previously I’d be walking
with wife 23 and notice that she’d dropped behind to stroke a dog or two while
she was surrounded by old buildings that didn’t really float her boat, she was
completely unimpressed by her historic surroundings. When walking around England
with the librarian I’d constantly have to turn around and go back to where she
was checking out an old monument or structure, it didn’t matter what the
building was, each old antiquity demanded her attention.
Consequently days
out exploring the country with my beloved librarian took much longer than I’d anticipated, actually it
was good for me because through the librarians eyes I started to appreciate
so many things that I’d taken for granted in the 40 years I’d walked on England’s green
and pleasant land.
At one point while we were in Trafalgar Square wife 23 was
in tears about a dog that she thought was a stray. She wanted me to call the
equivalent of animal control to make certain the dog received some kind of
care. It was then that I had to explain that the dog belonged to the homeless
guy that was sat less than six yards away, wife 23 couldn’t believe it and
asked how he could afford to have a dog, it blew her mind when I told her that
having a dog meant that the guy would receive more social security benefits and
that was why the great majority of homeless people had a dog.
On this visit we paid to see Whitby Abbey, Scarborough
Castle, the Castle Museum (York), a bus tour of Oxford, Windsor Castle, the
Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. All other attractions were free if you
don’t count the almost compulsory “Pay and Display” parking fee. I did plan to
pay for a bus tour of London however the Yorkshireman inside me realized that I
had enough knowledge to make certain we’d see all of the popular tourist sites
that the librarian needed to visit.
On our last day I decided that I didn’t need to stand in
line for 40 minutes and pay £25 to see the inside of Westminster Abbey but librarian
had a dream of seeing Poets Corner and so we separated for a couple of hours. When
I saw the librarian exit the Abbey her eyes were full of tears because her
visit to Poets Corner was such an emotional event for her. Only then did I
think I’d probably missed something special but the 234 dogs I’d stroked in
those two hours were all special!
That’s my reality,
Jobsonian
No comments:
Post a Comment