Planes, Trains, Automobiles (and Buses and Shanks-naigs)

I have a confession to share: I'm in love with Jane. It's okay, Christine is fine with it. In fact Christine loves her as well. Jane, or Jane TomTom, is the voice in our newly acquired GPS. But more about her later.

This is my last post about out UK travels and I hope you have enjoyed their irreverent and un-geeIsawTowerBridgeanditwasreallycool nature.

To get anywhere in Australia you often drive a long way. To get to the UK it means two to four very long trips, hurtling through thin air very, very fast. We flew with Singapore Airlines and we can thoroughly recommend them, but this does not mean the trips themselves were particularly pleasant. Fourteen hours trapped in a small seat, bolted inside a large aluminium can is a long time. Christine is not known for being a keen traveller, whereas I have always been busting for an overseas adventure. So it is probably a little strange for you to read that Christine handled the travel really well, whilst I handled it rather badly, having to recuperate at a transit hotel in Singapore in both directions. To prove what a travelling stalwart I am, I managed to suffer a vasovagal syncope (women faint, tough Tulloch men have a vasovagal syncope) on the very first leg to Singapore. Christine woke me after a couple of hours sleep and I managed to get my head off the backrest about 20cm before I passed out. A combination of a stressful few weeks beforehand, dehydration, an overly warm/stuffy atmosphere, and rising too quickly, was probably to blame. I felt like lukewarm death for the rest of the trip, despite Christine's wonderful attentions. A note to those who wish to attempt long air travel: dress lightly (they supply blankets if you get cold), take an empty water bottle with you (they serve you water in thimble-sized glasses), try to exercise regularly whilst on board, and don't accept hot towels from well-meaning cabin staff after you've passed out.

Our metropolitan train travels were far more fun. The London Underground, or The Tube to the locals, is an antique Victorian system that has carried over a billion passengers in its life. The demands of a populous of around 8 million people and the haphazard design of an ancient to modern city morph should spell disaster for this vintage public transport system. I believe that the individual lines have their moments, but in the four days we were in London we used the trains around two dozen times and it went like clockwork. Only once did we wait more than two minutes for a train (and that was a suburban line), within a half a day we'd worked out the system, and the Oyster card system (a version of Melbourne's bloated white elephant ticketing system, Myki) was a dream to use. Connex please take note, it is possible to provide good public transport in a big city.



Different again was the nightmarish bus system the English have delicately designed to be the bane of London commuters. We only travelled on the bus twice and the London trip was once too often. To be fair the trips themselves were fine, although a little stressful (the double-deckers get bumper-rubbingly close to just about anything on, and next to, the road). The system itself is a complexity of alphabetised stops, inconsistent timetables, confusing routes, and coloured maps that seem to, chameleon-like, change colours from stop to stop ("I thought we were on the blue line, now it's green"). I doff my lid to the bus drivers in London. I have no idea how they do it, but please excuse me if I take the train.

London cabs and a single rickshaw ride finished off our vehicular travels in London, but they were an expensive alternative to public transport.

Of all forms of transportation I think I most enjoyed what the Scots call shanks-naig, the English shank's mare, and us Aussies shank's pony (quite simply: walking). This allowed us to experience the UK like locals. Although we didn't really look the part with Christine snapping photos (around 5,000) of anything that moved (and many things that didn't), and me with a stupid leather bushman's hat and lairy backpack. Somebody asked us what part of Australia we came from and when I wondered later about this, Christine returned with, "well if you continue to say g'day mate to everybody they will probably get a hint about where you come from".

We hired a car for the Wales and Southern England part of our journey. It was a wonderful Volkswagon Passat with so many buttons and gadgets that we managed to work out a full 10% of them by the time we returned it. The one gadget it didn't have was a GPS. It was offered as a £10 per day option that I chose not to take, thinking I would rely on a road atlas and street signs. Which, with 20/20 hindsight would have been fine for the motorways, but a different matter in the cities/towns we visited.

Our friends Michael and Libby joined us on our way to Cardiff and Michael brought Ken with him. The only Australian voice on his TomTom portable GPS is titled Ken, hence the name (I was disappointed that wry English humour hadn't been employed and TomTom used the name Bruce instead). With Michael and Ken's help I managed to navigate through some reasonably tricky roads and roundabouts (some roundabouts have traffic lights, for goodness sake!) We were so impressed with Ken's expertise, and polite nature when I failed to take his directions, that we bought our own TomTom unit before we left Cardiff. We chose the pleasant female English voice TomTom calls Jane and, after several weeks of using her voice in the UK and Australia, it would be unfair to use any other (we even like the cute way she refers to Aussie freeways as motorways). Michael e-mailed me the other day a told me he had downloaded a Dalek voice for his TomTom, but I bet he's taken it off already.

Putting together my stalling of the car on more than one occasion (trying to get used to a ridiculous 6-speed manual gearbox) and the fact that I set off the windscreen wipers every time I tried to indicate (they are on the other side of the column from ours), I managed to keep Michael entertained in the front seat for the whole weekend.

Jane, the new love of my life, didn't once put us wrong, and she saved my sanity in the towns and cities. On the other hand, when I second-guessed her or misunderstood her directions, I wound up in hot water. None warmer, than in Eastbourne when I failed to take her left and took my left (in my defence there were two lefts). I ended up driving up a 'bus only' street, in peak hour, with several double-deckers up my clacker. Jane was madly trying to recalculate a way out of this idiot's choice of route, when I second-guessed her again, only to drive the wrong way down a one way street. Fortunately British motorists are a reasonably patient lot and allowed me to do, what seemed like a forty-point turn, to get the Passat pointing in the right direction.

I think this gamut of transportation gave us a pretty good idea of what civilised travellers might use; and like or dislike the various forms I think we chose them well for the entire journey (especially the aircraft bit, as they tell me it is a long way to swim).

Lost in Translation (from English to English)

"An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get,
Oh, why can't the English learn to

set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.

In America, they haven't used it for years!"

Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady

Isn't it funny how we all speak English, but our geography (or generation) makes communication a little difficult. Whilst living in Tennant Creek I once commented to a sickly American tourist that it was unfortunate that he was 'crook'. He took offence thinking I was accusing him of some felonious act. As with Professor Higgins above I put it down to the Atlantic (in our case the Pacific) gap in civilisation.

But on our trip to the UK I found similar issues. The English language is murdered even in its originating country. Not that I have the authority to pick (I have an infuriating habit of using 'me' instead of 'my' when using the possessive pronoun) but Christine and I did find it a little hard to communicate on the odd occasion. I had to ask people to repeat themselves, with me feigning a hearing problem, just so I could have another go at translating.

Of course accents don't help. It seems as though you can be born twenty miles away from your neighbour and speak differently. We loved the Welsh, but many of them may as well have been speaking Latin (actually I might have understood a bit of Latin).

Also, technical terms take on new connotations. As I was picking up the hire car I felt I needed to query why I needed to pay a deposit when I had already pre-paid . The incredulous reply was "You always pay a deposit when you hire a car" (thanks for the clarification lady). After a little to-ing and fro-ing I found our this was the money held as insurance in the case of a late drop off. Maybe we call it that in Australia too, but I'd never heard the term used that way before.

The local vernacular is a little hard to come to grips with as well. How the heck do you get "hello and how are you" from "ay oop"? Although some colloquialisms like 'sweeties' are not too far from our 'sweets' and cabmen obviously drive taxis (cabs). Christine picked up the lingo quickly which saved her from some of the embarrassment her husband faced with his Aussie ways.

My best English faux pas (I know it's French, work with me here) was in Cardiff. All holiday Christine and I had been sampling the best of British packet chips (Pipers' West Country Cheddar and Onion win). In the UK they are referred to as crisps, leaving the term chips for the hot fried variety. Here I am, standing at a dimly lit Cardiff bar with my mate Michael, two pints of Brains Bitter in my hands, and I spy a long line of crisps behind the barmaid. As I intently study the different labels, debating whether we should spoil our dinner with a couple of packets, the barmaid enquires if I need anything else. Deciding we don't need pre-dinner munchies, I reply: "No," I'm just checking out your chips." With that, Michael leads me away quickly from the bar. He was nearly bursting with laughter. Not 10 degrees away from my line of vision was the barmaid's ample cleavage (what some Englishmen would call a great set of Bristols). Michael told me later that her face went from shock to comprehension, which possibly saved me from getting thrown out of the pub. Those in my family will understand what I mean, when I say that it was definitely a 'Roger moment'.

So in Professor Higgins' words "Why can't the English, learn to speak?" (like me).

Do the Brit's Suck at Service? (Not Likely Guv'na)

Before we left on our big adventure, we were told by several people that we should not expect any level of service whilst travelling in the United Kingdom. This immediately brought forth visions of Ronnie Barker as Albert Arkwright or Dylan Moran as Bernard Black (or dare I mention the hotelier in Torquay?) Although an entertaining thought, this was not our experience and we enjoyed a reasonable to excellent level of service almost entirely across the holiday.

Now I must admit that during our time there we did not have one person fawn over us (maybe the sycophants were on Summer holidays) or become, in any way, gushy. But, with only one exception (which I will explain later) we found the Brits and the huge amount of foreigners working there very friendly and pleasant.

Now this may have been due to the fact that Christine and I were friendly and not demanding or impatient. We always greeted people with smiles (we were on holidays, why wouldn't we be smiling?) and used the manners that our parents taught us (thanks Mum and Dad).

In Portobello Road we met one of the funniest men on our trip. Guiseppe (try to pick the nationality) ran a gift shop in the road and was one of the warmest crazy people I have ever met. I swear that if we had stayed in his shop five minutes more we would have been invited to his niece's christening. We left with some lovely souvenirs, a discount, a gift for "The beautiful lady", and very nice shopping experience. Hey, we were probably ripped off, but is was Portobello Road. We finished off our Portobello Road trip with possibly the biggest waffle I have ever seen, and (up until then) the most drinkable cup of coffee I'd had in the UK. The Spanish lady behind the counter even did a little curtsey when we complimented her on her fare.

The mad pseudo-Cockney* driver on our nightime open-topped bus trip found out that Christine and I completed a passenger list full of Melburnians (travel halfway round the world and share a tour with people from Coburg and Mt Waverley). He spent the entire trip taking the good natured mickey out of his wife ("Five foot six of green-eyed Irish monster") and Melbourne. As he had spent some time in Melbourne and he was so much fun we let him get away with it.

(*Dave, the driver, admitted to being born in Fulham. To be a true Cockney you need to be born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside.)

Actually, it was on a bus tour a couple of days later where we had our only showing of shoddy service. We spent an hour and a half on two buses to travel the distance that we could have directly walked in 15 minutes. After another hour of being herded on to, and squeezed into, a third bus we got off and took The Tube. I understand that a mixture of lost Arab, Asian, and North American tourists, speaking limited English (yes, I know what I wrote) must be extremely frustrating. However, I think that maybe you shouldn't work for a tour operator in London if these things bother you.

A lunch in Covent Garden market provided us with some personal entertainment regarding 'true English service'. Christine, like myself, grew up in Adelaide on a steady diet of British culture. Given many people working in hospitality and retail in London are Eastern European or Asian, she was somewhat disappointed not to see Caucasian characters out of Coronation Street, or The Bill, dropping rhyming slang and talking about "Our 'arold's 'ernia". Christine lamented this fact at lunch and ten minutes later we walked past a fruit cart. Not wanting to miss out on nectarines months before I can eat them in Australia, I bought some from the lad at the cart. He was just the ticket: about 19, thin, Caucasian with freckles and blond hair, and short striped apron. He spun the nectarines in the brown paper bag to seal them and said, "There you go guv'na". I turned around to see the look of delight on Christine's face only to find she was (yet again) off taking photos somewhere and had missed the whole episode. I'm sure she believes I was making the story up.

People in the hospitality and retail industries in Wales and Southern England were the same and we really did enjoy conversing with them. The bloke in the Premier Inn at Cardiff left his post to help me with bags I was handling quite easily. We had a great conversation on the way to the car that, unfortunately, due to his incomprehensible Welsh accent I cannot share with you. This is because I have no idea what he actually said, except for something about rugby. While a woman in Eastbourne, who had sold us tickets to the Bandstand the day before, tracked us down across the foreshore to ask if we had enjoyed ourselves (which we had immensely).

The poorest service we had on the entire trip was on the shuttle bus at Sydney airport. The driver openly berated me for not putting our cases, back to back, in the storage shelves, remarking "Obviously some people can't listen to simple instructions". In my defence I a) can swear that he did not offer this gem of storage advice; b) did actually store them back to back, but in a way that would make them fall over with the movement of the bus; and c) had just lost all of Friday shoved in a high-speed tin can and had left my brain somewhere over Pakistan. I was too tired to even respond and let it ride. Now that I am fully cognisant: Mr Sydney airport shuttle bus driver: I wish you corns on the toes of your accelerator foot (there, I feel vindicated now). His attitude is one I am finding more and more here in Australia.

Maybe we should rebel against the level of service we experience at home before we worry too much about what the Brits are doing.

Back in Good Old Blighty

Upfront I need to state that until last month I had never set foot in the United Kingdom. However, since I was about six I have had a hankering to visit England; London specifically.

It is possibly due the Victorian family and social codes that pervaded our society in Australia during my childhood. Or maybe it was my love for English books and comics like The Magic Faraway Tree, Paddington Bear, Professor Branestawm, Jack and Jill (and later Biggles, Hornblower, Battle, and Valiant). It could have been British history threaded into the primary school curriculum, or the plethora of BBC and Thames television found on the family's favourite channel, the ABC. It is most possibly a mixture of all of these, and more, that has left me with a tie to a small island stuck on the top right-hand side of the North Atlantic.

On a reasonably balmy Sunday evening in September, this new-to-town traveller alighted on an unfamiliar Paddington Station platform, with a strange sense of familiarity. I bought Cornish pasties with a twenty pound note and thought nothing of it. I used the crossing on Praed Street in front of a black cab and red double-decker bus with a feeling that I had done it before. I was briefly lost in the back streets of Hyde Park with a sense that I really did know (roughly) where I was. It may have been jet lag, but I didn't have the sense of awe or bemusement I thought I would feel. I felt comfortable and at ease in this sprawling city.

In fact I spent the entire trip marvelling at the similarities of our two societies, governments, advertising, morals, et cetera. This seems to be irrefutable proof of how integrated British culture is in the Antipodes. In contrast Christine saw the differences, wowed at the new, and aahed at the counterpoints of our new location.

Please don't think I was unimpressed by London, as this was not the case. I was struck by the beauty of the city at night; amazed at how it never seemed to sleep, no matter what time you were out; captivated by the history steeping in its roads and walls; as well as being intrigued by its well deserved self importance. I continued to be impressed by Wales and Southern England on the rest of the trip.

So even though I had never been to the UK, some part of me felt as though I was returning to something familiar.

In the next few blogs I would like to share with you the wonderful travels and the feelings Christine and I gained from our newly adopted Mother Country.

I'm back to work next week, so don't expect them in a hurry.

Iechyd da!
TT