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London & Northampton
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
After arriving back at Heathrow very early in the morning after my final flight with the ever useless British Airways (Cathay Pacific were by far the best airline I flew with, closely followed by LAN) I waved goodbye to my mother and step-dad and headed into London on Heathrow Connect. This service links Heathrow with Paddington Station alongside the more expensive Heathrow Express. On my way towards central London I got my first views of the country I had left behind nearly a year ago. I wasn't exactly impressed by what I saw. Apparently the chavs still have the country by the balls and swarmed onto the train at each stop. Also as the train followed the line to Paddington used by First Great Western I got to see the amazing rolling stock offered by one of the UK's biggest train operators - wow, trains from over 30 years ago!
Imagine you are a Japanese tourist used to racing across Japan on the 300+ km/h shinkansen bullet trains. Modern, clean and most importantly, fast. Then you arrive at Heathrow, probably from a Japan Airlines plane with those fancy toilets that violate you. You grab a ride on the Heathrow Express, it sounds fast, in the mind of a Japanese tourist it may even sound like it might even use some fancy new technology like Maglev or be some kind of futuristic monorail or something. Then he steps onto a fairly standard, although admittedly clean Heathrow Express train before crawling into Paddington alongside trains that were only modern before Mrs Thatcher even climbed to power. And then when he climbs onto the aging London Underground he probably just thinks he has stepped through a timewarp back into Victorian London! The last comment is possibly a little unfair - its practically impossible to upgrade the aging London Underground to match the more modern subways I found dotted throughout the world as it was indeed built at the end of the Victorian era.
Anyway, once I got into Paddington I headed over to Greenwich and to my mate Ian's flat to catch up on some much needed zombie / terrorist shooting on various video game consoles. Awesome. Despite all the video game violence and swearing (House of the Dead Overkill recently got a Guinness Record for the most swear words in a video game!) we also managed to sort out some wedding details for his wedding in July, sort out a replacement O2 SIM card and see Star Trek at the IMAX (its a damn good movie by the way). All this with horrendous jet lag too.
From here it was back onto the aging UK public transport system and on to my hometown of Northampton to see my good friends Heather & Ed and their expanding family. When I left they had one daughter who had yet to fully speak sentences and another one on the way, one year later and they have a talkative daughter and a rapidly growing son. It was great to stay there, especially as it was Ed's birthday which meant barbecued meat and tasty cake! It was also nice as Northampton is still where I consider home to be so it felt like I had finally stopped travelling.
After a weekend of over-eating, spending way too much time sat in front of a laptop screen and then some more eating and enjoying the family chaos that is the Jakeman house unfortunately I had to leave Northampton due to the small problem of not having a house of my own to live in there anymore. This meant a trip on the ever reliable UK public transport system once more, this time to Somerset to stay in the spare room at my sisters house. Things started shakily, turned out I had bought a day return from London to Northampton, instead of an open one (stupid confusing UK train ticketing system) so that cost me another £22 (grrr). The trip to London was OK, but slightly late with the usual lack of information, and I got back to Heathrow easy enough.
From there the plan was to take the cheaper option of National Express bus to Bristol, simple right? No. This is the UK where nothing is simple. The bus broke down several times before it even left the airport, and then staggered onto the M4. It managed to make it to Reading for the first stop, but then let out a sorrowful groan and conked out for good. Luckily I managed to grab a commuter bus full of grotty and noisy school kids across to Reading train station and then caught the previously mentioned 30 year old rolling stock to finish the mammoth leg of the days travel. Thankfully the aging trains were on-time for once and I managed to meet my brother-in-law for a lift to their house. At only another £38 cost to me!
Now I am staying at my sisters house at Cheddar with two more noisy kids to entertain me / tire me out (I'll get one of my own one day I guess!) until I can accept the fact that its really all over and I have to get a job like the rest of the UK population - although in the current UK climate that may be slightly tricky. Its still seems pretty weird to be in the UK again, and it was good to see my friends I had to leave behind when I left the UK in May 2008, but I can't help but think that it already feels like I had almost not been away.
Sadly being away means you manage to get some perspective on exactly what the state of the country you leave behind is like. Before I left on my travels I had seen very little of the world other than a few places in Europe. Having seen so much more of the world now it saddens me to see the sorry state of my own country. Other than the unreliable, expensive and pretty ancient public transport system there are many other things that now stand out which make me question whether the moniker "great" really applies to Britain anymore.
Were people always this fat? Compared to Asian people British people seem ginormous and a visit to Abington Park made me wonder if there are any attractive women left in the UK anymore. Was there always this much graffiti? The US aside it seems you can't go anywhere in this country without seeing some un-intelligent moron scribbling their ill-informed comments over everything. Why are kids here so cocky and obnoxious? The little sods have all the power these days and they know it. Was everything always this expensive? Well, yes they were to be honest. Why are there so many unemployed people these days? It seems that everybody I know knows someone close to them who has been made redundant in the past six months, not good for somebody returning to the UK who needs a job. Why can't I get a job where I am paid just to surf the Internet? OK, not the UK's fault this one!
People also seem obsessed at the moment with asking me what my plans are now I am back home. The simple answer is that I just don't know. I thought that a year away would help me work out exactly what it is that I want to do by the time I arrived back in the UK. Sadly I am no closer now to working out what I want to do than when I left one year ago (except that I do know that I never want to climb up another bloody chimney as log as I live!). While I try to work things out though I'll keep posting on this blog and keep you informed if I ever do work it all out... Any ideas?!
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