To Nottingham Again

I was hoping to update this before I went abroad, but I clearly failed there.

On the weekend of the 21st/22nd August I decided to make a long-overdue excursion to Nottingham, having finally taken my car to a garage on the Thursday. It turned out that the air intake was full of oil/carbon/miscellaneous crud, which was why the whole thing was starting to sound like a tractor. There was also an irritating rattle and something wrong with the exhaust pipe, but apparently such problems could wait for another day, so they are doing.

The rainy Saturday lunchtime was occupied by lunch at the Sal with Andy (of the KDF persuasion), which involved much geekery and steak & ale pie and was thus excellent. I do miss Nottingham pubs and company sometimes. Fun fact: not one shop and not a single pub (there must be about ten) in Highgate sells Koppaberg. I've checked them all. One even asked me what kind of alcohol it was.

But anyway, from there it was a brief trip by bus back to Beeston to pick up the car, Leeanne, Simon, and Nathan, and then onwards to Peter A's spacious new house near the Lenton Priory. We there met Carl, Peter A, Peter S, and Ross for an delightful evening of Xbox 360, Cthulhu Munchkin, Thunderstone, and Chinese takeaway (though we got soaked retrieving the latter from Fortune Boy) until the early hours of the morning. Ah, Dinner 18, how I missed you!
I also got the added bonus of shoulder rubs from some of the very kind young men listed above, which alone probably made the trip worthwhile. Being able to crunch the joints in my neck and shoulders at will, whilst useful for scaring hairdressers and upsetting people in lifts, is probably not that good for me. I thus spent a large portion of the evening emulating somebody without a spine whilst my friends tried to push my vertebrae through my windpipe with their thumbs. Fantastic.

Moving on, I got to sleep in an actual bed at Leeanne, Simon, and Nathan's new house, which was bizarre.  I'm too used to crashing on couches or floors these days. Friends with a spare room? It's like we're turning into civilised adults, which is a terrifying notion.

Sunday was blindingly sunny, so the party from the night before (minus Nathan and Peter S) headed over to a field near Spondon to visit the Maize Maze, where Carl has been lurking this summer.

It does what it says on the tin - it's a maze, constructed of paths through a huge field of 7ft-high maize. The challenge is to locate all ten clowns within said field and get stamps of each of them.
Ross, Peter A, and I took it upon ourselves to succeed at this while Simon and Leeanne ate ice cream, gadded about, and caught up on their reading, having done it before. Carl stood upon his fortress of hay bales and kept an eye out for lost people throwing up red flags in distress.

 
It took us about an hour and a half to find nine out of the ten clowns.
It took us another hour or so to find number eight, which was placed in a manner devoid of logic or compassion. Our methodical search, aided by the obvious imprints of my inappropriate kitten heels in the mud, sadly fell apart in the face of such madness and we split up. I retreated for fluids and ice cream at some point in the last hour, and stole a map off Carl whilst I was at it. Then I MMS-ed an aerial picture of the damned thing to my comrades. We eventually got the bastard and entered our cards into the prize draw. Despite the cheating, I think we deserve to win on perseverance.

This needs to be at night, with flaming torches.

But this does not need to be more creepy.

From there I got in the car and headed back down the M1 to The Pit Known As London, thus ending a marvellous trip.
That said, I caught the underside of my car on a kerb on Saturday and now it rattles like it's trying to fly apart, so I shall have to take the wretched thing back to the garage and see if they can reduce the rattle from 'worrying & audible over loud music' to 'irritating, but ignorable' once more. Will it ever just work like a normal, healthy vehicle? Doubtful.

As an aside, my sister has gotten her A-level results and got her first-choice university place - at Nottingham. Huzzah! Now I have more reasons to visit and a no-notice-required place to sleep when I'm in town. Excellent.

Special Friends.

A clown, and Simon on a tiny tractor. Yes.

(Insert Hay-related Pun Here)

So, I figure that seeing as I have more time on my hands than a clumsy hourglass maker I should maybe start blogging again before I forget how to write entirely and scupper my career plans.

Status: Still unemployed and pretty pissy about it. I want to get into publishing, but it turns out it's hard.

Also, it is now sunny enough for a fifteen minute exposure to give me noticeable sunburn, so I am forced to slather on the sticky white emulsion, stay indoors or scuttle along shady walls like an overgrown albino cockroach. Marvellous.

Still, I shall not whinge further. This is not a Deadjournal.

Instead, here is what I did this last week.

After some decidedly unsubtle hints from my parents I ended up heading back to the Midlands for a couple of days. I actually decided to drive up on the Saturday, despite the car being overdue for yet another epic failure of some sort. Remarkably, both the car and I got there in one piece, and I successfully managed to whisk Charlie away from her visit home to trundle into Loughborough for a coffee. We bought cheesecake and were peculiarly recognised from school by someone much younger than us whom we have no recollection of. We also participated in the age-old tradition of buying some chips from the excellent Devonshire's and eating them in the car while it pissed it down outside. A most enjoyable couple of hours.

Grandad was staying over for the weekend, so I could only hare off to Nottingham for half an afternoon, sadly. If I didn't see you, this is why. I will be making an effort to make a proper visit soon. Still, it was great to be back, even if only briefly, and it was good to see those who I did. For those who evaded me – I shall get you next time!

Late on Monday I made the decision to visit the Hay Festival for a couple of days, so managed to get one of the few camping spaces left nearby and on Tuesday drove for about four hours o'er hill and dale and tiny rickety wooden toll-bridge to a land where my phone might as well have been made of cheese for all the connectivity it had.

If you're not aware of it, the Hay Festival is a literary shindig set just outside the improbable Hay-On-Wye just north of the Brecon Beacons. I say improbable, because the main industry there seems to be second-hand books. There are more bookshops in the tiny town than anything else combined. Other shops include a small Spar, a delicatessen, half a dozen pubs, three posh clothes shops, a perpetually-closed bank, an outdoorsy shop and a pharmacy that was, unexpectedly, bigger than the Spar. I guess the well-dressed locals eat books and then take lots of vitamins to counter the malnutrition.

But I digress. The festival comprises largely of a massive number of authors giving talks on their specialist subject, whilst those not attending dine on overpriced organic whatever and drink Pimms whilst reading something highbrow. There's also a handful of stalls by companies like The Balverine whiskey, the London Library and Oxfam.

It may be unsurprising to hear that this is all sponsored by The Guardian. In fact, the owner of my campsite referred to it as 'a Guardian readers convention'. Almost everybody there was a rah, wielding 2.4 children, or a retired, white, upper-middle-class couple. Don't get me wrong, those who I spoke to were all lovely, but it was a little disconcerting. I went to see Ross Noble, who did a good show on the Tuesday evening, and one of his opening remarks was about expecting a crowd of bearded tweed-wearers muttering about Richard Dawkins. He clearly didn't see the lady sat near me in a tweed vest top. Or her beard. I will compliment him on suitably ridiculing the venue though - The Barclay's Pavilion of Wealth. Oh yes. Enter stage left the Tepee of Joy, the Tent of Glory and the Cloth Warehouse of Magnificence.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the experience, spending most of my time at history-orientated talks. Not that anyone's particularly interested but I attended talks by Robert Ferguson on Vikings, Paul Cartledge (whose books contributed heavily to my dissertation) on Greek Democracy, Adrian Tinniswood (whose book I posted dozens of during my publishing work experience) on the Barbary pirates, Richard Miles on Carthage, Tom Holland on west Europe c.1000AD and a couple of guys (whose names I've lost) on mappae mundi. They were generally all very interesting, and I even had time to go for a walk on Wednesday evening (though I nearly got stuck down the bottom of an embankment near the river, which will teach me for going exploring inappropriately dressed).

I thought I should really get back to London and apply for more jobs, though, so I made the five hour trip back late on Thursday morning. My god, I feel it. I'm as stiff as a board from the combination of driving 500-odd miles and sleeping on a sliver of foam in a field. Everything aches, including my stomach muscles, which I have no reasoning for. The first half of the drive back was awesome, though. Driving at speed through the glorious Brecons along windy roads whilst listening to classic rock and playing 'spot-the-castle-ruins' (a rather dangerous game as a driver, it turns out) is one of those things that I really enjoy a lot. It would only be improved by doing it on a motorbike. That said, I drove past Raglan castle, and now immensely regret not stopping to have a look. I shall have to go back sometime.

I also got to drive across the Second Severn Crossing though. That is one hell of a bridge, I must say.

So now I am back to the noisy humdrum of the city. It is as hot as the countryside, but with added pollution. I don't like this.

But that tedious ramble brings me up to date, anyway. I shall try to do more interesting things in the future.