London Baby! (again) But first Nottingham. I started travelling a week ago. Wilton was fine for awhile, but only that. I quit drinking, quit smoking, went vegetarian and worked 6 or 7 days a week. That's about all I can say of my time there.
A Whole year.

But it has given me time to clear my head and have some space. I was sad to go, but not very. My co-workers were a perfectly nice bunch of people, something kind could be said about each of them. So I quit. I've served out my notice and here I am. I have a large battered rucksack (French army surplus - Prieveous owners have included Pierre 1988 according to the name tag). I have a couple hundred pounds and I'm off to see Europe. More specifically, I'm going to Florence.

And, on the way, look for purpose and meaning. And some idea of what I want to do with my life. And how I feel about it. And closure. And identity. And somewhere to make home. And all those elusive things.

Perhaps I will only find my destination, but I'm looking. Funny how I used to make fun of people who complained about all this quarterlife crisis nonsense. Ironic.

God I'm dreary this morning. And it's such a lovely day. And here's my station

Note to travellers: Do not go to Nottingham, it is dodgy as fuck. It contains - if anyone is interested - some Disneylandish Robin Hood 'historical' sites, the Sherwood Forresters Regimental Museum, Nottingham Castle (nothing special) and lots and lots of greasy, wheezy pigeons. It is crossed off my 'Possible Places to Live' list. Lots of grime and people covered in tattoos. Lots of litter and lots of litter bins. The London Underground is very clean and it doesn't have any litter bins. Goes to show.
Anywhere that gives pigeons emphysema should recieve a wide berth.

From an aesthetic point of view, the buildings need painting and the local accent has an 'ee' sound to it. There is an art gallery. I didn't go.

From a cultural perspective, there are many stands selling England flags and football merchandise. And many football themed shops and advertising campaigns. I judge the Yob Quotient of a city on the proportion of cars I see flying football team flags. (Yobs being loud assertive young men with bad English who binge on Lager and then pick figts with random people. Sometimes form figting gangs. Use the words 'cunt' and 'fuck' a lot. Most sentences sometimes). Nottingham has a very high Yob Quotient.

The countryside around Nottingham is lovely. Tiny villages, old churches, hedged fields and stands of trees. Wheat, gypsophila (sp?), blackberries, those white flowers whose name I don't yet know.

Note to self: this county will be excellent for making crop circles. The fields are sheltered by hedgerows and the rolling countryside, and the local news doesn't seem to have anything better to report.

Something I did enjoy in Nottingham was watching a chugger on the High Street solicit money from a pretty young woman. I should pay more attention to chuggers, they have useful social skills to teach us.

This guy walks up to a strange, hot, young woman in the street, holds her attention for 15 minutes, makes her smile and laugh whilst talking about some sombre disease, pushes the right emotional buttons and walks off with her credit card number. All while looking like a hobo and staring at her breasts. Amazing.

Wilton in the past was an entrely different place, it was the capital of Saxon England. Wiltshire's named for Wilton and there's a road towards it in most old English cities. In London it's from Victoria Underground station, but there's Wilton roads everywhere round here. And they all lead to my ex front door.
The Holy Roman Empire set up shop on some ancient Celtic earthworks a few miles east of Wilton, and built the cathedral city of Old Sarum, which was the seat of power in the region for some time.

An abbey was started at Witon and by the time of the Reformation the Abbess of Wilton owned most of the surrounding countryside. A bunch of sacking and looting and burning fixed that.

Into the power vacuum cam the Pembroke family. I'm not sure how or when but they did. The Earl of Pembroke owned the town and the coutryside for miles around.

Arstocracy back then - such as the Pembrokes - travelled around and married for social climbing. (So if Europe's royal families seem like a set of buck-toothed giggling inbreds, it's only because they are). One of the Pembroke wives was of a Russian roayl family, and she set about building a grand church in Italian style to honor her national saint, St Nicholas. Santa Claus to the rest of us.

And so the Italiante Church of St Nicholas was built, in parts in close imitation of various European cathedrals the Pembrokes liked. She destroyed the original town church in the process - out of wanting to, it's still there, ruined. In their travels and conquests the Pembrokes transported the wealth and history of many European cathedrals to their church on their estate at Wilton and it's well worth seeing.

Getting back to Sarum: it had a problem. Being atop it's celtic earthworks it was very defensible, but it didn't have a water supply. A new city arose in the swamp below Sarum. A city with canals on the trade route from the coast on the south to the Cotswolds in the north. A new and Grander cathedral was built. Salisbury Cathedral. The Old Sarum cathedral is stiil there, from the ruins there's a view of Salisbury down the valley.

Wilton, meanwhile, was frozen in time. Earls came and went. Portraits in Wilton House. The industrial revolution gave the town a carpet factory. The Pembrokes sometimes misbehaved, as those with money can (since they have money, after all). One recent Earl shot is butler for failing to pour his brandy just so. He got off more or less scott free, and the freemasons are said to have had something to do ith that. But hey.

In a dining room alcove of the Pembroke Arms Hotel opposite Wilton House there is a map of the area circa 18something. The little villages around Salisbury are still excactly as on that map.

Wilton has a baker, a greengrocer, a florist, a convenience store, three pubs, a hotel, a few sundry shops, a notable antiques shop off the square and a dog grooming shop of all damned things.

So.. Visit in the spring when the ducks get in the roads. And buy a Barbie doll. And go to the antiques shop off the Market Square.

In London (again), in this hostel quite some walk from Victoria Station. I was going to go to York but it turned out too much hassle and Edinburgh is twelve hours on the bus either way. I'll spend time in them both, but not this trip.

And London's a great place to be. I'm always passing though, so I'm going to take a few days to just be here. And I'm staying directly opposite the Royal Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. There honestly is such a place and it's on Grays Inn Road in Kings Cross. I love the world sometimes :-)

The hostel itself is a little seedy, I was kept up late by a group of young men in the next room chattering excitedly in some asian language and jumping on their beds.. I was woken up early by some jerk with Slipknot as loud as his tinny speakers would play it. But no matter. I've booked another couple nights here. Not only has the house got access to England's premier sinus institute but a pretty blonde has offered to teach me some French.

Wilton today is a tiny village about three miles west north west of Salisbury. The carpet factory still makes carpets, Wilton house is open in the summer and there is a beautiful Italiante church to see.

The town is walking distance from Old Sarum and British Land HQ (MoD). It is also close to Stonehenge, Woodhenge and Boscombe Down (The RAF test base).

The village is mostly four streets (North, South, West, Silver) around a market square and the ruins of an ancient church. Market day is Thursday and is the closest thing to a supermarket te village has. You can buy fresh bread and local cheese and there's a butcher who puts you off them by hanging up whole dead animals. And you can buy hardware/expired batteries/Barbie dolls/snail bait/kitchenware from a man who stands around shouting 'Torlet apypa fer a pownd! Wype yer arese fer a pownd!' and such. There really is no other way to buy Barbie dolls (fer a pound).

There is also a strange fellow who sells garden gnomes. Makes them himself far as I can tell. I wish I'd been able to find one to travel with. They're harder to swipe than the Garden Gnome Liberation Front makes out. But back to Wilton...

Wilton House was the set of a Jane Austin move and some crazy film about Mozart that's due out sometime this year. Terry Pratchett lives in the area.

If you're going to visit do so in the spring, the fields and meadows are green, there are daffodils everywhere and ducks everywhere with their ducklings, and the women wear fewer clothes and the motorists honk and shout at the ducks in the road.

Wilton House gardens are very beautiful and there's a place there where you can go at four or five in the evening to gawk at tourists eating cream cakes and drinkng tea. Presumably because that's what some tourists think that's what the English do at that time of day.

Alternatively, if you are visting England you can go to one of the local pubs and gawk at what people in rural England really do at that time of day, which is drink bitter. Bitter is a flat, warm dark kind of beer - not as creamy or dark as stout. Whilst drinking people typically complain about their job/family/climate/politicians/Europe, harass the barmaids and talk about one another.

If you're visting, be aware that rural England can be incredibly insular. The UK is not one country to the people who live there and the county is the geographical area many assosciate with.

The epithet for a person from Wilshire is a Moon Raker. This all got started some time ago when the wool market was such that the sheep farmers in the Cotswolds became wealthy.

Bandits would run ships aground on the south coast, move the cargo - alcohol, silks, spices, etc - through Wilshire to sell to the sheep farmers.

One night such a band of miscreants had the law on their heels, so they decided to hide the loot and split up, returning when the heat was off. So they fetched a couple of particularly thick yokels to stow the goods in a pond. And off they went.

Soon afterwards the Sherriff and his men arrived to find these two yokels standing by their pond carrying a pair of rakes.

When challenged as to what the hell they were up to in the middle of the night at the pond one yokel replied: ''We was tryin' to fetch tha' cheese wot's floatin' on tha' pond.'' (or something like that).

''What cheese?''

The yokel pointed to a reflection of the moon on the pond. Given whom he was talking to the sherriff was satisfied that he did indeed have before him two idiots trying to rake the moon off a pond.

And the name stuck: at least, that's the story as I have heard it. There is a Moon Raker Club for yokels who can trace their inbreeding a certain number of generations within the county, and I have seen a moon raker tie.

So, here's to Wiltshire. Because our inbred hicks are more retarded than your inbred hicks.

That's right. I'm off. I've served my notice, bought a backpack, and I'm going to see some of Europe.

I could wax lyrical about my time in England, and I'm not going to.

Bye

Perhaps I should point out that I get a lot of pleasure from playing with new digital technologies, and how kickass cool the whole lot generally is. Today I was going through a old backup CD, looking at old photos and catching a little nostaligia, I came across some .wma's of a friend's band I'd copied some CDs for back in South Africa. They only made a few tracks before the band broke up, I thought they were good.

Now normally I know better than to make .wmas (windows media audio files) but for reasons pressing at the time I'd had to use a crappy beta of WMP9 that had compulsory DRM in it. I still have my copy of their CD somewhere, but rather than dig it out I thought I'd queue up the sound files.

No dice. Files wouldn't play in Winamp or w32-mplayer, which Microsoft graciou$ly allows to play .wma files. So I grudgingly load up WMP to see if that can play the things. WMP tells me I need a liscence (from microsoft) to play these files. Now I'm quite sure the band never gave microsoft or anyone else the right to issue liscences for their stuff. But I go to the MS liscencing site and get a liscence for each of the 3 tracks, which are issued with a smug message about how great DRM is and the veiled threat that it might not be free next time.

And I had to use microsoft software to get this liscence. And somehow this software is paid for, and the liscencing servers are supported, and the bandwidth is paid for. And the lawyers fees are met. And lots and lots of expensive ads come out for this liscencing stuff. Wonder who pays for all this stuff? Guess.

Maybe I shouldn't take it personally when big corporations try to extort money from me. And maybe I shouldn't hate the RIAA for doing what they do. They naturally assume I owe them money because I enjoy music, like that Osama Bin Ladin fellow probably wants me dead as an infidel. It's just the way things are. Heck, if I was more enthusiastic about trying to extort money from people I might have a lot more of it, but I've turned out a lot less mercenary than I thought I was. Paint a red star on me and hang me as a communist.

Usually the news sources I rely on are The Telegraph, CNN and [[A::http://neworder.box.sk::New Order]]. But today I was reading The Times, apparently European nightingales are suffering from noise pollution, in that they have to sing over the ambient noise of traffic and cities in order to get noticed by other nightingales. As a result these little fluffies can get really quite loud, 93 decibels loud in some places. Under the law this techically makes them a noise hazard that requires protective clothing, so a nightingale at full bast can be illegal. How cool is that :-)

Continuing of random things in the news, check out this study on [[A::http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0383/cDc-0383.html::chop stick wrappers]] on Cult of the Dead Cow.

Here is something I do not understand: why do people 'hide' strong words behind punctuation in print, f**k, sh!t, c--- and the like? The standard answer seems to be 'so that everyone knows what word you want to use without you having to use it'. Even if that made sense (think hard) I can't see any good in doing so.

If you dont have the conviction to use or quote a strong word [like vagina :-) ] then why prove as much? I think this mostly done to 'tone down' a quotation and make it 'fit to print'. But... to use a quote without the full color and implication of what was said can only be misleading.

Or, if a writer is 'above' using a perfectly good curse word in front of readers then that's just priggishness. And priggish is a very special kind of stupid. If this is self censorship for the sake of the readers then that implies they are the prigs, which is insulting.

Perhaps I should be $%^&ing; the things I write? Does anyone actually think it's more polite?

Someone please email me and put me out of my confusion. It'll help make the universe make sense.

F--- it.

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Gratitous mixing of metaphors:
Is meaning better softened or sharp?
Do we make something bland in good taste?
If we tone down something colorful, are we aiming at grey?

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Another afterthought, there are several good reasons to dress words up for publication on the internet. Such as to circumvent censorship by chat-mod bots, family (ie, Christian) search engines and net nanny software. But these days most bots and even some morons know what you mean by 'pr0n' and (_o_). And I am convinced big brother has the best bots of all. Spiders that watch for talk of terror1sts b0mbing aerlyners, so you won't keep big secrets that way.

This reminds me, I must go flood a chat room I got kicked from by its bot once for swearing. It was a quiet night just like this about two years ago and I didnt know too much about IRC back then. How sweet is revenge :-) ...ciao

How do you design a blog anyway? They can get tedious and involved. I think I need something to put at the bottom right of pages, my logo in the top left is loud and that makes the bottom right empty. A signature would work, but thats an egomaniac thing to do. A red wine stain, like from the bottom of a glass could also look good, but I dont drink. A scribbled peace sign or a server logo would be too kitch. And... First good suggestion wins.

So... there I was. Watching an ancient Ace of Base music video over and over again. And I thought to myself 'Linn Berggren looks a little like Lisa Kudrow.' And then I thought to myself 'This is going to drive me stupid. Maybe I should start a blog or something'.

So here we are. I will write about whatever I am thinking about. And change my mind. And tack on bells and whistles. For this is how I design websites. Enjoy :-)

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I saw the sign - And it opened up my eyes - I saw the sign.

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