England: My Stake in Salisbury
Thursday, May 19th
Let's say that you yelled an obscenity in an historic and beautiful place in a foreign country as part of a large tour group... how would you appease everyone the next day? What would YOU do to work for forgiveness; to get the rest of the tour group back on your side? If you answered "Make everyone on the bus wait almost an hour for me the next morning"... you'd be right. And you'd also be Squidward... because that's what happened Thursday morning. For the first time in the entire week, my coach was loaded and ready to go before the other coach that morning... ready to go except that Squidward wasn't on the coach. And we waited... and waited... and as we sat, forty-five minutes after we were supposed to leave, Mike turned to me and said we should do a slow clap for him whenever he does board the coach. Done and done, I replied... as I figured that I was too old to care what the people on tour thought. As such, at 9:50 (almost a full hour later than we were supposed to leave) when Squidward boarded the coach... I started the slow clapping. And, because half the other coach had switched to our coach by Thursday, there were no seats in which for him to sit except for at the very back of the coach... where Mike and I sat with our 'sarcasm' turned up to high. As I said before, what a big D he was.
While we were waiting, Ken called me from the States. It was great to be able to hear from someone in the States while I was on tour... and Ken had much on which to catch me up (which I have to catch YOU up on), but that doesn't go here yet, does it? No... not quite yet.
After we finally left, and as we were driving towards Salisbury, we listened to a CD made from a recording of the Strewsbury concert. DRR had placed microphone down to record the concert to a DAT tape (that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes), which was then converted onto a laptop, then burned to a CD. Oh the long, winding road that is concert music! Huh? I don't know... let's get to my point, shall we? My point is that... well, guess where that microphone was. Go on... guess. I'll wait.
Nope. Try again.
Gross... it wouldn't even fit.
No! Are you even trying?
Fine... I'll just tell you. The microphone had been placed right next to me. The whole concert on that stupid CD ended up sounding like Johnny Chicago and his Albion College Choir! And, as it was playing over the coach's speaker system... I became as self-conscious as I have ever been. I actually felt exposed... as if my singing in the concert had suddenly become me changing on stage during Charlie's Aunt. Needless to say, hearing yourself and having everyone else hear just you is enough to make any insecure singer even less secure. I was embarrassed by my own voice... and felt REALLY uncomfortable for the first time on tour.
Thankfully we arrived in Salisbury before we could listen to the entire concert. And Salisbury's Cathedral was architecturally brilliant!
Salisbury's absolutely beautiful cathedral... under construction.
Posted by Hello
And it wasn't just an impressive building from the outside. Inside the cathedral were scores, if not hundreds, of minute but beautiful artistic details. We had a tour of the cathedral, which was interesting... but I was frankly a bit bored of old churches by Thursday. I wasn't really into how remarkable this building was. I would like to someday go back there... but we'll see about that. A wonderfully intricate building. Unfortunately for the choir, it looked better than it sounded. We were forced to stand in the absolute middle of the church... on a riser too small for the choir, with choir members spilling over and smashed together. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end for my interest in singing on this tour. Actually, the CD was the beginning of the end... as I was certainly holding back when we sang. I wasn't into the music... I was uncomfortable... I was embarrassed by my voice... it was the beginning of the end, my friends.
When we were done with that concert, I was actually pretty happy to not be singing. So the fact that we were going out to eat, just added to my joy! And, to add even MORE joy, C Sads actually asked me to lunch. Yeah, that's right... I've got attractive Chelsea's asking me to lunch. So I whisked her away to a little bistro before she changed her mind.
After lunch, I was excited for the next stop on the tour: Stonehenge! I had been looking forward to seeing Stonehenge ever since I heard that it was a stop on the tour. Every picture I've seen of Stonehenge has been beautiful... and I've seen at least four different Discovery Channel/TLC specials on Stonehenge and the mysteries surrounding the stones and their erection (I constructed that sentence on purpose... I am the most intelligent five year-old ever). Having said all that, I must admit I was horribly disappointed by Stonehenge. It is surrounded by a fence (so that no one can get close without paying)... but that fence is chain-link, so people who don't pay can still see it. Additionally, there is a path surrounding the monument, so that even the people who pay the money don't get much closer to it than twenty or thirty yards. There was an audio tour at Stonehenge just like at Bath. And just like Bath, the audio tour was TOO LONG and got quiet boring (particularly since so much is only conjectured and there is no hard evidence, so they can't really say for sure). There was yet another reason that Stonehenge was so disappointing: They had to close it early. Someone got close enough to accidentally knock over one of the stones...
I was tired from all the walking and needed to lean on something... What?!
Posted by Hello
Whoops! Um... let's move on, shall we? We left Stonehenge for the Marriott Hotel in Portsmouth. Mike and I had a room that overlooked the entrance and the breakfast area... so we could, basically, spy on everyone. I enjoyed it... but was too hungry to sit and people watch (even though we sat with a whole bunch of people and watched competitive darts... and THEN watched a show where smart kids get asked semi-tough questions, and then when we knew the answers we talked smack at the TV to the kids).
A large group of us walked next door to a pub called Beefeater. They, apparently, didn't like Americans... as a few of us got terrible service from the manager, of all people! I got fairly good service, even though it was too expensive for what I got (about twice as expensive as food in the States).
So, since we got such crappy service, we decided to head to a Tesco (Tesco Extra! Ooo!) and got some food and drinks. It was because of Chelsey's love for Strongbow that I decided to purchase an entire 2-Litre of the beverage. Needless to say, I didn't get as many people to share with me as I wanted to, and ended up drinking a lot more of it than I wanted to in the next two days. How much? Enough to spend a significant amount of time talking about all the women who liked another man... which is something completely sober, completely awake John wouldn't allow himself to do. What else did John in England do that he wouldn't normally? Only one more day!...
No comments:
Post a Comment