It started off pretty normal. Get on the bus, get off at Windermere. I went into the grocery store close to the train station to buy breakfast and lunch, and to my surprise two of the normal check out lanes had been turned into a small group of self check-outs. I realize that this is a familiar change in grocery stores these days, but a good majority of the patrons of this grocery store are senior citizens who prefer the normal manned check-outs. Anyways, I get in line to use the self-checks, and it ends up taking a short eternity. The machines were all broken and buzzing for the attendant, the people were all confused (Except for Jan, who was in front of me. If you read this Jan, just know that I think you are not a senior citizen, so I would expect you to be on top of self-check outs!! :) and it just took a really long time to get through the line.
I got on my first train, got off at Oxenholme. Got on my second train, and sat down facing backwards on one of the rear cars. I say "facing backwards" in that I was facing opposite the way the train was moving. I try not to pick those seats, but the train had a lot of reserved seats so I didn't have much of a choice. After the train had been moving for a few minutes, I turned to look out the window across the aisle, and I saw that the woman sitting diagonal from me was full-on sucking her thumb. She was at least in her late thirties, sucking her thumb. At that point, I checked the reservation ticket on my seat and realized that it was reserved starting at the next stop. So, at the next stop, I got up and moved to one of the front cars.
It seemed like every seat was taken, and I was getting ready to just stand by the door, but then I saw an open seat amidst a sea of taken ones. I moved down the aisle, but then tripped on something as I was turning to the seat. It was a cooler. I sat down in the new seat, still facing backwards (those are obviously less popular), still looking at the cooler. My eyes moved up to its owner, who was sitting at a table. There were two couples at the table, probably in their forties or fifties, drinking champagne out of plastic flutes. The bottles were on the table, along with a picnic basket. The couples were talking loudly, and all with their hands... It was like a weird dinner-picnic-party that had been transplanted from a park into a train. After a while, they suddenly all stopped talking and pulled out newspapers. All of them. They all started reading newspapers, and drinking champagne. I probably should not have watched them so much, in retrospection. But I hate watching the train move backwards.
I did eventually turn out the window, before my second train change. I saw a lamb charge and then leap-retreat from a crow in a field. I also studied a boy's hat; he was sitting directly in front of me. It was a white flat-billed hat that had "DRUNKEN $WAG" in metallic plastic letters glued on over the bill.
I changed trains again, got off in Chorley, and walked the 1+ mile to my hotel. Chorley is a "city" in the sense that it has more than one grocery store, and the grocery stores are not "metro" or "express" sized. There were also lots of roundabouts, several flooring and home goods stores, a hospital, and a McDonalds. But it was not a "city" in the sense that there was a lot to do in convenient walking distance from any given point. So I got to the hotel, checked in at the pub downstairs, texted my mom for a while, and then took a nap.
I woke up later in the afternoon to what sounded like a rooster crowing, like at sunrise in the country. It crowed multiple times. I laid in bed and watched Netflix on my phone for an hour, trying to kill time before I went back to the pub to eat dinner. When I did go downstairs, I realized that the pub was one of those weird UK pub-casino-American dinner chain hybrids. There were plastic menus with multiple cuisines, flashing gambling machines lining the walls, and a tap bar. I ordered "New York Chicken," AKA chicken breast with ham and mozzarella on top of it, with a squirt of "sticky Texas BBQ sauce." Funny, I've been to New York twice and never had it. Or heard of it. Or imagined it.
About half way through my dinner, the table in front of me got into a heated debate. I say debate because I couldn't tell if it was a fight or not, but it was loud, and weird. I tried to tune it out, and listened to the table behind me. It was a couple, younger than me, on a dessert date. They were talking about zombies. I missed a few lines, and then the girl said in an upset voice, "That's not nice! What if it was your grandma? What if your grandma was a zombie? Would you just stab her in the head?"
By then, I was done with my dinner which I had paid for when I placed my order, so I left the pub. I went outside (to access the hotel, you had to go outside) and I head a loud thumping sound in the tree above me. It was getting dark, but I could see a the outline of two very large birds in the tree. Like, turkey sized. I looked to the roof of the hotel, close to the tree, and saw the outlines of two peacocks sitting on the roof. Peacocks with full tails, the little feathers on their heads... Definitely peacocks. One of them flew into the tree, and it thumped again. I went into the hotel and looked out the upstairs window into the tree; the birds were all peacocks. How four peacocks with untrimmed wings got to a pub literally on a highway, I have no idea. I can't even imagine.
I decided to walk to the closest grocery store in hopes of ice cream. The walk was pretty uneventful until I got to the building before the grocery store. I had assumed it was another home goods store; it just looks like a warehouse. Upon closer inspection, it was an indoor water park. Through some windows behind a parking lot fence you could see tall crazy slides, and a lot of parents standing behind guard rails watching their kids in the pool and on the slides.
I got some ice cream, and walked back to the hotel. I turned on the TV, and was amazed to find The Fresh Prince of Bel Air on. I basically know the TV schedule of the three channels everyone watches here, and I've never seen the Fresh Prince. They were playing random episodes, but I had seen all of them before. I felt pretty old school, eating my Oreo ice cream and knowing everything that was about to happen next. Then I went to bed.
Saturday was a lot less weird, but it still could have been a much less weird sort of movie. The first half of the church activity was attending the LDS Temple in Chorley. For everyone who is not LDS, the temple is a place where Mormons go to worship and participate in various ceremonies; for instance, we get married in temples. I wasn't there to get married, though. Just the normal worshipping for me. But I got there at the same time as a million 12-15 year olds, and nobody differentiated between me and the kids, so my pride was hurt. Just a little. But then, I was asked to play the piano and everyone heard my American accent and got blown away by my amazing talent (lolz). So then I didn't feel like such a baby.
The second part of the activity was a luncheon. While I was getting my soup, I met a girl from the Midlands, and it was uncanny the way we hit it off. It was like we had grown up together or something. She's a sister missionary, so we won't be able to hand out or anything before I leave, but I got her email address. Yeah, friends!
And then I walked about 2 miles back to the train station, in the pouring rain. By the time I got there, I basically looked like I had gone swimming in my clothes and then decided it would be fun to sit on a train for a few hours. I noticed that I had a hole in the front of my skirt. At least it's close to the hem... I'm no floosy. So then I waited an hour for the train, and rode that puppy all the way back to Windermere feeling pretty cold and damp on the outside but warm on the inside because the morning had been so fun.
I needed to go grocery shopping in Windermere, so I did that, and then I had to wait 40 minutes for the next bus to Grasmere. I decided to buy ice cream and eat it while I waited. I broke a plastic spoon going for the first bite, and then I got a soup spoon from the cafe (there's a cafe in the grocery store) and awkwardly ate the rest of it while these old people having tea stared at me. I feel like a lady shook her head at me a few times, but hey: I don't care who disapproves, sometimes I just have to have my Ben and Jerry's and eat it too.
And then, one bus ride later, I got off in Grasmere. I saw a sandy bunny hop through the garden across the street from my house. It had a fluffy white tale. For all I know, that was definitely Peter Rabbit. His jacket and shoes are lost again, though. I got inside, and my stomach was upset (combination of winding roads and a pint of ice cream, no doubt) so I ate some real food, started my laundry, and got out my laptop to blog about the weirdness that was this weekend. I need to write a talk... 20 minutes on whatever subject I choose. Heh.
So yeah. I'll leave it at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment