Thrihyrne

At last, here's about 3/4 of my England pictures. I picked what I felt were the best ones, and didn't include some duplicates and whatnot. Sometimes I take pictures of odd things (signs for cookies that amused me, a redheaded Shakespearean actor because, well, you all know me), but if you'd like to check them out, go here to my 2010 U.K. trip pics! Callum won't feature in any pictures as he'd prefer to keep his privacy, and to my shame, I never even got my camera out while visiting matildabishop! But I'm in some, and a couple of choristers, and lots of cathedrals.

Enjoy!

That is all.

Well, almost all. We did see Wild Target, which was a fun romp, and I went to Cadbury World and bought chocolate, and then after dinner this evening she invited me along to her twice weekly yoga class. Which absolutely kicked my fanny. She's amazing!!! That's Matt. The instructor was also amazing, but you'd expect that from an instructor. I'm going to sleep well tonight.

Tomorrow morning we may watch some Starsky and Hutch and then only too soon I'll need to get back to the bus station and head down to Cambridge for my final two days. :(

Yes! Still in England, barely made it through this evening's Evensong due to my voice going out. Have made a lovely friend of the tour guide at the York Brewery. Ate way too much at dinner tonight and I feel vile. I'm still sick, though getting better. The problem is that rather than being really congested but my singing voice was fine (2 days ago) now I'm less congested and my singing voice was shot. Tomorrow is our fourth and final singing event. I'm hoping beyond hope to have full vocal quality again.

So… has some kind soul recently recc'ed my (by default) older Ron/Draco stories? All of a sudden I seem to have a couple of new readers (and reviewers! *gasp*) on Skyehawke, and figured there might be a reason for that, and it wasn't simply that somebody stumbled across the mass amounts of R/D I wrote a while back…

More soon. And I am uploading some pictures; once I get a few more up I'll post a link to the gallery and let you all see what I've taken with my new camera since the other fun lime green one seems to have gone totally missing. :( Now I have an orange camera. :)

My time in Ely was quite pleasant. It's a very small little place with a massive cathedral in the middle of it. I could easily transport myself back to a time in the middle ages when that would have been the major focus of the town. Our concert went well; no major bloopers and we had a decent sized audience. We sang in the Lady Chapel which was well lit and also meant that it got rather hot, as opposed to the rest of the cathedral which was quite cool. Especially for me, being as cold-natured as I am, I'm really not used to the sensation of sweat running down the back of my thighs. I should probably mention that we're singing in our cassocks and cottas on top of other clothes, hence making us even warmer.

Now we're in York, having had a mid-day several hours at Lincoln cathedral. While in the medieval town, I found a fabulous used book store and found a perfect gift for a friend. :) She won't get it until I return. Since I'm not spending that much time online, I'm going to disable comments, but I'm glad that any of you reading this are with me. I'll hope to download and resize a few pics and post them as well.

The bad element: I slept like crap last night and also woke up feeling as though I'd been swallowing razor blades. I've been trying to pretend all day that it wasn't happening and that I'll be all well instantly. Instead, I'm now congested, but will hopefully get a decent night's sleep, take some ibuprofin, and stay hydrated. We have a concert tomorrow morning at 10:30 at Durham, which means that we have to leave at 7:30 a.m. AUGH!

With all seriousness, anyone on my flist who lives in the U.K. who'd like to meet me, here are the dates and times for the services/concerts at which I'll be singing this coming week.

Thursday, June 24th: Lunchtime Concert in Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral - 1:10 p.m.
Saturday, June 26th: Concert in Durham Cathedral – 10:30 a.m.
Monday, June 28th: Evensong in York Minster - 5:15 p.m.
Tuesday, June 29th: Choral Eucharist in Bradford Cathedral - 7:00 p.m.

I'd love to meet you, so if you do come hear us (Trinity Church choir from Staunton, Virginia), please introduce yourself to me afterwards! I think you all know what I look like; I have an icon of me. I'm taking a laptop so I won't be all that AFK, but we will be kept pretty busy. Wish me well and that I don't freak out about flying. :P

Okay! So I've uploaded all of my pictures except the ones of Callum; sorry, he's a man of mystery. ;)
The link to my England pictures gallery is here. Enjoy! I think I uploaded all of the pics except ones with Callum, and a few more of Storm Constantine with her cat.

Here I am again at the internet cafe, timed to be able to do my online check-in for my British Airways flight tomorrow and select a window seat. So now that's accomplished, and I'm making my last post from the U.K.

( Bring on the English weather and the obligatory illness )

I guess I don't have that much left to report, sadly. I did some writing on my new Wraeththu yesterday and will probably do some this afternoon between now and coming back into town. If I had a companion, I suspect I'd spend more time in town at a cafe or something, but since it is kind of cold and I'm coming down with something, I don't mind spending a couple of hours of downtime at the guesthouse, reading and writing and having lunch. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep tonight since I tend not to sleep well the night before I travel. I really do regret having to leave this country; oddly, perhaps because I was with friends for so long, including an American family with Matt, in some ways I've not felt that I've been out of the country at all. The accents are different, yes, but I don't feel at all like a foreigner. Very strange. I'll never forget when Callum let me print out what I'd written on the Ron/Dean story I started for him last spring, and I was so shocked to realize the paper was A4 size. I looked at him and said, "I'm in England. I forgot." It was as though I'd known him forever and was just visiting someone from out of town, not out of the country!!

With that, I'll close. Please keep me in your thoughts as I make my return journey with the Suitcase of Doom^TM and scratchy throat. (((hugs)))

( wherein Matt, Thev, Harry and Ron go to Worcester )

I arranged my Oxford trip: the coach from here to Oxford, the place where I'm staying (which I now find out could be quite skanky, but oh well; it's done now and I have that local bus route printed out from the coach station), and the coach from Oxford to Heathrow airport Monday morning. ::sniffles::

Today's adventure with Matt will include a tour of the Cadbury factory here in Bournville, Cadbury World, then going into Birmingham to see some of the places where Tolkien frequented as a youth before he went off to Oxford. Not sure about the rest of the day; I do need to print out a map of central Oxford before I have to go searching for internet cafes for any kind of internet access.

I'll leave you with a droll comment made by the 10 yo Bishopette this morning as she and I were standing in the kitchen talking about salt. She'd left part of a bagel sprinkled with white stuff which I thought I'd finish off, thinking it was sugar. No, it was salt. So I opted out. But her precocious comment was:

"How can such a tiny crystal bring such joy to people?"

I will definitely miss being around friends when I get to Oxford. But that's not today. ;)

It's pretty early Monday morning; I need to catch a local bus to get to the local coach hub to take a coach (large bus) up to Birmingham to spend the next few days with matildabishop and her bustling, vocal family. I'll spend much/most of today on the bus, so don't look for too much to report tomorrow.

I tried to sleep in yesterday, to no avail, so I piddled around and then Callum and I had coffee and talked about where I should go for my last few days. I've now settled on Oxford, a place I've actually not visited which should be easy to get to by public transport from Birmingham, will also be easy to get to London when I'm getting ready to go, and will have plenty for me to do. When Callum's partner, R., came over after church, we developed our plan for the day, which was pretty busy. I should also note it still feels like August here; sunny and warm. I feel as though I definitely overpacked, though the weather could change.

( Stop #1 )
( Stop #2 )
( Stop #3 )

We stopped by a small supermarket on the way home to get munchies for dinner, then chilled out for a while. R. stayed for the evening and we watched Antique Roadshow, apparently a national establishment. I've seen the U.S. version before, but it's much more fun to watch with friends.

Lastly, Callum and I spoke for a while before both heading off to bed at a reasonable hour. Apparently I did get one of my first nights of proper sleep as I actually had the alarm go off rather than me having been lying there awake, waiting for it, for a couple of hours. Today will be predominantly on the bus, either writing or reading, but also probably staring out the window and enjoying how the scenery changes. I'll have a stop in London to change buses, and then further up north. I will very much miss being here; it was a most blessed way to start my trip. I feel as though I'd been visiting Callum and R. all of my life, not this being the first time, and they've both been incredibly gracious. Before getting all teary and crying on his keyboard, I'll stop.

Hello all- truly too exhausted to say much except that everything went well, and thanks to callumjames' chivalry and assistance, I'm safely here. My flights went okay, and while our meet up was a bit tricky (more on that later), here's proof that he and I spent the day in London: Thev at the Houses of Parliament!!!

We're going to have fish and chips, and take a walk on the beach (if my legs are still working) and then I think I'll crash. At least for a little while. I won't be able to reply to replies, but feel free to leave any if you'd wish. ;)

~Thev