David Goes to Barcelona: Day Two

The second day, me and Chris hoped to visit the Montserrat Hill Monastery. An ancient high monastery commanding beautiful views of the city and reachable via a quaint old hillside train. After much uphill walking, we found we couldn’t take the train because the queue was massive.

Instead, we decided to go to the nearby Science Museum. This turned out to be the best decision of the weekend. For some reason they have a submarine in the middle of the road on the way there.

 

The science museum, the CosmoCaixa, boasts stunning modernist design, both outside and in.





When you begin, you descend via a spiral walkway, journeying deep into the earth to explore where life first began.



 

While all the evolutionary exhibitions were interesting, the big attraction was the indoor rainforest. It was almost 30 degrees outisde, so naturally we wanted to go somewhere hotter.

 

 

There was a variety of tropical fish, of all shapes and sizes.



 

… A small number of tropical birds and animals…

And a number of creepy crawlies.

 

Then, to really enliven the holiday, we went to see an exhibit about infectious diseases. Apparently this is a glass representation of SARS.



 

 

After another fine meal, it was time to go on a tour of old Barcelona, or Catalonia as the locals like to call it.

 

They like cathedrals in Barcelona; you can’t go through more than a few streets without coming across another one.

 



 

Still, they do know how to give them a bit of variety. This one, Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia, had a rather nice grove inside it.

 

But in another recurring motif, this Cathedral took over a hundred years to complete, because the money ran out. And like the Segrada, it ended up with several different styles. In this case some of the features had been taken from another nearby building when that had been refurbished, rather than let its features be wasted.

 

 

We were taken to what was once the Catalan palace. The yard here is where executions would take place. They were quite rigorous executions – one chap, an assassin no less, had his skin boiled loose, and was then skinned, dragged around town by horses and then disemboweled.
 

 

We then finished the tour with another Cathedral. Then we were shown the memorial for those who died defending the city in the years it was under seige and then conquered by the Spanish. It was a good tour, lots of history; I even remember some of it.
 

 

It was a very busy, extremely educational, cultural day. There was almost no time for silliness.

 

 

And sadly no time for shopping either.

After one more nice meal of tapas, the short break was over. I flew back the next day, with almost no mishaps. My ticket didn’t say which terminal I was going from; fortunately I guessed right. Then I couldn’t find my way to security, but I followed some disabled people and found my way and it was all ok from there.
 

And when I got back to Croydon it was a temperate 9 degrees – good old Britain.

David Goes to Barcelona: Day One

Recently I took my first ever trip to Barcelona, and Spain in fact, in celebration of my friends Droz's 30th birthday. It started characteristically well for me, I arrived to a torrential rain storm and was soaked just going from the plane to the shuttle bus.

Then I found that my mobile (not that most sophisticated grant you) wasn’t picking up a signal. I was supposed to phone ahead to say when I was on my way to Placa Catalunya. Managing to find the bus there, I ended up begging other people on the bus to use their mobile phones. Fortunately, my friend Chris had just happened to have gone to the bus stop at the same time to wait for me, so all was saved.

Our accommodation was not far from the town centre, a B&B that was essentially someone’s flat. It had one of those old fashioned wood panelled elevators, which we used frequently.

After a wet first evening waiting around and then trying to find a restaurant that didn’t exist, we got things going on the next day by visiting Park Guell, an elaborate hillside park designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, displaying his full frothy style.

From these scenes its clear that Gaudi has a thing for cake and sand castles.

 

And that all manufacturers of ornaments for gold fish bowls have taken their lead from him.
 

 

There is, uniquely, an escalator route upto Guell. Shame we didn’t find it until we started on the way back.

After a rather disgusting lunch at an appalling café (fortunately the only culinary disaster of the weekend) we went over to the Sagrada Família, Gaudi’s rather staggering cathedral. One side is quite abstract...

The other more gothic, if it does appear to be melting. The Cathedral has never been finished (and there’s much debate as to whether it should be finished). This is something or a recurring there for cathedrals in Barcelona, of which there are many. All the good ones have taken at least 100 hundred years to get completed.

We were sadly unable to go into the cathedral due to huge queues. We then decided to go to the Picasso museum. Following much walking around in circles, we found that we could get in because of large queues. We spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the sculptures and odd pieces of art along the harbour.

After much wandering about in the evening, we enjoyed a really good meal of tapas and the got badly ripped off at a Ramplas bar. More to follow…
 

 

If You Think You've Had It Bad On The Trains

I've just come back home via East Croydon station. Fortunately, that's my stop. Unfortunately, for those going further south, things have been pretty, pretty bad.

A burst water main is preventing any trains from passing through. Replacement Bus Services are being arranged to take people past South Croydon. A distance of less than 5 miles. This is the queue....

This is where it starts, just 'round the corner from the station:


This is it going further down the round...



...and further....



... Now 'round the corner...



...'Round the corner onto another street...



...now down another street...



...and further...



And to the end.

According to Google Maps, that's a queue of half a mile. If you were going to Gatwick to get a flight... Well you'd pretty much have to forget it wouldn't you? Good old rail network, fit for purpose as always...

Why I Won't Be Going Paintballing Again Anytime Soon....

And this over 2 days later. They were a lot darker at the time...

Crazy Train Lady Part 3

So who was the mystery woman? What did I know about her? Well, lots, but little of it verifiable. There was one thing I could track down and that was the Sloane Ranger Handbook. A quick journey to Amazon gave me the names of two authors: Peter York and Ann Barr. I can be fairly sure it’s not Peter York, not unless her life was even more fascinating than she made it out to be.

I quickly Googled the name, and clicked on this article, where alas, I could see from the picture that this was not the woman who I had encountered. She was a bit younger and thinner and a glasses wearer. However, reading on I found that the book had been written with the help of three others, significantly Vicki Woods and Sue Carpenter.

Sue Carpenter now appears to live in Los Angeles, which seems to rule her out; despite the story I was told about how my train companion had once had tea with the heir to the Campbell Soup Empire, and how she had two private planes, one to transport the family, one for the pets.

Now interestingly enough, Vicki Woods seems to be based in England, and appears to write for the Daily Telegraph. I saw this article, and immediately got excited. It talked about how the writer worked for the magazine where the whole Sloane Ranger phenomenon started. It talks about Scotland, where my companion’s family lived. But then as I read on, I realised that the writer had not actually been to Scotland until the 90s, just her husband that knew the place well. Here’s a short bio here; this time too young... The stories just don’t match up.

Where to now? Reading the first article about Ann Barr further, I found another name, a sub-editor called Martina Margetts who actually coined the name in the first place. Could this be the woman? This lady is a lecturer at the Royal College of Arts, Senior Tutor in Critical & Historical Studies. There’s a bit about her here. Some international background, books published, but no picture, and no evidence to suggest she was the person involved in the whole Sloane thing. And no picture, alas.

With nowhere else to go, I went to the The Good Schools Guide website, and unsurprisingly, found rather a large list of contributors, none of which matched the name’s I had come across already. Although frustratingly there was a Sue Wood. Could I have sat next to a complete loony? A habitual liar?

Well one tiny thing makes me think that it wasn’t all complete balls. Remember her encounters with the Warner Brothers? That her father went on to be director of Playtex. Read the latter half of this page, there is a connection between the two. Rough – but could this be the nugget of info that proves that it wasn’t all made up? I cannot know for sure.

If you’ve got any further ideas or avenues for investigation, then by all means, let me know...

Crazy Train Lady Part 2

So having made some pretty scurrilous claims about the past two Labour leaders, we somehow got onto her trips abroad. She regaled with tales about her time at the foot of the Himalayas: “Have you ever played croquet?”, I had not. Well, apparently it’s really different on elephant back.

More risky of course if you fall off. She enjoyed it the first year, but the second year war had broken out without the rebels, so the people at the elephant croquet place couldn’t use any firearms. This meant scarring off wild elephants was very difficult, and one particular rogue kept coming into the enclosure and having his way with the females. It was hard to scare him off and he kept coming back. However, one time he came by during the day, and saw the elephants mid-croquet game. He his expressed his disgust with a mighty roar, and was never seen again.

Then we moved onto her time helping to run an African game reserve with the local tribe’s people. The nominated chief of the tribe had left many years previously and become an engineer. But he was tempted back and later went onto to enjoy 13 wives. This of course is the problem, too many of the tribe’s young people are being sent a way to get an education. They make most of their money from letting very rich people hunt there. The one thing they hated was gap year students; too much work to take care for, they didn’t really care about the land, they wouldn’t work very hard, and they just got stoned all the time. This apparently put her at odds with many charities.

I managed to get a few words in and mentioned my recent trip to India, and the conversation gradually moved towards the natural stomach problems I experienced. Apparently banana’s and Coke-A-Cola is best for diarrhoea , she was told that by the personal doctor to one of the more rebellious leader’s in Africa, who was also Glenn Close’s father.

Finally we went back to her childhood growing up in Scotland. Her father ran a few a whisky factories which boomed after prohibition ended, shipping most of their wares to America, but this boom didn’t last forever. He was partnered with a man who had strong ties to the mafia, and who also employed one of President Kennedy’s bodyguards. He frequently spoke ill of JFK, which came as a shock because he had near saint like status. Her father would eventually go on to be director of Playtex.

One of the fond memories she does have of her childhood is that of the Warner Brothers coming around for tea. The two of them would sit in front of the telly, timing the adverts. Commercial television has only just been introduced and they wanted to know how long the adverts really were.

It was at this point that the train stopped for a while and the seat opposite became free. She bought a copy of the Mail and decided to put her feet up there. This was after 3 and a half hours of solid talking. I always take long books with me when I go on long journeys, so I can really get stuck in. I think I got less than 15 pages read before the journey ended.

We eventually arrived at Edinburgh. We spoke a little while we collected our luggage, but as soon as the train was stopped, she charged off, past the shop and down the aisle past the toilet and out of sight. I went on in pursuit, hoping to catch up with her, but alas, she was gone.

I never did get her name. Who was she? I’ve already had one comment with a suggestion, but it’s unfortunately, not that easy...

TO BE CONTINUED

Crazy Train Lady

I went up to Scotland the other week. I enjoyed it, I’ve never been up there, it was a nice treat.

The trip itself didn’t get off to a great start though. I had packed, only had to toss in my tooth brush, a towel and then I was ready to go. I set the alarm on my phone for 8:20, plenty of time to get down to the station before 9:30 to get my train. Unfortunately, I left my phone in the living room and only realised this in the morning, when in a state of panic I turned on the TV to discover that it was now 9:40.

I was out of the house in 7 minutes, down on the platform at East Croydon in under 20 minutes and arrived at Kings Cross only 7 minutes late for the train. I was honest with the man on the ticket counter and he validated my ticket for the train half an hour later. I managed to find an unbooked seat – my journey could now continue.

However, what I didn’t realise was that I was about to sit next to the craziest woman I’ve ever met - and in this case, enjoyed meeting. She may have talked non-stop for 3 and a half hours, but I think it was worth listening too. Certainly more interesting than any work of fiction I could’ve indulged in.

It started off quite innocuously as she told me about how she was going up to see her elderly mother who’d been having a rough time recently. She’s not been well recently, but she’s 82 so she’s still a fighter. Her mother had a fall and was ill and the doctors said her hip was fine, but she insisted on an x-ray for her, and it turned out she had. Then there was a mercenary man going around to all the injured old lady, offering them a stair lift, ready for them as soon as they got home if they signed here. She swore at the salesman, even though the doctor recommended one; she’d go down on the stairs on her bum, as she had for ten years already.

Mundane so far. But we would gradually go to more crazy places. She was a writer, she’d written for the Times, Guardian, Independent and so on. Her claim to fame is as one of the creators of a famous book from the 70s called ‘How to be a Sloane Ranger’, which although humorous, many people took to be quite serious. There were two follow-ups, but they delivered diminishing results.

She is also still an editor on the Good Schools guide and told a good anecdote about a school ranked excellent. It was a modest school, with modest resources, and it seemed like it couldn’t keep a head teacher for more than a year. This was because the school hired disgraced, highly regarded teachers, who had been dismissed from former jobs for misbehaving – sleeping with staff, even pupils. So it got the best candidates, at a reduced cost, who needed the work to bounce back.

It was at this point that the crazy claims started to seep in. “You do know that Tony Blair’s gay? Oh, yes, he had this thing going with this press officer”. Then on to Gordon Brown “Did you know that he signed the gun license for the man who went on to commit the Dunblaine massacre?”*

We would then go on to considerably stranger places including playing croquet on elephant back at the foot of the Himalayas, diarrhoea advice from Glenn’s Close’s father, game reserve management in Africa, selling bootleg whisky with the help of President Kennedy’s former bodyguard, and visits from the Warner Brothers to her Scottish childhood home.

TO BE CONTINUED....

* I haven’t found any evidence of his, well, not on Wikipedia anyway.

The Ordeal

So yes I went to India. Big place, quite hot. I was staying at the bosses flat along with him and 3 other guys, 2 Kiwis and 1 South African, which is why it was a relief to find that Gujarat was a dry state, I don’t imagine I could’ve kept up.



Things got off to a spectacular start when I lost my debit card. You see, cash machines in India aren’t like cash machines in England, where after selecting your amount, you get your card dispensed back to you followed by your money. In India, you get your cash then your card, well I assume so, I just took my cash and left.

I didn’t suffer from jet lag too badly at first, but as the week went on, my health took a few hits. Office hours were from 11 to 8 over there, so that the office was open while the UK was open. And because I had to check up on my UK team every day, I was constantly watching the time and most of the clocks at the office were set to UK time. Lunch wasn’t till 3, and because the boss doesn’t get to India that often, working hours were frequently extended due to meetings and such like. We wouldn’t get dinner till about 10pm. Most of the time, I really had no idea what time of day it actually was.



Then of course once back at the flat, we just sat about till the early hours, and there was at least one heavy drinks session in the evening. And I’m not so good at sleeping in new beds anyway. Gradually, each day I got more tired and exhausted. The air-con did and didn’t help; it was good for keeping the temperature down, but it left you with a nasty dry throat in the morning.

I got properly hammered at the end of the first week. And despite the booze, still struggled to sleep, but things got worse. The drinking weakened my immune system, leaving me totally unprepared for a long journey across India for a cricket match. The country air hit my nostrils, and left them dripping for most of the day. We were supposed to be in an executive box; in reality this was a concrete room with windows, plastic lawn chairs and an air condition barely fixed to the wall. And as for the toilet – it’s a good job I didn’t have the runs or else I’d have been screwed. If I’d have dared place my behind on one of those seats, something would’ve probably sprung from the black water within and bitten my balls off, it did look like new forms of life could evolve down there. Did I mention that I don't even like cricket. There was a machine gun point at the crowds as they came in, what a welcome!



Fortunately for the second week we were moved from Baroda to Surat, where we stayed in a decent hotel and I got a room to myself. Finally some peace, it didn’t feel like I was on duty in front of the boss for once. Unfortunately it was then that I experienced the obligatory Westerner visiting India stomach problems. Frequent diarrhoea (I didn’t urinate for over 2 days) and unpleasant stomach cramps. These managed to carry me through to the end of the trip.

So overall it was quite an ordeal. To aid my stomach's recovery I made sure that I reaquinted it with an English breakfast, KFC, sausage and cheese mash, roast dinner and cheese sandwichs as soon as possible when I got back. It was hard work, but very necessary.