Through the lenses of John Lennon
I’ve been considering ways in regards to writing this, because not only is this a personal story, but it was my very first traveling experience, and the first time I’d ever been on an airplane that I remember (I may have been on a plane when I was three or something). The name “Roving Gypsy Boy” is from a song by the Rankin Family if you’re wondering.
My very first traveling experience happened at the age of 18. I’d been living in the small town of Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia (which will get ROH tv and some major markets in the States don’t). I worked at a telemarketing service selling All-State auto insurance to Americans. I got the ticket through a travel agency, Maritime Travel, and it cost around $1000. I would fly from Halifax to London Heathrow Airport, and then onto Manchester where I would get picked up. There was an actual reason for traveling though. I met this chick online, oddly enough at a wrestling website, she was a fan at the time. I haven’t spoken to her in ages, but I’m assuming she’s still not anymore.
Now, before I go further, I must bring this up. For privacy reasons, the name of the girl in question will not be revealed. I’ll give out the biggest city that was close to where she was living at the time, but I won’t give out any details of where exactly I stayed. I also have pictures with her, but they won’t be shown. I’ll be giving no description of the girl, all you need to know is she’s a human female. She will be referred to as “that chick” or “the chick” or something that some people may find sexist. So, let’s get on. But before that;
Travel Tip 1: Packing too much
-Having never traveled overseas before, and not being a plane, I didn’t know what was appropriate to pack and what could be eaten. I brought Oreo cookies on the plane with me, because apparently in England, they didn’t have Oreo cookies (at least in December of 2004 they didn’t anyway). I also had a stuffed carry on bag. Try to get as small of a carry on as possible, and if you’re bringing a laptop, have it be a little notebook. It’s also good to have cargo type pants with nothing metal, for the obvious reason of getting through security as fast as possible, which I’ve mastered. Sometimes you do get stopped though for a random search, like one time a customs agent was looking for child porn on my computer.
The walk of anticipation, and escalators on the ground, how high tech! Also notice the quality on my camera WITH FILM!
So after waiting in London Heathrow for a couple of hours on little sleep (I didn’t drink caffeine at the time), I was off to Manchester. I was incredibly nervous, saying I was meeting this beautiful girl. She couldn’t believe I was real when she saw me, and said to me “You’re real”. I couldn’t stop looking at her, just surprised that she was real as well. I had a hard time with a number of things. Going on an escalator, which I rarely had done in my life, and I would pause before going on one. I also had the obvious issue of seeing a wheel on the right side of a car, and driving on the left side of the road.
The first thing I picked up about England was the insane amount of bricks, which seemed like an odd thing. I would take pictures of brick walls just because they were so uncommon in the UK.
The city she lived closest too was Liverpool. We went to the movies that night, being very romantic (one of her friends came and wore a skirt, and it was almost snowing). Ahh, how touching. I forget the movie we watched, some Bridgett Jones deal I think. An incredible amount of previews too, that blew me away.
Hoping not to get killed by crossing the street
I’d been to Halifax, Quebec City and Montreal before, but it was usually on school trips. So my big city experience was limited. I grew up in a small town and this tip is for small town folk.
Travel Tip 2: Watch for England’s crazy drivers!
People in the UK maybe offended by this, and to them I say, “fudge ’em”. In North America, the traffic light system goes Green, Yellow, Red, and then Green. In the UK, it goes Green, Yellow, Red, Yellow, Green. So instead of driving from zero, you have maniacs on the road who are trigger happy with the pedal. So they’ll hit the gas a little bit, and when it hits green, BAM, they’re going full speed ahead. I brought up being from a small town for this reason. I only have one set of traffic lights in town, so when I want to cross the street, I just do it. I wasn’t used to waiting for lights at all, so I would just randomly dart in front of traffic, to which the chick would get after me for. This may just be an issue with my own impatience, but this is also an issue with most of Europe, as I’ve been almost run over numerous times. The scariest was being in Brighton England, and almost being hit by a double decker bus, because I was so used to the cars driving on the other side of the road.
The places of note I went to while there were:
Liverpool:
-Obviously, we went here, as it was a nice big city close by. I got to see my first little street market where it’s just an area you can walk around in, and there’s a number of stores around. We went through different places in the area, I wish I could remember exact names, but geez, it was 7 years ago. I did like the rail system they had their though, I wish they had something like that in Canada. I do believe it was my first time on a train. I think one place was like, a bowling alley type of gaming place. An arcade maybe, ha, brilliant.
Manchester, England for a concert and a trip to the Trafford Center.
-We traveled to Manchester, England, including seeing a Ronan Keating concert, who I had never heard of before. She asked me who I would like to see, and we were looking through names. She came across Elton John, and I said in glee “ELTON JOHN!”. The concert was ok, I was just marking out that WWE had been in the Manchester Evening News Arena. I would have much preferred to go to that, but what can you do. About a few days later, we went back to Manchester to check out the Trafford center, as the biggest mall I’d been to at that point was somewhere in Quebec City I do believe, so the Trafford Center was massive. I would later go to the West Edmonton Mall, so that kinda trumps any other mall anywhere else.
I can't drink Coke anymore, just Coke Zero. Or Coke Light in the UK, in 500 ml bottles. Mind blowing.
Wales
-As for Wales I’m not too sure of where in Wales, all I know was it was Wales. We tried going ice skating.
Beatles Museum
-I wasn’t a big fan of the Beatles, but my Dad was, so I thought this would be a neat place to go. I have a number of pictures from there, I’ll put one notable picture here anyway.
Living in a Yellow Submarine. Potentially close to an Octopus' Garden in the shade.
Where did I get all this money from? I didn’t bring much, I was actually given £100 from the chick’s Dad, which really surprised me, I guess I may have said or did things that got myself over with him. She was also paying my way for a lot of the different places. I was just a poor university student at the time. So I did kinda feel like a freeloader. I was a freeloader. I came over with £40 in my pocket, which was converted from the $95 I gave to the bank before I left. I also converted a $5 bill into UK sterling, and ended up with like, £1.96. The conversion rate was really bad at the time. It’s much better now thankfully, hell, the Canadian Dollar is worth more then the American, or at least at parity.
As it was time to leave, I was driven back to the Manchester airport early in the morning. It wasn’t a pleasant trip as I was essentially leaving. I actually got Christmas presents from them, which included that Liverpool Jersey which I have on my wall, not for any reasons of, oh, remember that time! I have that, and two other Jerseys on my wall, one for Manchester United (which originally has the initials of my FAN username) and a Cardiff rugby Jersey. I actually randomly left, to go back security, like, I guess I was tired. I came back, kissed her good bye, and I then left to go back home. It didn’t work out in the end, but it was certainly an interesting trip, going over to meet someone halfway around the world. Or maybe a quarter of a way, oh well, it was far. But, I had to get through one more issue.
Travel Tip 3: No foreign meat!
They made me a sandwich, called a “batch” I guess, and I was gonna eat it when I got in Newfoundland. I marked down on my customs sheet that I did have foreign meat, and brought it into Canada. When I showed it to them, they told me I couldn’t eat it, and had to throw it away. Lame! So yes, if you have foreign meat, eat it on the plane. Or well, don’t bring it on the plane at all, that’s pretty dumb, but I didn’t know better at the time.
So that’s my first addition of my travel stories. I spent pretty much all the time there with that chick, and other friends of her’s who were around. She even dressed me up too, like, I ended up getting some clothes that she wanted me to have, and had me look like a proper darling chap. Very posh! It didn’t stick though, and years later, I’m still wearing wrestling t-shirts, army pants and waiting ages to buy new clothes. Being young and stupid as well, I definitely wasn’t the perfect house guest, but you live and learn. I had a lot of growing up to do, and had to learn things from my new experiences, which I will discuss in later issues. Next time on the blog, working at a bar in rural Scotland.