To Muncaster, Continued.

Different signs delight the far-traveller., originally uploaded by Phoole.

(From my paper journal 9 June 2007)

Our trunks made the train journey absurd and comical -- we'd struggle on and off trains and up and down aisles and cram them in compartments. But the trip there was the last we'd actually lug them ourselves until it was time to leave the castle.

Trains carried us swiftly and silently through sunny countryside and our first eyefuls of real pastoral beauty. Fields of green. Low stone walls. Sheep. A coastline I couldn't understand: Did the tide really come so far inland as to deposit small boats on a two-mile-deep beach? Rolling hills and mountains and clouds and sun and blue sky.

At Lancaster we changed trains. On the platform we heard a man who sounded exactly like Andy Pipkin from "Little Britain." I tried not to stare or laugh. I looked at the man to whom he spoke to see if they were laughing at his absurd dialect -- but no, they took him absolutely seriously. Jenny and I giggled silently. I petted a very fluffy red dog.

On the second leg of the journey by train to Muncaster from Manchester, we realized we really were doomed to be surrounded by young, angular, fashionable-to-the-point-of-absurdity, hotttt young guys. Just everywhere, being relaxed and casual, texting each other about fashion or hair or us or whatever. On a platform where we waited for a few minutes for a connecting train to arrive, we watched a young guy on the plaform wreslte playfully with his savage-looking dog; the dog would lower his head in the Play Pose, and then leap up and chomp the guy's arm in a kind of soft kronsche, over and over. We were delighted.