Return of the Native 2 - Edinburgh

What I really hate about long distance rail travel in the UK is that it's too damned quick. You've no sooner settled back to enjoy the ride and you're at your bloody destination! That was certainly the case with our trip from London to Edinburgh. We left the unwashed masses to their own devices in the departure hall, all staring up at the illuminated commandments awaiting a platform direction from the Fat Controller. We had First Class tickets so headed straight for the lounge. Unfortunately it bears no resemblance to an airport lounge but you can spend a penny without it costing you 40p. They also have the Fat Controller's ear so can direct you straight to the appropriate platform via the special overhead walkway and lifts - no cattle stampedes!

Virgin East Coast Travel Tip #1

Book seats on the right side of the carriage to get the seaside view north of Newcastle. There seem to be more cathedrals on that side of the train as well.

Virgin East Coast Travel Tip #2

If you're travelling First Class try to do it on a weekday because hot food and an open bar are part of the deal. For reasons I cannot fathom it's just sangas and soft drink on a weekend.

Edinburgh was immediately appealing but its buildings are rather filthy. With a couple of beers tucked safely under my belt, I once fronted a drag queen in Adelaide and told her that wigs can be brushed. Well here's completely sober telling Edinburgh that stone and brick can be cleaned. Why not try on the absolutely blackened Scott's Monument, it may catch on? That aside, it's a very pleasant city if you can ignore the fact that they used to hang people on every other bloody street corner - but not the witches, they were strangles and then burned.

Edinburgh Hotel Tip #1

The Premier Inn City Centre Royal Mile is modern and very comfortable with good sized rooms that have a view if you're lucky. We looked at Carlton Hill with all its various monuments and structures. It's brilliantly located just a 5 minute walk from Edinburgh's Waverley Station and near all kinds of restaurants as well as a stop for all the hop-on-hop-off city tour buses routes which I also recommend. Splash out the extra couple of quid and take the Majestic Tour, it covers all of the routes and even takes you to the Firth of Forth which is worth going to just so you can say "I've been to the Firth of Forth" and it would be even better if you could go there on the forth of the fifth!

I think I've lost a little weight. We had to remove everything from our pockets and take our belts off when we went through security at the Parliament of Scotland today. Then there was a pat down which turned out to be a bit of a shorts down in my case. They slid half way to my knees! I was absolutely delighted but the security chap and the others about were a little surprised.

I'm not prepared to pass judgement on the new buildings of a' Pàrlamaid na h-Albabut but my first thought was they're a bit shit - or should I say 'shite'? They were designed by a Catalan architect who probably shared a grudge about being from an absorbed client state but then he died before the place was finished or even properly explained. It's absolutely rotten with all manner of both abstract and construct symbolism that requires a very long lunch and a great deal of Chardonnay to appreciate although Prosecco seems to be all the go here. Now that's taken me right back to Asti Riccadonna and Al Grassby at the Griffith RSL Club in 1972!

Anyway, with my belt done up an extra notch we hiked the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle - us and thousands of others. I'd hate to be here in the height of the season! I was intrigued to see that the area in front of the castle where the Edinburgh Tattoo is held isn't flat, in fact it's quite the slope. I shall be watching with informed eyes next time it's on.

And it was cheap! The website mentions free entry for carers so we flashed Peter's Companion Card and I was in for free, Peter as a senior. Hey, if you don't ask and you don't get! We were queued to see the Royal Jewels, which are really just the crown and associated things, but I could see a very narrow, very crowded curved staircase up ahead so asked the guide what it was like. She was a lovely lass from Melbourne and once I uttered the magic word 'claustrophobia' she took us to an elevator then provided a full explanation of the history of what we were about to see.

We had Indian tapas for dinner at the only BYO restaurant I've spotted so far. We really enjoyed the chicken egg foo young the previous night at the Chinese/Japanese/Malay fusion that was run by Italians but 'Mother and Child Reunion' by Simon and Garfunkel kept playing in my head since that's apparently what the song was about.

We're sitting on Waverley Station awaiting the train to Glasgow as I write.  It's the second largest railway station in Britain and looks to have been designed by a number of different committees over several generations.  People may one day say the same about the Parliament buildings. The station is interesting though and takes me back to my childhood when Grandma and Pop would take me to Central Station in Sydney for whatever reason. I was absolutely fascinated by the little tractor things that hauled long 'trains' of baggage carts too and fro the actual trains of the day. Happy memories.

Return of the Native 2 - London

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I am completely perplexed by the fact that a nation that once controlled a third of the planet cannot organise itself on a pavement. Americans are damned good at keeping right; Australians have a reasonable handle on keeping left; but the British, with narrower pavements than either, are like ping pong balls in a bloody clothes dryer - especially when they have an iDildo stuck up against their ear and a cigarette, electronic or otherwise, shoved in their mouth. But it doesn't stop on the pavement. We were very nearly run down by a motor scooter with a pillion passenger just metres from our flat the other day. He cut to the wrong side of the road at a corner we were crossing then tried to go between me and the curb, a space of less than a metre, and did so as speed. The air in Bloomsbury turned quite blue for a short while when I let fly with some very loud F&Cs and I wasn't talking about fish and chips!

We saw The Book of Mormon when we're here last time and couldn't help but go again. It was just as good with a few fun little change thanks to the new slightly cheekier Elder Cunningham. Apart from being a superb and extremely witty parody of Mormonism it simply makes you feel happy. The problem is that just like last time I am walking around singing tunes from the show or sometimes lines pop out of my mouth for no reason as if I have acquired Tourette's Syndrome. People looked at me quite oddly in the Prepared Meals aisle at Waitrose yesterday when I announced that "A clitoris is holy amongst all things!"

When we visited the London Transport Museum at Covent Garden I was expecting a little more for £15 entry but we can go back as many time as we want for the next year. Even if that was practical it would be unlikely given the number of school groups in there, all of them K-2. It was a largely inappropriate venue for kids of that age who were more interested in the play room where they could throw bus-shaped cushions at one another and scream a lot. The Year 1 kiddies from St Lucifer's Church of England School at Sodding Cocksnot were by far the worst.

Lunch with buskers performing Pachelbel Canon and a little shopping attended to I decided we should take the Tube and Docklands Light Rail to Poplar just because we are Call the Midwife tragics but that Poplar isn't there any more. We did a bit of a shuffle through Canary Wharf and Canada Water, where we stayed last time, to get to Wapping because the name makes me laugh.

An English-born high school friend invited me to dinner at his house one night - steak and kidney pie (much to my horror). After dinner we watched Till Death Do Us Part. Alf and Else were had gone to the seaside and were plodging (paddling), Alf with a hanky tied at the corners in knots on his head. Else turned to him and asked "Is this the same water we have in Wapping?" and Alf, exasperated as ever, barked back "Of course it is you silly old moo!" - as he always did.

Both of Robert's parents fell about laughing but eventually recovered sufficiently to tell me that was exactly what it was like. I've wanted to go to Wapping ever since. We had a beer in a pub by the Thames then made out way back with me determined to avoid the crush of our outbound journey. We are mid-way between Russell Square and King's Cross (spelt with an apostrophe here) so I thought I'd be smart and took us on a different line due east of where I imagined our flat to be then we started hiking.

Well, my feet, back and right hip were fully buggered and English food has firmed my bowels magnificently so I also needed a poo. My west-bound trajectory was also about 500m too far south but we finally got back, although not before very nearly getting run down by the aforementioned dicks on the motor scooter!

Three hours up the Thames by boat was all good but perhaps hats would have been space far better taken up in our bags than the sports jackets and nice trousers I packed for evenings out. The Thames is a fascinating slice of history. We went the other way to the absolutely wondrous Thames Barrier last time so this time chose the leafier route up river to Hampton Court where we spent the best part of three more hours. Henry VIII was a complete and utter self-obsessed, church-starting and destroying, murdering bastard - pretty much the Donald Trump of his day! How much more clearly can a fully-recovered low-church Anglican put this? The Church of England should still be apologising!

Visiting the Chelsea Flower Show has been a dream of mine for decades but the reality was more of a nightmare. It was oversold to buggery - half the crowd would have still been too many people. There's more room aboard a live cattle transport ship than there is at the Chelsea Flower Show and more space to sit down as well. Some of the displays in the main pavilion were lovely but I wasn't in the mood to go into battle to view the garden designs. The rest was just shops, shops and more bloody shops! All up it was the Sydney Royal Easter Show on Pims but the chooks had been turned into hats and the cows were wearing frocks.

Now why not go to London to catch up with an old friend who lives in Sydney?  Will and partner Wayne were visiting at the same time as us so we caught up with Will for a light lunch one afternoon and both Will and Wayne for a wander around a Saturday market and a poke about an antique centre  another day.  Will, Peter and I then went on to explore Little Venice which is a very interesting part of town that's built around the apparent confluence of a billabong, a stream and a canal.  Peter and I were also able to acquire a few photographs of us together which is a rarity for lone couples traveling.

Another night at the theatre made up for the farce that is the Chelsea Flower Show. We saw Miriam Margolyes in Madame Rubinstein at the Park Theatre in Finesbury Park, North London which is a great venue - once you find it. The upshot was less than 20 minutes to clear the rather excellent mezzo plate I'd preordered an throw down the accompanying bottle of merlot but we did it!

We saw The Importance of Being Miriam in Sydney two years ago and I was overawed by Miriam's presence and engaging personality. I'd never before hung on every single word of a performance but Miriam Margolyes is a master wordsmith so to miss any of what she has to say would be like wasting fine wine, which the merlot wasn't. The Importance of Being Miriam was a monologue whereas Madam Rubinstein is a play so the two performances don't easily compare beyond the fact that they are both magnificently written texts, superbly delivered.

Return of the Native 2 - Rocks & Flowers

A visit to Great Witcombe and Little Witcombe was a must since Witcombe has been my sister's surname for the last 53 years and my brother-in-law's for all his life.

Now here's what sets the English apart from Americans, it's irony and there is no better example of that than Great and Little Witcombe. Great Witcombe with just a church and a post box is anything but great whereas Little Witcombe, though in no way great in the classical sense, boasts about 70 houses, a local hall which it shares with nearby Bentham, a pub, a defunct shop and a post box - but no church.

Bath, yes there is one right in the middle of town and it's the one place we didn't visit because we left our run a little late but never mind, we've all seen the pictures. We wandered by one of Britain's near dozen Avon rivers and when we took both bus tours we discovered why there are so many of them. The Celtic word for river is something approximating avon so when the Romans politely asked the name of the river they were about to chart the locals responded accordingly. Aborigines throughout much of Eastern Australia did something similar but different when asked the names of places. Prefixes like gunda, goono, goonda and so on all refer to places where you go to shit so think about that next time you're in Gunnedah, Goondiwindi or Goonellabah.

I suspect that I saw as much of Bath as I needed to. Too much more would not have left me wanting more. It's a town that does its best to function whilst being swamped by tourism but then that's how it's always been. People have come to Bath for thousands of years for one reason or another.  And when they have done so they've invariably exploited others. Beautiful though much of Southern England is, my inner socialist can't help but see both the historic and current social divides of the place.

So let's back things up 5000 years to when life was immeasurably shittier for everyone, even essentially Anglo-Celtic types like myself - yes, I know I look Greek or Italian, perhaps Spanish on a good day but I'm not!

We visited Stonehenge which pre-dates both Celts and Angles but what-the-hell, I'm sure I had people here long before I turned Mediterranean. But back to Stonehenge; this wasn't just any iPhone-bloody-clicking, stay behind the blue nylon rope experience; we went for the complete nude, Mother Earth worshiping, all drumming all chanting, up close and personal sunset tour package and it was fabulous! We were able to romp unimpeded, amongst the stones for a full hour and my chakra is now aligned beyond belief. OK, I'm bullshitting you about the naked romp but I did feel moved to remove my thongs before we entered the Inner Circle which completely perplexed the Americans in our group who were already perplexed by my thongs and shorts, given the temperature.

The place has a certain power which my rationalist self says we give it but my tortured feet felt so much better for the experience. Having said that, I am no believer in miracle cures; an hour of trotting about any damp paddock would have probably achieved the exact same result but I thoroughly enjoyed being there. Stonehenge is an iconic part of my heritage be that Pagan, Minoan or whatever. It was nice just to be there.

Now at this point I must tell you that the Google Earth app on my new iPhone is a troublemaking bitch! Louise (as we have named her because DeDe's sat nav's name is Thelma) has a penchant for complication. She is extremely keen on back roads, goat tracks in fact! Our return journey to Snowshill should have taken less that two hours but took three along some shocking fucking roads. Every time we are about to hit an 'A' road bloody Louise pointed us back towards yet another single-lane track. We finally got back at around midnight and passed out cold till after 10.00am next day.

Hitcote Manor, oh glorious Hidcote Manor!  It's now my second favorite English National Trust property after Wallington in Northumberland which is unsurpassable. I don't care about the houses but their gardens are quite special. I was blessed to have had a grandmother who taught me how to see, and not just look, so Hidcote was an extraordinary treat. I now need to grow alliums, tree peonies and Gallery Red lupins which will probably fail me in exactly the same way as fuchsias did when I returned home obsessed with them from Wallington last time.

Today's drive back to London was all good until we stopped for fuel about 20km out from the car rental at Heathrow and had a major Chevy Chase, European Vacation round-about experience trying to get back onto the M40. Well there went an hour - Louise, you sodding bitch!

We are now happily settled in our Airbnb in Bloomsbury which is on the Piccadilly Line close to just about everything we want - and for the money it cost it would bloody-well want to be!

Return of the Native 2 - Sydney to Snowshill

When I went through my family history phase I discovered my earliest known British ancestor was a resilient young woman named Mary Martin. She was the founder of my father's line in Australia. Convicted for theft and sentenced to transportation at the age of 16, she was packed aboard the former slave ship Neptune with 500 other sorry souls for the long voyage to New South Wales.

The year was 1790 and the Second Fleet was the Admiralty's first shockingly misguided venture into privatisation. Contractors were paid for each convict that boarded their overcrowded vessels, not for each who disembarked as was the practice with slaves. Unrestrained capitalism is never a good thing and nearly a full third of the convicts died en route with 124 more joining that number shortly after landing in Sydney. Mary, as you will have guessed, was not one of them.

Our return to the Old Country on a Singapore Airlines A380 in Premium Economy could not have been more different to Mary's experience in leaving it. Well, I suppose it could have - those First Class Suites in the next cabin looked extremely tempting but for a couple of big blokes used to travelling Cattle Class I have to tell you that Premium Economy was luxury! There's no going back!

I highly recommend arriving into Heathrow at 5.50am on a Sunday morning as a way to minimise the stress of transferring from plane to rental car and then clearing the airport. Once I got my new iPhone to talk to Google Maps, and we undertook a few Chevy Chase style circuits of several airport roundabouts, we were on our way to the M40 and the glorious Cotswolds beyond.

When we were planning this trip Cotswolds was just a name to me, a pretty green entity with cottage gardens and thatched roofs. I had no idea where to book but made an uncharacteristically perfect choice. We are in a truly lovely spacious cottage on a farm called Sheepscombe Brye just 500m from the village of Snowshill which could easily be the location from the Vicar of Dibley. The church, which is also named for St Barnabas, is identical and there is a row of stone terraces just like the one where Letitia Cropley lived. I fully expect her pop here head out as we pass by and invite us in for a slice of Marmite cake or some lard and fish paste pancakes.

We are about ten minutes from the town of Broadway which we can see down the leafy green valley from our deck where we sit with wine in hand and a ploughman's platter before us, says he who is now fully addicted to Branston Pickle. We overdose on quaint each time we go to Broadway and I don't mean any kind of quaint, I mean QUAINT! The place is absolutely rotten with stone buildings, thatched roofs, lilacs, wisteria and the whole range of southern English folk from tweed-clad rude and dismissive to eccentric then onwards and upwards to absolutely delightful. Their dogs are far more homogeneous though, there's not an unpleasant one amongst them.

The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway was a bit of fun and the drive across rather lovely as we descended a small escarpment through what looked like a rainforest of deciduous trees with fresh new spring leaves. We took the 10.00am steam train out of Toddington and beat the crowds then did it all again after lunch on a railcar set. By the time we returned for the second time it was 3.00pm and we were well and truly done!

I didn't spot a single Asperger's amongst the volunteer staff which is unusual and completely rules them out as actual card-carrying gunzels but a number of the other passengers were high on the scale and truly classic examples. The hats, badges and telephoto lenses give them away every time as does the unkempt look and just occasionally the smell.

And speaking of people with obsessive interests, if rain prevents you from driving from one scenic Cotswolds village to another then Snowshill Manor, former home to a somewhat odd chap by the name of Charles Wade, is a slightly disturbing place to spend some time. Wade collected scads and scads of shit from everywhere but mainly Asia and also liked to play dress-ups. I'm sure he's been the subject of many a psychological dissertation. There is so much crap in his dingy, rambling old house that Wade took to living in a nearby shed and I would have as well.

Five minutes in that nightmare of clutter was enough. I fled to the garden where I wandered wet but happy and chatted with dozens of white pigeons who, unlike me, were all intent on staying dry. I played quite happily in some puddles which seemed perfectly reasonable given that I was wearing shorts and thongs. There is little doubt that there have been far madder people in that house than me.

Yes thongs. After 22 airborne hours my feet have to puffed up to the point where I resemble a very tall hobbit. Some people stare, a few are brave enough to pass comment and I've even heard several whisper "He must be from New Zealand!"