Disappointing, anticlimactic day. Tired of being herded on and off the bus. Last organized tour, at least on a bus, at least in England, we do. We don't want to shop. We don't want to stay when we're ready to go or be told to go when we want to stay. We don't want just cathedrals and castles and city walls. We want to be back in Edinburgh with three more days to explore on our own. We've learned.
Stopped for shopping at Gretna Green on the Scotland/England border which exists solely to give you one last chance to buy more kitschy Scotland shit. Onto the Lake District. Pretty enough drive, nothing omfg. Lunched in Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived and was buried, and where rows of shops exist to sell Grasmere and Beatrix Potter shit and scones for three pounds and pots of tea for two.
Grasmere sheep, yo. Gavin the Borscht Terrier is quite explicit that he believes shopping is what the passengers, especially the women, want, he's quite bwahaha women and shopping bwahaha, and yet, to the credit of the others, few come back with anything more than once and only one person I've seen - a man - comes back with something every time.
That's the Jubilee Clock on the city wall of Chester, southwest of Liverpool near the Wales border. Gavin has been selling Chester as the "crown jewel" of the trip since day one, extolling the cathedral and, especially, the shopping. Since Chester was a walled city, and a small one, shops were built on top of on another with overhangs providing roofs from below and walkways from above. Chester was the first mall in the history of man! You women are going to love it, watch your wallets, men.
Chester's charming and yadda. The above is the roof of a guard's tower on the city wall. Today Stratford on Avon where there are some lovely shops, some town in the Cotswolds where there are some lovely shops, then Cardiff Wales where there are some lovely shops. Saturday Bath where there are some lovely shops and Stonehenge where unfortunately there aren't lovely shops but then Salisbury where there are some lovely shops then back to London and well.
Had time to read last night in a Ramada three miles from anything outside Wrexham, Wales (a high school prom thumping in the pavilion directly beneath our room) and this morning while the others are eating breakfast so have the typing requirement and Sarah Bachmann and Michelle Bachmann and ITMFA and the only good poor person and buy me this for my birthday and I'm number eleven again and shock doctrine of a sort and believe what you will and every word he offers is a lie and death to the either/or and death to the either/or and we're talking about practice and Clarence Fucking Thomas and brand management and who wants to put you in prison and a third footnote and saving objects from themselves and ALARM ALARM ALARM and incoming e-mail and swinging for the fences and duh and the answer is never and Fire Bob Bradley! and Burtonsville and my future hell and undergirding expectations and seven fragmentary novels and Mirah? and
