Runnin' Amok in the U.K. & Japan - Did I Ever Tell You About The Time I...

Did I Ever Tell You About The Time I...

Spent X-mas in the U.K.?

In '94 an offer to spend the holiday in England was extended to me and my then-gf by an associate I was in contact with on a regular basis through my job at the time. We eagerly accepted. Upon arriving at Heathrow Airport we took a train into London, hopped in a taxi and gave the driver the address. We soon found ourselves outside a 3-story cottage in Chelsea. We were greeted by our hostess, my associate who worked at Paramount TV's London office, who warmly welcomed us inside. We had barely taken off our coats off when she informed us that she was going away with her friends for the Christmas weekend!

And what a weekend it was...Christmas presents, Bailey's on the rocks, roaring fireplaceS and David Letterman on Sky TV. What more could one ask for?

In those ten days, we visited nearly everything London has to offer: Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, shows like "The Threepenny Opera" and "Oliver!" with Jonathan Pryce, Shakespeare's home, etc.

Me and my former gf/fiancee rented a car in the seaside town of Brighton (love that pebbly beach!) a couple days before New Year's and drove through the southeast coast of England. We saw the White Cliffs of Dover, spent the night in Sandwich (where, yes, the Earl of Sandwich invented that delicacy of all delicacies), had pizza in Canterbury, and (after watching "Baywatch")  danced in the New Year to the sounds of such songs as The Village People's "Y.M.C.A." (and, yes, I, too, was making the Y-M-C-A letters with my arms overhead).

Driving in England proved to be an interesting undertaking. The other side of the road, round-a-bouts, the low traffiic lights, street signs on the walls of corner buildings. The key, I found, was when in doubt, just keep your eyes on the tail-lights of the car in front of you. (That only proved to a problem one time: when, closely watching the tail-lights of the car ahead of me, I followed him all the way home, right up the guy's driveway! He was so relieved I wasn't there to kill him, he invited us in for dinner! Okay, I made that all up.)

So, on the first day of 1995, we went to Leeds Castle in the English town of Kent. A massive castle on an even more massive estate, we walked the grounds on a rather cold afternoon, and took a guided tour of the inside.

One minute we were watching people peforming magic, sleight-of-hand, and spitting fire, the next it began pissing snow. As you can see in the pictures above, the snowflakes fell large and in large quantities. In fact, the snow fell so fast and furious, and piled higher and higher on the ground, as well, of course, as the road leading up to the castle and the parking lot. It was so bad that the castle's staff had to arrange for the busses to drive up to the front of the castle in order to pick everyone up and return them to the parking lot.

After we got back to the parking lot, we eased the rental car through the sea of exiting cars and high-piling snow. We headed back to London, passing through the snow back into the safer confines of the falling rain. I would have felt more at ease if it were not the lorry driver bearing down on me, flashing his lights at me. I fixed him, and pissed off my girlfriend at the same time, when I slammed on my brakes, causing him to, no doubt, down-shift several gears to avoid rear-ending me. I watched him in my rear-view mirror as he fell back several hundred metres, obviously having learned his lesson. From a dirty Yank, no less!

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