Hewwo!

I’m afraid this isn’t quite the next Montreal post because I’m sat here at Penn Station NYC, laptop out typing away at 11:19pm in the Amtrak patron waiting lounge.

For the time being I will put up the rest of the photos I took with the ‘Non-Camera’ and hope to return to elaborate on the whole trip some more in the near future. This will give me a chance to write up the more recent and cruxing developments (see newer posts).

Essentially, I stayed with Michael and his partner Reajanne. They took me out to dinner that first evening but a headache came upon me most viciously and I started to feel queasy eating the posh french food. I had to eventually apologise and leave off eating any of the dinner. Took it home with me in a doggy bag, went straight to bed. Following day I got a chance to look around Montreal as Michael drove me around some. Then I was taken too….

*Enter pictures*

The Montreal Biodome (zoo) also where the Olympic Stadium resides.

Fishies and Gawkers

Birdies. (Or rather people watching the birdies). Note the ‘faux sky’, would inspire anyone to go on a humanitarian animal wellfare crusade.

My favourites! The cute penguins!

Then we went to the Chalet also in close proximity to one of Michaels Sons; Shawn who has a nice little family of his own..

Me. ‘Chaleting’

Michael reads a story (in slight monotone) to his Grandson; Liam.

Went back the following day to Montreal where I got to see a nice view that I made into a dodgy panorama.

Montreal (can you spot the Biodome/Olympic Stadium?)

Then Michael took me to his other son; Dylan and his partner; Sophia.

“Sophia, Vic (a friend of theirs) and Dylan

I liked Dylan, he was on the same wavelength as me and not nessacarily because he owned a hemp shop but he is quite interested in family history like me. That evening we went to a vegatarian restaurant and then a strip club(!), both equally quite new experiences for me.

It was a very short stay, especially with Dylan and Sophia but I have been invited back. I hope to take them up on the offer.

Blitzed back down to Vermont on the Greyhound whereupon I immediately started organising my Florida trip.. So, onto another post then.

The reason for my severe delay in finishing the rest of the Montreal blog postings can be attributed to the frantic headrush of the past 2 weeks that have seen me tackling the huge logistics of an extended Florida trip.

If you can recall, I have been asked to pick up a van for a company and drive it back some 1500 miles to Vermont. I have decided to go ahead with this because I would be paid for my time, have the travel costs covered, get an opportunity to do some real-life US State-wide driving and also visit a large number of friends, family or relatives.

In order to visit relatives in a timely manner, I requested if I could get a paid Amtrak rail pass to chuff along the East Coast and make stop overs to visit people possible. Luckily the company agreed.

The huge logistics problem came about when I realised that I would have the mammoth task of coordinating a rally of visits with about 25-30 odd people that I have addresses and invitations for all the way down to Florida. I would need to schedule a day or two for each person and work out which Amtrak station is closest and if I need a Greyhound from there or not. Then I would need to check which days were suitable with everyone and make sure that it all lined up with the minimum of ‘backtracking’ up the railways.

Whew.

I think I’ve pretty much accomplished a good array of dates all one after the other which succeed their way down the East Coast.

My plans are:

WAY DOWN (Amtrak Train & Greyhound Bus)

Vermont – A ride down with my host Chuck as he had to go to NYC anyway

New York – Visit a friend of my mothers living on Mulberry Street, China Town in Manhatten.

South Carolina – My distant cousin who lives in UK but has a work placement for a year in the US

Savannah – My old hallmate from the first year at University who went to the States to do a different course

Florida – Visit a large number of relatives who have settled up and down the length of Florida

PICK UP VAN, DRIVE UP

Stop off at any of the above who will be free to have me again

plus

Washington D.C – My cousin who I visited 3 years ago also

New York – My grandparents in Long Island.

Vermont – Drop off van and work out how to get a lift back home!

Waking up moderately late at 10:30am to the smell of my father cooking porridge on his single hob I considered it lucky that the coach didn’t get in till 12:05pm but pondered whether it was unlucky that today was Friday 13th, I scrambled from my sleeping bag and my father shared some of the porridge and then boiled some water for me to wash my face with. Aah it was just like camping, but.. not.

T’was was sunny out, I took the opportunity to run across the street to the Chittenden Bank and cash in a check (not cheque) for $50 from the Vermont State, what had happened was that I found an old money order check when clearing out my room back in England. Turned out that since I hadn’t taken it to the bank and forgotten about it, the check had expired back in 2004. Had the forsight to bring it with me to America and luckily was able to fill out a form, get some documents copied and notarized and then send off to reclaim the money from the State. Boring paperworky stuff aye? Took me a couple weeks to sort out but $50 is useful spending money!

Checked in at the Greyhound office to make sure I knew where I had to change (White River Junction) and I would have to get off etc. Then went back to my fathers studio apartment and waited till mid-day.

He had been rummaging around and presented me with an old Canadian $10 note he had left over from his own travels. I gratefully accepted, it would make a useful taxi fare.

Coach was 15 minutes late but it faithfully pulled up right outside, handy to have the coach stop next to my fathers place.. the door opened and I was confronted by a vision of beauty, the young woman locked eyes with me for a moment and then I stepped aside to let her get off, hmmm, I like beautiful people, for me, in women, it’s important to stress that this refers not the usual busty fake plastic stripper types, but the sweet down-to-earth natural beauty, those who you know will make beautiful mothers, if you know what I mean, hard to describe, photographic evidence needed sometime!

Well a nice fleeting moment she was, but I had a country to get to and the coach wasn’t gonna wait around long, threw my luggage under, showed the driver my US passport as ID (would also need it to cross the border) and stepped aboard to make myself comfortable.

“A trusty Greyhound coach!”

I settled down opposite a gentleman with streaky shoulder length grey hair, whiskers and brown leather cowboy boots. He kept reaching for a comb in his trouser (pant) pocket and running it a couple times through his hair whilst checking his image reflected in the coach window. Behind me sat an interesting looking girl donning a blue hat and busily staring off into the distance. Aside from a couple of others dotted around, the coach was mostly empty.

I felt tempted to talk a little to my neighbouring journey partners however a burning feeling of calm started pouring back into me as the coach pulled away to begin it’s way along the twisty interstates and freeways. I hadn’t been on my own for a few months what with always staying at peoples places so far, I realised I was momentarily my own person again, independent. Todays journey was a precious time to assimilating my thoughts and placating the stresses of recent.

Thus, I was on my way, in peace.

“Thought Mode”.

I zoned out for a little while watching the landscape of Northern Vermont pass by, on the edge of consciousness my mind registered that this really is a beautiful piece of land, a moment later I was briefly interrupted from my daze by the streaky grey haired comb and booted gentleman when he tapped my knee and spoke something to me.

I didn’t catch it but he repeated again and I realised he wanted me to wake him up when we got to ‘White River Junction’,

“Sure thing” said I and the comb and booted gentleman promptly tucked himself into the length of two seats and snoozed.

Booted comb gentleman needed have worried for he awoke when the coach pulled into town and announced we were at White River. I got off for this was my change over also. Only had to wait 20 minutes and the Montreal destined Greyhound pulled in also. This one was much fuller but I still had two seats to myself. I got out a book to read for this leg, Mmmm Sci-Fi.. my favourite. Unfortunately got quite engrossed in the story of advanced civilisations sending a radio signal to Earth from Vega and telling us how to build a machine.. a machine machined from not-yet-discovered fabricating methods of bio-metals and acids. A machine with 5 seats perfectly shaped for humans, should we build the machine? Where should we build it? Who should build it? Who will ride it? How many should be men? How many women? What should the be trained to d….

The coach pulled into border control and the driver instructed that we all had to get off and grab our luggage. Aaaar, what with my brain running amok with interesting futurist icy questions that demanded to be pondered I sort of fumbled my answers to the queries of the immigration border control officers which prompted them to sort through my luggage and be greeted by not very much at all, for I carried little money and had left the laptop at home.

Painlessly, they let this victim of daydreaming into their country and we all piled back aboard the bus.

Book set back on my lap and about to read who got to build the machine, well I didn’t because the new Canadian landscape before me was rather overwhelming. Huge flat plains and farm land extending as far as the eye could see, quaintly small houses (dwarfed by 200 acre back-gardens) dotted the road as we went. Never really seen such obstructed space before, magical stuff. Me-so-small and the rest of it. Photos couldn’t help portray this because there was nothing in field of vision to demonstrate the scale. Might be a way though, shall think about it for the future. At this point I really wised I had more than 8mb to play with on the digital cam of uselessness, at best I would be able to squeeze out 30 or so shots for the whole weekend, gosh it’s just like having to make use of a single roll of film because it was much too expensive to purchase and develop another one, I’m that 9 year old budding photographer all over again.

The sun had set and it was starting to get dark as the coach drove on to one of the bridges that would take us into Montreal, again, again, hugeness and camera pains abound with a vista view of the silvered estuary of be speckled ripples gushing its way to join the Pacific. I stowed away my book and took in the sights until the bus got us to the station.

Montreal has a feel of its own, like Boston was different to New York City, Montreal is different to those, I suspect that this will be a recurring trend to all the cities I goto, most will appear quite similar on the surface but when you’re actually there, the cars, high-rise buildings and people constantly ebbing and flowing from your vision, the subtle differences will seap in at the corners of your imagination and the place stamps upon you a feeling all of its very own. Hard to describe!

I freshened up in the toilets, gave my face a quick wash and pondered how long I had been journeying, about just under 5 hours actually in motion with the odd 90 minutes waiting around. It was just going 6:20pm as I plonked a mapquest print-out of directions in the face of a taxi driver. Took him a moment to get his bearings on the map but shortly we were on our way. For 15 minutes I peered up as far as I could see at the skyscrapers from the backseats and before I knew it, we were already there! The taxi fare was something like $10.11 (Canadian) which seemed to be ironic considering my gift of $10 (Can.) from my father. I gave the taxi driver $15 (US) which he seemed pretty happy with, I guess I’m pretty generous with these things.

Just to confirm I was at the right place, I asked the driver to wait whilst I knocked on the door. I was greeted by a thin, amiable looking fellow donning bouncy tufts of white hair, Prof. Michael Maxwell. I simultaneously shook his hand and gave a thumbs up to the taxi who drove away.

I had arrived at Selkirk Avenue, Montreal PQ.

Hullo again,

A 3 part special! Stay tuned, gripping stuff, perhaps.

Well I decided it was time to make a little trip away from Vermont and get away from the hassles and frustrations of things like immoral Russians and futile car hunting.

In the little green book my mother had given me were a list of names and addresses, friends and family from all over who I could potentially get in touch with and visit.

I didn’t want to go too far just yet and so perusing the little green book I settled on Michael Maxwell and his family in Montreal, Canada.

We corresponded by email a couple times and yes he would really like to have me over,

“If you can come up a week Friday then we shall drive you up to our Chalet with us”, gave me a target date to aim for.

The next issue to solve was method of transport. Not yet the proud owner of a set of wheels (and chassis, engine, gear stick, pedals, ooooh a steering wheel, fluffy dice maybe..) it wasn’t quite time to bring into effect the roadtripping and so instead I thought it’d be nice to go up by train. A leisurely pacing, see the landscape and whatnot.

Well that wasn’t to be either, since at a Jazz Jam, connected to a wi-fi hot-spot, I phoned up Amtrak using the TTY (text phone service provided by Nextalk) and was told that in order to get to Montreal from Vermont I would need to get a train down to New York Penn Station and then from there a direct line to Montreal….

WTF?

New York City is like almost exactly the same distance from Vermont as it is from here to Montreal but in entirely the opposite direction.

Fools!

I went to a travel agent the next day and the lady there rather vigorously lamented to me that the Vermonter Train service to Montreal had been dropped with some budget cuts and all the Vermont travel agents were frantically appealing Amtrak to get it back running, I could tell I had hit a touchy subject and I started to fear that this newly agitated lady agent would any moment clasp onto my arm and beg of me to solve the problems, have mercy and get the Vermonter Train back in action.

Well I got away in one piece.

So with the train out of the window, it was down to the faithful Greyhound coach to save me, don’t they spell ‘grey’ ‘gray’ here? Confusing.

I was lucky, I found out I was just in time to take advantage of the special ‘weeks advance’ offer for next Friday and save myself $15, woot. So, with Greyhound Coach ticket proudly in my hand, I ambled away from the Brattleboro office and was all set for Montreal. Interestingly the ticket was the same price if I left from Brattleboro or Bellows Falls, they are a good hours drive apart, I decided to leave from Bellows Falls as my father offered to have me stay the night and then I could catch the coach the following day.

Bellows Falls, this was a mini adventure in itself. Staying over at my fathers place? Howso? Wherefor? Why?

Questions, qwestions, b’huh thems’ imaginary voices sure keep me busy..

The adventure was setting down my packed bags and things, wondering what space I would be able to sleep on, for my fathers abode was a single room above a stationary shop on Bellows Falls high street. Piled high in many places were my fathers possessions and commiserated work places for his art. A tightly compacted maze of clutter in which you’re lucky to find a place to stand, let alone sit, oh and sleep(!), consarn it.

In a way the room and it’s artistic clutter was a direct contrast to the sparseness of Karl and Susans’ place, oh how we suffer.

Well it wasn’t that suffersome really, my father cleared a space on part of the floor by the back window and was able to set out a small air mattress and a borrowed sleeping bag. The evening, I spent delving onto a half hidden Fender Rhodes , caressing dusty keys, the electric piano chimed away in it’s mellow glory whilst I stared absent mindedly at a fuzzy TV public broadcast documentary, visually apparent to be concerned with the recent US voting and polling situation which I couldn’t understand for lack of subtitles. My father emerged from behind another pile and produced a vegetarian stir fry from seemingly nowhere, at a portable single-hob gas stove. Cunning stuff. It was tasty too. We chatted quite freely, a rarity, I forget about what.

Soon after, pretty shattered, I called it a night and got ready for bed whilst a freight train thundered by outside. It tooted a low note and haunted across a bridge of rusted metal that crossed over the rapids of a silver river that cut its parallel way in front of a barely seen, green mountain face.

The view from the window of my fathers home.

I’m sure the word ‘consarn‘ is very close to the word that I’m trying to think of,  if any of you have any ideas let me know…

Meh,  a little deflated today,  small inklings of frustration seeping through the cracks.  I know things will be better,  just a matter of a good nights sleep and a positive week..  Smilie Face!

THE GOOD 

• My laptop rocks
• I’m beginning to get paid for work that utilises my creativity!
• Autumn is beautiful here in the Vermontonian wooded valleys,  golden leaves rain down in the wind
• I’ve been writing some new songs,  pretty high quality work
• Friends and family members being very supportive of me and my big adventure
• I’m going up to Montreal this weekend to visit relatives in Canada
• Seeing and being with the people over here

THE BAD

• My laptop didn’t work on the wi-fi hotspot in McNeils pub (damnit, it worked flawlessly everywhere else,  why won’t it let me drink and surf!?)
• My web-site coding skills need work (darn cross browser compatibility gets me every time).
• Internet really really sucks here in the middle of nowhere!
• Getting frustrated about lack of independance (can’t go anywhere without my Father turning up and giving me a lift to places)
• Car search is going slow (try to rectify the above problem, however all the decent looking car deals get snapped up before I can get anywhere close to checking them out)
• Still no digital camera (sorry folks, that one is long overdue for the blog)
• Seem to have gone a few steps backwards in the music theory I was teaching myself,  will have to relearn some stuff
• Banking sucks here in America compared to UK
• Finally got confirmation that I was ripped off by credit card fraud on the Canon camera I auctioned before coming over to the States meaning I owe Paypal 415 GBP (plus another 10 GBP for them doing me the service of failing completely to prove to the credit card company in question that I am the victim here.)
• Having to rebudget a lot of things for my trip due to the above (really could use that $800,  at worst I will probably have to put off travelling west until I have done some more jobs and reearned the money).

A few other odds and ends,  in general I’m doing pretty well I think.  Nothing every goes smoothly but I am confident that the experiences that are coming thick and fast will give continue to give me big pushes in the right direction and I will be thoroughly making the most out my time here as a young man with nothing holding me back from my potential to create and achieve.

Hip, hip, hurrah.

Been meaning to update people to the fact that I did another radio interview. Like the BBC one I did (and still need to somehow get into digital 101010110100101000.. format from cassette) this interview was only broadcast locally but still I’m sure there were a couple (dozen) ears tuned in between the hours of 8:30 to 9:30pm on Bellows Falls Community Radiostation; Wool.fm. This interview I am almost certainly going to be able to obtain a straight digital copy of to share it with all.

The interview went well and it was a jolly fun hour of waffling, who doesn’t want to talk about themselves to an interested audience eh?

Unlike the BBC interview, the show was done live and on the spot as opposed to when the BBC chap came with a recorder and mic to ask me some questions and then took away a CD of my music to intersplice with a monologue of yours truely, totally only 4 minutes. This time I got a full hour to myself and was able to play whole songs all the way through.

I was interviewed by a ‘Maya Costley’ who I had met previously at one of the Drum Jams (will have to talk about those sometime too). She had an air of youth about her, I was surprised to find out later she had and raised kids as usually she hides an amiable and pretty face under funky large skullcaps or various other headgear,  I had assumed she was quite young but today I was able to spot the odd strand of white hair.  She’s very nice.

Maya works at the Community radio station and was starting to pursue more local music acts for the show and thought I would make an interesting subject to drill.

Drill me she did, we got to talk about all manner of things from growing up in England and getting a ‘British Education’ to how I come to be sat in the chair talking about my lifes aspirations. I think it best to let the interview speak for itself when I upload a copy asap.

After the interview I showed maya how to use some computer software to edit audio material as she needed help with a previous interview project of hers, in fact the Bellows Falls Studio has this impressive audio workstation which apparently know one uses any more(!). It was just sat there, a whole mini studio begging (me) to be fondled and used for bloodthirst creative audio endeavours. I was told I was welcome to use it anytime and even invited to have my own radio show! I guess the interview went better than I thought! I am tempted of course but don’t know how long I will be in the area for..

“Not to worry” says they,

“Record some shows for us on the road!”.

You know what? That’s a jolly good idea. So watch this space for ‘Myles’ travelling radioshow’. Just need to obtain a microphone and audio interface for the laptop.. Mmmm.

Alas the rest of the week was quite boring, a lot of paperwork related infiltrations of local post offices and banks to sort out other things that needed erm.. sorting out.

Also had some really warm days where I just was lazy… aah bliss.

Oh yar wrote some new tunes too, if you’re all good boys and girls I may share with you a sneak preview..

Now to edit the timestamp of the post to make it look like I am keeping on top of my blog… (oops).

After trampling all over Boston, we were getting quite hungry and so made our way to ‘Government Center’ which is where the City Hall was. Getting off the tram, we were treated to a troupe of breakdancers performing in the sqaure and so watched them for a while. I thought they were pretty good and liked some of the coorindated dances they had going with up to 6 of them grooving to the gettoblaster at the same time. Skill wise I have seen a lot more impressive breakdancing in videos and from researching the passing interest in the dance form online, but still it was great to see it for real in the flesh. Bet ya didn’t know I took some breakdancing lessons at University? I don’t know if I can still do some of the spins and I seem to get dizzy more quickly these days if I bounce my head around, possibly a sign of my worsening hearing condition, related to the pressure imbalance in my head? Meh

For food we entered this long thin building which contained about 35 different food stalls up and down the whole length, take away foods from all over could be had from Greek cousine, Thai to brick oven pizzas and fish and chips. Mmmm, mouth watering stuff. Right in the middle of this ‘food market’ there was a large circular eating area with two floors so you could sit down and munch away. This is precisely what we did, I went for Thai..

An amusing incident was when I had to pay for the Thai meal with a $20 Travellers Cheque. This part was fine but I had to sign and date it as usual, didn’t know the day and so asked the lady behind the counter what the date was. 9 30 she said,

It wasn’t so bad with the being an ‘outsider amongst deaf peers’ really but when we all got back to Davids apartment Karl told me that Susan and David had decided I was mad at Karl for some reason, I quickly dispelled the rumour and said it was just a little difficult for me to participate in conversations thus I was being quiet a lot of the time. Certainly no-ones fault and definitely a temporary issue. Karl was happy to hear that I wasn’t angry or any such thing and agreed that I would be fully participating soon once I had learnt more ASL. He gave me a hug and went off to prepare for going out to the clubs tonight.

So go out we did, all dressed up and ready to party, however it wasn’t to be. We knew it would be difficult to find a club to get into with David not quite 19, but unfortunately everywhere we went to said, 19+ or 21+ only, so poor David couldn’t get into anywhere! I’m nut sure if it’s related to the fact that we were trying to get into gay bars as there were two bisexuals among us (not me, I’m pretty straight I reckon), however it’s more likely to do with the 21 being the drinking age in the States.

Well it was a bummer not getting to go into a club, we instead decided to go grab something to eat at a 24 hour supermarket, Karl and Susan had Sushi, David and Meg (oops forgot to introduce her too, she came out clubbing with us and was a 2nd year video art student friend of David, she was hearing but learning signing too.) had Ben and Jerrys. I had a chocolate sundae pudding. Weird what you can get at these hours in the supermarket..

It wasn’t such a bad night out but we had a long trek back as surprisingly the Tram services stopped from around midnight or so. With aching feet we got back to campus and went to bed.

Running out of time writing this entry here at Bellow Falls Community Radio Station… what am I doing here? That’ll have to wait till another blog post I’m afraid 😉

So the following morning (this would be the Sunday Oct 1st), we packed our things back up and Karl drove us back to Vermont. Not before stopping off at the Cheesecake Factory mind you! Yum yum, supreme cakes that I got to munch on the roads back home.

Crashed out at Karl and Susans place as we were all pretty knackered. Got to talk to Karl some more about his life and past relationships which really helped give me food for thought about what I am looking for at the moment. For your information I haven’t been one looking for ‘fun’ with girls and have been on the hunt for more serious relationships but so far no luck there, usually the nice ladies I ask out are taken. I won’t bore people with the failed attempts to court ladies in the past but might talk a little more in the future about some things I’ve observed or learnt so far and my own thoughts on that huge word; ‘love’.

Karl took me home after his days work on Monday to Putney.

Gotta dash now though, plenty more to say, not enough time in the day wot wot.

Oooarrgh, well brain information overload this weekend and unable to contain all it for later consumption blog-wise however I shall try and recollect some of the best bits for ya all, but quickly to catch up:

“Side-notes”; The workshop went rather well if a little needlessly hectic on my behalf, made one or two tiny errors when instruction the kids what the do in the exercises (e.g. tearing up all the paper into ‘frames’ when folding them and tucking into each other book style would have been much better) but everyone was remarkably patient with me and for that I am grateful. To my surprise, I was handed a money order check for $200 as gratitude from Austine School for my efforts. I was all set up to do it voluntarily but being rewarded money for my time and ‘skills’ *cough*.. was an extra bonus 😉

That’s not all, the day afterwards, apparently a little review and evaluation was performed by the students to say how they enjoyed the Camp and I was informed that they enjoyed doing my workshop the most out of the other 4 activities they did also! So I must have done something right.. 🙂

Highlights of the day would be the kids understanding a lot more about the concept of animation and video art than I expected, seeing some excellent flipbooks, chipmunks, and being asked what the ‘name of my car was’ by a small and intriguing girl with a face and demeanour of someone much, much older.

For your information, the car search still continues..

So the Leadership Camp drew to an end and Karl, Susan and me went home to pack and prepare for Boston.

We took about just over 3 hours to get to Boston, much of the journey I dozed off in the back of the car wishing I had my new camera as I watched the sun set through the rear window. The cloudscapes were sheer bliss providing a softly evolving illuminated backdrop for the wispy green mountains. Such is the rural landscape of Vermont and Massachusetts, green trees turning orange as they coat the hills and occasionally you can spot mist rise from the valleys.

Driving through the Streets of Boston was a wake-up call to the fact that I was suddenly back in a City environment, an extreme contrast to the idyllic towns and villages that dot Vermont, that said, the places we drove through seemed quiet, I was expecting more hustle and bustle to match the skyscraper-ed street blocks but the general pace of things seemed very laid back to me especially compared with ‘neighbour’ NYC.

Quickly we found the campus for the “School for the Museum of Fine Arts” which is where the friend of Karl was studying and who we were to stay with for the weekend.

David was a quirky fellow, I was surprised by the age gap between him and Karl but I found out that they had met when David were at a Summer Camp.  At 18 David was a well travelled fellow having already visited 15 countries,  details are a little sketchy as I tried my best to keep up with the conversation but when deaf people get together they tend to sign away at the speed of light and change topics at the turn of a .. er, whats the word.. hmm, meh… oki, at the turn of a turtle. Thus poor old me with 2 weeks ASL learning under my belt was a little overwhelmed.

In fact much of the weekend I experienced almost exactly the same situations of being left out when in group conversations, this has happened all my life among hearing peers because I find it difficult to hear what people say and as soon as the topic starts bouncing around I am lost without my contextual recognition. So it was a little depressing to experience the same thing among deaf peers but I kept reassuring myself that this was only temporary and it was just a matter of time before I could fully participate when I have learnt a lot more sign.

At least this time everyone could understand my troubles a little better this time and so made more of an effort to pause and tell me what the topic was and ask me some questions in super slow-motion signing. Thanks guys 🙂

We went out that Friday night to mooch around, found our way to what I was told to me the famous ‘Newbury Street’ known for upper class toffery. Again I got the feeling that the streets were quiet, not much going on, this would be about 10:30pm mind. Many of the shops were closed save for a the bars and restaurants. We did finally find an open Candy Store and proceeded to gorge our eyes on the sugary possibilities. I spied a table in the middle containing exclusive and rare ‘imported chocolates and sweets’ essentially containing my typical diet back in England from the age of 6-10, Cadbury’s Flakes and Kinder Eggs anyhow, awesome stuff.

The sweetie attendant kept offering us some freebie samples whilst at the same time nagging not to ‘mix the walls’ referring to the fact that the different sweets on different walls were priced differently. I proceeded to joke with her about the fact that ‘all local kids must be insominacs seeing as the Candy Store was the only place open within sight at this late hour.’, well it got a giggle.

After candy we visited a park where I was slow-mo sign informed ‘Good Will Hunting’ was filmed, having not seen the film yet I couldn’t comment much on this trivia, prompting the others back into their discernible conversations, and thus I descended into quiet gloom as I am prone to in a moonlit park such as this. It was silly of me as I battled against not being able participate fully in signed conversation versus the knowledge that I would be able to in the near future if I stick with it. I tried to stay positive but lagged behind the others as they continued on.

We got back to campus about 1am, since David is a fresher and living in the halls of residence we had to keep handing in a form of ID to the guard in reception until we wanted to go out. I was a little worried about leaving my Drivers Licence like that overnight but I can report that I got it back each time without fuss.

I slept on the couch in a communal apartment whilst Karl and Susan got a blow up mattress in Davids room. Zzzzz… Continue reading →