2004-06-21 - 21:33

Everything is a step above sleeping on the sidewalk.

So, after leaving the most charming Bed and Breakfast yesterday morning, last night found us on the pavement. And by that I mean the sidewalk.

How you go about getting tickets for Wimbledon is involved. You show up, you get a place in line and then you stay there...overnight. We met Beth's friends at there hotel in Piccadilly circus after spending all day on the train. The six of us then headed to Wimbledon. We had two tents between the six of us, so we set them up on the sidewalk. Elizabeth and I went for a walk through the neighborhood. Its a beautiful neighborhood. I like to think of it as being full of My Fair Lady houses. We then went to a wine shop, bought a few bottles and returned to camp. We ordered some pizza and just generally had some wine and chilled out. Anne, Beth and Caz and Jeff all went for a walk, leaving Elizabeth and I to guard the tent. This is when the visiting began.

Whippy is a young Scotsman from the town of Aberdeen. He stopped by to say Hello. He was wearing a kilt. He flashed Elizabeth. After a brief chat he went on his merry way. As the evening progressed, we ate our snacks (another run had to be made to a shop for the procuring of crisps, coconut cake, beer and fruit and nut bars) drank our wine and such, and made friends with our queue neighbors who were Aussies. During the evening, Whippy and his friend Wesley stopped by. We chatted some more. We talked about where we were from and Wesley taught me some slang. foos the doos is apparently, sup?. nae sa bad is a response. It was the response I immediately understood. At one point, Whippy looked at me and pointed and said, " You're going to Wales, right? Well, stay right there." And then he disappeared. A few minutes later, he reappeared with to Welshmen. Whippy introduced us and then was distracted by the Aussies and disappeared. The Welshmen, Owain (that's said Ohwine) and Kip were fantastic and inteligent individuals. We talked about traveling and history Wales and books and politics. We talked about new labor. Apparently, Margaret Thatcher was asked what her greatest legacy was, and her answer was new labor. At one point, Brian the queue steward, whose job it was to keep us quiet but who just ended up chatting with us, said, its not very socialist anymore, is it? to which Owain said Ya, the number of socialists in Britian has dwindled down to...me. I then took his picture. I have a picture of the last socialist in Britian. I then had to apologize for blinding everyone with the flash.

On our way out of Wimbledon, Elizabeth and I stopped in the gift shop (Mom, I bought you a t-shirt) and we saw Patrick Stewart. He was inches from me. I looked right at him and then went on blathering to Elizabeth about how we needed to leave before I bought myself sports bands with little Wimbledon W's on them. He is, as his IMDB biography says, about my height.

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Artificial Sound for the Artificial World:

Still more noir than you are.