Bright Lights and Beacons

The view from our roof

Another beautiful weekend is winding down. Friday evening was rather wet, but that didn't stop me from showing a friend, in town for just the day, my favourite pub and chippy. The weather really picked up on Saturday, setting the stage for gunpowder and treason -- or at least much fire in their remembrance. After a bit of hemming and hawing, we settled on taking in the spectacle from Cleeve Hill. A quick stop at B & Q for torches -- i.e., flashlights; should've put that one on our list -- and then we were in it.

It's difficult to describe how surreal it was, standing up on Cleeve Common, lit by moonlight alone, watching fireworks go off randomly all over the town, as far as the eye could see. In some cases we'd wait six or seven seconds before the bangs, pops and crackles (h'm, I'm hungry) would reach us, and then others would fly over our heads in an instant cacophony, as fellow Common squatters joined the party.

Aside: for the movie fans, I kept alternating between that opening shot of the city in Blade Runner, with those flames shooting up, and something out of The Crow, like Devil's Night, almost a week late. Surreal, in any event.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way home and picked up some mulled wine and appetizers for board game night -- a favourite way to spend an evening, now British style, with sausage rolls, egg bites and falafel augmenting the usual Italian meats, cheeses, bread, hummus, chicken wings, etc. We decided to try The Rivals For Catan this time, a two-player take on the better known Settlers... We were both impressed: lots of paths to victory, and for screwing over your rival in the pursuit of it. Plus, once you've mastered the basic game, there are three 'era' expansion packs included.

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We struck out around noon today for Great Malvern, set on conquering the Worcestershire Beacon well before sundown. Tea was brimming with confidence, and would hear none of my burning quads after those first '99 steps' of the Rose Bank Gardens that open the walk. The temperature was perfect: we were just right in our long sleeves, even in the brisk wind on the crests of the lower hills (so long as we stayed in the sun). And the view from the top was fantastic: parts of thirteen counties can be seen on a clear day, apparently, and we certainly had that.

"Yay! We made it!"

The bar in the Great Malvern Hotel

Having worked up an appetite, we made our way to the Unicorn in Great Malvern. An old haunt of C. S. Lewis, it's probably seen better days; still, the staff were really friendly, the roast pork was excellent, and they did have Ringwood Best Bitter on tap. I then convinced Tea that we couldn't leave town without trying a pub from the GBG. The bar in the Great Malvern Hotel was what we settled on; such a homey place, with some interesting ales on when we visited: I tried Sharp's Red Ale, and enjoyed it.

P.S.: I've uploaded a few other pictures from the day, as well.

Back home (for a month or so)

Looking at our pictures from yesterday, I found the urge to blog was still there and thought, "Why not?" Yes, we're home for a bit, but very shortly we'll be back in the UK, so why break the habit.

I was up early yesterday and had some time to work on my drawing class before Tea got up. We decided to continue working on the inventory we'd started the previous evening -- the inventory of our books, music and movies has been done for some time, but now we've finished the furniture, most of the kitchen and some of the electronics. (I still have to take photos of everything too.) Tea dictates and I type; we both feel like we have the easiest job, which works out well.


She's about to have another piece
Then Kae came by for a visit, bearing a gift for our wedding anniversary: a fantastic chocolate cream pie! As you can see from this picture, we're already well into it a day later.

Then the inventory of the kitchen continued, but with the wine flowing now as we looked ahead to our anniversary supper at one of our favourite restaurants, Fiamma, just a short walk away. As you can imagine, our pace diminished -- at some point I started echoing Tea as I typed so she'd realize how far behind I was falling -- 'til Tea gave up entirely and called her sister. The two of them decided to have an interactive opening of the birthday presents Tea'd sent her -- over Skype -- and much hilarity ensued.

Then it was off to Fiamma. Foolishly thinking that the sidewalk was a safe place for a slightly-inebriated person such as myself, in one of those both-zigging-when-one-should-zag situations, I was almost run over by a young man on a barely-coasting bicycle. Thankfully, the rest of the walk was uneventful.

We began the meal with more wine, an anti-pasti tray, and PEI mussels in a white wine and garlic sauce. Yum! Tea had chicken parmesan with fettucine alfredo, and I had linguine pescatore with scallops, squid and more mussels. They really know how to cook pasta at Fiamma, and this time was no exception.

Then it was home for a bit of drunken cribbage. Tea was kickin' my butt all over that half-acre, so I decided to call it a night. At no point did I fall asleep in the middle of a hand -- ah, the advantages of being the blogger/historian.

Day 7

Gusto
Well, it was our last full day in Cheltenham. (Note that the posts will be erratic from here on out, as it's our last day of free Wi-Fi too.) We started out right at Gusto, with some fantastic tomato and chickpea soup, followed by anti-pasti trays. We'd bought coffee and a croissant from the shop on the ground floor earlier in the week, but the first floor is a restaurant onto itself -- incidentally, I regularly confuse their use of ground and first to describe first and second floors, even though we often have main and first floors at home; go figure -- with plenty of sunlight pouring in from windows on both sides. Tea particularly enjoyed the Teapigs loose tea bags.


Imperial Gardens
Then it was off to the shopping that Tea had queued up over a week of looking in the windows of closed shops -- Oh, we'll have to come back here on Saturday, she'd say. The town has a different feel on the weekend; particularly on such a sunny Saturday, no doubt: the park in front of the Queen's was full of people, as were the streets and shops.

Some of the shopping highlights included: House of Fraser -- which reminded me of Macy's -- with its £600 suits (no, I didn't buy, or even touch, one); Tea got a fabulous pink handbag (my approximation of what I think she'd write); and Waterstone's, where I got a copy of Seth's It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken; in one of those strange coincidences, I'd read a review of it in The Walrus a few weeks ago, and then, just the other day, I read that very line in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. (I didn't realize that that's where the title came from.) Anyway, that was all the excuse I needed to pick it up.


Inside St Georges Vault
Tea also picked up some shoes at Jones Bootmaker, and admired the dresses in Primark. I ogled a beautiful Davley flask with collapsible shot glass, and then it was time for a break. We ended up at St Georges Vault, which, I have to say, was one of my favourite spots of the trip: the bartenders were really friendly, the locals were entertaining; it was the perfect spot to kick back with a couple of bitters -- we weren't surprised by them being at room temperature thanks to Holly :-) -- and play some cribbage. I won both games and was very reserved in victory, as the photo to the right indicates.


Shon Thong
They don't serve food at St Georges, so we headed out for some sustenance after our second game and round of pints. One of the few recommendations that we hadn't tried up to that point was the Thai restaurant, Shon Thong. We tracked it down without too much difficulty, and enjoyed a great meal that included both hot and sour soup, and green curry (again). Tea preferred the soup, curry and ambiance at Thai Emerald, and I would second two of those: I actually preferred the green curry at Shon Thong, by a nose.

Packing for the trip back to London was looming large in our minds at that point, so we started heading back to the apartment. On the way back to High Street, this terrific amount of yelling and squealing assailed our ears; we turned a corner to see a mob of pink and black undulating in the distance. I immediately started wandering in that direction, at which point Tea said, "Wrong way, Jae;" I was uncharacteristically witty with my, "No, I think this is the way," as I took a last look at the 'stagette' party moving toward us. We passed a group of lads and heard one of them muttering, "Scheisser," as he caught sight of what blocked his path. Godspeed, man.

One final note: it actually brought a lump to my throat to see flowers laid at the foot of the World War I memorial in front of the municipal buildings. It's one thing to see such a display in November, and quite another to see it in June. I really like this town. (If you are interested in looking at more photos from the day, check out our album.)

Day 5

Pretty quiet day so far. We had an appointment at the bank this morning, and spent much of the rest of the day anticipating news regarding the approval of the tenancy agreement. Unfortunately, the business day is over here now, and it's just been confirmed that there's still no news. Tomorrow's our last business day here, so we're really hoping for good news in the morning.


High Street
After the bank appointment we went to the Suffolk Arms for a bit of lunch, and then wandered along Bath Street to High Street (and yet more shopping). We spent some time in Marks & Spencer -- which was so much bigger than the shop they had in St. John's for a bit, when I was a kid -- before descending upon what will surely be a favourite haunt of mine: Moss Books.


Our Moss Books purchases
At times I feared for my safety under those precarious precipices of tomes, but, truly, had anything happened, I would've died a happy man. I barely scratched the surface of their collection, and the combination of awe and walks down memory lane -- they have the largest collection of old TSR-era paperbacks that I've seen outside my parents' basement -- still has me shaking my head. I picked up a fantastic copy of Crime and Punishment, and Tea got Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food; the latter is a collection of simple, tasty recipes, and she's particularly excited about the wide range of curries therein.

I'm not sure when my allergies finally forced us out on the road again, but at that point we decided to head across to the street to Frankie & Benny's again, for a proper meal this time. (Tea was intrigued by the menu yesterday.) Tea had the Margherita pizza and I had the sausage and mash.

On the way back to the apartment, we stumbled upon a market of sorts in an alley. We'd been attracted by yelling that put me in the mind of some eastern European auction; sitting here now, I'm still not sure what that guy was selling -- no, Dubya, it wasn't sacks of random meat ;-) -- because the table across the way from him had all these bowls of random fruit, each for a pound! Tea got a bowl of cherries, looking very pleased with herself.

There's a smaller album associated with this day, and I'm gonna try something new: embedding a slideshow on this page. Let me know what you think.



UPDATE: We ordered Chinese food from Golden Mountain and played games -- Fluxx and Ticket To Ride -- 'til 1 a.m. this time. Definitely a pattern emerging.

Day 4

We got an early start of sorts today: board games and wine 'til 2 a.m. (local) -- you'd think we were protesting the time change, with 9 p.m. EST being a perfectly reasonable time for such things.


On O'Neill's patio
I had time to finish The Cider House Rules before Tea was ready to begin Day 4 proper. First up was lunch at O'Neill's: Tea had the two-cheese burger -- with some sort of blue cheese that she really enjoyed -- and I had Guinness fish 'n' chips with mushy peas -- I can see I'm gonna be a big fan of the mushy peas!


The library
Then it was off to a bookstore Tea had heard about called Cooking: The Books; as you might expect, it was packed to the rafters with all manner of cookbooks, and books about food and drink in general. The printed-word trend continued with a stop at the library; not a big branch, per se, but laid out very well, with a good mix of old and new titles (including movies, CDs and comic books -- a.k.a. graphic novels). The facade is under construction right now, and I loved the smell of freshly-cut wood as you entered and left the building.

We then made our way to High Street, and decided to pop in to Starbucks for a pick-me-up as the rain began. (I love the way they assume you're staying in there; nice, big, ceramic mugs too.) A bit of grocery shopping at Tesco and Wilkinson followed, and since the rain was still fairly heavy once we'd finished, we decided to see a movie.

The subtle differences continued when the lady behind the cash asked us whether we'd prefer to sit in the front or the back of the theatre: they assign seats at their cinema! We had an hour to kill before the show -- Last Chance Harvey -- so we headed across the way to Frankie & Benny's for a pint.


Inside the cinema
Our return to the theatre brought new surprises: they serve liquor, for one; and they asked Tea whether she'd like her popcorn sweet or salty. (The latter, of course, silly woman; my girl is nothing if not a salt lova.) The ratings are also very prominent, on both the trailers and the feature. I think they should've had them in front of the ads too: they played one for the Royal Marines that left me thunderstruck -- I think I muttered something along the lines of "f***in' hell..." following it.

An interesting consequence of assigned seating was that hardly anyone showed up before the feature began. Prior to the trailers, it looked like we'd share the theatre with half a dozen couples at most. Halfway through the trailers, the theatre was still half-empty. Then they just started spilling in, and it was about five minutes into the feature before it trickled off, leaving only the first two rows free for the most part. It was refreshing, actually, compared to the line-ups at our multiplexes.


Thai Emerald
We were feeling a bit peckish after the show -- excellent movie, incidentally, as you'd expect of anything that would interest both Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman -- so off we went to Thai Emerald. What an impressive restaurant! Big, banquet-size tables that still manage to feel warm and welcoming; and the food! Oh, the green curry was amazing! Everything was, really. Even the Thai beer, Singha, managed to surprise me, tasting more like a bitter than a lager, and, honest to goodness, reminiscent of Fuller's ESB (which I love). A great cap on the evening, to say the least.

Finally, here's some comic relief from the morning. If you're interested in looking at more photos from the day, check out our Day 4 album -- note that we've had a request for supermarket photos; this isn't some sort of fetish of mine. :-)