my tragic right hip

Yes, I’m swearing a lot in these posts I’m plowing through tonight, but it must be said exactly this way: my new bionic hip kicks some serious ass.

I walked for three weeks in Europe. That’s 21 days of traipsing through cities, peering at ruins, standing in front of art at galleries, and finding my way around foreign places. And I had no pain. There was a bit of a struggle because my muscles aren’t in the greatest shape, but no joint pain.

In the months after surgery, I have resumed normal activity in the sense that I’ve recovered so much of my mobility. Things I never thought I would or could do again, I’m now doing on a regular basis: enjoying an 8-hour walk, sitting cross legged and chatting with a girlfriend, dancing to Irish music at the pub, jumping up and down at my RRBF’s show, enjoying a weekend at Hillside, and feeling normal, even if it’s just until the rash returns or my stomach churns up the last meal, but it’s something anyway. And I’ll take the small victories for now.

Couldn’t someone in Paula Abdul’s camp update this photo? It honestly looks like it’s from the mid-80s, which isn’t so bad considering the amount of plastic surgery I’m sure she’s had in the last decade or two. But then again, it makes me laugh every time I read a fake “news” item on the imdb and the use it.

When I had jet lag in Paris, I slept on Tina’s couch for an entire day. But now I don’t have that luxury of being on vacation any longer, and so I spent half my day today trying to stay awake, thinking about how many truly strange and wonderful things happened when I was away, so here’s my top 5 weird and wonderful things I noticed while on vacation:

1. You can develop crushes on all sorts of people.

Endearing love for my RRBF aside, I met a crazy British ex-pat journalist for about five minutes in Paris on my birthday and developed a total crush on him. He’s not all that tall, not particularly attractive, and covered in a serious amount of attitude, but it restored my faith in the fact that if, and it’s a big if, something ever happened with my RRBF, I could still find real people attractive. The “real” is an important distinction because my crushes on Ethan Hawke and Jeremy Piven so don’t count.

2. Life goes on after the hub cab falls off.

Tina and I hit the curb so many times in our Irish rent-a-car trying to maneuver the car on the other side of the road that when it finally fell off, we laughed and then freaked out, instead of the other way around. And then a completely nice man at a Toyota dealership in Limerick gave us a free cap, and then never noticed when we took the car back that one of the caps was certainly not like the others. In fact, the fellow that looked at the tires inspected every single one except the one we replaced. HA!

3. Live theatre is both thrilling and boring at the same time.

Honestly, I think it’s the fact that the lights make the theatre so hot. Both plays I saw were equally good in different ways, but I yawned during both, and not because I was bored or tired, just because it’s a hot stuffy place where old men with hairy ears sit down beside you and fall asleep. Honestly, just that kind of old man sat beside me in the theatre in London, and that’s what happens when you go places and do things by yourself: old men sit down beside you and fall asleep.

4. Carrying your own sh*t is hard.

Life as an independent lady travelling around is way, way different than life as an old married lady travelling around. People talk to you differently when you are two women, they hit on you differently, they treat you differently, and they certainly don’t help you with your mega-knapsack when you’ve bought two books and are carrying three others. Ah, life as an old married lady still has some benefits. And it makes me appreciate the sheer, brute strength of my RRBF. Sigh.

Oh, and feel free to treat the above as completely metaphorical as well.

5. Strange cities are always fun.

Simply because you don’t have to get up, cook yourself some breakfast, find your way to work, sit all day long, and then get up and do it again the next day. Therein lies the true beauty of a European vacation.

I’m sure I could come up with 5 more, but I’m sort of tired from watching 7.5 hours of Coronation Street, 3 hours of Six Feet Under and four almost-straight episodes of Entourage. Ah, to be back to the grind.

The hardest thing about going away is coming home to some extent. It’s wonderful and fun and amazing to be in a different place every day, seeing different things, meeting new people, but then you get back to the grind. On my daily travels through cyber-space today I came upon an article about Posh Spice, who, on the cusp of publishing her autobiography, announces to the press that she’s never read a book.

Ever.

In her life.

Never.

Not once has she picked up a book, cracked the spine, smelled the wonderful ink on the pages, and then eaten up the words like a morning pastry. But low and behold, she’s written an “autobiography.”

What the f*ck? Has the line between writer and celebrity really become that smudged? Are there people out there who will actually buy this book and think that she even had a hand in writing it? Because honestly, would you believe someone who has never read a book could actually write one?

Oh, and does that mean she never reads to her kids? Because that would be a crying shame, strange geographical names and all. Silly Posh Spice, shut up, I mean really, shut up.

One of my poems was accepted by Taddle Creek. I’m not sure when or even if it’ll be a print vs. online edition, but I’m excited anyway.

After a few mistarts (including having to book a whole different flight), I got home yesterday afternoon, tired, cranky and probably a bit smelly.

Tomorrow it’s back to everyday life. Upcoming this week, my vacation top 10, things I’m obsessed with and why I have a huge crush on Jeremy Piven, which may or may not threaten my feelings for my RRBF.

Just kidding.

Postcards certainly not to follow.

Perhaps the problem isn’t the lack of road signs. Perhaps the problem isn’t the maps. Perhaps the problem just simply comes down to the fact that I have one hell of a terrible sense of direction.

It took me forever to find the Victoria and Albert Museum yesterday, which feels more like your great-grandmother’s colonial attic than anything else. It’s a marvelously complex and convoluted place with art and design in every nook and cranny. After it taking me over two hours to make my way there after buying my theatre ticket, I walked around in circles for a while before finally landing in the William Morris rooms I wanted in the first place.

Victorian literature has always been the bane of my existence, from high school to undergrad to my glorious mistake to take it in graduate school. But Victorian art and design? I love them, can’t get enough of the grand and pretentious manner of it all. There were two William Morris chairs that were absolutely beautiful. Then I wandered around the fashion section, saw some truly fascinating old instruments, then bought my RRBF a small presents, and left.

From there I had dinner by myself (for the first time ever!) and went to see Neil Labute’s Some Girl(s). David Schwimmer played the lead, with Saffron Burroughs as the girl that really makes the difference in his life. With any play or film by Labute, I feel as if the ugly under-belly of humanity comes out in funny, witty and acerbic ways. The play was interesting; it’s about a man who seeks out four of his ex-girlfriends to have a final heart-to-heart talk to settle everything before he moves on and gets married. He chooses the four women (of a long, long list, so he says) because he feels particularly responsible for their heartbreak. The four women are recognizable stereotypes: the high school “typical” girlfriend you could marry; the hippie, pot-smoking artist; the older, married influential woman; and the one that got away.

I sat there wondering how different the play would have been if it had been told from a woman’s perspective. If she was the one travelling back through the annals of her past relationships and wanting to make peace with men she screwed over, and I think it would be a very different play.

It’s funny as well, to see Ross up there trying to act his way through a different sort of character he played for how many seasons on television. It was all anyone was talking about around me, whether or not they liked him on friends. He plays to the audience a bit too much and doesn’t really have a theatre voice per se, but he does a good job and has wonderful comedic timing. As the woman who sat beside me said, “That was just tremendous!”, and it really was. Funny, I saw the opening of A View From the Bridge in Dublin, and then now I saw Some Girls two days away from its closing. A nice bookended theatre experience over my vacation.

Now Elyssa and I are going to take her Wapping Walk, a theatre in sound experience of a neighbourhood. I’m quite looking forward to it. Then I might do some more sightseeing or pack it all in and go to the movies. But I loathe to go back to Leicester Square — I’ve never been bothered so much on my trip as the few moments I either sat there or walked through.

T-40 hours until I come home!

We toured around Limerick and saw the big sites there, King John’s Castle (which was never occupied by the very king that commissioned it in the 13th century), the Hunt Museum and a beautiful church called (if I remember correctly) St. Mary’s (something or other). We ate some mediocre but incredibly over-priced food, and decided to do road trips the next day to the Rock of Cashel and the Lough Gur, both of which were lovely.

Driving around Ireland is so frustrating. First of all, it’s the whole, how to navigate the car on the other side of the road thing; secondly, it’s problematic that there are no road signs; and finally, even the locals aren’t necessarily aware of what the road is or what the road is called. Inevitably, when we were out driving trying to find a site that wasn’t necessarily right off the main road or in a city centre (which was most of the time), we would get lost, sometimes for hours. The roads wind and bend all over the place, and they seem to have no cohesive narrative in terms of leading to one another — and you wish the maps would help, but they don’t really because there are no signs telling you where you are or which way you’re going, so it’s really like looking a pile of sqiggles and lines that make no sense in terms of the map. Are we here? Who knows! Are we there? Maybe! Which way do we go? Who’s to say!

In a way, I’m so glad I went to Ireland because it’s a beautiful, magical, historical and fascinating place, but as with anything in my life that I learn about, read about, think about, there’s a tendancy to romaticize it. It’s important to remember that life goes on in Ireland just like it does in Canada, in France, in London, and it’s just as regular as anywhere else in the world, only with a different accent.

After a long day of travelling, I’m back in London (sitting at the airport, taking the rental car back). I’ve read three more books since I’ve been on vacation, one not even worth mentioning and two others that I enjoyed (The Perfect 10 by Louise Keans, terrible chicklit to waste time at the airport; The White Lion by Henning Mankell, which I loved; and Carolan’s Farewell by Charles Foran, which I thought was pretty good. What does that make now? No.s 40-42? I think so).

Today I’m going at a leisurely pace, being in Brixton at the library using a computer, then off to Marks and Sparks to get some lunch for later. I’m off to see if I can get a ticket to see Neil Labute’s new play and then go to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

London Ho!

PS.

I’m feeling quite homesick, and I miss my RRBF terribly. There was a flight out of Shannon airport yesterday going directly to Toronto, and I considered just buying a ticket and going home. But then I wouldn’t get to see my friends in London and with only three days to go, it would have been a shame not to see them. And there’s a lot to occupy my time in London, which is an awesome city. Okay, end of feeling sorry for myself!

We stopped in Galway for a couple of days to put an end to the mad travelling around by car—the crazy driving for hours to get to the city by dinner time, eat, walk around sleep, wake up, walk around, drive somewhere else, and then repeat the pattern of the last few days.

It’s an interesting city: on the water, lots of cute shops, tons and tons of tourists, and really bad food (with the exception of the Indian food we had after we drove down from Derry). On the way to Galway, we stopped at Donegal Castle and walked around. It’s so awful to use adjectives that barely contain the full definition of how something actually appears, so I hate to say that Ireland is quaint, with it’s small coastal towns full to the brim with B&Bs, signs in both English and Irish, wee men riding their bikes wearing tweed, but it is, and we drove through about a hundred little towns that all seemed lovely and amazing, but small, rural and strangely full of tourists.

The rain continued the two days we spent in Galway. The first day we walked around the city, saw and amazing old medieval church, the Spanish Arches from the 1500s, and a couple of other sites. There are ‘authentic’ shops in Galway, and one that sells Claddagh rings (stamped “original” because, well, it’s where they originated), so I bought one, and I also bought my RRBF a cute, jaunty tweed cap (I just hope it fits his head). Then we went back to the B&B and slept for a little while (car-lag), got up, had Chinese food and went to the pub. The nightlife in Galway is astounding: there are tons of bars, pubs, nightclubs, smartly dressed boys and fancy girls. I felt downright old and dowdy! But of course, I was wearing a huge, smelly raincoat, the same grey sweatshirt I’ve been wearing the whole trip because I didn’t bring enough warm clothes and my everyday jean skirt. Ha! There goes fashion, right out the window.

The pub was fun. We met a couple from Roscommon, a lovely girl from Florence, a fellow doing a PhD in 17th century Irish economics who said, “There’s an old Irish saying, ‘God gave whiskey to the Irish so they wouldn’t conquer the world.'” We were having some conversation about colonialism or the like, it was very funny. And then Tina met a funny fellow we called “Bob the Builder” because he was a bricklayer who talked to her for our entire pint but never introduced himself.

We got up the next morning and drove to Clifden, well actually a small town outside of Clifden called Cleggan where we went horseback riding. Tina did a lot of riding in her youth and beyond, so she’s totally experienced. It was only my second time on a horse, and I was terrified. His named was “Duggie” and he was lovely. We walked, and then trotted a bit, back and forth on a beach in the Canemara. It was a fun experience.

But then the driving began, again. After a false start, we were on our way to the Cliffs of Moher. We drove through The Burren, a geological wonder, an area where time and prehistory have evolved into a fascinating and spectacular karst (a limestone region). You come around a windy, bendy corner and then all of sudden the landscape changes and it’s one of the most interesting, beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Before we got to the Cliffs, we had dinner in Doolin, and it was a meal to rival the restaurants in Paris. Surprising that the best meal we’ve had so far was in a tiny town with only 200 residents where we almost didn’t get a table after being lost for a couple of hours earlier in the day. I guess that’s what travelling is all about, happenstance and circumstance.

We landed in Limerick by around 11 PM last night and are spending the day looking around, maybe walking over to Frank McCourt’s infamous neighbourhood.

I forgot to talk about the most hilarious part of Tina and I watching the show at The Gate in Dublin. After it finished, I wanted to take a picture of the front of the building, but what we didn’t realize, is that the actor’s dressing rooms face out onto the street above the entrance. So the flash goes off and they all look outside because they think I’m taking pictures of them, which I wasn’t (but then I did because Tina giggled and said, “There they are!”), so Christopher Meloni saw us and waved, and then I gave him a thumbs up. Yes, I am the biggest geek in the entire world — I gave the cool guy from TV’s baddest, baddy-ass show (Oz) a thumb’s up.

Anyway. We were in Belfast yesterday morning, and went to see the West end where there’s still a military post on top of a high rise where people live. Barbed wire covers most of the fences, and there are cameras everywhere. There are murals depicting Gerry Adams and all kinds of other messages, and people just get on with their lives. And now that they’re at a de-militarized point, I couldn’t imagine what Belfast was like at the height of the Troubles. It’s hard to put it into words.

We drove out of the city to Giant’s Causeway, another Unesco World Heritage site, large rocks that look like people with very big hands set them all just so, and then got back in the car to drive to Londonderry. It’s a smaller, working class-type city, from the very small impression I have of it. The women all sort of dress like they’re from New Jersey, but the bar we were in had a lot of tourists, so they could have very well been. We listened to traditional Irish music, watched the cute bartender, tried to avoid Tina getting picked up by men, and talked to some people around us. There was a frame of tiny letters beside us on the wall. One fellow’s wife told us that when men were in jail, the women of L’Derry would write the letters and then fold them up under their tongues, passing them with a kiss–isn’t that a wonderful story? Makes me want to write a poem.

We’re off today to look at the walls (from the 1600s), a workhouse museum and then to see the Bloody Sunday memorial. Then it’s on to Galway, which always, always makes me think of the Pogues: “And the boys from the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay, and the bells were ringing out for Christmas day.”