Beside the Seaside

This is the final UK post. I’ve been so busy with other writing work that it’s taken a while. There are no more cute kids to show from here on out. These parting shots of my dad and family are the closest.

This one’s been photoshopped a bit for maximum clarity, as you can likely tell

If you’re keeping tabs, this means that the only family now left in the small Dorset town of Buckland-Newton were me, my mother, and my grandparents.

Observation: My grandparents bicker at each other more now than they’ve ever done before. They also say they’re happier than ever before.

Here’s the great Reverend in action picking tomatoes…

…and digging for parsnips…

Success!

Anyway, there’s not a lot to do in Buckland-Newton. This is literally the only shop:

And this is a typical view:

So we went to the coast instead. Here you see a bit of it, with an island dead ahead that, if I recall correctly, is called Portland.

English beaches get pretty crowded, because when the sun comes out, everyone gets the same idea.

So I didn’t swim. But I did get in the spirit of things.

The big difference I noticed between this seaside, and, say, Venice Beach here in CA, is that this was a total family-oriented (or “orientated” as they say in England) environment, full of bright colors, candy stores, and carnival rides. Venice is all dope-smokers, tattoo and piercing studios, performance artists, and political literature.

Even the buildings are appropriately cheery.

I went into a local toy store to see if I could find anything rare. No such luck, but I did buy the stylin’ Union Jack tank top you currently see on this site’s front page.

And it provoked interesting reactions. If you think American liberals are reluctant to embrace the flag, well, that’s nothing compared to the way English liberals (liberals, mind, not radical revolutionaries) see their flag. I was told I looked like a member of the National Front, a fascist/racist fringe group. The fact that I have tattoos sealed the comparison. I tried an American political tactic of arguing via pithy soundbite — “I thought this was the UNITED kingdom, not the DIVIDED kingdom” — but the retort I got was “That’s what the National Front would say!”

Sad that the flag of a nation is so easily ceded to hate groups.

On a minor political tangent, I was asked by someone if I was embarassed to have George Bush as president. I’m not sure how to answer that. I don’t like having him as president, but embarassed? I didn’t vote for him, and the majority of Americans didn’t vote for him. But frankly — what world leaders out there are really great people? Putin? Blair? Berlusconi? Hu Jintao? Standards are pretty low all around. And frankly, after Reagan, there shouldn’t be anything that could surprise anyone.

You could make a case that Bush is the worst when it comes to current leaders of free democracies, but still, I’m not sure how that personally reflects on me. So embarassed isn’t the word. More like “resigned.”

We now rejoin our story already in progress, at a pub lunch (pub lunches are da bomb).

After lunch, and a few pints of “Fursty Ferret” ale, we walked along the upper coastline. There’s an old military fort there, but they (over)charge admission, so I just took this photo instead.

After the walk, my mom and I went to the King Tut museum in Dorchester. Why a King Tut museum in Dorchester, you may ask. Not sure why Dorchester, but as I understand it the original relics don’t do any travelling these days, so this museum was allowed to make exact replicas of everything. So it’s all copies, but done well, and with some educational backstory well presented.

No photos — like the nuclear bunker, they ban ‘em in hopes that you’ll buy their badly photographed postcards.

I’m not sure if it was that day or the next, but my mom and I went on a walk through the fields to pick blackberries. I thought I was in pretty good cardio condition, but she totally schooled my ass. There were some mitigating factors — lots of annoying buzzing things around my head, my inappropriate attire (shorts), and the fact that on the steepest hill there was an electric fence to my left and stinging nettles to my right (NOT GOOD with bare legs!). She makes fun of me for being out of shape, which I’m not, really. Just ill-prepared in that case.

Before bidding the grandparents farewell, there was one final stop.

The ground beneath my grandparents’ feet you see here is their recently purchased burial plot. It’s in a relatively new funeral home, and eco-friendly one where they grow trees between plots, and presumably the decomposition feeds the plants. I seriously doubt they’ll be needing this for quite a while yet.

And that’s the trip, folks. If you’re ever headed for the UK, holler and I might hook you up with some of these characters.