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Wed, 18 Sep 2002

author Tim location Carlisle, England
posted 21:04 BST section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/North and Central England ( all photos )

Never an un-eventful day ( No photos )
First and foremost, two site-news items:

Just when you think the day is going to be nice and boring, interesting things always find you.
Take today, for example - we went into Carlisle proper to get ourselves some picnic gear - you know, thermos flask, cutlery, etc. Quite a nice walk actually (about half an hour).
Our investments complete, we take the bus home. Liz gets on and asks the driver "So haw maach iz it, mate?". To which he replies "A pound ninety." Liz hands over the coins, apologising for the change. "There's no dollar coins in there, is there?" comes the smart reply at Liz's thick Aussie accent!
She comes back with me, beetroot red (the same as her top, incidentally), and we joke about it a bit. An attempted pickup!
On the way off the bus, he asks where we are from. "Sydnee, mate" we reply almost in unison. "So you're swans fans then?" "Not really" we reply. We get off the bus and walk up the street.
Then the previous flirting at Liz story rears its head again as he pulls the bus up to talk to her again, lifts up his sleeve to flex the muscles, and says "The reason I asked is because I'm a North Melbourne Kangaroos fan", pointing at a tattoo on the aforementioned arm. Imagine that - a small city in the north of England, we find a pom with a North Melbourne tattoo. Strange. We tell him to go away. He does.
We also topped up Percy with anti-freeze (which Peter laughed at - apparently that's usually done about December here). Tried to buy an ice-scraper for the windscreen but no luck there. I guess the locals just know how to time it a bit better.
Rang and spoke to Jane today - apparently Lucky is going well - thanks guys! Also had a quick chat to my grandparents, which seemed to make their week.
Tomorrow we head south towards London to meet up with Meaghan on the 21st or 22nd. Liz and I have packed all our stuff into one suitcase - this worked well for our one or four night trips, but might be a bit of a stretch for the whole month in Scotland. Still, it's far better than lugging two large suitcases up narrow pub staircases every night.
Once again, Internet access will be patchy at best, so we'll try our hardest to keep you all updated.
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author Tim location Carlisle, England
posted 09:36 BST section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/North and Central England ( all photos )

Washing day ( No photos )
Yesterday was spent doing not much - I've been keeping my mind on programming by writing a little program which calculates mileage figures (5.57 l/100km or 50.7mpg last tank!), and Liz went into town with Peter to get some more films developed.
Today is going to be equally exciting - we're going to do a whole load of washing at a laundromat. Thus far we have been handwashing at Peters, but the backlog is too great, and the weather isn't nice.
Thanks to Dad for pointing out uk.multimap.com. This is a good site where you can punch in any of the little towns we are going on about, and get a scroll-able, zoom-able map of the area. You can even put postcodes in - try CA26TT which is Peter's house where we are staying at the moment. I'll try to incorporate this into the link we put up top there saying where we currently are.

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