it’s sunday afternoon in kentallen, and for the first time i can remember while being here, it actually feels like a sunday – leisurely, time to catch up on odd jobs, some fluffy tv, cereal for lunch…

i don’t know if it’s the extra hour or the day off or the slowness of the hotel as the season starts to really wind down, but i approve.

i watched the repeat of last night’s x-factor, which was sweet, and i also watched some rugby, which is a funny, funny game. best i can deduce from what i saw, the rules are: run down the field and pass the ball until someone gets knocked down. everyone nearby grab the person and try to get them to drop the ball before they completely fall down. continue until the ref actually calls a tackle, which i think happens when the knees hit the ground, and then stand back for a second while the guy gets up (if he can) and tosses the ball to a teammate nearby. repeat up to 6 times, or until either a goal is made or a penalty is called, whichever comes first. if you make it through 5 tackles and don’t think you’ll reach the goal next time, kick the ball and try to intercept the kick so you can keep going. otherwise, your turn to try to tackle and steal the ball.

figuring out the rules by watching is pretty fun, actually, and my muscles were already warmed up because there’s been a snooker tournament on tv this week, and that shiznit is mysterious. i figured out that you sink all the red balls and then go for the colored balls, but i don’t quite get why you get to switch to the colored balls sometimes in the middle, and how you decide which colored ball you’re supposed to hit in which order.

but don’t tell me, and i’m not going to link to anything that might give the answer away, because it’s more fun this way, and the tournament can’t last forever so i can have a few more days with the puzzle. :)

then i’ll just have to find some cricket to watch, and i will be on my way to becoming a veritable encyclopedia of international sporting knowledge.

booyah.

anyway, this post is supposed to be an update, so i’d better let you in on the news that the hotel is closing two weeks from today, on sunday, 12 november, which is a full week earlier than expected.

we are excited about this development, particularly because it means that tania and i have more time for our road trip, which we were having a hard time condensing into the week we had previously allotted.

details still need to be finalized, but we are building around the following highlights:

• the most remote pub in mainland britain
• the isle of skye
• loch ness (and inverness proper)
• the moray firth
• as many speyside distilleries as will still be open (which might not be many… blah november!)
• glen coe and other parts of lochaber (the area around where we are now, referred to as “the outdoor capital of the UK”) that we haven’t been able to explore without a car
• stirling

and then we’re going to end up in glasgow, whereafter i think that tania is heading directly to england, and i am going to edinburgh for st. andrews day before crossing the border myself.

the trip leaves out two major regions that would currently be included on my ideal tour of scotland – orkney and islay – but time constraints, financial worries, and wintery weather make both of those difficult, so i will just have to return one day. one thing i can say about touring scotland is that it would be a great camping vacation in the summer. there are loads of cheap and interesting hostels if you need a night with a real bed and a shower, plenty of campgrounds, and a lot of people walking and biking.

so there’s something to think about for the future.

anyway, i started writing all of this much earlier today, but then i decided to go outside, and the day started living up to the title of this post. tania and i ended up riding bikes around the empty carpark like we were 10 years old and then sitting on the end of the pier until it got dark. we came back in for dinner and a bit of deal or no deal, but then we went out again and did some tipsy exploring in the rain, which was fun.

tonight is the first night of my employment at the hollytree where there are no guests in the hotel, and the sudden weirdness of it has made us a bit stir crazy. there were two people in the restaurant for dinner and tania accidentally shone the flashlight into the dining room and we think it scared them, because jane peeped out the window to try to see who was there, and we stood in the dark on the pier standing still and giggling like fools.

i anticipate tension in the ranks as jane tries to keep hold of her somewhat tenuous managerial authority as the days grow empty and closing comes nearer, but i will leave those stories for later dates, and sign off on a lovely scottish sunday.

the two week countdown begins… now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 8:12 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.