Cathedral and Castle - Day Eight

I slept in a bit, but managed to muster some energy for the day. Roblyn and I went into Lincoln to check out the cathedral and the castle there. I was excited!



Lincoln Cathedral was used in the Da Vinci Code film. The movie was okay, I liked the book better of course. The whole place was quite impressive. I am speechless...here are some photos:









Probably the biggest highlight for Roblyn and me was the "Lincoln Imp". Legend has it Satan sent two imps to reek havoc on earth. At some point they reached the Lincoln Cathedral and caused a stir by turning over tables and knocking over the bishop and whatnot. An Angel came out of a hymnbook and started attacking them. One cowered away while the other threw rocks. The Angel managed to turn the rock thrower into stone! The other imp fled. It took us awhile, but we managed to find the Lincoln Imp. By this one pillar we saw this box that said "20p to light up the Imp". What amazing light would shine down on the Imp, we thought! I hope you're as dazzled as we were from this photograph of the historic event.


20p well spent!

Right beside the cathedral is the castle. We walked over and here is proof!


Lincoln Cathedral from the castle tower


Every house is the same colour with the same chimneys in England


Inside the castle


The tower with the cathedral in the background


The old prison inside the castle


Atop the castle wall

Both places were really cool! I'm glad I woke up so we could see them. When we got home the "kids" and I got to play Roblyn's favourite game, "Hide and Go Seek". Haha! I laugh just thinking of Robyn rolling her eyes as she reads this. We played a few rounds and I had a brilliant time, but Robyn could barely put up with it. That evening she told me, "You should be their nanny...they like to do geeky things like you do!" Amen to that...if I had known about such fun I would have signed up for it after high school instead of working at Walmart. That evening we had a wonderful supper where two of the "kids" nearly killed each other in a fight. That was lovely. One more day in Lincolnshire and I would be out of that madness...

My Sleep is Completely Messed Up - Day Six & Seven

The plan for Tuesday is to go into Lincoln to buy shoes for the "kids". Robyn had to stay home to clean up the huge mess we had created in the whole house. Oh yeah, Robyn has a nickname. It's Roblyn, pretty crazy huh? Better than the nickname they gave me: "Tom". They called me Tom a lot. But they also called me Cooper, although it sounded more like Cue-per. As you're driving into Lincoln you notice right away the Cathedral. It's amazing! Perched on top of the hill you can see it from quite a ways away. I looked around the shops while everyone else did their own thing. Here are some pics:






Nothing really stood out for me to buy, I'm not much of a shopper really. I stumbled across this book though:


Everytime I read this book I would actually laugh out loud. I had a hard time controlling myself. The book is basically transcripts from a podcast called The Ricky Gervais Show. Ricky Gervais is the boss on the British version of "The Office". He created the show with another guy named Steve Merchant. On the podcasts the two of them talk to Karl Pilkington, who is quite possibly more mental than me. When I got home I downloaded all the podcasts plus previous radio shows these three did together. I'm addicted to them now!

I don't remember what I did the rest of the day. Read the book mostly I think, maybe a little dutch blitz and skip-bo. Of course that night I couldn't sleep and ended up staying up late again with nothing on TV. Actually they had this interesting show on Jesus taped. The next day I slept in really late and ruined the plan to go back to Lincoln to see the cathedral with Roblyn. That would have to wait till the next day.

At some point someone named Ashley said hi to me through Roblyn on messenger, and now I am saying hi to her now, whoever she is.

I am preaching Feb 25th...

probably! definitely not feb 18th now. hopefully our church will be up and running by the 25th. come check it out if you want, but prepare to be blown away!

The Shortest Day In England - Day Five

Because of the late night I had and other various reasons, I slept in on New Year's Day. I slept until 3pm!!!!!! Do you know what time it is in Ladner when it's 3pm in London? 11am, which is the precise time I wake up at when I sleep in. All the hard work adjusting my body to the jet lag was instantly flushed downed the toilet!!!!!! I came downstairs and everyone thought it was funny I slept all day. I was so out of it, I'm not even sure what I did that night. I think I played Monopoly with the "Family". They have this new version that has "Electronic Banking". Instead of using paper money everyone has credit cards and you swipe them through this handheld device to transfer money and whatnot. Just not the same...

So we had supper and it was good. And then I went to bed at around 8! Oh brother. Woke up in the middle of the night of course and went downstairs to watch TV. They have so many music video stations. I like those. They also had a lot of gambling channels. That was weird. Basically what it is is, they give you a puzzle or question and you call in to see if you get the answer right. For example, they had, Name a movie that starts with T. They have 8 movies already picked out, and you have to guess which ones they are. Costs money to phone in, and apparently, you might not get chosen to go on air, but you are still charged. It was actually slightly entertaining watching the announcer guy or girl fill time waiting for people to call in. Here's an example of what the shows are like:


A really big phenomenon over in England is Big Brother. It's a lot bigger than it is in North America. At night they have the show on live so you can watch the housemates, even though they're usually sleeping, but sometimes engaging in late-nite chit chat when they can't sleep. During my stay there, Celebrity Big Brother had just started. Face from A-Team was on it and so was Jermaine Jackson (Michael's bro). I thought that was interesting, seeing as how they're not British. I didn't really know the other contestants, except Jo from S Club 7. This version seemed really lame. Most of the celebrities didn't even seem to want to be there. In fact, I think during the course of it 4 of them walked off at different points.

So I eventually went back to sleep at like 4:30 or 5. What an eventful day...

We can't make up our minds...

OK...so, last I heard I am still preaching on Feb 18th, but it is at a mystery location. sorry teresa!

Attention! Attention!

If you are coming to hear me preach on Feb 18th, I wouldn't be so excited...looks like I will probably be bumped to the 25th. I'll keep you posted.

The "kids" were buzzed - Day Four

I woke up Sunday morning refreshed and ready to take on the world. I went downstairs to find the kids playing video games with Robyn. They were playing a game called "Buzz!"


"Hosted by the computer animated, ever-smiling Buzz and his assistant Rose, the game makes it seem like you are in an actual quiz show, complete with buzzers, theme songs and canned audience clapping/laughter." - Wikipedia.

Those are the buzzers that you use instead of regular controllers. I was amazed. I had never seen such devices! I got to join in on the action and slaughtered the competition. We were even playing the Music version which has a lot of English bands I had never heard of. Why couldn't they make something like this for Canada??!? How frustrating...

Tonight was New Year's so everyone was getting excited for the festivities. "Grandpa" gave Robyn money to buy some beer, so she, the "daughter", the "youngest son", and I went in search of some. We went to the nearest small village place, but the store was closed! We had to move on to some place else that was bigger. It was there that we found the beer! Boy, that was an exciting story!!!! I did enjoy driving around and seeing the neighborhood though.

The "youngest son" wanted to play Monopoly, but no one else did, so instead we watched a movie. Can you guess which one??? It was Mary Poppins!!! I really enjoyed it, it was much better than the play. As the day progressed the topic of magic tricks somehow surfaced and right away I was excited to show off some of my skills. It wasn't long before we were amusing each other with various card tricks and pulling balls of light out of our noses and magically making toothpicks form into stars. I should mention at this point that Robyn was not nearly as amused by this as me and the "children" (let's just say I was on top of the world and Robyn was rolling her eyes).


I've been doing magic since I was a kid and it was incredible to meet people who were actually amazed by it! There was only one other time in all my life when someone was impressed by my magic. I was doing a card trick for Dennis involving my "magic hoodie". You take a card from the deck, memorize it, put it back, I pass the deck through my magic hoodie and the card magically moves. This time I was still wearing the magic hoodie and I had the deck in my hand. So after I took the hoodie off Dennis says, "that would be fast if you did the trick already". I looked at him and flipped the top card showing his card had in fact already moved! I don't know how the magic hoodie works, but even passing the deck through the sleeve like that provides unpredictable results.

So anyways, the kids were having so much fun with the magic that they decided to put on a special "magic show" for our New Years Eve Bash. We had a lot of fun...I think everyone left with a sense of bewilderment and awe.


The food was amazing! They had prepared this huge spread of desserts and appetizers. Mouth-watering! Everyone was especially excited because this was the maiden voyage of their brand new chocolate fondue.


It was time for the countdown. We watched the London broadcast on the telly. The fireworks were amazing at the London Eye by the Parliament Buildings. We each had these exploding things that shot out stringy stuff. And, well, you know how things are in Europe...it wasn't long before the "kids" were downing the champagne. They're hyper enough as it is!


I have doctored these photos to protect the identity of the "Family".


Robyn wore her new outfit she got for Christmas. Love the pearls!


This dog barked at me a lot, but with my Dr. Doolittle charm I won her over in no time.

Thus ended 2006 and Day Four of my journey. Robyn and I stayed up kinda late chatting about life and such. Who could foresee what 2007 would bring us??

I'm preaching soon

If you're interested in hearing me preach I am scheduled for February 18, 2007. I'll try not to be boring.

I meet the "Family" - Day Three

I think there must have been something in that Irn-Bru cause I didn't sleep so well that night. I woke up at about 2am and had trouble falling back asleep. Then I kept going in and out of sleep until I decided to get up at about 7. I was sharing a room with Silas and Beck and that night I was sleeping in Silas' bed, Silas was in Beck's bed, and Beck was sleeping on the floor with a bunch of boxes walled around him?!? In the middle of the night I woke up to Beck crying. In his sleep he had smashed through the boxes and was now on the other side of the room. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I want to be over there" and pointed at his makeshift bed on the floor. I told him to crawl back then (stupid kids). He got back in his bed, I tucked him in and refitted the boxes around him. In the morning it was all destroyed again.

We played for a few hours until everyone else woke up. Had our breakfast, talked for a bit, and then back to downtown London we went! Our first stop was some big monument thing in the business district.

I wanted to climb it but Robyn was too wussy. Actually, I was sooo tired. We went to Starbucks and got ourselves something to help jolt our systems. I don't think it helped me much. Our next stop was to look at the Thames River and see the Tower Bridge and London Bridge.


After that we zipped back to the Parliament building area and I took some pictures.

Next stop was Buckingham Palace. We got there just as they were changing the guards. That was mildly exciting. There was a lot of people there!

It was now time to have some lunch and head over to the theatre to see Mary Poppins! This would also be my first encounter with...the "Family".

As we made our way into the theatre, Robyn spotted some of them and pointed them out to me, but it wasn't enough to make a first impression. Later on, when we found our seats, they made their way down the aisle and into my life (I don't know why I'm making this so dramatic, it wasn't that big a deal). Anyways, the kids were super excited to see Robyn. They showed her all the candy they had bought (which is a very big part of their lives) as well as a number of magic tricks they had bought (foreshadowing!). They didn't talk to me much at first, they were more excited to see Robyn of course, but after awhile I felt pretty comfortable talking to them.

The play began and our seats were pretty terrible. We were the absolute last row at the highest point in the whole place. It was soooo hot up there and my legs could hardly fit. When the play started I was impressed right away. The production was quite something. The set design and the costumes and special effects were incredible. They were all great singers and the dancing was choreographed quite well. But overall, I have to say it was pretty boring. I hadn't seen Mary Poppins for a very long time, so the story was new to me, but still, it didn't really pull me along for the ride. By the intermission I was ready to get out of there. It was something to see her flying though! So that was a little disappointing, but what can you do?!? I'm glad I got to experience it at least.

I took this photo of the National Gallery that evening

Afterwards we left to get our bags from the Watts' and head to King's Cross to meet up with the "Family" again for our voyage home on the "Flying Scotsman" (that's a train). Did you know King's Cross is where Harry Potter catches the Hogwart's Express??!? I found out just the other day that they have this set up for tourists:

Next time that'll be me pushing the cart!

The train ride was nice. In no time we were in Newark, but unfortunately there wasn't enough room in the car for all us. Robyn, the "Mom", the "Daughter", and I waited about an hour for the "Dad" to drive the others home and come back to pick us up. By the time we got back I was about ready to fall asleep. Nothing could prepare me, though, for what adventures awaited me the next day!!!

The End of a Great Day - Day Two (Part Two)

So after the wax museum, I quickly went to see if the Sherlock Holmes Museum was any good, but it didn't seem worth the 10 pounds. Robyn made some phone calls to figure out what we were going to do for New Years. We then went to this really cool restaurant/pub place. It was a great atmosphere, and I liked the food. So we made the decision not to stay in London for New Years for a few reasons:

1. It was now Friday. The trains would be closed on New Year's Day. So that meant we would have to stay in London until Tues (that's 4 more nights).
2. We didn't want to burden Phil & Ingrid with staying that long, because they and their kids were battling sickness.
3. Robyn's other friend only had a couch, so one of us would have to sleep on the floor.
4. We just weren't in the mood to stick around in those conditions.

So we decided to stay in London one more night and travel to Lincolnshire on Sat evening.

After lunch I'm not exactly sure what we did. My mind was a bit fuzzy for some reason...I think we went to the National Gallery next. They have a bunch of paintings there. We didn't spend a whole lot of time, I would like to go back when I'm more aware. Somehow or other we got to the Parliament buildings at about 4. In that area is Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. After that we roamed around Piccadilly Circus. Our main objective was to find the theatre where Mary Poppins was playing (cause we were going there the next day). For supper we went to McDonald's (I'm an addict!).

I had seen these signs for a play called "The 39 Steps" in Piccadilly Circus. One of Alfred Hitchcock's first movies was based on the book. I have that movie and it's pretty good, so I thought, let's check it out. When we got to the theatre we noticed these posters with different reviews on it. I don't remember what the exact quotes were (Robyn should hopefully post them soon), but they said things like "Hilarious" and "Funny". I couldn't remember the movie being that funny, so I didn't really know what to make of it. We decided to go and bought the cheapest seats we could find. One of the quotes that stood out to us was something like, "It goes down like Hannay's Whiskey & Soda." We both were intrigued...what does that even mean?!? None of us had tried a Hannay's Whiskey & Soda so we had no frame of reference. This set us on a mission!

We wandered around looking for a pub with a nice feel to it. We passed a few, but nothing grabbed our attention, until we got to this quaint little place off on its own. We went inside and asked for two Hannay's Whiskey & Sodas. The bartender had no clue what we were talking about. So we decided just to try a different brand of whiskey. We took our drinks and prepared to analyze it to understand how we might experience the play. All I remember was it didn't really taste like anything, it was like drinking air. Did that mean the play would be insignificant to me?? Would I sit through the play and not realize I was watching actors??? Robyn commented it reminded her of smoke...I think she had a bias coming into this against all whiskey. This wasn't a good sign before the play...

So we left the pub scratching our heads, what did this all mean?!? After puttering around until it was closer to showtime, we made our way into the theatre and into our own private box! When we had bought the tickets it had said there was "restricted view". We weren't sure if that meant a post in the way or what. So we get in our box and right away we realize we could hardly even see the stage! Haha, I had to lean over the edge the whole time and I still couldn't totally see everything!!!

But regardless of the poor seats and the mixed signals we got from our drinks, the play ended up being really funny! We had a blast, even sitting in the box was fun in it's own right. In the play there are about 150 different characters, but they had 4 actors playing all the roles. They were really good, and they made it enjoyable to watch.


"Am I rrrrrright sir?"

I began to realize that what we had read about this play was slightly misleading. One write up said, "Nothing has been cut from this spectacular premiere of Britain’s most spellbinding thriller—the legendary scenes include the chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape on the Forth Bridge, the first theatrical bi-plane crash ever staged and the death defying finale at a packed London Palladium." They had very little props so they had to really use their acting skills to make us believe they were at these certain locations. I don't want to ruin how they managed to get a bi-plane to crash on their small stage (you'll have to see it yourself!).


Notice they are not really in a car...

Also, I noted right away that the main character's last name was Hannay. In the play his drink of choice was guess what??? WHISKEY & SODA!!!!! Hannay was not a brand of whiskey!!!! I felt kinda stupid after that. But I still don't know what that review had to say about the play??!

That was good choice, I'm glad we went! Afterwards we made our way back to the Watts' residence. On the way there Robyn bought me some Irn-Bru...a very popular drink in Scotland. It was basically just like McD's orange drink but carbonated. Yum!!! I fell asleep wonderfully, because remember, I had overcome my jetlag just like that!


"Day two goes down like Roste's IRN-BRU." - West End Review

A fantastic day in London - Day Two (Part One)

I had a really good sleep the night before day two...looks like my plan to overcome jet lag is a success!!! I woke up and played with Silas for awhile. Then we had breakfast and off we went into London for what could be one of the best days of my life....

Our first stop was the Wax Museum! I had bought tickets online and booked them for that morning. On the internet people were commenting it's good to buy online cause the lineups can be long for the wax museum. Sounds ridiculous?!?!? That's what I thought, but I still did it. Once there we found the queue for prepaid tickets and it wasn't too bad, took us about 15 mins to get in. As we're standing in line, there's another line right beside leading up to the place where you purchase tickets at the door. That lineup didn't seem long to me at all, so I thought, guess it didn't really matter that we bought tickets online...until a guy came around the corner, "Attention, if you are waiting to buy tickets for the wax museum, you need to move over to this other queue! You are all queued behind people trying to get out of the rain! This is not the queue for the wax museum!" I couldn't believe it...all those people were standing in a fake line!!?! When they all moved I could see the real line which stretched forever in the other direction. Oh those poor people (but lucky us, we didn't even have to stand in the rain!!!). I can't remember exactly, but I heard that queue was at least an hour long (correct me if I'm wrong Robyn).

So we're finally inside. I wasn't sure how Robyn would take to the whole experience, but I was going to make her take my picture anyways. Once we got out of the elevator into the first main area Robyn turned absolutely giddy! It was a side of her I think I only ever see at camp. She would look to her left, "Oh, look it's that guy!!!" and then to her right, "I can't believe she's here!!!". Haha, it was too funny. Right away she wanted me to take pictures of her with different people. Here are some of the good ones:


Robyn actually has a friend that looks like Jessica Simpson


Here she is performing for Simon Cowell and some other guy


It's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Greg!!!


Robyn makes her move on Beckham while some mystery kid distracts Posh Spice


Robyn finally makes contact with a certain Irishman


I'm touching her bum!


...and Tom is grabbing mine!

After the first area they had a section for Pirates of the Carribean. Orlando and Captain Jack looked really good, but Keira was hurtin' so I didn't take her picture.




The next room was different celebrities. They had this huge Hulk wax figure, which I'm sure they wouldn't have made if they had realized how horrible that movie was. No one took his picture.


Did you know we have the same size hands?
"I'm a cybernetic organism: living tissue over a metal endoskeleton!"


I was so honoured to finally meet the Master

After that was a room with more historical figures. My camera battery died halfway through, I was pretty choked cause I was just getting into it! I forgot to charge it the night we got in.


I should have worn a tie.


Great minds share the same hairstyle...


After that was the chamber of horrors. Haha, online I was a little confused when I was buying the tickets. We had to pay extra to go into the chamber of horrors live. I thought that meant we had to pay to go into the chamber of horrors (which is one of my favorite parts of wax museums) so I told Robyn she was sucking it up cause I wanted to go in. Turns out, the chamber of horrors is free, its just the live part that costs money. Haha, hahahaha, oh boy, if I had known that...I once took Chanel into a live horror show like that, big mistake! Now I'm dragging Robyn in and I don't even really care about it that much. Poor girl! They liked to pick on her cause she was freaking out. In the insane asylum section this crazy girl came between us and wouldn't let Robyn get by. She kept muttering stuff about wanting to eat her and rip her apart or something like that. Haha, oh man....let's just say after we finally got out of there Robyn had to take a little timeout to compose herself.

Then we went into the actual chamber of horrors, which was alright, but not nearly as good as the Victoria one. So far that's my favorite.


I can't wait to go back...

After the chamber we got onto these moving taxi car things Disneyland style that took us through the history of London. I thought it was fascinating. I liked the part when everything was on fire. At the beginning of the ride we noticed a tv screen showing pictures of people in the cars, so we knew there would be a camera up ahead and we planned what our pose would be. I thought it would be funny for Robyn to choke me, cause then all the people in the line could laugh at our picture. As we're coming around the corner at one part of the ride we hear in a strong british accent, "Oy! Oy! Wew gowng taykca pahehfqo!" Then there was this Santa Claus figure and we're both like, "What's that all about?" when suddenly we hear the camera go off taking our picture. We then realize, the voice said something like, "Oy! Oy! We're going to take your photo!" which would have been nice to understand so we could do our pose. Dang it!!!

So that part was done and then it's on to this planetarium type theatre to watch a movie. We probably waited 15 mins to get into this movie, which turned out being only 8 mins long. It was a claymation short about some aliens who love Earth cause it's filled with stars (celebrities). Then they come to Earth to see them, and they cut the screen out and pop over with cameras and we all waved as they took our photo. It was so dumb, there were plenty of jokes scattered throughout it, but no one laughed or made any noise or anything. It was completely lame! And I think the message of the flick was really that we're lame cause we like celebrities so much that we paid to look at their wax figures. Good one...

So the Wax Museum in itself was such a huge adventure it deserved a post dedicated solely to it. The rest of the day will be posted next....