Charting the Course

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
-- Paul Theroux

Someone, somewhere, has said that planning a trip is half the fun of traveling.  It was that, or party planning, or wedding planning...  Something like that.  I'm not sure who or where or what was being planned that was half the fun of the event, but I can say this, with absolute certainty:

These people?  Are full of crap.

Planning is torture, especially for someone as impulsive and flighty as I can be.

At this point, I feel that I would be remiss if I didn't explain the whole impulsive process that's taking me overseas.  Those of you who don't know how nerdy I can be, strap in.  It's about to get real.

So I'm a big Doctor Who fan.  Please don't run away, I promise not to go on and on about it (at the moment).  Anyway, one of the actors who played the Doctor, David Tennant, is also well known in the UK for being a Shakespearean actor.  He's actually a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company based out of Stratford-Upon-Avon, and he starred in Hamlet a few years ago with Sir Patrick Stewart, who played the evil King Claudius (better known in the States as Picard from Star Trek or Xavier from X-Men).  I've seen the movie adaption the BBC made due to the popularity of the run, and if you're theatrically inclined, I highly recommend it, if only for the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy and Claudius' prayer scene.

But I'm getting off on a tangent.  I apologize, I do that from time to time.

For Christmas this year, I decided to gift myself with a passport.  I had multiple reasons behind this move: One, it never hurts to have another form of ID.  Two, my mother and grandmother went to Ireland last year, and I want to be ready if I get a phone call from my grandmother going, "Ireland, next June!"  Three, a passport is good for ten years.  If I get one, I'll use it before it expires.

Traveling overseas, for me, has never been a question of if but of when.

Two weeks after I applied for my passport, I found out that Tennant was doing a production of Much Ado About Nothing with his former Doctor Who costar, Catherine Tate.  Tate is a comedienne who is better known in the UK because of The Catherine Tate Show, and she's honestly one of the funniest people on the planet.

So. Two of my favorite actors, in my favorite Shakespeare play.  And did I mention that they're playing Beatrice and Benedick, the two best characters ever written?

Confession time: I want to be Beatrice if when I grow up.  Okay, actually I want to be Emma Thompson, who played Beatrice in Kenneth Branagh's adaption, but that's an unattainable dream; I'll settle for being the fictitious, sharp-tongued little shrew.

When I found it out, I announced at dinner, "Going to London this summer!"  My family thought it was a joke; and to be honest, I was only joking at first.

Then I started actually looking into it, and could afford to go.

So now here I am, with a plane ticket and a play ticket and a vague idea with what I want to do while I'm over there.

Taking a break after the first day of Comic Con, June 2009, San Diego, California (I believe we were at The Blarney Stone Pub, and I was well over the age of 21)

I'll admit it:  When I bought the ticket, the parental units were not pleased.  But I knew Mom, at least, was on board when she looked at me and said, "Got us an appointment to go see a travel agent!"

That's right.  Us.

The agent...  Well.  Not to knock the South, but sometimes getting all dressed up for work doesn't seem to cross some people's minds down here.  Mom and I hit up the agency when, apparently, all the agents were out conducting field research; there were -- maybe -- two people in the entire office, and neither of them were dressed in what you'd expect an agent to be wearing.  I have never been to a travel agency personally, but I've peeked through windows on occasion and I've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so I was expecting...  Business casual.  Possibly a suit and tie.  At the very least, a clean pair of jeans or khakis and a polo.  Something that makes you look professional, or at least trustworthy with someone's travel itinerary.

What I got was a gray tee-shirt and cotton shorts.  Actual shorts, not British it's-really-underwear shorts.

He was friendly enough -- teased me a little about going to London, mostly because he lived in France for a few years and that mutual French/English hatred is dying a long, hard, slow death.  I admitted to wanting to go to Dublin, and he rolled his eyes in that typical tourist sort of way.  I'm sure everyone who goes to London who has even a distant relation to anything Irish feels the pull when you're that close to the homeland.  He conducted a quick-spot interview, asked what hotels I had looked at, places I'd like to go, et cetera.  I mostly have NO CLUE as to what I'm going to be doing, but I pretty much know how long I'm going to stay at one place before moving to another, and I have plenty of room to change my mind and spend another day at one place if I just fall absolutely in love.

"Well, it sounds like you don't want a lot of structure," he said, my mother nodding along in agreement next to him, "and it pretty much sounds like you've figured out what you want.  But what I'm going to do is give you some itineraries.  Read over 'em, get some ideas, and if you find an actual tour that you'd like to go on, let me know and we'll book it."

And then, and then, and then.  He dropped the f-bomb.

Now, given the chance and pushed in just the right direction, I can swear like the proverbial sailor.  Most of my writing is littered with cuss words.  What can I say?  I work blue.  More and more, I find myself biting my tongue in public, around children...  At work....

Because it's not.

Bleeding.

Appropriate.

Anyway.

He got up from behind his desk and started listing the tour companies he had information on, and when he listed one, said -- and I quote, "I'll be happy to have that one off my hands, it's as heavy as a f*@#ing Bible," as he walked out the door.

Mom and I are sitting next to each other on the couch.  I can't quite bring myself to look over at her, because I know, I know, I know the look that is painted across her face -- that wide-eyed, gobsmacked, My-Ears-Must-Be-Broken-Because-There-Is-No-Way-You-Actually-Just-Said-That expression.

In emoticons, it looks like this:  O__________O

I meanwhile, decide to focus on the small desk clock, a red London phone booth with a clock face set in it.  Because I know if I look over, I'm going to bust out laughing.

Like this:   XD

"... Did he just say f*@#?"

"Yes.  Yes, he did."

"Good thing your grandmother's not here.  She really hates the f*@# word."

We then proceeded to spend the rest of the time while he was getting the f*@#ing brochures feeling the plants in his office to see if they were real or not.

I am pleased to announce that he'd opted for the economical, easy-to-maintain silk ivy in a pot of moss, so no poor potted plants are subjected to profanity on a daily basis.