Back blogging and coming up in the world

Hi, y'all. No I'm not back in the states but in Basingstoke, Hampshire UK. Lots has happened since I last posted a blog. We have moved twice, I got a job, Al went back to Aus (sadly for his darling Aunty Pam's funeral) and came back (thank God) and now we are house sitting in Basingstoke and looking for a car.

We moved for one night to another hostel and then to a so called holiday let for the same price. It was a bed sit with an insy winsy kitchen and a bathroom that was down the hall. We had our own key and didn't have to share with any one else but the shower didn't work and the bog was so close to the bath Al had to put his feet in the tub to crap. To wash my hair I had to sit in the bath and pour a bucket of water on my head. No offence to any poms reading this but our experience so far is that English plumbing is the worlds worst. Every shower we have used has been bloody useless. Although we at least have hot water and reasonable water pressure here in Basingstoke.

I have a job in Twickenham where I work as a care manager for a people with learning disabilities team. The staff are friendly and helpful and two lovely Irish nurses helped me move all our stuff to Basingstoke while Al was gone. Apart from having one case from hell, the work is reasonable and I am starting to get into my role. I still have no idea how the NHS, Housing and Social Security systems work but I'm working on it. The down side is that I leave Basingstoke at 6:14am on the bus to the station and after two train rides I arrive in Twickenham at 8:33am. Coming home is a bitch because the train arrives about 3 minutes after the bus leaves and I have to wait 20 mins for the next bus. If I don't catch the right train from Twickenham I don't get home until 8pm. Glad I'm not going to be doing this for ever.

We hired a car this weekend and drove around looking at car yards to buy a car and then gave up and went sight seeing. I have some lovely pictures of Old Basing. This is a very picturesque place. I will post pictures later. Anyway, its Sunday night and if I don't hit the sack by 9pm I'll be wrecked tomorrow at work. See you all anon.

Galviston Oh Galviston

Well Galviston is not quite what the song evokes. We spent 3 days sweltering in a public camping shelter. It was very tropical weather, raining in the afternoon and humid as hell. The town is really flat and below sea level. At one time it was devastated by a cyclone along the lines of what happened to New Orleans. There is a long road running parallel to the beach and we saw some amazing looking beach houses. They were all different shapes and pastel colours and looked like something from a film set. I would have loved to transplant one in Bateman's Bay. They were a bit out of our price range for property starting at around $800,000.

Al was very keen to visit the Ocean Star Off Shore Oil Rig and Museum. We spent at least 4 riveting hours there (yawn) looking at all sorts of deep sea diving, oil drilling stuff. Al loved it. They had an oil men wall of fame and George Bush Snr was on it. I looked for Jed Clampett but he had not been given the acclaim that he truly deserved.

Back in the States; The Alamo

We nursed the car to San Antonio where we paid to get the fuel problem fixed.$1000 later it went like a dream. While we were there we stayed in a very interesting B&B ( used to be a youth hostel) called General Bullis House. It was a magnificent old mansion built by General Bullis who was a famous Civil War General instrumental in capturing Geronimo. Have a look at the link to the Bullis House homepage but don't be taken in by the glorious pool pic it was so green we didn't think it was safe to swim in. While the house was lovely and you could imagine the grandeur of the past, our room was in the attic and was about 100f with a noisy struggling air con in the window that had to be left on the whole time just to cope with the heat. The area the house was in had a faded glory sort of feel to it. There were some beautiful old houses there but most were run down and would probably cost a fortune to renovate.

We actually liked San Antonio. We went for a river cruise in the city centre. Civic could do with canals linked with the lake and meandering through Garema place and out to the museum before flowing back into the lake. It would be a great tourist attraction. Someone should talk to Jon
Stanhope about it. Of course we visited the Alamo, saw Davey Crockett memorabilia. He came from Tennessee and after visiting Tennessee you wonder why he would ever go out of that beautiful lush state to fight in Texas. The link tells you all about it.
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Do we ever get out of Texas

Well, yes we did and travelled to many other great US destinations which I will endeavour to up date you on but right now we are actually in London.

We arrived on 1 August 2008. It was 17c and raining and has barely stopped since. To be honest we have been a bit flat since we arrived. The USA, while it has its warts is vibrant, energetic and in your face and London feels stodgy in comparison. We have been living in a hostel which costs a fortune. 180pounds a week for a small room with a double bunk, a sink and a fridge. The other people here are like us; broke, looking for work and somewhere cheaper to live just younger. Alan took down every scaffold number on the buildings that we saw and has managed to get a job with a scaffolding company doing casual work. I have my name with the recruitment agency and am waiting to see what happens. If I hear nothing in the next week I will send my own CV out to different places.

We have been looking for a flat and have had an unpleasant encounter with someone who after a few emails was very certain that we should go to Western Union and send money to each other so he could be sure we had the cash. He sounded more and more sus so we told him we were no longer interested. A lot of people find work and accommodation on a website called Gumtree but I think there may be plenty of shiesters on there ready to rip you off. The real estate agents here charge 79pounds just to release the stuff on their books. I think its probably better to pay it than have to put up with these other people.

Anyway we have been into town and had a look at the tower bridge and walked around Kensington Gardens and the Kensington Palace but we cant afford to go inside yet. We also wandered around Greenwich yesterday which is a lovely area. The Cutty Sark which was moored there unfortunately burned and only the hull is left. Such a shame.

I will keep adding our other adventures in America as I can. Its been difficult getting to an internet spot and having the time to do it. So sorry if its out of sequence.

Bad place to break down

We left El Paso heading East to San Antonio where we intended to stop and have the car fixed. The heat was still up in the high 90's and we were on 4 lanes of an insanely busy highway 10 travelling west. We were only 15 miles from Mexico and the Texas Border Security patrol funnelled the four lanes of traffic into one by blocking the lanes with huge red plastic barrels. At this point where the four lanes became one our bloody car decided to clap out again with three miles of traffic behind it and about half a kilometre to the checkpoint. We put the hazards on and began walking toward the checkpoint. We were met by a border patrol trooper with a smile and a hand on his pistol asking "Y'all have a problem?". We explained the car situation and that we wanted to bypass the check point because we didn't want to push it through the checkpoint in front of 500 eighteen wheelers. He took us to the check point. Inside were about 10 armed cops who listened to our story and decided to let us evade the check point. They checked our passports and then drove us in the patrol car back to our car, stopped the traffic and allowed us to go on the empty lanes to bypass the checkpoint. We had explained that the car went if the fuel tank was completely full and that we could get fuel at the next stop about four miles down the road. We headed for the servo and while filling up we noticed that the Patrol Car had followed us, presumably to see that we did what we had said we would do.

Down in the West Texas town of El Paso ....

After Alan felt a little better we decided to push on to El Paso, Texas. On the way the bloody car clapped out in temperatures of up to 110 f on the blacktop. At a place called Truth or Consequences we called the AAA and had the car tabletopped to Las Cruces. A guy at a Honda dealership there, said to put wooden clothes pegs on the metal part of the fuel line feeding the injectors. He reckoned that it was heat evaporation causing the problem. We followed his advice and limped on to El Paso, where Al had a rumble guts relapse so we booked into a very seedy hotel. The hotel was built in 1959 and at that time was top class but it had long seen better days and commanded a hefty $27.00 a night. While the air conditioning worked and it was clean there was a very large mysterious stain on the bathroom floor that we deduced was the blood stain from a drug deal gone bad, backed up by a huge piece of plywood covering the absent window in the bedroom and frequent patrol visits to the car park by the local sherriff.

Lying; dying

Because of Al's irreverent attitude to my holy sand gathering, God afflicted him for the whole of the next week in Santa Fe and later in El Paso and then in Fort Stockton (Texas) with terrible diarrhoea and vomiting. He initially took refuge in the Santa Fe camp ground under the shade of a motley tree. It was 106 f (in the shade) and the ravens were literally circling above him. Then the cheeky buggers did a low level run and flew over the top of him. He feebly waved his fist and said "I'm not dead yet".