Our Adventures in the Cotswolds or ‘Oh my lovely Kotzwald’

XXIV

‘I only had a couple of drinks last night.’

Dan Courtney

***

This time my blog will have to dive down into the depths of black humour and I apologise in advance. For those of you who have quite a vivid imagination I advise stopping at the point when you feel the vomit surging up your throat so you can make a run for the toilet in time. Another option would be to place a bucket right next to you. Anyway.

1. This is us in bed, on a Sunday morning at 7 am. We have booked a train that will be leaving Paddington Station at 9.30 am. The train will take us to a nice place in the Cotswolds region where we are planning on cycling for the day and staying in an Airbnb over night. Thanks to Bank Holiday Monday, we will be cycling the next morning as well and return to London in the evening. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? 

2. Now, there is a slight issue with this plan. Dan has been to a school reunion the night before and come home in a rather "happy mood". Whilst I am putting on my cycling clothes I observe him taking his time to get to stage 1 (out of bed). Somehow I feel that there is a tiny chance that I will have to go cycling all by myself.

3. After having had a glass of water, Dan has to pay the toilet a short visit. Having known Dan's stomach for quite a while, I am quite good at judging the degree of his hangovers. He's definitely had too much beer or whisky - outbursts like this only happen if his intake of 

alcoholic gluten the night before has been too high. This means that he might be curling up in bed for the next five hours. So much for our 'romantic' trip together.

4. However, it seems that I have underestimated my hero. A pale ghost, he packs his rucksack (who knows what he's stuffing in there) and follows me out into the grey Sunday morning. London can be dangerous on a bike when you are sober so you have to put extra caution into your actions when this soberness is slightly, erm, blurred. Slowly, ever so slowly, we cross London from Southeast to Northwest, a journey of about an hour when you have to wait for a tortoise cycling behind you.

5. Paddington Station is crowded with people and whilst I'm enjoying my breakfast bagel, Dan is hunched over his bike and trying to focus on the station clock and the train times.
‘Breakfast?’ I ask him, munching away.
‘No thanks, later mebbe’, he declines politely, trying to avoid smelling my delicious salmon-fried egg bagel.
Finally, there it is - our first train that will take us to Swindon. Due to space restraints I will have to refer you to picture no. 3 again. Just imagine the whole thing on a train.

6/7. Please note that after the change to a regional train in Swindon, I have to make yet another reference to picture no. 3. As I feel sorry for not supplying you with more image material, here's a photo of Dan posing on the train, pretending to be OK.

Every nice train journey has to come to an end at some point. This is when the actual fun starts. We are cycling through beautiful, wonderfully peaceful countryside. The rapeseed is in full bloom, distributing its intensive, artificially sweet smell. 

The blue sky is interspersed only by a few clouds, reminding us of the sheep below who are roaming the scrumptiously juicy meadows for the greenest grass and yellow buttercups.

I can't compare these endless landscapes with anything but my inner image of Middle Earth. I want to change my bike with one of the horses that are watching us from their pastures and jump over the streams.

Living in London means dealing with constant distractions and air pollution from cars and busses. The Cotswolds are only 1.5 hours away from the capital but at first I couldn't quite comprehend what a different world it was.

8. How wonderful then, when the only noise you hear comes from the chirping birds, our bike chains, the wind in the trees and ...
Oh wait.
How could I forget that someone's stomach is still not sorted and we have to have regular breaks next to the underbrush. Moreover, the pace of our journey still hasn't improved from our London crossing, so I make a decision. It's time for a Coke break.




9. I don't know how, but Coca Cola always sorts Dan's terrible hangovers out in the end. We are roasting in the sunshine in the back garden of a cafe in Tetbury. I can finally have normal conversations with him so we discuss which route to choose. Don't think that I do hangover-sitting like that for free. Oh no, it comes at the price of a fine dining experience and while I'm slurping my ginger beer, I'm already looking forward to the pub later on.

Before I leave you all with my utmost recommendation that cycling trips should not start with a heavy head, randomly packed rucksacks and constant ‘toilet’ breaks, here are some more lovely pictures of the Cotswolds. 

*This photo was taken on the next day (Monday).
The problem with people is that they never learn from their mistakes.

‘And anyway, you're not from here, why don't you go back to where you've come from?'

XXIII

‘And anyway, you're not from here, why don't you go back to where you've come from?’

*

The world is changing, and not in a good way. This statement might seem far fetched but I'll explain what I mean in a bit.

First, let's start with this little episode that happened to me and my boyfriend on the way home from the pub the other day. There's a little boat moored in the docks close to where we live. Up until a few months ago it used to be "England's Only Boat Pub" with regular karaoke nights. The only time we went there we didn't stay very long, probably due to the drunk middle aged people everywhere. Since it closed down a couple of years ago we've never seen anyone on board, until a few days ago, when the boat was occupied by a few squatters. They put up a pirate flag and a sign explaining that they are using the empty boat as their home.

Having grown up in Austria, where houses are occupied regularly, I'm more than used to such a scenario. I can't say that I completely agree with people doing that but to be honest, in my opinion they can stay until they're kicked out by the owner. As long as they don't damage anything I don't see any harm, and understanding the precarious London living situation obviously helps.

At any rate, as we were walking home from the pub, we heard shouts coming from the boat. A naturally human sense of curiosity urged us to walk on. A middle aged woman was yelling at someone on the boat. We were only able to gather the words '... and I'll be your worst fucking nightmare!!' before she stomped around the corner and hurried past us. At the same moment, a man shouted at the occupants: 'You'll have something big coming your way!'

Wide-eyed, we looked at each other but kept walking so as not to get involved. However, at that moment, a woman in her early thirties, who was looking down from her window, asked the man why they had to be so horrible to the occupants. 'Mind your own business, love, will ya?', was the response she got. At this point we were slowing down properly to listen to the full argument.

'Why are you swearing at them?' the young woman asked. She had a slight accent and dark hair which made us think she might have been southern European. 

'Why does it concern you, you silly girl?' The middle aged woman had apparently come back. Together with the man they were now focusing their irritation on the young woman who had dared to defend the occupants. 

'But they are not doing any harm', the young woman objected.

'This is our community', the man shouted. 'We used to go to this pub, you know? We care about it. They're on the boat illegally!'

Now they were yelling at her so much that the young woman's voice was drowned out. The last sentence we heard before the two buggered off was 'And what's it to you anyway, you're not even from here! So why don't you go back to where you've come from? Like everyone else around here!'

*

In the light of the recent presidential elections in Austria (we just escaped, by the skin of our teeth, a right-wing president which might not have been the best for a country with our past) and the emerging monster of Brexit (the referendum on whether Britain remains in/leaves the EU will be held on 23rd June) I am more than alarmed by such an outbreak of oral violence. It's not the first time I've seen the unpleasantness of xenophobia but it was usually from a distance or on TV/YouTube and never in London.

Since I've moved here, this city has been so generous, so embracing, particularly for foreigners like me. As a European citizen, I'm very happy to be able to live and work here and I pay taxes just like anyone else; however, the referendum has revealed a lot of people who think differently. "Those Europeans", and "migrants in general", "take away our jobs". This is, of course, the usual argument for people who don't inform themselves. It's so much easier to blame someone else for their problems and unfortunately, politicians and media know how to stir up sentiments.

So here we are again, in the first quarter of the 21st century, with the right on the rise in several countries including the United States. The scapegoats are different to what they were roughly 70 years ago, but the arguments aren't.