By this point, we were beginning to get acclimatized and we were pretty much museumed out so it was time for a new challenge.
We rented a car.
As I believe I've mentioned before, it was small and green, had no cupholders and redlined at about 400 miles per hour. The steering wheel was on the right side, that is to say, the right side, and it had a sunroof. I believe it was a Ford Fiesta, but I can't remember now for sure. It was a comfy, zippy little car in any case, with a lively, sporty exhaust note. The only real problem with the car was the lack of cupholders.
Suddenly, Chris got bored with writing email and went for a walk.
He walked under stone bridges and alongside an ancient canal. He bought a kitkat in the local Spar store, then returned to the University where he bought two orders of chips with malt vinegar and salt for 1 pound 50 and took them to the Pub where he was to meet his betrothed, the divine Miss V. She and her babelicious colleagues were so grateful, two of them kissed him right on the face when they left.
Then he valiantly had a nap and then went surfing on the ever-exciting net where he found an absolutely brilliant text-editor for windows. He and his cohort, Mr. "Sandpaper", had been searching for just such a text editor for months. Up to this point there had been nothing to rival the amazing and anointed by God text-editor BBEdit which is only available (perhaps justly) for Macintosh. He sent an email off to Sandpaper, wrote a quick perl program just to see if it was really as cool as it pretended, then ran off into the cobblestone streets to rejoice.
In the midst of his rejoicing, he remembered he was supposed to do some shopping and so darted off to Sainsbury's where he bought potatoes, onions, bread, eggs, lemon juice, tonic water, and Bulgarian Merlot.
The Bulgarian Merlot was consumed during and apres dinner with Vicki's roommate Izzy and her friend Ian. At some point Ian left to get some liqueor and ice cream while Vicki washed the dishes and Izzy phoned her sister in Leeds. During this break Chris finished off his email message for the day and signed off with,
Cheers, Mate,
Chris
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while you might miss it."
-- Ferris Bueller