Troll composition

This is going to have to be pretty much completely redone, but this is where we're at for elements. I'm also going to have a male younger troll coming up from the back too - just head and shoulders. Maybe two of them, depending on how my muse feels...

Very close now...

The clothes are still only really blocked in, but those and a bit more work on the hair will see this pretty much finished!

Troll update

Not done yet, but at least it has a bit of colour. This will eventually go in a version of the cave I posted way back when. I love my boyfriend, he buy me wacom.

Progress

Still need to do more detail - hair, clothes, features etc - but we've got the background in, and the shape of the hair.

Two more Yargs

Ok Pike, here are two more Yargs. I think they are both much better shaped, and look much more like what you wanted. As I mentioned, I am working in quite a different way with these two, so theoretically they should turn out looking quite cool, and much more realistic than the first one would have.

Basically, I am about to get time constrained, so I am putting these up for you to choose which one I develop in to Yarg, rather than something which looks like a gross pink smudgy blob. Shoulders can be changed, as can skin colours, and on both of them the detail will be much better (no black lines in these ones). Obviously one is more detailed than the other, but try to ignore that and decide which one's expression you like best.

Yarg III (click on image to enlarge)




Yarg II (click on image to enlarge)

Back to heads

Well, obviously I am home. I was going to post a summation post to do with my travels, but there are so many other things to do since I got home.

So, this blog is going back to its original function: showing people pictures. This is a (so far unfinished) tentative picture of Yarg, a mischeivous pyromaniacal hobbit, for Pikel.

Wails and Other Surprises

I spent a few days last week in Wales. Cardiff, to be precise. It was horrible. I think this is not entirely Cardiff's fault - it was more a case of whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. A horrible hostel, some horrible people, some creepy people and some downright unsanitary people unfortunately weighed more heavily in the balance than did the nice people I met and the cool Victorian-era faux-medieval castles I saw. I won't condemn the whole of Wales, but what I have seen of it left a nasty taste in my mouth - sorry Wales.

Since my almost indecently joyful return to London I have kind of hung around for a few days, but on Saturday I went to Brighton! It was great! I was rather surprised at this - I had decided that all continental beach towns were tawdry, over-inflated tourist traps with no more soul than a Simpson-Grierson lawyer. It turns out that if you can forget that these places are meant to have anything to do with what we Kiwis think of as a beach, they can actually be quite cool in their own way.

I am now in Paris, for the third time, and I have a cold! I don't seem to have much luck here - I've had bad weather or a cold both times (the weather is lovely this time, touch wood)! Still, it hasn't lost its charm and I am enjoying it, and am looking forward to seeing the catacombs and the (inside of) the Louvre this time.

After Paris I catch the eurostar back to London for my final weekend in London. I'm going out with Jamie on the Saturday, and possibly having drinks with all the people I've met in London on Friday or Sunday evening. I leave on Monday, in the evening thank god, so at least I don't have to rush. A week in Brisbane, and then... home!

Dreaming Spires

The air in Cambridge is rarer than in other parts of the country. It seems to be thinned out by its being spread across generations of be-spired buildings and their inhabitants, whom one can imagine all still inhabit the place, just a step to the side...

Poetic pretensions aside, it was a great day out. Tony and I got on the bike nice and early... well, sort of early... and rode up in the brilliant sunshine. Lunch was had at a place which didn't serve chips with everything (they exist! Wow!), which had a great view of the road for watching people, and deciding which were tourists, who went to the University, and which of the old mad homeless men were tenured professors.

The King's College Chapel

After lunch we went to see King's College Chapel. This "Chapel" (read: private Cathedral) was pretty amazing, but doesn't stand out as the coolest one I've seen. The way out took us in to the grounds proper, where we wandered the paths - they actually have "keep off the grass" signs! - and watched punters pass on the river Cam.

The Grounds of King's College

People punting on the Backs, as seen from the King's College grounds

Avoiding touts, we made our way down the crowded streets to where the punts start. We got in to a boat with ten other people and proceeded to be poled up and down the river by a very dextrous young man, who regaled us with tales of the colleges, and the odd gem detailing reasons why Cambridge is better than "the Other Place".Our punt, with the Cambridge "Bridge of Sighs". It connects some of the student accomodation to the exam halls.

After our punt, we went to a pub called the Eagle for a quick cooling orange-and-lemonade before the long ride back to London. A sign near our seat proclaimed that the table next to ours is where DNA was discovered and officially announced. It said that the two professors who came up with the idea ate dinner there together six nights a week. Presumambly the other night their mothers cooked for them. And so ended my enlightening day in Cambridge.

EDIT: Also, I have just added some more photos to the posts from "Ogle Castle" and up. Enjoy!

Lake District

It is the stuff of poetry - striding across windy moors, over purple heather and scrub, climbing scree slopes and finally coming out above a vast, moody lake, the view of which inspired Wordsworth, Keats, and... some other dudes.

Unfortunately, it all remained in the poetry. It rained, horribly, and the only views we got were of mist-shrouded valleys which Andy swore had lakes in them. We tried to get out to do some striding, but were blown directly back in to the car before we had even properly made it out of the car park. We huddled in the car to eat our picnic, then resigned ourselves to driving the lakes rather than walking them.

In the Battle of Peugot vs. Road, Road won.

Luckily, Cockermouth (the little town we were staying in) has almost as many pubs as people, and two breweries, so time spent indoors was by no means wasted. I have now been indoctrinated in the ways of the British warm flat beer, which they call ale. I kind of like it. It isn't the kind of thing you'd drink at home, of course, but in an old pub with blackened beams and a fireplace, while the wind howls outside and rain lashes against the window panes (and this is in summer!), you just can't drink cold beer - it is too cold!

I'm back in London now, and going to try to see as much as I can before I go to Cardiff for a bit of Welsh next week. Twenty-eight days until I'm home!

Again we confirm that forward planning is a good thing, and winging it brings its own 'rewards'

Well, my last posts have all been a bit brief and uninformative, so I thought it was time I got something up telling you where in the world I am, and what I've been up to. Not much, to be honest. Hence the short posts.

I got back from my Cornwall trip with Tony and hung out with him for a couple of days. Then, to save some money (this is the only reason, honest. I'm not a geek.) I went to stay with my friend Jamie in Kilburn, and played Oblivion all day every day for a week. I knew that wouldn't make a very good blog post. "Today I killed seven goblins, twelve mudcrabs, three slaughterfish, four bandits, and was killed by a troll. I hadn't saved so I took out my frustrations on Jamie's toilet." Fascinating stuff.

On the Sunday I had to go out to get some more blue dye because almost all of the colour had gone - it was starting to look a bit of an ectoplasm-green kind of colour. I met Antona, Andy and Tony on the way there for lunch, and then (because I found that the hair place in Camden was closed, and I decided that I might as well see some sun) I went out to a festival with them afterward. That was pretty much all I did that week, apart from going out again the next day on a slightly more successful mission to get dye, hence the second pic of me with blue hair.

On Wednesday, after a full seven days of Oblivion (in which I got maybe a sixth through the main quest - waah!) I left for Northumberland. Newcastle was exactly like the place you would imagine Geordies to come from: loud, brash, full of grotty cheap bars and strip clubs, but friendlier than anywhere else in the whole world. I found Ogle Castle, as I sort-of described in the previous post, and then moved on.

A main road in Newcastle. This is the pretty part of the city.

I had heard from some friends I made on my Contiki trip - hi Val, hi Matt! - who are living in Glasgow, and I decided it would be cool to go out with them once more before I left. Newcastle is kind-of almost in the neighbourhood, so I told them I was coming up for the weekend and that they would have to entertain me. I did, and they did, and it was great! Drunken pictionary... always good!Val and Matt (his trousers are ripped, he doesn't have three legs) hanging out in their tenement.

Unfortunately, when I had booked my ticket to Newcastle I hadn't really planned it all that well... or, to be honest, at all! What I should have done was gone to Glasgow first, stayed there four days including the weekend, then to Newcastle, and from there to Cockermouth (yes, laugh, go on) where I am meeting Antona and Andy and Tony for a few days in the Lakes District. What I did was just book my ticket from London straight to Newcastle, so I then had to rush getting to my castle (which, because I was only there for one day, involved taxi-ing - £££! -rather than the one-a-day public transport). I then spent the weekend in Glasgow, which was highly enjoyable but which left me a week away from meeting Antona and co., but too close by to justify going back down to London...

The only good thing about Newcastle - easy access to Hadrian's Wall. It's just not five days' worth of fun.

As a stop-gap I decided to book myself in to a place sort of on the way, because there looked like there wasn't too much to do in Cockermouth. Carlisle looked like the biggest place which was in the right area, so I booked there. I am now in my... fourth? fifth day? I am so confused. Anyway, Carlisle is BOOORING! I am going a bit mad here. Luckily I only have today and tomorrow left, so I can probably fill those with something. There is a castle I haven't been in to yet which I plan to do after lunch, and a museum which should occupy me for the rest of tomorrow before Antona comes to rescue me from the ignominious fate of getting stuck in Carlisle for longer than I have to.

Ogle Castle

The village of Ogle is about 20mins out of Newcastle. It is comprised of about twenty houses, and no shops - not even a pub! The Lady of the castle was out when I visited, so I only got to have a look at the front, but that was enough. It is a very pretty looking manor house, with ivy and a gravel driveway lined with trees. There are horses in nearby fields, as well as various other forms of livestock. The coat of arms on the iron gates is very familiar.

The Manor

The village of Whalton, where the church for the area (and the pub, which was my original goal) is located, is 1.5 miles (a long walk!) away down a single-track road. The church has all sorts of distingushed-seeming Ogles buried there; you can tell we were important because there are plaques to said ancestors right up the front, inside the church.

For Rob and Tony

I ATE'NT DEAD

Land's End, Cornwall, on day three.

I have just been out. Tony (Kali's brother, with whom I'm staying while in London) and I have been out touring the south west of England on his Bandit 650. That's a motorbike. A black one. We decided we'd take three days to get down to Cornwall and back, finding B&Bs on the way and generally just spending most of each day riding.

We learnt a few things on this trip. One of these is that finding a place to sleep - even on a very wet, very cold weekday - in a seaside town in southwest England during what they try to pass off as summer here, is pretty close to impossible, no matter what Angus says. Another is that a good way to round off city-riding-squared tyres is by nearly getting blown off the road by wind gusts. Another, although one kind of implicitly knows this, is that riding for long distances is always much pleasant when there is sun. So here is the story.


Day one. Rode out of London. It's quite big really. It's not like Auckland where there is a motorway right through the middle of it, either - that's what the Underground is for. Unfortunately Tony's bike wouldn't have fit through the turnstiles even if we had taken off the luggage, so we had to ride. It took us the best part of the morning; we stopped for lunch and we hadn't even reached Richmond!

We finally made it to the M3 (SW motorway), and the heavens opened. Damn. We pulled in to a service stop to don our wet weather gear (we had, rather hopefully, left it off) and then got under way again. A few hours of riding along exposed motorway on one side of the wheels, and we were in Dorset. We chose a few likely looking roads to what looked like they might have been pretty beachside towns where we might have found B&Bs. Upon reaching said towns, we were nearly blown off the bike whilst looking at the beach, and the towns themselves didn't look that charming at all.

We continued on to Bournemouth where, after about half an hour's search leading to the surety that everywhere in the whole place was booked and we would have to dig a hole in the ground for shelter that night, we found an ugly-looking B&B-cum-hotel on a main road which was actually quite nice inside. The proprietor was "bike friendly", so he let us put it in the garage ("Priavate Property - No Entry - Beware Two Dobermanns") rather than leaving it in the public carpark out the front, so the seats were even dry in the morning!


Day two. As we came down to leave, one of the two Dobermann dogs made an appearance. I was feeling brave, so I gave it a pat. It was really cute actually, much like a labrador in behaviour. Then it decided that seeing as I was giving it attention it would go get one of its toys. It came back with a short bit of rope in its mouth - it wanted to play tug. Let's just say you never want to be playing tug with one of those over a limb. Even if it was attached, you'd lose.

We rode on along the coast for a while, and pulled in after a little while at a place called Bridport. It's a pretty little town, with some neat cliffs. We went to see them, but the wind was such that even walking up on to the beach was nearly too much! A true gale was blowing - I have a video of us leaning against it. The waves were amazing!

We decided to take some back roads to connect up to the main road southwest. My, were they ever back roads! Little dirt tracks with with high hedges so you couldn't see out of the lanes, and with no signposts to speak of. So we got a little lost. By this time, of course, it had started raining again. And it was lunch time - we were hungry! So it was with great pleasure that we stumbled across the Shave Cross Inn. In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by paddocks and lanes and hedges and with nothing in the way of civilisation anywhere I could see.

It was a fabulous old pub - all low ceilings (and I do mean low!), black irregularly placed beams, whitewashing and thatch on the outside. No rushes on the floor, but it totally could have had. It was quite busy - not difficult I guess as there were only two large tables in the room - it was very small - so we sat at the bar to eat. I had a ploughman's lunch, with more cheese that you would believe could fit on one dinner plate. It was good cheese though, and there were enough pickled onions to counter the cheesy mouth-stick so I made a good dent in it.

As we were eating, predictably, it started raining again. And not just raining; I mean Raining. It poured down! So we stayed for a coffee. It eased off after a while so we again got back on the bike. Luckily I had packed a fishing rod, so while Tony drove us ever so carefully through some now very flooded muddy lanes, I was able to focus on catching us something for dinner.

That night we stayed in a little place called Moretonhampstead. It is such a small village that it doesn't exactly require two names' worth of name; it is obviously compensating for its size. Or perhaps it's just indecisive. Dinner, due to my lack of fishing skill, was at a very nondescript pub, the owner of which was a large, burly woman with short hair and a nervous gaze. I assume that it was her who had decided on he decoration for the back of the women's toilet doors, as Tony assures me that his were very uninterestingly adorned.


Day three. We left nice and early on Friday morning, heading down through Truro where we had lunch and watched a Punch and Judy show (Itchy and Scratchy are less horrifying) to Land's End and back in a figure eight, so as to see everything and then start on the A39, a road we had heard was quite fun. Our first stop after lunch was St. Ives, a patricluarly popular beach town. It was quite amazing. So many people and shops... it was like Mission Bay crossed with the main street of New Plymouth crossed with Venice - the last mostly because of the fat pasty British tourists and their screaming children. If one could empty out all the people and the shops, then give it a decade or more alone so that the ecology could recover, I imagine it would be a truly beautiful place.

Land's End - the southernmost part of mainland England - was dressed up with the trappings of an amusement park, but the complex sat uncomfortably on the wild Cornish coast, looking as if the land was planning to shake the irritatingly gaudy buildings off the cliffs and in to the sea at the first opportunity. I would approve, especially as the shop didn't sell sherbert lemons.

Around the coast further and we arrived at Penzance, which we felt no need to stop at - we just drove down the promenade and onward to Falmouth, where the A39 began. We followed this road away from the coast and through some lovely green scenery - old glades as well as the inevitable agrarian scenes - and to our B&B for the night.


Day four. Back on the A39 after the best breakfast of the whole trip, and a nice long ride took us to to Lynmouth, a town built on some very steep hills indeed! Steeper than Korokoro in Wellington, although somehow safer feeling. We had a bagel and some tea there, then moved on toward Bath along some pretty fun roads. It was getting to time to sort out our night's accomodation by the time we got to Glastonbury, but they were hosting a crop circle convention *cough* so all their accomodation was booked out. We decided to strike out into unclassified back-roads to try to find some small town to stay in.

We drove for a while and it got later and later, and we hadn't passed a single B&B. It was six p.m. by the time we decided to stop at the Vobster Inn, and ask them if they knew anywhere which had accommodation. They did, and although the ones they had numbers for were all booked up, those had a few numbers of places, and eventually we found a place. We ate at the Vobster - fabulous rainbow trout! - and then limped off damply to Lime Kiln farm, which we (eventually) found.


Day five. Well, the expected three days of our journey had long passed us by and we were down to emergency measures with underwear. The discomfort was compounded by the fact that when the owner had said the room was "ensuite bath", he really meant it! No shower. Just a bathtub. Bizarre! Anyway, there was a lovely fruit salad at breakfast, as well as the usual greasies, so that made up for it. We drove in to Bath and had a bit of a look around (nice, but not as amazing as I have heard - the little villages were cooler), then drove on to Stonehenge. We didn't stop - what is the point really when they are right next to the road like that? I could se them perfectly well. I found it surprisingly impressive, actually.

We rode north across the Salisbury Plains where we saw a "tanks crossing" sign, and then went to look at the Avebury henge. I found it less impressive than Stonehenge - perhaps because the monoliths were so much more rough-hewn and so widely spaced that you didn't really get the sense of a unified structure. After that, it was back on the bike and on to the motorway for London.

So that was the end of that, you might think. Well, you're partly right. It was all plan (boring motorway) sailing until we got back into the city. The traffic around Oxford Circus was incredible! I wondered what was happening to cause the congestion; then I saw a guy waving an Iraqi flag out of the window of a car. And then I saw another one. The more I looked, the more people from that part of the world I saw in the cars. "What do you think has happened?", I asked Tony. We came up with all sorts of theories while we watched car after car filled with jubilant Iraqis. We finally decided that the most likely thing that had happened was that the new British Prime Minister had pulled the British troops out of Iraq.

We eventually made it through the traffic and got back to Tony's. Avidly we got on the net, looking for what was causing the traffic chaos in the city. War? A new Middle Eastern state? The death of Tony Blair? George Bush's head on a pike? As it turned out, it was none of these, nor even our more moderate pet theory. No, the Iraqis had just won the Pan-Asian Soccer Cup.

So we went for a pint. The End.

So, do you notice anything different about me?

Comments encouraged; anyone who can summarise their comments in to a word which begins with 'c' gets extra points.

The bit before Portugal

Well, I´m in Portugal. There is a beautiful beach, a beautiful pool, and lots of beautiful sun! But rather than describing a beautiful beach town to all of you who are stuck in winter (except to mention that there seems to be no such thing as takeaway food here! No fish and chips on the beach for me), I´ll skip that and tell you about how I got here.

We left London on Monday. I had a fun weekend that weekend - went out to a goth thing with Jamie and his cool girlfriend Soraya on Friday night, and on Saturday I had some drinks with Lisa, the Kiwi nurse I met on the Contiki trip. Tony and I woke up early on the Monday and caught the bus to Paris. We thought we would be taking the ferry across, but when we got to Calais the bus turned away from where the ferries are and drove into a tunnel. The tunnel then magically turned into a train. So confusing! And then, about an hour later, we were in France. Without leaving the bus!

We got off in the city and promptly realised that our hotel was not in the central city as hostelbookers.com had shown it as being, but rather out in the Lincoln Road, Henderson of Paris. It was terrible! But highly amusing. Well, it was once I´d found food. We´d kinda counted on getting food on the ferry, but of course that never materialised... It took us two hours to get to the suburban area our hotel was in from Paris, via about four different trains. At least between the two of us we speak enough French to get by.

Anyway, we stayed the night in this hideous hotel then got up early and went in to Paris proper. We got off at Gare Du Nord, and booked our tickets there. We hadn´t really decided what our train route was going to be, but after some back-and-forth with train-booking ladies and pamphlets and thinking, we decided to go to Bordeaux for a day and a night, then to Madrid for the same, then on to Portugal the next day. And two of the trains were TGVs!

Once we´d finished booking trains we went in and had a look around. Paris was as pretty as always, even though it was raining. Tony hadn´t seen the Louvre so we went and saw (the outside of) that, looking at all the neat stone famous dead dudes who line the eaves of the first floor. Then it was lunchtime.

I wanted crepes, so we went and found a little place not far from the Louvre which speciualised. It was full of French people, which is always a good omen, so we sat down contentedly to eat. Tony had a crepe savoyeuse, I think it was called. I wanted something appropriately cream-filled, so, given the lack of creamy mushroom-based formulations, I went for a crepe with potato, cream, mustard, white wine and... pig´s intestines. It'll be fine, I thought. It'll just taste like pork, and nothing that is cooked in cream, mustard and white wine can possibly taste bad.

Wrong.

It wasn´t awful... well, no, actually it was. It had that earthy, strong taste that only offal has. I ate half of it, telling myself that it was "just different", and that I should be open-minded about my food. Then my brain rebelled and told me that I was probably poisoning myself. So I stopped, admitting defeat and hoping that the waitress wouldn´t laugh at me. She didn´t, so I got an awesome dessert crepe to fill me up and, more importantly, to take away the flavour in my mouth!

Later that afternoon we caught our TGV to Bordeaux. Now for those of you who aren´t aware, TGV stands for "Train a Grande Vitesse": in English, "Train of Great Speed". Simple people, the French. The train reaches speeds of up to 300 km/h. I had learnt about them in French class at school, and ever since then I had thought they were cool. Ever since I had thought about actually going to France, I have had a secret ambition to go on one. And I got to go on two! Actually, it was a bit of an anticlimax - they were so smooth that I didn't notice I was going that fast, until I looked out the window and noticed something on the edge of my vision... it was power-lines, flicking past so quickly that I could hardly see them!

We arrived in Bordeaux to a much better hotel - just a chain place - and promptly went out exploring. It´s a pretty place - definitely somewhere I´d reccommend. Just avoid ordering the "Monaco" beer, eh Tony.

The next evening we caught the second TGV to connect with our overnight train to Spain. It was a three-tier, six berth carriage with officials bursting in every five minutes as you were just getting to sleep, but I slept fine. I´m good at sleeping through stuff though.

We piled off in Madrid and realised that we really had no idea where we were going to stay, or what we were going to do, or what the point of going to Madrid was anyway. I bought a guide book and, on its advice, we went into the central city to find an internet cafe to book a place to stay and our onward travel. We got a flight (a cop-out, I know, but cheaper than train-ing and I had definitely had enough of trains at that point!) to Porto booked, and then decided to use the guide book to find somewhere to stay. It recommended this fabulous little place above the Puerta del Sol (not Plaza del Sol or whatever I called it in my last post!), which is the centre point of the city. They just happened to have only one room left, which was a twin as we needed, and it was fabulous! Madrid was hot and dusty but much cooler (figuratively only!) than Barcelona. It just seemed a bit... classier, I guess. It's definitely worth seeing.

So a day there, then we flew to Porto in Portugal yesterday, then trained north to Vila Praia de Ancora, which is in the very north on the coast of Portugal above Viana do Costelo and below Caminha. It's a beautiful beach town with a beautiful beach, a beautiful pool, and lots of beautiful sun! Muahaha!

I´m in Spain!

Well, I don´t know where to start with all the fun I´ve had recently, so I will just give you a quick update on today and save the stuff about France and London for another post.

I arrived in Spain (Madrid) this morning with Tony, and after some overnight-train-induced dithering, we decided to go into town. We´ve found this fabulous little hotel-type-place (a pension? I dunno) overlooking the Plasa do Sol, which is sooo central. It is hot, sunny, and awesome.

We´re off to Portugal tomorrow, staying in a beach town in a hotel with a pool. Wheeee!

Oh, the pain, the pain!

Well, it doesn't actually hurt yet - I'm still numb. But fully lucid (apart from the adrenaline etc), thank god. I went to the dentist today.

The place I chose - Tony's dentist - was fully booked until the end of July, so the receptionist told me to come in and just sit around in the waiting room to see if a dentist comes free.

Now, this has been a long, slow process trying to get somewhere. First I had to get hold of the insurance company which was a mission, then I had to wait until I'd stayed my paid nights in Edinburgh, then find a dentist - did you know there are no good dentist-reviewing websites on the net? Once Tony had told me about his dentist, getting hold of them proved harder than I thought - there was this odd noise on the end of the line and Tony didn't know what it meant any more than I did. But I tried a few more times and eventually got through.

I was therefore, with all these little annoying obstacles in mind, pretty unsurpried when I turned up and was asked to go away and wait somewhere else for an hour because the surgery was closing for lunch.

I came back when they opened, and waited a while. It was a surprisingly short time before this nice, pretty young blonde Polish (so Tony tells me) lady came out to fetch me in to the surgery. She sat me down, had a look, and told me that the wisdom tooth that I was blaming was actually not the main problem. While it has the potential to become a problem in future (it is coming in sideways - "impacted", as they call it), the cause of the current issue is a wisdom tooth which has come through without any problems but is now biting down on my cheek and the tooth below, kinda mashing it a bit. "So we will remove the top one," she said.

"The top one?!" It took a little while for me to get that while the pain was mostly in my cheek and bottom gum, it was the fault of the top one. And then, even longer to come to terms with the fact that I was not going to have to be sedated, or have my jaw broken in to little bits, or any other of the plethora of frankly quite frightening (not to mention icky) things which need to be done to remove impacted wisdom teeth. Then just a bit more time to realise that after about a week of trying to get it sorted, it was all going to happen today. Right Now.

"So if you like, we can start numbing you up now. It will take about ten minutes, and then another five minutes to remove the tooth. Simple." After days of freaking out about having to have a long and painful operation, this sounded almost too good to be true. Eventually I got my head around it, and I am now one evil cheek-mashing tooth-o-wisdom the poorer, and one neat x-ray, some antibiotics and a report to the insurance company the richer. Problem solved!

And she said I was very brave.

Can I just say...

I am thouroughly sick of men trying to pick me up while I am watching the MotoGP on TV (the motorbike races, for all those who don't know).

I go out of my way to find somewhere to watch this, and without fail, some dude comes up to me and starts talking to me! Sure, "who do you think will win?" is acceptable, as is "who's your favourite rider", etc etc, but I'm trying to watch my sport, people! Asking things like "so how long are you in Edinburgh for?", and "Yamaha, is that the green one?"... Seriously! If you don't know and are just trying to crack on to me, wait until the race is finished. At least then I can dignify your sleazy midday lines with a multi-syllabic response.

I am a girl, honest.

Edinburgh

Well, Orkney was lovely, but I didn't see any puffins. I did however see three concerts! There was a music festival on while I was up there, and they were selling student tickets to some performances for £4! So I went to two of those in one day (one was a nouveau classical music performance, which was actually incredibly good, and the other was Bach, which was actually incredibly soporific), and caught a jazz/bluegrass performance at a pub afterward. Three concerts in one day!

On another night I went to a traditional(esque) story-telling evening, which was neat until they got us up to dance. Usually I'd be right in to it, but I wasn't really keen that night cos I was feeling a little homesick and didn't want to dance with this random guy, especially with no warning! I also saw some castles, and the MotoGP in a pub with no sound. I've planned that better this time - I am in a hostel with a TV room this weekend, so I will be able to catch it there.

I am in Edinburgh now, as you may have guessed from the title. It was quite amazing coming in - I felt like a country bumpkin! It had been a month since I'd been anywhere bigger than a small town so I was a bit awed by the size of this place!

Edinburgh is home to the ugliest human construction in the history of the world; the colossal Forth Rail Bridge. This was the sight which greeted me closest to the "Welcome to Edinburgh" sign. Happily, the central city is much more picturesque. Spiky things abound, from Cathedral spires to monuments to writers to random buildings - everything has a turret, and most things have some architectural feature seemingly designed to imperil the life of the recreational skydiver. Some of them are even serrated!

They do like their monuments here. They have one hill here with four of them on it. One of these, the somewhat famous "Edinburgh's Disgrace", also known as the National Monument (unifinished since the 1800s) is a facade of a Greco-Roman temple. Some pillars, and half a low wall. Hahahahahaha.

I went on a ghost tour one evening, with some people I met at the hostel. It was cool, and actually quite scary! I don't really believe in ghosts, but it got me going all the same. We visited one of the world's first concentration camps, called the Covenanter's prison, and entered a mausoleum which is supposed to be haunted by a poltergeist which is able to inflict actual physical wounds on people. One lady, who claimed to not be a credulous individual and seemed more fascinated than scared, came out with three bloody scratches on her finger. Nifty *shiver*.

Today, I finally got to see puffins! They were very far away though - so far that they had to be seen over a surveillance camera. So it wasn't really actually seeing them, I guess. I wanna seeeeee them! But I got to move the camera around to look at different ones and stuff, so it was cool.

I'm here until Monday, when I will be retreating to London as opposed to making my way leisurely down the country as I had planned to. One of my wisdom teeth is coming through, and being really nasty about it. It's given me pain bad enough to keep me taking neurofen all day for the last three days, and using bonjela too, so I figure I should do something about it. It sucks, cos I'm a bit scared of getting it done, but my insurance will cover it so I should just deal to it, I guess. I'm going to get it done in London so Tony can look after me and give me a towel to drool blood all over. Sound like fun Tony? ^^

Higher Lands: Our Heroine Goes Further North

Okay, so after my rather drunken interlude in Inverness - where I also saw Loch Ness (no monster, though plenty of pics I can photoshop one into) and some of the Highlands (a couple of sword-wielding maniacs, but that's another story, which I can't tell without the pictures) - I finally moved on. I headed further north.

"Why on earth would you want to go further north?" you ask. *Shrug* Why not? I reply. I think the first reason I decided to go up more was because I fell in love with the scenery on the bus ride up, and decided I wanted to see more of it. Then I remembered about all the ancient Viking and Pict sites on the Orkney Islands, so I thought that would make a good end destination. And then I read that it is the right time of year to see puffins. That sealed it!

So I decided to go to Orkney by way of a little place called Helmsdale. I stopped there for no particluar reason - it has a memorial statue to the Clearances - the Scottish Diaspora - which I thought I'd like to see, and that was about it. The train pulled in, and I caught sight of the place from the station. It is this TINY little village with two dairies, five cafes, two pubs and a permanently locked set of public toilets.

The hostel there was little more than a hall with two rooms at one end - one for boys and one for girls. It had a very nice fire, but it doesn't let you stay inside during the day. We were kicked out at 10am, and then not let back in until 5pm! As you can imagine, when I arrived at 1pm and saw that the hostel didn't open for four hours, I was a little miffed. Especially given I was desperate for the loo! It was ok though - it wasn't raining, so I found the library which had a toilet, and then found a nice grassy sward upon which to sit and read my book for four hours. I wasn't able to do much else - like explore, for example - with my 25kg (or whatever it is now) backpack on!

The next day I spent half the morning on the internet, trying to book a hostel in Edinburgh (my next destination after Orkney) and then went for a walk. It looked like a nice gentle stroll on the map, and I thought it would be a pleasant way to spend the rest of the day. Heh. It said it would take two hours but I figured I'd stop to admire the view in a few places. So I set off up this hill, carrying three huge books and the rest of my bag (needed the books for finding a hotsel, and I couldn't drop them off cos the place was closed). It was a nice walk, and I saw some fantastic Highland scenery - heather, hills, glens, rivers... but I had no idea where I was on the map! So after two hours and some images of broken ankles and hypothermia, I decided to go back the way I had come, rather than trying to find the way any longer. Kept me busy though.

The next day - yesterday - I moved on, up to Orkney, where I arrived at 8pmish. I met a nice German couple on the way up, whom I hated because I miss Simon, and then found my hostel. It has free internet! But I have much more active things to do than sit here all day. I am off to the tourist office in a minute to find out if there is public transport to all these ancient sites I want to see. And puffins!