The Adventures of Team Parker

It rained today in Cambridge, and I had to cycle through it. That was an adventure. I think the wind was worse than the rain. You get all wobbly on your bike when a strong gust comes along. The rain just makes you soggy and you get this steady drip, drip off the tip of your nose. I was off to temporary employment agencies to see if I could get some on and off office type work to fill my time with ’til we go to Chicago. The proficiency tests took a while but by the time I got home they called to ask if I was interested in doing some office admin for the council in Bar Hill so it was worth it. We’ll see how that turns out.

Anyway, I’ve been storing up some pics for the past few days and meaning to post them when I had some time at the computer, so here they are.

Okay, remember in one of the previous posts I mentioned the cornerstones at Wolfson? Well, here are some pictures. At Cambridge, they always make a big deal about not stepping on the lawn. People just don’t walk across the grass, so it always grows thick and green. Now, according to one of the porters, who gave Mpumi a lecture when he set one foot on the lawn, the university has found that though they don’t walk across the grass, people always cut corners. They don’t like to walk in straight lines with 90 degree angles. If there’s a corner, the will cut it and with repetition that usually kills the grass, like this. (See the corner of the lawn.)

So, anyway, their grand solution to this was the following – a triangular shaped paving stone, placed on the corners of each patch of lawn, or wherever there is a 90 degree turn in the path. With this in place, people can cut corners, and not affect the lawn. Maybe not such a great story but the way the porters tell it, it’s a really big deal!

Anyway, more pictures. Here’s one of a squirrel that lives in the grounds of Wolfson College. Well, I don’t actually know if it’s the same squirrel each time but I somehow think it is. This one is really brave and a bit nonchalant about people. I’ve seen him sit near the bike racks and watch as you struggle to unlock you bike, or sit in the path and watch as you go by. I got this picture only after following him up the path and towards the tree. He’d scamper forward a bit, stop to look at me, then scamper forward again. He eventually climbed about a meter or so up the tree, and then just stood there, vertical and Spiderman like, watching me until I walked away. I was only a few steps away from him at the time.

Oh, and then last night (or was it the night before?) we went to the clubroom and played Scrabble with the Sainsbury peeps. Except for Molebaleng, none of them had played Scrabble before so we had to explain the rules and so forth. Well, Sameer played and I just watched but it was fun except when we knocked a juice bottle over the board, that wasn’t so good. Now it has a distinctly mangoey smell when you open the board. And then we played pool for a while.

Here’s one of Kings Way in the late afternoon. I had to pull my bike over to the side of the road to take it and even then it didn’t come out so good. It was all just so golden and glowy that I had to take a shot.

I also took some pictures of the market because, well I really like it there. The first is of a mum, with one kid in a baby seat on the back of her bike (don’t know if you can see it so well) and another kid cycling alongside her on his little bike, with a big flag sticking up from the back of it so cars can see him. It’s amazing how families get around on their bikes here. I’ve seen mum’s cycling with a toddler in the kiddy seat at the back and the baby in a baby seat in the front. It’s hectic! I’ll try to get a picture of one of those bikes if I see one parked anywhere. They also have this other mechanism where the kids bike attaches to the back of the parent’s bike so it looks like a tandem bicycle with a big and little part. And they also have this thing, it looks like a motorcycle sidecar except that it’s attached to the front or back of a bicycle, and usually a parent rides the bike, and they put two kids in the sidecar, which has a plastic cover with little windows in it. That’s also quite nifty. But, I keep thinking, that this only works safely in a place where people who drive cars respect and give way to cyclists and pedestrians.

Anyway, here are more pictures of the market. The first is of the little stalls in the square that constitutes the market. There are real shops, chain stores and such, on the streets that surround this, and even a little indoor mall. But the market stalls offer anything from fresh bread to flowers and plants, second hand books and clothes, spices, bags, and bicycle repairs. The second picture is of some bicycles (including mine) parked against and chained to the bars that surround St Mary’s Church, which borders the market on one side. When I took this picture, I’d had my first experience of having to ride in circles looking for parking for my bicycle. That was novel. I couldn’t help being amused by it. Also, another thing I find really interesting is the posters that people tie to the church gates with bits of string. They go all the way around the church, just like the bikes, and they mostly advertise plays, operas, or music recitals put on by the students at venues around town.

So anyway, here we are. I’m all out of pictures. The weather says it will be a minimum of -2 tomorrow and a maximum of 2 degrees. So Sameer’s decided to stay in all day except to go to Jumuah. And I’ll probably do the same, lie in bed with my book, a cup of coffee and copious amounts of biscuits.

I’m not really in the mood to write much today, mostly because I’ve started reading Phillip Pullman’s Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) and I really want to get back into it. But I’ll give you all a quick rundown of the latest events and also some pictures.

This first shot is of the facade of W block at Wolfson College. You go in with an access card, down a hall, round a statue that’s in a circular room from which three separate hallways run at different angles, straight on, and then immediately left to our room – 105. It’s the newest wing of one of the newest colleges at Cambridge so it doesn’t have the grand, churchly feel that the other colleges in the city have. Wolfson caters almost exclusively to post-graduate students and has the largest number of international students.

And here are two shots of the room itself. The first one is taken from a position just inside the doorway, at a 40 degree angle or so. You can see the wide desk, the bench over the radiator in the bay window (which overlooks a little garden/yard) and the bed. The second is taken from the same position, just facing straight ahead. The door is obscuring the built in cupboard and there is a slight recess where you see the coat rack. There’s a blue tub chair in the nook. We mostly just chuck our excess clothes on that one. (Don’t tell my mum I said so!)

The bathroom is really oddly shaped – like a rectangle with a clipped off corner. The toilet is to the left of the sink you can see, on the clipped part of the angle. The shower is on the short end of the rectangle. There’s no cubicle or anything, just one screen preventing water from sputtering out into the bedroom. The fixtures are quite new. They’re Grohe, and they let you adjust the water to exactly the temperature you want with a little twisty knob. I’ve decided that I like my water at a warm 45 degrees. Anyway, (I know I’m going on about this quite a bit but it was quite intriguing when I first saw it) the oddest thing is that it’s really a shower-room. The entire thing is tiled, top to bottom, and there’s a drain in the middle of the floor. So when you shower, water goes every which way, splashes on the toilet seat, on the sink, all round the floor. Anyway, it’s quite messy coz you tramp the water all over the place and I really wish I could mop! But I don’t think there are any implements for that. We got some disposable toilet wipes at Sainsbury and I tried using those but they’re not very good. The cleaning lady only comes in to clean once a week. And right about now the dirty shower-room floor is starting to work on my nerves…

Moving on swiftly. So, yesterday, Sameer went off to meet with his supervisor etc and left me to my own devices. So I grabbed my map and wandered off into town. And that’s where I took this lovely shot of (wait for it) a bridge, over the River Cam. This one was from one building in Queen’s College over to another on the other side of the Cam. It was lovely.

So I walked along there and tried not to get run over by all the bicycles. I found my way into the historic center of town, where the only cars allowed are for residents or deliveries. There were students everywhere and – whether walking or cycling – they were all motoring somewhere. After a while I realized that they were all rushing back to their colleges for lunch or to nearby restaurants and coffee shops. Oh and tourists – there were many many tourists.

One funny thing that happened was a girl and a boy were walking along the road in front of me. And they were so obviously hot for each other. He kept putting his hand on her arm and saying arb things and she kept giggling. Anyway, they were so high on love or whatever that first she walked straight into a car (amusing) and then he inexplicably dropped his baguette and spilled all the toppings off (very amusing). Both times, they were embarrassed, tried to laugh it off and made apologetic/sympathetic noises. But as a random person on the street, it was really funny to me. I wonder if they’ve even admitted to themselves that they like each other.

Anyway, that was mostly how I spent the morning, wandering around the little streets, looking into shops, and hearing snatches of conversation from people going by. I can’t remember exactly what people were saying but I just remember thinking how strange it all was.

So, anyway, I found myself right in the center, on Trumpington Street, which becomes King’s Parade, and that’s where you find King’s College, the oldest college at Cambridge. It was a real wow moment. I had to stop and take pictures. But I didn’t go in because it costs £5. On the other hand, they have a choral mass on a Tuesday evening which is free and I intend on going one evening. Apparently, the inside is even more lovely and they say the singing is fantastic. So I hope to do that.

After that, I came across a little market type thing (like the one between Cavendish Square and the Link) and I stopped to look at the books on sale. Nothing interested me until I got right to the end — the full Dark Materials trilogy for £5! Now that was worth £5 so I bought it, then went into a cafe (Aunt Tattie’s) and started to read over lunch. (Feta, tomato, and red onion baguette – tasty!)

Then Sameer called and said the MBA guys wanted to go to the mall. I walked back across town (took me about 15 minutes) and then we went off. Some of the guys had tried out their bikes and we decided to go hire one for me at the train station, where there is a big bike rental place. It was flippin expensive but beat buying a second-hand bike because it came with insurance and free repairs whenever needed. (Apparently bicycle theft is huge in town and also, people often vandalise your bike just for kicks. I believe it too. As I was walking around I saw loads of bikes that looked as if they’d been jumped on or hit with a sledgehammer.)

Anyway, off we cycled to the mall. Then I dropped the bike and broke the front mudguard. (Yay insurance…) I am such a clutz these days. There were quite a few big shoe sales but I didn’t see anything I liked. Beside, my feet are in between a four and five for some strange reason and most shoes I try seem to be either too small or too big. Weird! So we went to Boots to buy some soaps and things and then, for additional supplies, we cycled to Sainsbury’s. In the dark. On the road. With cars. Through circles.

I survived.