In this part I write about three different cities I visited – visiting a friend in each and doing some other things while I’m there. Again, I’m telling thoughts I have based on things I did including gender, mass surveillance, learning, fear, etc.
Bristol
Following home, I set out on the next stage of my holiday in which I visisted three different friends in three different cities, spending two nights at each (so I would have one full day in each, plus the evening of the day I travelled, before leaving in the morning).
Bristol was a destination because of the Bristol Student Law Conference 2014, which makes it sound quite grand but it was just an afternoon of talks and discussions. The theme was “Privacy versus National Security“ (aka the Snowden revalations), and though this was something I had been following anyway it was good to hear some different angles and develop my thoughts more coherently about the topic. Unsurprisingly, we were all of the opinion that the line was drawn in the wrong place and that the state (through GCHQ, NSA, police power) is doing stuff it definitely shouldn’t be doing. [More detail than this including my many reasons will have to be saved for another time]. It’s a shame that the public as a whole seems to be quite apathetic about an issue which I think is an extremely important one for us as civilians (which I think especially acutely having written a piece of coursework on Totalitarianism (aka really evil government like Nazi and Stalin) and law, and thoughts on how democracy is meant to work, and that power wielded with secrecy necessarily does bad things, and, and, and).
It was good to see my friend there too, as that’s the only time I’ll really see him this year, catch up on what was going on etc. He reminded me of some technological things, which I’ve been quite unaware of since buying a cheap laptop and putting Linux (a free operation system) on it instead of Windows. I replaced that laptop (which was nearing the end of its life anyway) last week and was amazed by how much improvement there had been in laptop specs in the last few years and how cheaply I could get something which was much better than what I was expecting!
He got me playing Civilisation 5, and I got hooked quite quickly. I used to play a lot of video games as a teenager before (mostly) giving them up during sixth form to make better use of my time, and it’s extremely tempting to start playing some again!
Another thing we did was play squash, which I’d been introduced to by him some years back. I hadn’t played for a couple of years (not that he had played all that much either), and I was glad to not be completely demolished in our match (by which I mean I was nowhere near winning, but I did score a few points). It was great fun and I found it amusing that on a few occasions I would miss the ball simply because my racket didn’t quite swing the way I was trying to make it. After that match we played a game of left-handed squash, and suddenly we were equal and had a very close match (which I led to the end, but couldn’t make good of the few match points I had). As well as it being really fun to be beginners again (though we did know what shots we wanted to make) and enjoying learning something half-new (life philosophy: never stop learning), it was a good demonstration that the skill is practised, not innate from talent (a controversial theory which I’ve been broadly convinced of following readng the book Bounce, check it out).
Durham
I then got the train up to Durham. I’ve never really minded train journeys – although you’re stuck in a seat for awhile, we spent most of our days sat in seats anyway so it isn’t that different, and I’ll happily work on my laptop (no internet means productivity), read, or just listen to music. I also got into a habit of cleaning my teeth on trains to save me time leaving in the morning and enable me to pack my washbag the night before.
On my first night there, the friend I was staying with had invited some of his friends round for dinner too, and we had a meal with eight of us. It was a nice reminder of how good group eating is and that it ought to be done more, so I’ll try and implement this more myself too… [Editor’s note: I’ve actually done this once since being back in Bonn!]
On the next day I was taken on a tour of the city and a wander around, with a view to doing a bit of jumping on things (aka parkour, as I like doing it and my friend hadn’t seen much of before). I found a couple of walls just outside his house which were a couple of metres high and a couple of metres apart with a height difference and jumped between them a couple of times, as well as climbing around a nearby park. The jumps had some height in them, but enough that I knew wouldn’t be a problem if I had to jump down so it wasn’t too dangerous. I did them without too much thought, and only afterwards realised that they were probably the ‘scariest’ jumps I had ever done (not scary to me, as I have found some simpler things scary and these didn’t cause me much fear). It was a great reminder of progress I’ve made in my confidence in just a couple of months and the importance of going to new locations to give yourself a blank canvass to test yourself against (as old places have mental hang-ups and fears already present in them).
Jumping between two pillars in a park which were part of a set of stones to represent the cathedral, the real cathedral being just below my knee.
I was then shown around bits of the city, the main landmark being the hill with the cathedral (featured heavily in Harry Potter) and University College, which is a castle, before being taken on a wander across a couple of bridges and then along the river through a park, eventually going on an impromptu many-mile-walk adventure which included wading through a waist-deep river, getting to a ruined abbey (which was open as an English Heritage site), before hitching a lift back to Durham. [Potentially a post for this story sometime] We then had bacon/peanut butter/banana sandwiches (which I think are pretty good, but my appreciation wasn’t shared) and I went along with my friend to a church service in the evening, which was followed by going to the pub.
The following morning I got on a train towards Leeds.
Leeds
Not quite as much happened in Leeds. I stayed with one friend and met up with two others, which was great, but I didn’t go to any talks or events or go on any adventures or do any parkour. It was still great though – it was nicer to have a more chilled time, I spent a couple of hours in the library catching up on internet things (emails, a couple of chores… and facebook). This visit reminded me I’m now in the adult world: gone are the times when having friends was easy, everyone was in the same place (for school) and together at the holidays, and now are the times of being an adult, where friendships aren’t kept together by geographic convenience and effort must be made. This was half-apparent already (y’know, I am in a different country), but because I have another year of study when I get back I forget that not everyone does, and as some people leave and get jobs we won’t all be in the same place for the holidays (and they won’t have them because they have jobs… I only have one summer holiday left anyway!), it hadn’t hit me yet.
I did a couple of things while in Leeds. One was that I got signed up to be a bone marrow doner – there was a drive going on for the Leeds student population which I got signed up in. It’s obviously a great thing to sign up for – you get put on a register with a DNA sample (taken by spit, nice and easy) and if in the future someone might need you to donate, they contact you (unlike blood donation, where you actually give it).
Me in front of the Parkinson Building (Leeds Uni’s iconic building)
The
other was that I went to a gym. Gyms aren’t my thing. I don’t see a
point: the “exercise“ I do (the word “exercise” doesn’t really fit with how I understand life, it isn’t a word I would use myself – designating it as “exercise” means you’re missing the point)
is all outside, gyms aren’t necessary in my opinion, natural training
is better than using resistance machines for multiple reasons, and I
don’t plan on doing any free weights at the moment as a supplement.While in the gym,
all I did was stretching (and self-massage with a lacrosse ball) and
a little bit of press-ups and rowing. Having not been around gym or
gym culture for a couple of years, a couple of interlinked
observations came to mind. Firstly, that I don’t think it’s a very
good way of being healthy, and I can’t help that it comes slightly
with a capitalist/consumerist society. We could be outside, playing
like children with tig, “exercising“ simply because it is fun;
instead, we have decided as a society that we exercise only in
certain locations and in certain ways, confined and packaged into a
comodity. People don’t look to be enjoying themselves or benefitting
as much as they could be; the fun seems to be taken out of the
exercise. There’s much more to it, but this isn’t the place for it
(this post is certainly long enough), but being in a gym reminded me
of this. My second observation was the difference in how girls and
guys exercised: the girls did lots of “cardio“, running or
walking on machines or using those strange inverse-stepping things
that I’m not sure are that beneficial, or sometimes used machines
with low difficulty. The guys were mostly around the free weights
doing things (presumably) to make themselves look bigger. It just
struck me on seeing this about the gender divide we have on society
(the whole “women are from venus, men are from mars” idea that
we’re inherently different, which I think we massively exaggerate as
a culture). Both males and females are human, so surely whatever we
do to be healthy should be 90% the same? Both should be able to lift
heavy things (strength), be able to continue going for awhile
(stamina), be able to move creatively and with grace, etc… and
enjoy it too! But instead guys want to be hench and girls want to
have thigh gaps. Seems a bit silly to me.
Also
while in Leeds, I did what is probably one of the funniest things
I’ve ever done, in playing a prank on someone. Words won’t do justice
to how funny it was for me, but that won’t stop me trying. We (the
friend I was visting, his housemate, and I) were at a bar playing pool
and needed some change for the table, so the housemate and I went to
the bar to get some. The barman had his back turned on a laptop, and
being silly and polite and English we waited in silence instead of
saying anything. Ten seconds passed, I had a funny thought, then
twenty seconds passed… and I put my thought into action. I loudly
and rudely coughed, then dropped straight to the ground, hiding myself behind the bar. The barman turned, obviously assumed it was the housemate,
and bluntly told him to go to the other bar, while the housemate spluttered.
I silently died laughing on the floor, then twenty seconds later
crawled away (and continued dying laughing by our table).
I
then left Leeds and went home. On the train home I got into a good conversation with the two other people also sat at the 4-person-table thing I was sat at – one was on their way to an interview at an environmental law job, the other was a doctor on their way to a conference. We started with a couple of friendly smiles or comments on each others food to show we were friendly before breaking into a full conversation. Again, a reminder that chatting to strangers is better than not.
Parts iv and v to follow sometime.