West Yorkshire Calling
Dear team,
I’ve made it. Somehow. For those of you who don’t know already my journey to England was, well, let us say eventful. I left Sydney on Saturday night, 22nd of January (after saying goodbye to mum and dad on the 21st, see attched piccy of me and them at Ballina airport) and arrived in the Old Dart around 11.30am (local time), Sunday 22nd.
The immigration person took about 2 minutes to decide that I didn’t have the right paper work and before you could say ‘you’re nicked’ I was being led into the dreaded ‘room off to the side’ where I was repeatedly interviewed (ok, twice), had my bags searched by someone wearing rubber gloves (perhaps fearing they would find sweaty riding gear?) and, within the hour, informed that I had been booked on the next available plane back to Australia at 9.45 that night! Yes, you heard right. I was being deported and yes that was the word they used. Well, you can imagine how I felt after 24 hours in the air. For the next 8 hours I sat in a brightly lit room with nothing but plastic chairs and other visa offenders waiting for their respective flights. This was, without doubt, the most gruesome part of the whole ordeal. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere and they confiscated my passport. When the deportation hour arrived I was escorted every inch of the way back to Australia and suffered the ignominy of being described as a ‘deportee’ to everyone in the deportation chain. The final insult was when one of the Qantas stewards told me they couldn’t serve me alcohol on account of my ‘status’! I mean, you can imagine how much I would have needed a bloody drink right? I must admit, the Qantas people were awfully nice about the whole thing but the sense of wasted time and exhausted desolation was something I don’t ever want to have to go through again. All in all, a Barry Crocker.
So I arrive back in Sydney on Tuesday morning some 60 hours after I left, no closer to my final destination. I hired a car, drove back to Manly and then set about regrouping. Long story short, next morning I drove to Canberra and sorted out my visa. Around lunch time while I was waiting for my passport to be processed I took pot luck and swanned into a travel agent to see if there were any flights to London that night. There were. So I got myself a seat, picked up my passport, drove back to Sydney and headed out to the airport for a 10.15pm flight. I begged for an upgrade, even got a little misty eyed, but nothin’ doing.
I must say, a single one way trip Sydney-London seemed a doddle after what I’d been through. Silver lining? Well I did see quite a few movies and got very good at Volcanix and Magmazone, my two favourite video games. I also think the experience completely killed off my fear-of-flying problems which had started to improve coming back from Canada. I was so calm that I even slept a bit and, by the last Singapore-London leg, was basically bored. Believe me, bored beats terrified by the length of the straight; time goes much quicker when you’re bored.
Arrived midday on Thursday (almost exactly 5 days after initially setting out), successfully negotiated immigration, hired a car, headed north, spent about 5 hours on the M1 battling peak hour traffic and finally (if you’re still with me!) got completely bamboozled by the Leeds city centre traffic system which the words ‘rabbit warren’ do not begin to describe. Basically, you can only go one way in Leeds. There is a loop road which goes in one direction and if you go too far you’re buggered.
I arrived at my temporary home, ‘Queenswood’, the multi-room guest house on campus which, by the way, also houses the vice-chancellor and his family, at about 7pm. No sooner had I walked in the door when my new dean David Kirk appears and invites me to a three course meal in the Queenswood dining room with some local staff who are hosting some French teacher educators from a Montpellier (excuse spelling) institution with whom my new empolyer has a partnership of some kind. I hit the pillow about 10.30 some time after I had actually fallen asleep.
I was pleasantly surprised by Leeds Metropolitan University. I’m to be based at its Headingly (in local dialect, the closest I can get to correct pronounciation is ‘edinluh’) campus which is smallish, green and basicually a semicircle of (mostly) quaint old buildings around a sward known as ‘the Acre’ (see attached piccy, my building is half way up on the left hand side).
Highlight so far has been the West Yorkshire accent. I must admit to getting all gooey when I here someone say ‘I’m on way ‘t pub’, where ‘t’ is a brief t sound where we would normally say ‘to the’. On the down side, the English winter nailed me the day I got here and for the last few days I was afraid I had actually got pneumonia. Most of all, the fact that I’ve had to do a lot of walking between the campus and Headingley town centre (10 minutes) and just about everywhere else meant the cold went straight through me. As I write I’m just about over it but lucky no-one showed up with the elephant gun a couple of days ago otherwise I’d have begged them to put me out of my misery.
Better news is that I’ve found a funky new apartment, right in the middle of Leeds city (Headingley is about 10 minutes bus ride from Leeds city centre). This will mean a commute to work, but I’m pretty happy with this. Headingley is crawling with students and, well, one is just in a with-it inner-city kind of stage of one’s life I suppose. The apartment is small and will cost me two arms and a leg (limbs are over-rated anyway) but there is enough floor space for guests, particularly those offering to contribute to the rent! Best of all, it’s just next door to Leeds’ equivalent of the QVB building, Pitt Street Mall combined. That’s right. I may not get much work done here but by crikey will there be some shopping! Also, the restaurant scene in and around Thornton Chambers (the name of my building) seems to be overflowing with posh funkadelity. Obviously I’m going to need many new outfits just to go out for a meal at night.
It’s not all glamour though. I can report that, for all its charms, England is still home to the world’s worst banking system. It took me 90 minutes (no exaggeration) to open an account recently. Why did I put up with waiting that long you ask? Well, I had just been in two other’s which had told me that I needed to make an appointment on another day in order to open an account…. to which my response was………... can you guess? So the fact that I found one that would actually open the account then and there, well, you can see why I stuck it out. Fair dinkum. I’ve been visiting England since the early 80s and as far as I can tell the banks started out crook and have been declining rapidly ever since. The whole experience is both humiliating and frustrating by equal measure. It is also the case that despite claiming to be something of a cradle of civilisation, after years of whinging bloody aussies the English still do not have a handle on the concept of the shower. I am sure there is a PhD in this. Which bit don’t they get? It’s cold, therefore the shower should be… yes, hot. The water sits in a tank somewhere in or outside the building and needs to wet the bloke standing under the shower fitting, so therefore we need some…. yes, pressure. I mean, (this is nearly over) if you can get a decent shower in the public changing sheds at the south end of the beach at South West Rocks (in Australia for ethnic readers) (that is, in a cement box in the middle of nowhere) why not in the country that gave us the steam engine and Cliff Richard?
Oh, by the way, last Friday night I went to see the Rugby League World Club Challenge between the Bradford Bulls and our own Wests Tigers in beautiful Huddersfield. The gig was actually sponsored by my new employer and so I lapped up corporate hospitality in the university’s private box just this once (as you know, I have strong views about what corporates are doing to sport!). The pre-game meal was excellent (I choked it down) and I got to meet some more Leeds Met colleages (see attached photo of me and Lori Becket, an Australian who has just been made a professor here). Now, why doesn’t Ian Goulter (CSU VC) do something like this? Huh? I mean, would it be so hard for us to get on board, say, the Sydney Swans? I’ve got it; the CSU Swans! We could rename CSU Bathurst the Barry Hall Campus. And these are just ideas off the top of me head which I give for free. Imagine if we really put some intellectual grunt into it. By the way, the Tigers got an absolute touch up by a bigger and more physical Bradford outfit. The tune: 30-10. If this is the mob that won the premierhip in Sydney last year I’ll go he.
Have just completed my second quiet weekend on me Pat here in Headingley. On Saturday I wandered the district and stumbled on a backyard business which reconditions bicycles and actually managed to find a perfectly respectable road bike which will do me for this year. No Rolls Royce but I can see myself coming down a fair bit on these slippery English roads so probably just as well. On Sunday was at a bit of a loose end so went to the pub just after lunch to watch my beloved Tottenham Hotspurs play and duly put the cleaners through Charlton Athletic (tune: 3-1). About half way through the game some bloke come up and asked me if I was using the menu sitting on my table. I looked round only to find myself face to face with ex-Balmain Tigers stalwart ‘Back Door’ Benny Elias. He was with a group of blokes – obviously footy heads – including another Balmain star of yesteryear, Paul ‘The Buttocks’ Sironen. Never to miss a chance, I asked ‘The Door’ his thoughts on the game. He agreed with my synopsis and, after a bit of chit-chat, wished me well for my stay in the Dart. What a moment!
These small (but significant) talking points aside, let me sign off by saying that despite my trials and tribulations to this point, your correspondant has been delivered into the hands of some of the friendliest people on the face of the earth. I was on a bus the other day and was about to ask the driver for street directions when one of my fellow passengers, obviously noting my slightly concerned expression, asked me where I was going. Well! Within 15 seconds the entire bus is engaged in a lively debate about how this nice (ahem!) young man would best reach his destination. Not sure I was any the wiser by the end of it but all of a sudden I didn’t feel so alone. Alright, Ciao for now friends. I’ve got a pint of bitter waiting for me down ‘t pub.
Love you’s all.
MG
I’ve made it. Somehow. For those of you who don’t know already my journey to England was, well, let us say eventful. I left Sydney on Saturday night, 22nd of January (after saying goodbye to mum and dad on the 21st, see attched piccy of me and them at Ballina airport) and arrived in the Old Dart around 11.30am (local time), Sunday 22nd.
The immigration person took about 2 minutes to decide that I didn’t have the right paper work and before you could say ‘you’re nicked’ I was being led into the dreaded ‘room off to the side’ where I was repeatedly interviewed (ok, twice), had my bags searched by someone wearing rubber gloves (perhaps fearing they would find sweaty riding gear?) and, within the hour, informed that I had been booked on the next available plane back to Australia at 9.45 that night! Yes, you heard right. I was being deported and yes that was the word they used. Well, you can imagine how I felt after 24 hours in the air. For the next 8 hours I sat in a brightly lit room with nothing but plastic chairs and other visa offenders waiting for their respective flights. This was, without doubt, the most gruesome part of the whole ordeal. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere and they confiscated my passport. When the deportation hour arrived I was escorted every inch of the way back to Australia and suffered the ignominy of being described as a ‘deportee’ to everyone in the deportation chain. The final insult was when one of the Qantas stewards told me they couldn’t serve me alcohol on account of my ‘status’! I mean, you can imagine how much I would have needed a bloody drink right? I must admit, the Qantas people were awfully nice about the whole thing but the sense of wasted time and exhausted desolation was something I don’t ever want to have to go through again. All in all, a Barry Crocker.
So I arrive back in Sydney on Tuesday morning some 60 hours after I left, no closer to my final destination. I hired a car, drove back to Manly and then set about regrouping. Long story short, next morning I drove to Canberra and sorted out my visa. Around lunch time while I was waiting for my passport to be processed I took pot luck and swanned into a travel agent to see if there were any flights to London that night. There were. So I got myself a seat, picked up my passport, drove back to Sydney and headed out to the airport for a 10.15pm flight. I begged for an upgrade, even got a little misty eyed, but nothin’ doing.
I must say, a single one way trip Sydney-London seemed a doddle after what I’d been through. Silver lining? Well I did see quite a few movies and got very good at Volcanix and Magmazone, my two favourite video games. I also think the experience completely killed off my fear-of-flying problems which had started to improve coming back from Canada. I was so calm that I even slept a bit and, by the last Singapore-London leg, was basically bored. Believe me, bored beats terrified by the length of the straight; time goes much quicker when you’re bored.
Arrived midday on Thursday (almost exactly 5 days after initially setting out), successfully negotiated immigration, hired a car, headed north, spent about 5 hours on the M1 battling peak hour traffic and finally (if you’re still with me!) got completely bamboozled by the Leeds city centre traffic system which the words ‘rabbit warren’ do not begin to describe. Basically, you can only go one way in Leeds. There is a loop road which goes in one direction and if you go too far you’re buggered.
I arrived at my temporary home, ‘Queenswood’, the multi-room guest house on campus which, by the way, also houses the vice-chancellor and his family, at about 7pm. No sooner had I walked in the door when my new dean David Kirk appears and invites me to a three course meal in the Queenswood dining room with some local staff who are hosting some French teacher educators from a Montpellier (excuse spelling) institution with whom my new empolyer has a partnership of some kind. I hit the pillow about 10.30 some time after I had actually fallen asleep.
I was pleasantly surprised by Leeds Metropolitan University. I’m to be based at its Headingly (in local dialect, the closest I can get to correct pronounciation is ‘edinluh’) campus which is smallish, green and basicually a semicircle of (mostly) quaint old buildings around a sward known as ‘the Acre’ (see attached piccy, my building is half way up on the left hand side).
Highlight so far has been the West Yorkshire accent. I must admit to getting all gooey when I here someone say ‘I’m on way ‘t pub’, where ‘t’ is a brief t sound where we would normally say ‘to the’. On the down side, the English winter nailed me the day I got here and for the last few days I was afraid I had actually got pneumonia. Most of all, the fact that I’ve had to do a lot of walking between the campus and Headingley town centre (10 minutes) and just about everywhere else meant the cold went straight through me. As I write I’m just about over it but lucky no-one showed up with the elephant gun a couple of days ago otherwise I’d have begged them to put me out of my misery.
Better news is that I’ve found a funky new apartment, right in the middle of Leeds city (Headingley is about 10 minutes bus ride from Leeds city centre). This will mean a commute to work, but I’m pretty happy with this. Headingley is crawling with students and, well, one is just in a with-it inner-city kind of stage of one’s life I suppose. The apartment is small and will cost me two arms and a leg (limbs are over-rated anyway) but there is enough floor space for guests, particularly those offering to contribute to the rent! Best of all, it’s just next door to Leeds’ equivalent of the QVB building, Pitt Street Mall combined. That’s right. I may not get much work done here but by crikey will there be some shopping! Also, the restaurant scene in and around Thornton Chambers (the name of my building) seems to be overflowing with posh funkadelity. Obviously I’m going to need many new outfits just to go out for a meal at night.
It’s not all glamour though. I can report that, for all its charms, England is still home to the world’s worst banking system. It took me 90 minutes (no exaggeration) to open an account recently. Why did I put up with waiting that long you ask? Well, I had just been in two other’s which had told me that I needed to make an appointment on another day in order to open an account…. to which my response was………... can you guess? So the fact that I found one that would actually open the account then and there, well, you can see why I stuck it out. Fair dinkum. I’ve been visiting England since the early 80s and as far as I can tell the banks started out crook and have been declining rapidly ever since. The whole experience is both humiliating and frustrating by equal measure. It is also the case that despite claiming to be something of a cradle of civilisation, after years of whinging bloody aussies the English still do not have a handle on the concept of the shower. I am sure there is a PhD in this. Which bit don’t they get? It’s cold, therefore the shower should be… yes, hot. The water sits in a tank somewhere in or outside the building and needs to wet the bloke standing under the shower fitting, so therefore we need some…. yes, pressure. I mean, (this is nearly over) if you can get a decent shower in the public changing sheds at the south end of the beach at South West Rocks (in Australia for ethnic readers) (that is, in a cement box in the middle of nowhere) why not in the country that gave us the steam engine and Cliff Richard?
Oh, by the way, last Friday night I went to see the Rugby League World Club Challenge between the Bradford Bulls and our own Wests Tigers in beautiful Huddersfield. The gig was actually sponsored by my new employer and so I lapped up corporate hospitality in the university’s private box just this once (as you know, I have strong views about what corporates are doing to sport!). The pre-game meal was excellent (I choked it down) and I got to meet some more Leeds Met colleages (see attached photo of me and Lori Becket, an Australian who has just been made a professor here). Now, why doesn’t Ian Goulter (CSU VC) do something like this? Huh? I mean, would it be so hard for us to get on board, say, the Sydney Swans? I’ve got it; the CSU Swans! We could rename CSU Bathurst the Barry Hall Campus. And these are just ideas off the top of me head which I give for free. Imagine if we really put some intellectual grunt into it. By the way, the Tigers got an absolute touch up by a bigger and more physical Bradford outfit. The tune: 30-10. If this is the mob that won the premierhip in Sydney last year I’ll go he.
Have just completed my second quiet weekend on me Pat here in Headingley. On Saturday I wandered the district and stumbled on a backyard business which reconditions bicycles and actually managed to find a perfectly respectable road bike which will do me for this year. No Rolls Royce but I can see myself coming down a fair bit on these slippery English roads so probably just as well. On Sunday was at a bit of a loose end so went to the pub just after lunch to watch my beloved Tottenham Hotspurs play and duly put the cleaners through Charlton Athletic (tune: 3-1). About half way through the game some bloke come up and asked me if I was using the menu sitting on my table. I looked round only to find myself face to face with ex-Balmain Tigers stalwart ‘Back Door’ Benny Elias. He was with a group of blokes – obviously footy heads – including another Balmain star of yesteryear, Paul ‘The Buttocks’ Sironen. Never to miss a chance, I asked ‘The Door’ his thoughts on the game. He agreed with my synopsis and, after a bit of chit-chat, wished me well for my stay in the Dart. What a moment!
These small (but significant) talking points aside, let me sign off by saying that despite my trials and tribulations to this point, your correspondant has been delivered into the hands of some of the friendliest people on the face of the earth. I was on a bus the other day and was about to ask the driver for street directions when one of my fellow passengers, obviously noting my slightly concerned expression, asked me where I was going. Well! Within 15 seconds the entire bus is engaged in a lively debate about how this nice (ahem!) young man would best reach his destination. Not sure I was any the wiser by the end of it but all of a sudden I didn’t feel so alone. Alright, Ciao for now friends. I’ve got a pint of bitter waiting for me down ‘t pub.
Love you’s all.
MG
posted by MG at 8:54 AM
0 comments
