Days With My Aunt

After consuming one of the greatest bacon sandwiches of my life an hour later I was at my Aunt's facing roast beef.  Maureen did us proud, and at the request of my cousin had served it "Australian style" - with a crisp fresh salad rather than the usual mountains of soggy boiled vegetables - yet somehow I was feeling a little full.  I was exhausted: exhausted from a strenious morning's eating, exhausted from the BBQs, beers and sly playstation of Launchston and perhaps even a little fatigued after four months on the road.  The only sensible thing was to snuggle up with a book on the couch, pretend to read for a whole six seconds or so and promptly fall asleep.

Four hours later I rubbed my eyes and emerged a rested and reparied.  A gorgeous summer's evening had snuck up on Exemouth.  Sun sparkled across the horizon and Mike's suggestion of a Sunday drive seemed somewhat appropriate.  Out of the garage emerged his pride and joy, a 1970s ... ... .  Convertable, red and shinny the ... boasted a roaring two litre engine.  Cruising through the winds of Devon became a joy and we pulled into the carpark of the Bridge Inn just in time for opening.

Situated in the sunny little village of Topsham on the Exe Estuary, the Bridge Inn is Britain at its finest.  Refusing to sell the evil foreign and commercial beverage of larger, the Bridge sells only real British Ales.  These delightfuly thick, rich and totaly undelicate beers are resposnible for the false remour that the English love flat, warm beer.  Real Ales are not servered warm, they are just not served cold.  Naturally fermented in the cask, they have no gas added on serving, instead they are "pumped" straight from the cask with only scant 'bubbles' formed from fermentation in the barrell.  While they are certainly an aquired taste any home brewer will love the whole 'real ale scene' and it is quite nice that England does have something that resembles a slight tradition of caring about what they consume.  The Bridge Inn is one such pub, a place were people care about real ale.  The sunshine helped lubricate the troat and a couple of pints slipped down easily.  The evening light sparkled off the river and fish were rising just above the weir.  In light such as this England actually appears kind of nice.

I awoke to a list of jobs.  The kind of jobs that seem simple and quick, but kind of end in tears.  All I had to do was ring Vietnam Airlines and check we managed to get on the flight ... right?  But we suddenly somehow hadn't managed to get on get a seat from Saigon to London.  The old "don't worry, you'll be right", suddenly transfered into "you want to go home, hey, how does an indefinant period of time stuck in Vietnam sound?".  While I did enjoy Vietnam, getting back to get a job in Hong Kong seems a little more important.  We rang the airline, we emailed our Australian travel agent, we even rang the consulate to enquire abouit visas.  Yet all anyone could tell us was that it was someone else's fault we weren't on the flight and it was someone else's job to fix.  Who this someone else was remained a mystery as we slowly spun in a circle of disbelie ... Vietnam Airways was an international airline, surely they could fix it, surly ...

After four anxious hours it finally clicked, they couldn't fix it, so it was time to ignore it.  Maureen gave me a lift to neighbouring Sidmouth were an old mate Barry was waiting to take advantage of another scorching day with yet another BBQ.  I worked with Barry years ago.  When I first came to England he was a chief at the Tides Reach Hotel in Salcombe, were I was a humble barman.  Barry moved from Salcombe to Sidmouth and has been cooking away ever since.  Sidmouth is a strange palce, an English resort that was at its prime 150 years ago.  Most contemporary English tourists take a cheap package to Spain, leaving the grand old seaside resorts such as Sidmouth with, well with old people who love England.  I'm pretty sure my Granny fits in to this catorgery so to be nice lets just say Sidmouth consists of "an aging clintel whom enjoy 'classic' English food (ie. food that is not just bad, but has been bad for awhile), whom enjoying strolling along the seafront with an icecream and who hire deck chairs to sit on a stone prominade (to watch other equally old people walk along the prominade eating nothing but icecreams)".

It was Barry's day off and he wanted to make to most of it.  It was decided to have our BBQ on the nice, quite section of Sidmouth's beach.  While many of my English readers may consider any bit of beach nice on a 35 degree day, Barry has been to Australia and is a little wiser on all things beach.  The nice bit was nice and though it looked very similair to all the other bits of beach it was nice because we had to walk far enough along the beach that anyone of the Sidmouth 'old people' trying to get there was sure to pass out in the process.  We swam in clear blue water, cooked burgers beneath blood red cliffs and basked under a roaring sun.  Sidmouth beach is basically all pebbles, normally this is no problem - they look pretty and and hinder the bold people - yet pepples basking under a roaring sun on a 35 degree day trap heat and soon resemble an oven.  I felt very much like Sunday roast "Australian style", sourounded by waves of heat.

Cooked to a tea, we stagged back over hot pebbles and decided the only way to recover was a refreshing beverage.  Several pints later the red ... pulled up and I was off.  It was magnificent to see Barry again, a great guy who I consider a great friend.  It's strange you can always tell your good mates by how the conversation is after a few years and talking to Barry after two and a half years was like talking to him over staff tea at Tides Reach in 2000, where I saw him eight times a day, eight days a week.