Quaint and Quirky

Today we went to a Writer’s conference/book festival in Folkestone.  It was absolutely fabulous and we learned loads and loads about how to write, edit, and publish a novel.

However, getting there and back was really the story I wanted to blog about :)

Originally we were going to take an 8am train, but since we had been up late last night we decided to sleep in and take an 8:30am train instead.  Everything went smoothly, until we started off to the train station slightly on the late side.  Halfway there I realized I didn’t have my amazing-one-of-a-kind Britrail Pass (further digression upon that subject can be seen here).

I couldn’t leave without it, so I ran all the way back to the dorm…couldn’t find it in my drawer where I had thought I put it…finally found it…raced out of the building (slamming all doors in the process, probably waking everybody up) and ran as fast as I could to the station.  Running and nice breakfast don’t go well together…especially when one has had the breakfast before the running :(

Every other breath I was glancing at my watch and praying that God would delay the train so we wouldn’t be late to the conference.

Thankfully, I reached the train SECONDS before it was about to leave the station!!  Now, who says God doesn’t work miracles?

Leaving the conference, we had the same sort of problem, though to a lesser extent…  As we were changing stations, we couldn’t figure out which platform our next train was on, and the clock kept ticking away.  Finally I saw a sign, we ran down stairs, down a hallway, up some more stairs (which, let me tell you, isn’t easy for someone who climbed to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral the day before!)  The conductor yelled “Canterbury?” and we got on the train…again, seconds before it was about to leave…

But now for the meaning of the title… yesterday, on our tour of London (which Mary is planning to blog about) we had the most entertaining guide.  He had my favorite British accent (there are several, you know…) and the way he said things was just so quaint… straight out of the BBC or something :)  The tour went something like this:

“You see that Church in the alleyway on the right hand side? The one that’s called St. Bride…well, it’s not actually St. Bride, but short for St. Bridget…well look at the architecture and tell me what you think.  It' looks like a wedding cake, doesn’t it? You know, when you go to weddings…if you’ve been to any weddings…and they have the cake with all those layers…well sometimes they do… well, that’s where they got the idea…or so i’ve been told…”  Then he paused. “Quirky,” he said slowly. That’s where I lost it!  Mary and I erupted in giggles (quietly, of course).

“Oh, you like that word…very interesting, isn’t it?” he paused again. “Quirky…if I had more time, I’d tell you about our different languages…we do speak a different language, you know…” and so on and so forth…very charming, in my opinion.  It helped that he looked like Dr. Watson :P

Now for some odd and interesting, quaint and quirky (love that word) facts:

Did you know that the British term for pickles is gherkins?  just found out from a native :P  Odd that, we pickle pickles, they pickle gherkins…

For some reason, the petrol around here is marked at gas stations by the barrel price, instead of by the liter price (I think…otherwise, they’re all spending 124 quid a liter :P)

Cheers!

~Laura