I am in York. It is a big city. It is an old city. It is a Yorkshire city; and I'm damn proud of that, though I have little reason to be. What suprises me most is how different the populations make up is to that of Leeds. There are old people. There are children. There are very few people from ethnic minorities. Not all takeaway delivery people are from ethnic backgrounds. There are very few people who speak in a foreign language. It is all rather strange and surreal to me at the moment. I'm not used to it yet, but I will have to. It is a beautiful city with elegant old buildings, thatched cottages, hugging streets and protective stone walls. There are so many nooks and crannies still undiscovered and waiting to be explored. But it is no Leeds and Leeds I sincerley miss.
I have no job, so there is nothing for me to do except absorb culture; reading books, listening to music watching DVD's and playing computer games as well as adding to my collections of all. I have bought 3 books on the subject of mathematical/theoretical biology/ecology which is what my next year will rigourously consist of. I have had lots of fun playing with the house DAB radio and picking up new music, my favourite channels being BBC 6 music and BBC Asian Network, ironically the two stations that were nearly slayed by the BBC a while back. Steam has provided a free game - Alien Swarm which is quite fun, though I always find it weird playing 3rd person shooters from a ceiling perspective and I have also engrossed myself with Civilisation IV and Plants vs. Zombies. As a house we've been watching a whole lot of DVD's and I have ordered two more - Shine, about a musician who has a musical breakdown which I saw on the TV a while back and loved and Into The Wild, which I have heard good things about!
I plan to have an adventure myself next week; on the basis of the book I've just read - Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, about a violinist who left glouster walked to and worked in London on a construction site till the job ended and decided to spend his moeny on a boat to Spain which he walked across making a living from his playing and the generosity of the local people. Providing it's nice I'll set off in the morning with a packed lunch and walk somewhere fun about 20/25 miles away before catching a train home. That's the plan at least.
