My Last Two Days In England

After dragging ourselves out of bed and down to breakfast the morning after the St. Neots Freestyle, Raven dropped me off back in Cambridge. Lam and I went to dim sum one last time at Charlie Chans on Regent Street. It was a nice, relaxing lunch and we discussed the future mostly. She's starting with her and Rasmus' wedding plans. They've been together 4 or 5 years and they're pretty sure they're going to have two ceremonies: a traditional Vietnamese one and a traditional Christian one. That means she needs to go to Vietnam to get a traditional wedding dress, which is pretty exciting! But then again, anything that has to do with shopping is exciting for me. I told her to make a detour stop in Taiwan so we can go have proper dim sum.

Afterwards, I went home and finished packing, wrapped up the stuff I was shipping ahead of me and hightailed it back into town to the post office. I made it just in time, posted my stuff and dusted my hands. Then I hightailed it back home, got ready for that night and hightailed it to Yseult's house to meet Raven. And damnit, for once I was the one who was late! I got delayed by Neil, who wanted to sort out some bits and pieces before I go and give me my deposit back, then by the bus, which is never on time. That's one thing I definitely will not miss about Cambridge - the damn Citi 3 bus.

Anyway, I handed over three large bags of stuff to give to Yseult: my rice cooker and wok (plus several bits and pieces, like chopsticks and some small jars with lids), Nick P.'s George Foreman Grille to give to his brother and my books for safekeeping for until I can come back and claim them back. And some magazines, mostly food ones, that she'd find useful. I left everything with Nicoletta, Yseult's housemate, since Yseult wasn't back from barn dance, aka uncle's birthday party, yet. Then Raven and I dashed off to Mildenhall, in the next county.

That night was the Cambridgeshire Cats American Football Awards Ceremony, which was being held at RAF Mildenhall. We'd booked a hotel as it was unlikely that we'd be sober enough to drive ourselves back after the ceremony so we checked in first, passing the airfield on our way. After checking in, we walked to the base, all along the fence line to the main entrance which we saw on our way over. That was about a mile's walk. While we were walking, Raven called a couple of guys on the team to find out about where to go once on base; no one picked up. However, only cars were allowed through that entrance - damn - so we walked back to the hotel to ask if there was a pedestrian entrance. There was one 300 metres in the other direction so we trekked down that way. The guard looked to be really enjoying door duty when we walked up and gave him our IDs. This is where it gets funny: Raven was fine getting on base with his British Army ID but the American couldn't get onto an American base with her American drivers' license. Say what?! Yeah, that's what I said. The helpful guard informed us that I needed a visitor's pass from the other gate so we had to drive in the end. Double damn.

We went back to the hotel to fetch the car - luckily Raven had forgotten to leave the car key in the room - and made our way down to the main gate again. The corporal at the visitor's centre took down my information but when Raven asked him about the Cats' Awards Ceremony, she had noooo idea what we were talking about but she did recall someone else coming in asking about the same thing then calling someone else and saying something about (RAF) Lakenheath. Bloody hell! Both of us were so damn annoyed with the whole bloody thing and how badly it was organised but it took us so long to get on the damn base that we were going to drive around on it anyway!

The base is like a suburb! The streets had names like 'Texas Avenue' and 'Missouri Street'. There was a commissary, a gas station and a food court which had Taco Bell. Ohmygod, Taco Bell! Raven said, 'No, we're not having that for dinner!' as I pressed myself against the window when we drove away. *Sniffle* They even had a Bank of America! I wonder if I'd be charged a fee for using the ATM there with my BoA card...

The hilarious thing was that we couldn't find our way out. There weren't any exit signs and the road we came in on was two-way so we figured we could just go that way to get out. Ha, we figured wrong! Turns out, if you weren't a military escort, you couldn't go out the way we came in even though there were no signs saying otherwise! This guy runs up to us, exclaiming, 'This is an entrance only!' Raven goes, 'Well then how the hell do we get out of here??' The guy points beyond us, then pauses, lowers his arm and some more silence. You could hear the mental 'umm' loud and clear! As soon as he lowered his arm and thought about it, I lost it and busted out laughing in disbelief. Even he doesn't know how to get out of this place! He then turns to the guard at the entrance and says, 'They can go out this way, right?' while pointing to the 'Escorts only' way out. The guard says, 'Yeah' and we finally made it out. Geez louise.!

Anyway, by this time we figured they'd probably moved the event to RAF Lakenheath and hadn't contacted Raven about the move; he'd left his email and phone number for the organiser but he hadn't received any emails or anything about any changes. Although Lakenheath was just a short drive from Mildenhall, Raven had had enough with running around like a mad chicken looking for this and to be honest, I was starving and really needed some food. Shame, though, because both of us were really looking forward to it! I suggested we just grab some grub, some wine or something and head back to the hotel as there's bound to be something good on TV on a Saturday night. Bonne idée!

I'm good with ideas because then I suggested Dominos pizza and that met with rounds of approval. We ixnayed the wine since I don't really drink enough and Raven declined on the beer; we settled on pop since it was 2 for £2 - Dr. Pepper and Fanta Orange. 20 minutes we had our pizza and garlic cheesebread and found A Knight's Tale on TV. Yay, I hadn't seen it before! It's part of Raven's DVD collection but I just hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. Heath Ledger is yummilicious and Paul Bettany cracked me up - he was awesome as Chaucer. I love happy endings. Raven got a text back from one of the guys saying that no one's had any service on base, that Raven must not have gotten the email about the change of location (uh yeah, he totally didn't get no emails!) and that he was just leaving - it wasn't even quite midnight yet! After A Knight's Tale, I then passed out while Raven watched Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz.

As award nights go though, it was a pretty good one - despite having missed the Cats' awards - and I had a great last night in England. The next morning, we had an English breakfast then woke Yseult up and went back to hers for tea and to chill out. I had to leave her instructions on all the stuff I'd left, too. Poor Alfie (Yseult's cat's full name is Alfonso Bonzo) had to sit outside while we were over. We chatted about this and that, about the St. Neots Freestyle and our adventure in Mildenhall, and we demonstrated the airplane and a lean for the girls (Nicoletta was up, too). They were suitably impressed. I then said my goodbyes and take cares, fetched my luggage and went back to Raven's to watch some Babylon 5 (so addicting!) before I had to catch my train to London.

I caught the 4:18pm train to London and I was gone. Damn, I hate leaving England.