Passes

I have been telling people that we are like children. We don't know how to do basic things like find the right coin without reading them. We could not make a pay phone call. We don't actually know our address and cannot tell anyone the area in which we live. We have to read and look at pictures of each item in the train store-where one buys sandwiches and crisps (not chips which are french fries).


However, yesterday we made another giant leap forwards in independance and now feel like we might be teenagers. We took the bus into town and when we got home we drove the car back to the supermarket for a few missed items like cling film. We still like to keep a paper in our pockets with our bus stops written on it.


Our trip to town was mostly business-the business of collecting passes. I purchased a network rail pass (25 pounds) that allows us to ride the train to London and around for 1/3 off both of our tickets. A few trips with it should pay it off. Rail travel is expensive. Mark tells us that one of his friends pays half of her salary for her daily commute to London to work. Driving a car would mean about the same expenditure and a considerable investment in time. We have seen the queues of cars in rush hour London.

We did buy Brit Rail passes months ago. You can only buy them from outside the country, and they provide significant savings on rail travel. For $1400 for both of us we get 15 days of travel between when we take our first trip and the end of September. We save these days for long distance travel.

We also bought the Econosaver 10 bus pass. This gives us 10 bus rides for 12 pounds-special introductory offer, as it will probably go to 15 pounds. It can also be topped off by the bus driver, so it is very convenient. Otherwise, we would have to have exact change for each ride. Our driver was quite kind yesterday and told us that we could ride for free to get to the store that sold the passes.



St Marys

The store that sells the passes is in the Butts Mall (pronounced like New Englanders do-sounds like the first syllable of mallett). Acutally, the sign outside says it is the Broad Street Mall, but it is located a the corner of Broad and St Mary's Butts, so it is the Butts Mall in common reference. We thoroughly explored St Mary's Butts getting our bus passes and looking for our bus. In the end (I just cannot help myself) we walked the length of the Broad St pedistrian mall to get to the Abbey Ruins.






A word about language here. I came upon this school van at Muncaster and thought about how American children might face a soapy mouth for saying the name of this school. Even more astonishing, I have it on good authority that British children would as well. I wonder why it continues? Surely these taboo words did not always have the same punch that they do these days, and maybe in some local areas they do not.

We did get to see the Reading Abbey-what's left of it. They recently fenced it off, as it is crumbling away and they don't want people to even touch it. It was built in the 13th century and razed by Henry VIII when he was giving the finger to the pope. We did get close enough to get some photos which I will soon post to the blog.

Marcia standing under the nose arch.

Rain is predicted for all weekend, so we think we might tour the museum in Reading today. Another bus trip.

FYI-I put quite a few photos on the photo blog last night.

KG