A journey to England

After an Epic 30+ Hours of constant travelling, Squeak and I have made it to England. We are here for the summer, the festival season, and the English do it in style, with a festival at least every weekend from mid May through the end of September. I am working for a company called Natural Event, who provide environmentally sustainable sanitation solutions… Essentially, I am the Green “Kenny“, and yes, I get paid to go to music festivals. Anyway, I feel I should start from the beginning, the epic flight.

So on Monday the 31st of May, Squeak and I were, ever so kindly, driven to the airport by my lovely sister Bridget. We couldn’t surpass the opportunity for one last ‘good quality’ Australian meal. So we visited the airport Maccas, checked in, and after Squeak sent some last minute papers home, we went through Immigration, and onto our Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur. It was a pretty easy flight, and I throughly enjoyed my brand new Bose headphones, a very expensive, but very worthwhile investment (nerd moment). The inflight entertainment system was a little glitchy on the way over, which limited the amount of movie catchup we could do, but we survived… Just!

We landed at KLIA, an amazing airport I have frequented before, and settled in for our 4 hour stopover, with me enjoying the Malaysian signature dish, (Nasi Lemak), and Squeak some very spicy noodles. I attempted to buy some clove cigarettes (Sampoerna), something I very much enjoyed during my previous trip to Malaysia, but the Duty Free store didn’t stock them. Squeak & I attended the smoking room, a very, very, badly ventilated, plastic decor’d, hazy box, and then boarded yet another flight, to Heathrow, London.

We were under the impression the flight was 16 hours, and were delighted to find it was only 11. This time, the inflight entertainment system was functioning, and we caught up on some movies, making sure we stayed awake until the last part of the flight to adjust our body clocks appropriately.

Now was the nerve racking part of our journey, clearing Immigration. As you may have read in some of my previous posts, I have had some issues with the UK Border Agency in the past, first having a visa denied, and then being hassled each time I entered the UK. Squeak on the other hand, had been deported just 3 weeks earlier, after attempting to enter on a legitimate business visa, that as it turned out, they rarely allow. He was held in Heathrow cells or 7 hours before being returned straight back to Australia. He had been living at my house ever since.

We were both asked one question “Are you here for business or pleasure?” and upon finding our visas, let straight through. Probably the second easiest Immigration clearance I have ever experience, after Dubai of all places. From there, it was onto the Heathrow Connect train to Terminals 1, 2 & 3, then a bus to Woking, then a train to Yeovil Junction. We were picked up by Hamish (our boss) and after a quick trip to TESCO EXTRA (an amazingly huge supermarket), we finally arrived at Bearley Farm, our home between festivals. Bearley is an awesome place; maybe it has something to do with my growing up in the city, but I do love the farm. There is endless mechanical toys; Tractors, Combine Harvestors, Telescopic Forklifts, Diggers, Trucks, and last but not least a Volvo Ute, which I am currently in the process of re-registering, Photos to come. We have 200+ cows as neighbours, sheep, cats, chickens, horses and my favorite of the bunch, two lazy black Labradors named Charlie and Bruce, the farms dogs.

We are going to hit the ground running, with Sunrise Festival, a hippy/green festival just outside a lovely little town called Bruton.

I hope this post finds you all in good health, a reminder that you can manage your subscription to my blog at geordiebarker.com/follow and I would like to encourage you all to comment, as I do love hearing from home.

I will try to keep this blog up to date as much as possible, but it is difficult when you spend most of your time in the middle of the English Countryside.

So for now, cheers!

Geordie