Looks like she made it...

OK, I know those aren't the words, but I'm determined to have at least one cheesy 80s song in your head by the end of this one...

This place is cool! Its almost a cliche! Fair enough, my knowledge of England is pretty much limited to Mary Poppins, but the all buildings remind me of chimmney sweepers! Everything's made out of stone and perfectly laid out in rows... there are green pastures full of cows and sheep (everyone's freaking out about how late the spring lambs are - global warming, ooh aye! - but a farmer has confessed to me that lambs are born after the male sheep has had relations with the female sheep... has more to do with when the farmer has decided to cohabit them than weather), really narrow roads, and more pubs than people... Paul's local is the Yeoman, which is a smoky little pub with thick carpet and flowery wallpaper, and a cast of crazy characters on both sides of the bar. Met a couple of dudes last night playing 'paper, plastic, glass' - a variation of rock, paper, scissors where plastic always wins - and drinking "zam-booka"... so wish you guys could hear these guys talk!

So I arrived in Leeds incident free... Granted, didn't have to do anything very hard, but still, think Paul was more than a little surprised when I walked off the plane at Leeds/Bradford. After getting called over the PA at Darwin airport and being by far the last one to board the plane, I went through Singapore (where the 1st song I heard was "i want to know what love is" - recently taken a very special place in my heart thanks to Kylie, singstar and waaaaaaaay too much wine... ) Flight was all good, apparently very long but I managed to sleep through 10 of the 14 hours, don't know what everyone's bitching about!

It was a balmy -1 degrees when I arrived in Heathrow... spose if it had to be a minus, pretty happy it was only 1. Some farkin smartass was wearing shorts and thongs though. Then connecting flight to Leeds/Bradford... some very superficial observations about England (bearing in mind these were all seen from window of the plane) 1 - everything about the land is structured. Neat little lines of houses, carefully divided paddocks, perfectly straight waterways and little clusters of trees. 2 - Farms everywhere! The country is so green... and 3 - hard to see any massive built-up areas - where the hell do all 50million live?

Paul lives in a little town called Otley, just out of Leeds - 14 000 people and 22 pubs! Plus the coolest fast food delivery place ever - the World's Greatest Kebab bar also does curry, pizza and fish & chips! I'm going to be so skinny!

Just added some more photos... can't believe they have urinals in the middle of the footpath. These guys think of everything!

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