Tour guide vs. Tourist: The ultimate face-off

“You’re too loud!” A man’s nylon-enshrouded arm waved for my attention, for everyone’s attention. He looked miserable.

He sat among rows of over-prepared tourists, all wearing shoes so sensible they had no place in London. Some were shod with hiking boots. Others with bulbous white trainers, the sort resembling miniature cruise liners on each foot, which is, I suspect, their natural environment. But we were on an open-top tour bus in the centre of London, not the Alps or a 14-day cruise to the Bahamas, though a few wore the T-shirts.

Somehow in a sea of immigration and unparalleled diversity, amid faces and accents of all hues and tones, these tourists still managed to concoct a look that said: We don’t belong here.

Looking back at the still-waving man, I paused, microphone in hand, to assess the situation. He locked bespectacled eyes with mine and crumpled his face like he had a migraine that was entirely my doing. This one’s a problem, I thought – my first delinquent passenger as a new London tour guide.

Perhaps I could have ignored him, had I tried harder. But when I continued to speak, he looked at me like my voice was a busted sewer pipe; like my tour was a test-run for a new method of psychological torture; or, like I was his estranged wife who’d just informed him I’d not only be taking the dog, but the house on the lake as well.

As a tour guide in London during high season, it helps to have a thick skin. Since I don’t have one, I cope in other ways. I see my job as a sit-com, and I’m the main character. The concept offers the false sense of security I need, that everything will work out by the end and I will glean some useful lesson from each episode no matter how cringe-worthy. Each antagonist is carefully chosen for comic value. In this episode, I’d apparently acquired a failing marriage.

Following their father’s lead, the children, swathed in beige safari gear, covered their ears with their hands. Their bony arms akimbo made for pointy elbows in the faces of nearby passengers. The boy moaned and rocked a little. If my voice inflicted as much pain on him as it seemed, I hope the poor child never gets a paper cut. He’d have to be euthanized.

“Maybe you could take it easy and stop talking for a while,” the condescending husband character suggested, gesturing at our suffering offspring, as though it was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. “You’re talking a lot.”

But I’m a tour guide. Sixty-five passengers, including this man, paid me to talk for two hours straight, from Westminster Abbey to Tower Bridge, and now his issues wanted me to stop. “There’s a public bus that follows the same route and costs ten times less,” I thought, but didn’t say. “And isn’t the commentary the entire point of a sightseeing tour?” I didn’t say either.

Instead, I covered my microphone with my hand and managed a much more discreet, “I’m sorry sir, but these people are expecting me to tell them about London.” I gestured at the other passengers who were polite enough to busy themselves with a statue of a horse. Incensed, he stood, rolled his eyes and took a different seat. My seat. The one reserved for the tour guide.  He was now close enough to make me fear the episode might receive an R-rating, if not for intimate touching, then for the rage I might unleash if he continued to play his role so convincingly.

While leading a tour I usually stand, so I didn’t actually need my seat, but I did wonder why he wanted to be closer to the apparent source of his misery. The answer became immediately clear – now I could hear him, too.

In close proximity, he met my every historical fact with a cluck, every anecdote with a huff. The children writhed in pantomime pain just a few seats ahead. Exacting their powers of peripheral observation, they regularly checked for their father’s approval and got the exact opposite from me. Objectively, I must say the scene was impressive. The children’s belts were cinched so tightly and the chinstraps of their sun hats so taut, that their relative range of motion showed real dedication to the cause. If practice makes perfect, I see a future in Japanese bondage for these two.

Hyde Park, Queen Victoria, Marble Arch, I rambled on in the face of adversity. But my mutinous sit-com family was contending for a Golden Globe. My passengers, the live studio audience, were now fixated on this subplot rather than London. A few kindly shot me glances of solidarity. Everyone else shot me looks saying, “I’m so very glad I’m not you.” My studio husband just wanted me shot. I couldn’t wait to be rid of this man and his two snivelling protégés.

With no amicable end to the arrangement in sight, as the bus pulled over to collect more passengers, I had no choice but to start the proceedings. “This is your stop,” I said directly to the man, and I meant it more than I’d ever meant it before. In retaliation he unleashed an expression of unbridled disgust to match my squinty face of disapproval. Following a brief, but intense stare-off, the father finally resolved to add me to his list of failed relationships. He cast a look so final and so clear, I knew exactly what he was saying. “Fine,” said the look. “You can have the dog and the goddamned house. But I’m taking the kids.”

Directing audience attention away as he arranged his things and prepared to leave me – children, backpacks, snack packs, water bottles, camera, map and suntan lotion – I pointed out the Bob Forstner car showroom, because no one can resist a Lamborghini. It was the perfect location for a scene change.

When the bus pulled away from the stop, I looked down at the sidewalk and watched the disgruntled, neurotic triumvirate shrink into the distance, becoming nary more than a tiny beige smudge in a crowd of otherwise pleasant tourists. In this moment I realized I might never see the family again. And with that came relief.

I never wanted those kids anyway.

Wild England

I’ll admit I was expecting some trees. Camping would be the perfect break from the cacophony of London, I needed – respite from the queues, the cost and the constant threat of pickpockets and train delays.

For the peace of the countryside, I was willing to incur a few itchy welts and fall slack with my hygiene. From my tent in the shadow of the trees, I would mistake the sound of the wind for traffic, and the buzz of mosquitoes for shit electronica reverberating through from the neighbour's flat. But then I would awake to my refreshing new reality in the countryside. And I would take a long, deep breath of clean country air and smile contentedly – completely relaxed and rejuvenated. There would be little to do, other than play cards in the dancing orange light around the campfire, and perhaps cool our beer in the frigid North Atlantic sand.

I had no idea what I was in for, but driving through a military weapons test site on the way to the campground was the first sign I wasn’t going to get the peace I’d been expecting.

Camping in England is as dissimilar to camping in Canada as our respective versions of football. The only wild creatures at our campsite in Durdle Door, near Poole, were feral children and mothers who ran madly among the tents scream-crying, “Where’s my baby!?”. Fortunately, every tent was within earshot of all others, so their children were usually located fairly quickly, which meant the fathers could stop cursing and the mothers would stop hyperventilating and they could get back to bickering about whose responsibility it is to watch the kids. Teenagers roamed in small packs, hunting stray beer and tentatively stalking each other’s elusive virginities.

Rows and rows of beige and tan rectangles lined the paved, speed-bumped streets of the campground, surrounding the small field designated for tents. To get there, we walked a gauntlet of beady eyes, peering out through white lace curtains, belonging to old ladies, Shih-Tzus and toy terriers. All capable of terrible yapping should anyone stumble onto their perfectly manicured territory, too near the potted mums, pansies and plastic ornaments. In England, this is a campground. In Canada, we call the phenomenon a trailer park. Nowhere else would you see so many white shoes outside a retirement home.

Our tent overlooked two trailers, a few parked cars and a beautiful valley dotted with grazing sheep. There would be no campfire, I realized, but not because we risked inadvertently starting a forest fire – there were no trees in sight – but because we couldn’t risk ruining the grass. We didn’t need a flashlight, because even on cloudy nights, the streetlamp next to our pitch provided all the light we needed.

There was no wilderness, but nature made itself known. It rained from all directions. The wind blew in with gusto, sucking out our slack tent walls and snapping them back with twice the enthusiasm. Camping in Canada, I thought, trees would provide some shelter from the weather. Camping in England, I could just walk to the campsite pub, next to the shop if I wanted shelter. Not only did the pub offer cold pints and a quiz machine, but full English breakfast and steamy lattes in the mornings.

When I realized waiting out the storm in a pub was an option, I also realized the campsite was more populated than my Canadian hometown. My parents still live there, where there are so few people, a general store is barely viable. They drive fifteen minutes to the nearest town to find a meat selection like the one at this campsite. Where I’m from, most of the meat is still running wild in the forest.

I really thought that in heading to the English coast for camping, I’d be getting away from it all. Relatively I was. London offers everything you could ever want, and everything you definitely don’t – Buckingham Palace and council estates, multiculturalism in the streets and people under trains, orderly queues and regular stabbings. Fame and misfortune. London has it all.

At Durdle Door, our campsite, things were simple. Only lattes, cold cans of beer, salty ocean water, and beautiful coastline could be found, all within a two-minute saunter. Even the sun made an appearance eventually, and long enough to sear my pale, deprived pins. It didn’t matter that camping in England wasn’t like camping in Canada. Nothing in England is like Canada. That’s the point of travelling. I reminded myself of this as I passed a yard sale on my way to the pub.

Still, I longed for the smell of wood smoke to permeate my belongings, for sparks to char and scar my hooded sweatshirt and for pinesap to ruin the seat of my jeans. I wanted to worry about real animals – bears, coyotes, skunks and raccoons – rather than suburban foxes stealing our Mediterranean olive assortment and feral teenagers stealing our beer.

But instead of worrying away the days of our trailer park residency, I sipped my coveted latte and took a really good look at my welt-free self. Breathing deeply, I let the aura of freshly mown grass and sun-warmed pavement fill me with the sense of summer, and I accepted the beautiful absurdity of camping in England. Because with all the authenticity it seemed to lack, it also lacked mosquitoes.

As the sun sets over the trailers, here I am making delicious kebabs to cook on the bucket barbecue. The entire camping experience was made possible by friends who organized basically everything, and the entire reason we had a nice time. They also took this picture.

Good morning, Great Britain!

Seat 39K – the one beside the toilet at the very back of the plane and directly across the aisle from the gawking, randy middle-aged man with mustard on his scarf – was all mine.

The karma I'd generated in the departures lounge, by turning in a stranger's purse to the security desk, had apparently been lost in airspace. It had occurred to me at the time that I maybe shouldn't involve myself with the business of unidentified parcels in airports, but my heart was so strung out on adrenaline that adding accidental implication in a smuggling scandal seemed manageable. I carried the purse very conspicuously at arm's length, just in case.

On the plane, I hid under my coat instead of that karmic shield I’d wanted. And my scarf. And that other coat I didn’t have room for in my checked luggage. A stiff neck was all Mr. Mustard was going to get from his efforts, no matter how long the flight from Halifax to London, or how vivid or well-oiled his imagination.

I sniffed the air, because I was more concerned about a smelly washroom anyway. It seemed normal for a plane: heavy on the freezer-burn with undertones of armpit. Since the flight was only five hours long, I reasoned my misery would be capped at passing ladies knocking me lucid with their purses or, at worst, a little anticipatory flatulence from the queue.

Nothing so minor would distract me from my daydreams, I resolved. Finally Heathrow-bound and running on three months of anticipation, I was on my way to meet my frighteningly-too-exactly-what-I’ve-always-wanted-in-a-man-to-be-true English boyfriend, and I had a lot of theories about how that might go. I wanted to run though them all. The R-rated ones I replayed until I fell asleep.

Before long, a swift knock on the head with a sturdy leather handbag woke me to a pink horizon. The sun was rising over England and the wing pointed to the moon. Pre-cooked omelette wafted then flopped through the cabin, and it smelled relatively delicious.

Mr. Mustard, now fast asleep, missed all the good stuff. I snapped a picture, because I didn't want to miss a thing.

Pee: The curse in the cure

As it turns out, my grade school bullies were right. I do eat worms and drink pee.

It's fair to suggest their twisted little minds planted the idea in my head. As a squeamish child, I'd never have come up with that on my own – not unless one of those stones they threw knocked me in the worms-and-pee section of my brain. It's possible.

To my credit, the acts didn't manifest quite as my bullies imagined. The worm was Mexican and travelled via souvenir mezcal to a Friday night in Montreal. The bottle housed only one worm, so, to my horror my friend Cathy sliced through its middle and offered me first choice of ends – a version of Heads-or-Tails impossible to win.

"Aaaaaaarghaaawwwaaawwwaaaaarrrrrrrgh!" I retched with the wrinkled grub in my mouth.

Though equal in size to two aspirin, it hadn't occurred to me not to grind its tiny leathery, jelly-filled body into a putrid alcoholic pulp before swallowing – not until I did just that. I feared I'd see that worm again.

It's a matter of perspective whether that's the most disgusting thing I've ever had in my mouth. I'd argue the virus (which has still has control of my sinuses) tops the list, but you might suggest pee as a fairly strong contender.

As I've explained to many a revolted family member and friend, I didn't actually drink pee – not intentionally – though a few drops inevitably escaped down my throat when I swallowed as reflex. It was the more palpable alternative to vomiting. The only way to avoid swallowing a little pee would be to not gargle it at all, which is what most have suggested.

Come to think of it, only two people have ever suggested otherwise, and neither was my friend. Still, they seemed to have my best interests in mind. Suffering the onset of strep throat while travelling solo through rural El Salvador, I was ill and desperate enough to try nearly anything – even pee.

"Do YOU gargle YOUR pee?" I croaked at my hostel-mate, an Austrian kiteboarder, from the nest I'd made in my hammock with all the blankets I could find. Over tea and sniffles, he'd spoken of pee's healing properties and I was positively scandalized.

"It really works," he answered, looking anywhere but back at me.

"Ewwwwwwwww!" I taunted. "You're a pee drinker!"

"It really works," he said again.

"Well, I could never do it," I announced, not realizing "never" would only last until the next morning, when I was sufficiently desperate.

I was still miserable in my hammock when a young Korean couple arrived later that night and, hearing me complain of an ever-worsening sore throat, suggested their grandparents' cure-all: gargling pee. No way, I thought and headed to bed, only to wake up, swallow some razor blades and think, Maybe way. Beside my bed was a plastic cup.

If I was going to do it, I intended to do it right, so I'd never have to do it again. The pee, as it was explained to me, should be the first of the day, so the vitamins and minerals it contains are as concentrated as possible. Knowing this, I procrastinated in bed for a long, long time that morning. When I could hold it no more, my decision was made: I would pee in the cup and think about it.

Battling three decades of cultural conditioning, social convention and a general aversion to pee in my mouth, I managed to rationalize the remedy, and cleared my head enough to bring the glass to my lips. Pretend it's tea, I told myself. It won't be so bad. But it was.

It was so bad, in fact, that sipping pee and vomiting in the sink seemed to happen in the very same moment. I don't think I expected it to be quite so hot, and it tasted nothing like tea at all. There was no turning back, though; I'd already crossed a line and there was plenty more pee for another try. And another. And another, until I finally managed to gargle.

"This better be worth it," I said to the new pee-mouth me in the mirror. I reloaded my toothbrush with minty-fresh paste a few times while I brushed and brushed and brushed and brushed, and pondered having lost my pee-ginity. Back in my hammock, I fell asleep to my newest mantra: "I am so hardcore."

Hours later, my throat was better. All better. "Shhhhhhhit!" I yelled, suddenly aware of the curse in the cure. Now the keeper of a terrible secret, with every instance of a sore throat, I'd forever be forced to consciously choose to suffer, or to gargle pee. The line of separation between the options is arguably blurry.

While I don't regret my decision to buck convention concerning pee remedies (and join the ranks of Madonna, Gandhi and British actress, Sarah Miles), at the end of the day, there's one convention I'd have been better of to heed. You know the saying: "What happens in *holiday destination* stays in *holiday destination*"? No longer are my grade school bullies teasing me about eating worms and drinking pee, but the torch is carried by my family and friends and others I've made the mistake of telling, which, as of now, is everyone.

Thankfully, half of you won't believe me.

Reason I love to travel #4

I've learned that a smile can get me out of all sorts of trouble – particularly when it comes to dealing with the (presumably) self-appointed, easily excitable, bullet proof-vested Nicaraguan beach patrol and its collective libido.

Short skirts, on the other hand, only get me into trouble.

Reason I love to travel #3

Travel allows me to hone valuable powers and render them "super", like the ability to sleep anywhere. Anywhere. Even in Miami's mouse-infested airport, surrounded by grumpy strangers:

Fortune echoes in the void

Of hundreds of meals enjoyed in my Park Avenue apartment, chow mein was my last. It was my $6 reward for having dragged, rolled and huffed another 60 pounds of my former life – the one I had before I decided to relocate to the UK – eight blocks to the donation bin at the local mission. I suppose I could've just used that $6 for a taxi, but then I wouldn't have gotten a fortune cookie out of it.

In the sole remaining chair in my apartment, I sat before the now empty Chinese takeaway carton, with a few more ibuprofren-enabled hours of lugging boxes ahead of me.

Tearing open the fortune cookie's clear plastic wrapper, I thought three things:

1) They don't even have these in China.
2) I hope this cookie isn't stale like the last one.
3) This fortune better say something good.

It read, "You will soon travel abroad."

Drawing a slow breath, I scanned the nearly empty space that was once my home. Assessing the final precarious tower of awkwardly packed boxes awaiting transportation, I couldn't help but feel that the cosmos hadn't been paying attention to my life plans at all. Incredulous, I responded as any exhausted Canadian might, after spending more than a grand and weeks of preparation to move overseas:

"Noooooo shit!" I yelled.

"No shit," my four walls echoed back. "Nooooo shhhhhhit."

The final countdown

What is 4 x 24? Fewer hours than I have to purge two years of living from my apartment, that's what.

In four days, a French PhD student will be sleeping in my bedroom. Actually, she'll be doing whatever she wants in there, and I suppose she'll do it anywhere she wants, just like I did. She might even do it on my sofa. I won't be here to stop her. No matter what she does, I'm sure I did it better.

Ninety-six hours to transience and my house is still full of furniture, art, cookware and crap. You'd think losing all your belongings and mooching off friends would be easier. Don't people do it all the time?

Yesterday morning, I signed a contract with movers who've agreed to transport my antiques and irreplaceables back to Nova Scotia where my parents will reluctantly, but thankfully store them. Then, the new tenant arrived to see what of my furniture she'd buy, and last night I hosted a giveaway/livingroom sale I called, 'Dinner and Dibs'.

Basically, I sorted through all my things, lured some close girlfriends to my house with the promise of a home-cooked dinner and gave them first pick of everything I'd rather not pay to store or transport to England. Whatever they didn't want, I forced on them, like an annoying salesgirl working on commission. "Oh, Pyrex cookware is timeless, and would go so well with this sailor's cap!"

I'm stuck with a few dining room chairs, which I rescued (read: pilfered) from the basement of this building. At the time, I wondered why anyone would abandon something so nice, but now I see that furniture fate is inescapable and, chair by chair, they're going right back to where I found them so someone else can wonder the same. There are also some leftover books, deceivingly titled and disappointingly academic, from my university years: Pornocopia and Public Sex (among the less scandalous untouchables, Anthropological Theory and The Mass Media in Canada). Most everything else is claimed and awaiting pick-up.

Perhaps the greatest marker of the evening's success is having finally uncovered my house keys – one of life's little conveniences – which have been missing beneath the chaos for nearly a week.

The crumbs I'll be donating to the local mission today, and by Sunday, all evidence of my life here and my ongoing battle with mice and my creepy neighbour will be completely gone, save for bits of furniture the new tenant bought, that red paint I spilled in the sink, and the stack of papers that fell behind the fridge. These little accents will add to those left by the previous tenants: the good luck charm bolted into the oak frame of the doorway, unidentifiable trinkets lodged in the radiator, and little poops left by midnight visitors – the furry rodent kind, not the freaky weirdo sort.

Ninety-five hours to go...

Death, lies and dinner

When I was small, my parents lied to me all the time. "It's beef," they'd say, and drop a plate on the table. Sometimes, I'd refuse to eat, convinced I'd heard them slip a barely audible "just like" between the "it's" and "beef". It was inhumane, I thought, to hunt wild game and (at that age) equally inhumane to force me to eat vegetables as the alternative. My parents were cruel, and I was right not to trust them.

Several incarnations of Bambi's mother and his philandering father have joined us for dinner, as have Thumper, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Jaws and various anonymous guests, sometimes in a medley of murder my mother liked to call 'stew'. Children's stories, cartoons, movies and Teddy bears did not serve me well in a family of naturalists, hunters and fisherfolk.

Not until I fully understood the horrors of industrial farming, and tired of my diet of pasta and frozen chicken nuggets while studying at an out-of-province university, did my views on my parents' eating habits begin to soften. By then, I cared more about what food wasn't (pasta or mechanically separated meat), than what it was.

Not until I'd travelled throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America did I begin to actually appreciate my parents' choices. As it turns out, a lot more can be considered food than I'd initially thought, and the horrors of my mother's cooking weren't, comparatively, so terrifying. Travelling, I learned to find my happy place, which allowed me to politely choke down whatever lovingly slaughtered, hacked and salted ungodly creatures I'd been served. They won't eat me from the inside out, I consoled myself. Even if the heads are still on? asked my little voice.

While I maintain my belief that food should not be able to look back at you, I've learned to appreciate dead, cooked versions of creatures, so long as I have nothing to do with their death or any stage postmortem/pre-meal.

Among life's greatest motivators, however, (pain, necessity, a full bladder) is the desire to look tough in front of one's peers, and this is what got me to both kill and cook one of Earth's most hideous, head and all: a lobster.

I watch my parents do it every year on Christmas Eve, and, with the help of my happy place, I was pretty sure I could pull it off for my mostly urban, English, fruit-and-salad-loving boyfriend. On this, his first visit to Canada, my family had already introduced him to bear stew, moose sirloin, vampire-repelling dill and garlic pickles, pierogi and three batches of Mom's cookies, and it seemed a shame to have him leave Nova Scotia without eating something from the sea, especially since he'd never tried lobster.

My greatest realization, in cooking the beast, was that I truly am becoming more like my parents. Here I am, carrying on the tradition of lying to people who are reluctant to kill for dinner, while my boyfriend screams, "It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE! OH, EFF! It's still ALIVE!":

Breaking up with my apartment

The last time I moved from an apartment, I walked in on strangers having gay sex in my living room.

Apparently, there'd been a miscommunication (read: no communication) between me and my recently "exed" boyfriend concerning when the new tenants could have the keys and start moving in. That's the difference a day makes.

Our relationship was a recent fatality, having ended with style and force usually reserved for collapsing mine shafts, atom splitting and revolution quashing, as most long-term relationships do. Everyone involved scrambles for their lives, there's screaming, and no one makes it out unscathed. Still, when it's all said and done and a new day comes, it's a bright one.

More than simply packing up, we'd had to negotiate seven years' worth of mine vs. his. Through clenched teeth and the staccato of monosyllabic reluctance, we still managed to negotiate divisions of things like dinnerware: Three plates for me. Three plates for him. A holy travesty.

The car was his. The furniture was mine. The apartment and its gorgeous patio would soon be for someone else. The hate was initially his, but we soon managed to ensure there was plenty for everyone. Eventually, all I wanted was 'out'.

I'd arranged for movers to come when I didn't think my Ex would be there, the cheap kind that arrive late and try to buy weed from you when the move takes longer than expected, because they can't call their regular guy after 11 PM. It doesn't occur to them that you don't smoke weed and don't know where to get any, so they become annoyed, and you end up tipping them more than you would have otherwise. They know where you live.

The final and more delicate remnants of my three years in the old apartment were still there come midnight. Returning in a taxi to gather them in a last run, I'd romanticized that perhaps the night would end with one final moment of silence for that era of my life, and with a deep breath I'd both symbolically and literally lock the door behind me. Saying that I felt like I was reluctantly saying good-bye to a beloved, but toxic friend would be a good analogy, if that wasn't exactly what was happening.

When I arrived, all sentimental and melancholy, I remember turning the key and slowly pushing the door open, expecting to be struck by the vacant space that was once my home. I remember just as clearly how instead there were two svelte, naked bodies humping in the dark on my living room floor.

Oh my gawd, I gasped and gawked, too shocked to avert my eyes and still not quite understanding what I was seeing. Initially, I'd thought my Ex was exacting some sort of revenge, and had arranged to have me catch him doing the dirty with some poor martyr or hussy. Moments later, I realized both bodies were of the male variety. Oh my gawd, my sense of wonder renewed. Then, I realized neither belonged to my Ex.

They scrambled for pants and sheets, all the while apologizing and urging me in. Blushing and gathering my things, I knew I wouldn't have that final moment of closure I'd romanticized, just as the new tenants' first romp in their new home didn't quite go as they'd imagined.

That's a lot less likely to happen this time, I think – as I pack, sell and donate my belongings before my next big move – but I can't wait to see what will.

Reason I love to travel #2

If I put on a brave face for the camera, even if only for a few seconds, someone will snap a photo that will make me seem tough for all eternity – not because I like to eat bugs.

Costa Rican Crunch, originally uploaded by Kate Savage.

Reason I love to travel #1

I get to take pictures of Teletubbies-lovin' child Christs. Not everyone can say that.


Señor Santo Niño and the smoker, originally uploaded by Kate Savage.

Merrymaking with mischief-makers

I love to travel solo, but when the little monsters asked to accompany me on my first trip to England and Ireland, I couldn't refuse. I really couldn't. They're monsters, and I just can't risk responsibility for inciting their wrath. Thankfully, my best friend in London agreed to help chaperone the unpredictable and tactless duo during my three-week sojourn. The monsters helped us make no friends. No friends at all.

Click here to see the monsters' most terrible vacation memories, and read their captions to learn why monsters think "England, Ireland suck".

Monsters no pay, no see nada, originally uploaded by Kate Savage. Monster photos are a collaborative effort of Kate Savage and the lovely main photographer, La Perla Esperanza.

Sixty minutes in a London pub, some degree of separation

"Kyahnahseetahayah?" frothed the Rugby-sized pub regular. His substantial ass imagined itself small enough to wedge in next to me on the over-sized chair in the London pub.

"Can you sit here?" I repeated for clarification, but said ass was already testing the possibility and subsequently established, at the misfortune of my left thigh, that no, he physically couldn't. "You can sit there," I suggested with a lubricating smile, pointing at a seat a few meters away. To compromise, he slid himself onto the arm of my chair instead, where his giant body eclipsed my view of anything else in the pub and proceeded to emanate noxious fumes. I met the degree of his lean with my own in the same direction so as to avoid contact with anything more intrusive than the spray of his saliva.

I'd chosen the seat nearest the window, both to watch the time on the tower clock outside and to maximize daydream opportunity with a clear view of a bustling London street. In an hour, I was to be at the Liverpool Street tube station to meet my new boyfriend after work, and I intended to enjoy a moment of solitude over a cold, bubbly pint of cider. We were heading to the English countryside, to play house alone together for a few days before my return to Canada, and he was really all I wanted to think about. As a wise English band once said, however, "you can't always get what you wah-ahnt."

"Yer prittay," sprayed my new companion, his eyes entirely out of sync, neither directed at me. "I'm Welssssshhhhhh," he said, hoping to create an allure of exoticism that might win my favour, or failing that, any woman's favour, despite his probable impotency to follow through with anything beyond ordering more pints to spill on his bar-rag of a shirt. "Have you met people from Wales before?" he frothed for the third time, this after we'd established, more than once, that I was Canadian and not offended that he'd assumed I was American. Boring him off, my usual tactic, didn't seem to be working.

"Leave the poor girl alone," his friends called from across the room, from somewhere behind this fleshy barricade of man. "She's not interested in a drunken idiot, you drunken idiot."

I liked them straight away. "I've met drunken idiots all over the world," I said, "and three of them happened to be from Wales."

"Reeeeeh-leeeeeh?" he said, leaning closer, ignoring that I was the fourth person to call him a drunken idiot since he'd made his introduction. His arm was around my back now, but I didn't particularly mind because the added support prevented him from toppling over and smothering me. Still, I edged forward to avoid coming into contact with whatever was making his skin damp.

"Two at a wedding in London this past weekend, and one in Argentina," I clarified in monotone.

"Argentina!?" he boomed. His enthusiasm made up for my complete lack. "What was his name?"

"Caden," I answered, because it was easier than saying, "Stop talking." I checked the time again, and alternately gulped cider and covered the glass with my hand to protect it from spit-spritzing.

"Caden [So-and-So]?" he asked, slightly more sober. "The one from the Welsh pet food empire?"

"What?" He finally had my full attention, though my brain didn't immediately allow me to understand how, on my first visit to the United Kingdom, I'd managed to encounter Caden's older brother's best friend in a random London pub around the corner from the Liverpool Street tube station. Within minutes, I was on some stranger's mobile talking to Wales. "It really is a small world, " I said to the brother of a traveller I'd met, and maybe smooched, at a Buenos Aires hostel two years earlier, "Say 'hello' to Caden for me."

My sixty minutes alone in a London pub was up. I grabbed my bags and ran to the station.

Liverpool Street Train Station, originally uploaded by RonDeeView.

How Ireland nearly did my head in

Generally, guided tours aren't my deal. Something to do with not being a herd animal, and something else to do with the risk inherent in entrusting my life and happiness to a potentially overzealous herdsman whilst crammed into a minibus with any sort of mammal for hours at a time. Very few scenarios can push me to a guided tour, like fear for my life, for example – as was the case in a Salvadoran national park at night – or a desire to see more of Ireland than Dublin pubs through the creamy blur of Guinness goggles, which is exactly how I found myself on a minibus just a few days ago.

In the spirited stereotype of a city with a best friend from London – the one who insists on being referred to here by her exceedingly ridiculous pseudonym, La Perla Esperanza – I reasoned that an organized outing might not be quite so abysmal as I feared if it meant we'd be able to enjoy a little Irish countryside. Within moments of our departure, however, we knew we'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Our guide was also our driver – an arrangement we later realized was the only sure way to guarantee his personal safety. Otherwise, surely there was risk of mutiny, with passengers shoving the microphone dangerously far down his throat, or up the alternative, if we thought doing so wouldn't put us at risk of death by gruesome highway pile-up.

For seven hours, this man babbled. When he didn't have anything relevant to say, he filled what should've been peaceful moments left to appreciate picturesque pastures and gently rolling hills in quiet reflection, with personal opinion and brash commentary concerning all matters from biofuel to gender roles. When he ran out of opinions, he resorted to nonsense, which eventually degraded to gibberish – evidence, I believe, of a clinical disorder.

"Dublin isn't a big city," he said. "You've all been to Manhattan. You live there, probably."

"I'm not sexist, but..."

"Red and yellow are warning colours. Warning colours, people. Red and yellow."

"What do you know collectively about dogs?"

"I'm your fairy godmother without wings."

Then he announced the country of issue of every foreign license plate we passed.

"Let's just get out," I said to my friend before we'd left city limits. "We could just get off the bus right now and catch a city bus back." She laughed, but I was serious, if not panicky, and more than willing to cut my losses at the 25 euros we'd paid and just make a run for it. She's got resolve, though, and encouraged me to develop some – we stayed. Precisely two hours into the tour – the exact amount of time it took the last lubricating vapours of the previous night's whiskey to dissipate – I began losing the will to live.

Usually, I'm quite good at coping with annoyances – or, as a therapist once called it, completely disassociating – but my normal capacities were compromised, my ears couldn't process the flood of constant and pointless anecdotes and misinformation. We went manic, our eyes rolled unrestrained in their sockets, and we laughed so as not to cry. OK, maybe I cried a little.

"Shuuuuuh-uuuuuh-uuuuuh-uuuuut up!" was the sound of my every exhale.

"No!" was our collective response to his every rhetorical question.

By hour six, we were at the tipping point, another minute of asinine chatter and I might not have recovered. We needed silence like we need oxygen. The damage done was very nearly permanent.

Ironically, it was herd animals that saved us, allowing us a few moments of respite when they were needed most. The guide had begun playing a selection of easy listening Irish tunes, the worst versions available in all of Ireland, alternately inserting clips of the Braveheart soundtrack, and ranting that Dutch drivers are especially bad, when a flock of sheep loomed into view. "There's Ireland for you," he rolled his eyes, and stopped the minibus full with its mostly catatonic passengers. "Go take pictures," he said, like it was our idea, and that the idea was really, really stupid.

So, we did.

From London with love

Cabbie love

"I got my wife and family for $1400," my cab driver shouted over the wail of a siren, turning around so I could see the full breadth of his grin.

"That's quite a bargain!" I shouted back, and we shared a laugh that drowned out everything else.

He was driving me to the airport, where I was to barely catch a flight to London. Within the first few blocks, I'd already excitedly informed him that on this trip, I'd be meeting a man I suspected might be among the best I've ever had the excellent fortune to meet, but that I'd met this particular man via a best friend, via the internet. My story prompted him to share his.

"I'd been wanting to marry a nice Lebanese girl," he explained. "You understand." He shrugged apologetically, as though I might be offended for failing to qualify as a contender in his search for a life partner. "Of course, I understand," I said, though I couldn't relate. I've never been on the hunt for a 'nice Canadian boy', I've simply been holding out for someone truly great.

When his brother called from Lebanon to offer him the number of a worthy future sister-in-law, my cab driver was more than intrigued. For four months, the two spoke over the phone for hours at a time. "Everything is a lot to learn about someone. It takes a while," he said. Boarding the plane to go meet her, he hadn't seen so much as a picture. All he had to go on concerning her looks was what his brother had said: "She's not ugly."

Having perused and reviewed and obsessed over hundreds of pictures of my current interest, I just couldn't imagine at all how he must've felt. His situation speaks loads for the weight of personality, I thought.

Not surprisingly, his friends thought he was crazy for entertaining the idea that she might actually be right for him, that she'd return to Canada with him to live, and that she might actually be anything less than horrendously malformed or psychotic. "They told me I was just wasting my money on a plane ticket," he said.

Then, he started yelling. "You have to take chances! Look at me! Look at me!" He was now flailing his arms and laughing like a lunatic, and I thought his friends may have been right about him after all. "I took a chance, and I won my life. I have a wonderful wife and three kids now."

Crazy or not, I'd never been so glad I'd struck up a conversation with a cabbie. I couldn't help but fantasize that my meeting with the English boy would go as well, especially when he said, "I'll never, never forget how I felt when I first met her." He became silent and looked ahead at the traffic, reflecting for a moment before laughing again, not because something was funny, but because he'd won big. Really, really big.

While I recognize that advice is really little more than nostalgia, I'm willing to accept his. "I'll tell you what to do," he declared (at this point I'd been doing little more than egging him on for a while). "Go to London, meet this man, and fall in love. If he's a good man, and he respects you, keep him. You'll figure out how. You really don't have anything to lose."

At the airport, we were both all smiles. He helped me with my bags and we shooks hands for a long time, moments short of hugging. We wished each other all the luck in the world for all the chances we love to take.

"I'm going to tell people your story," I told him.

"Please do," he said. "There should be more stories like it."

I boarded the plane thinking $1400 really is a bargain.

Clover, 11:11 and other people's birthday candles

I'm willing to use any tactic I can to make what's about to happen as fun as is romantically possible. And it's about time I update and tell you all about it.

Remember when I admitted to you that I met an English boy on the internet? And then I went on to describe that, despite how wonderful he is, I'm totally embarrassed about how we've met? And then I dared you all to heckle me, but you just egged me on instead?

Well, thanks. I'm all packed for London.

[Here's the original post.]

We're both ecstatically terrified. We meet on Thursday afternoon, in the historic centre of the city, for the first time in person. It's not a blind date, not at all, but I've also never watched his mouth move when he speaks to me, and I've never even laid a single dirty finger on him. I do plan to, though, if he lets me. And, he really should let me.

Over the phone, I sometimes have trouble understanding little bits of what he says, but not as much trouble as I let on. Certain words sound particularly silly, and I like him to repeat them, for kicks. Certain things he says to me make my whole world spin a bit, like an amusement park ride, and I make him repeat those, too.

I really do like him as much as is possible to like someone I haven't yet met.

I'll let you know if I like him as much as is possible to like someone I have met, too.

You might as well hear it from me – I met a boy on the internet. I just said that out loud, didn't I?

If you look to the top of this page, and re-read the introductory blurb in that little partitioned box, you might notice it's worded a little awkwardly. It's not my fault, it's just that there's no other way to say it in the 500 allowed characters without rewriting the paragraph. And I've got no time for that, because I'm far too busy actually doing the thing that sounds awkward. No longer is "soliciting dates with foreigners" listed as an alternate activity to writing, but rather "soliciting dates with a foreigner" – a subtle, but significant change. Did you catch that? Against all odds, I've gone singular.

As a beloved friend of mine likes to announce with an open-mouthed grin, to anyone willing to listen, "Kate's met a boy on the internet!" She does it because she loves the confused scowl the statement elicits and the red in my cheeks, and she loves hearing me justify the truth of it. I have met a man via the internet, but not on purpose, and not like THAT. And I really like him, and that wasn't on purpose either, but, yes, maybe like THAT. Liking him is actually a very inconvenient state of affairs, for which I blame him entirely.

If the bubble bursts as I've been warned it might/promised it will, then I suppose I could re-list myself on Montreal's dating market before the end of the summer, and I wouldn't have to go all the way to England to meet him, which would save me a lot of hassle. That doesn't look like it's going to happen, though, because he keeps getting better and better and seeming more and more real, and I can't quite remember meeting anyone in recent history who could make me feel what he does. I'm packing my bags and heading for Heathrow. If we hit it off, I'm really screwed.

That said, I'm not crossing five time zones and one of the world's largest bodies of water just to check him out. This trip has been planned for a year or more, with the purpose of visiting another beloved friend in London, someone who's known me for ages, and is deeply invested in my best interests, and her own. She moved there years ago, and I've been promising to visit just as long, but the allure of tropical beaches and the Latin American unknown kept trumping my good intentions. This friend of mine is clever, and romantic, and just a little tired of always being the one to cross the ocean for a visit, so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she orchestrated this entire fiasco to make sure I'd cross the pond, for real this time. Alternate explanations for what's happening include, naiveté, coincidence and kismet.

Regardless of her intentions, or lack thereof, she made the fateful introduction sometime around January, through a social networking site – this fact is a source of great embarrassment for me. I barely knew what he looked like when the exchange began, and didn't think much about it at the time. Initial silly, sporadic messages about little-to-nothing gradually evolved into daily hilarious emails, which eventually became well-composed, highly entertaining essays of epic length for which I held my breath. Soon, I looked at every photo of him I could find, twice, and that's about when I acknowledged I'd already taken something too far, or I'd become one of THOSE people, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what that something was, or when I might pass the point of no return. I was too distracted by the butterflies inhabiting the space my vital organs used to occupy.

Of course, as I hear these things go, I became obsessed with the idea of talking to him, but was terrified to call, lest a real conversation change something. He'd given me his number weeks earlier, when I was still the kid in grade three who wouldn't talk to the boy she liked. Thinking about it made me feel as though I was preparing to jump from a bridge. Once I managed to grow balls enough to actually dial his number, he missed the call. Admittedly, my relief grew with every unanswered ring. Leaving a message might be easier, I thought, until I started actually leaving it. Keep it short, I reminded myself, you just want to touch base. A drive-by message of sorts. Hanging up, my heart was pounding and I asked myself, out loud and very sincerely, "What the EFF are you doing?" And right then, the phone rang. Ga-gunk was the sound my heart made.

"Hello?" There was a pause on the other end, as there sometimes is with international connections. It was him, I was sure of it. My ga-gunking heart ricocheted off my flipping stomach, sending my head spinning, and the whole process transformed me into a giggly, dumbstruck teenaged girl. Not unlike a concussion would. At least I wasn't in grade three anymore, I was in junior high.

"Hello, Miss Savage?"

"Yes..." I answered tentatively. Something wasn't right. I wasn't expecting a thick Asian accent.

"Hi, this is the Hudson Bay Company and we have a new offer for you." It was the fastest I've ever managed to get off the phone with a telemarketer. Thinking he'd called, realizing he hadn't, left me with whiplash.

Seconds later, I threw myself backwards onto my bed, bicycle-kicking my girlishness into the air, yelling, "This is too intense! This is too intense!", and the phone rang again. That time, it really was England calling. Our first conversation was wonderfully, appropriately and thrillingly sweet and awkward, and I was both hooked, and pleased with myself for keeping it together after all those bicycle kicks. That time, after hanging up, I said this out loud: "Oh, great. You really have met a boy on the internet." He'd left me thoroughly, undeniably, inescapably intrigued, and yet completely embarrassed about how we'd met.

What's happening is the exact inverse of a one-night stand. We're all talk, no sex. Not even close. In fact, I'm not even comfortable mentioning it here, because I know he's reading this. We've already established that we're intellectually compatible, uncannily like-minded, and we each think the other is great, but the idea of intimacy in any sort of physical sense seems as real as telekinesis. Maybe it's possible, but I'm not entirely convinced, so I don't spend time thinking about it. Still, I'm not about to rule it out. As it stands, we'll be friends without a doubt, and anything more will just have to manifest as naturally as this unlikely situation began. Thinking about anything beyond that first "hello" might send my heart ricocheting again, leading to another concussion, and I hear the human brain can only handle so many of those.

Sure, it seems too good/lame/strange to be true, but all the best (and worst) things start out feeling that way. I like him as much as is possible to like someone I haven't yet met, and it would be a shame to end the story there.

Dear readers, you may now heckle.

Blue with airplanes, originally uploaded by fluffysam.

Unaccompanied women

"Where did she get that travel bug?" My parents still live in the small, fairly traditional community where they raised me and field the question all the time. What people are really asking is: Why hasn't she settled down yet? No husband? No boyfriend? No kids? No husband?! No boyfriend?! No kids?!

And what they're thinking is: We always knew she was a lesbian...[pause]...or a slut. It's OK, though, there was a time my mom thought that, too. Now she knows I'm not a lesbian, and for the other matter, she's settled on the more general term, "free spirit".

Mom's called me worse things, but with saccharine laughter in select foreign languages, and for most of my life I'd assumed they were Polish pet names, so it doesn't count. What I didn't know, didn't irk me. It was her privilege as a parent. Clever of her, really.

My dad spent his quintessential Canadian youth driving gravel roads from Quebec to the Yukon with my grandparents, and later hopping trains across Canada, working on grain farms to pay his way, and riding freighters through the Great Lakes, so he's more sympathetic to my transient lifestyle/travel addiction than my mom. Though her father was an adventurer, too, after making the long, uncertain trip from Poland to Quebec before WWII, my grandfather seemed content to stay put and generally so does she. Try to get her on a boat, I dare you. (Actually, I take that back. I'd hate to be liable for your safety.)

The women in my family, two and three generations ago, they were the real wild cards. Bucking convention, they each ventured out on their own for love, education or professional development - whichever they wanted most. I'm sure their neighbours in that era of marriage and motherhood had a lot of questions, too, BUT - judging by the facial expressions of my great-grandmother, great-aunt and their friend in this picture, waiting for a train in the Eastern Townships - they probably knew better than to ask.