Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Back in the USA...

In NYC. Still awake after an okay flight but hellacious time getting my bag. The baggage handlers put the bags from my flight out one at a time, it seems, and I was close to the bottom of the pile. Like virgin; do NOT like dealing with JKF's Terminal 4. I won't be getting to sleep anytime soon, either; some child is still awake down the hall and has a sharp happy voice that cuts like a knife.

Something I've found on this trip is, I get a lot of shit backwards. It's one thing to make mistakes or get rushed and not think ahead; it's another to actually have good information and not pay attention to it. That was driven home when a friend of mine pointed out I'd put in the wrong address for Sherlock Holmes' place of residence (I corrected it, below, and am kicking myself because I could have gone to the SH museum).

I've always had a tendency to reverse letters and numbers, or drop words from a sentence and think they're there. Makes me wonder if I should get tested for dyslexia. But what I noticed on this trip was how even when I'm given the correct info, I misuse it and make things harder for myself.

For example when I was going to Hampton Court, I knew I had to catch the train at Waterloo Station. But the man who runs the B&B mentioned to me it was only a 20 minute trip from Wimbledon and printed out a timetable for the next few trains. So I went down to the Wimbledon train depot...and hopped on a train to Waterloo...and wound up taking the same damned train back to Hampton Court, right through Wimbledon. I could have hopped a train there and arrived half an hour sooner, if I'd been paying attention.

Then came the stupidity of Baker Street, which is really embarrassing because I've read the books and some of the short stories and knew better. What's even worse, I have a pamphlet that had the correct address in it, and I'd used that to find out how to get to the right tube station and locate the statue.

This morning it became ridiculous because I was staying at a hotel in Ealing...and misread the directions on getting a bus to the tube to go to Heathrow. I had it in my brain that I had to walk down Melbourne Street to get the correct bus...but Google told me to just walk up to the bus stop at Melbourne, not walk down it. So I dragged my way-too-heavy suitcase down four blocks before realizing my error.

I really do have to wonder about me, sometimes...unless this is Adam letting me know all about himself and why he likes his life to be so orderly. That'd be a nice excuse for having a brain in desperate need of defragging.

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