{"id":544,"date":"2022-10-04T19:52:18","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T19:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/?p=544"},"modified":"2024-12-02T08:33:09","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T08:33:09","slug":"lie-down-with-essex-dogs-wake-up-with-essex-fleas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/?p=544","title":{"rendered":"Lie Down With Essex Dogs, Wake Up With Essex Fleas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While I’ve been to the UK before, I’ve not ‘lived’ there in the resident sense. Tooling around in a country’s biggest city for a couple of weeks is different from living there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I’m living here. It’s a real trip, man. Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon are both from the area; exciting, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First impressions: this place is fucking packed with corpses. You might be thinking ‘duh, so is everywhere’, but what I mean is, you might be walking through an outdoor mall with a bunch of bullshit stationary, magazine, coffee and clothes shops and in the middle of all this is a small square of grass with a tree and a tombstone\/tombstones. Like, you have to walk around a grave when walking from the Hallmark store to the Starbucks. This is a 7 second process. I really want to make sure that you, reader, understand how many corpses are directly below the surface of even a bustling mall center here in the UK. It’s fucked off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’re going to be hard-pressed to find bodies below ground this close to a street in most other places<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Still first impressions: pick a fucking side of the sidewalk to walk on. You are likely aware that one drives on the left in the UK. It isn’t some left field sucker punch to come to find one is also supposed to walk on the left here. There are literally arrows painted on the ground indicating that you’re supposed to walk on the left hand side. This is awkward for me, particularly because no one else seems to understand the significance of the arrows. Even people who are obviously British- and I mean people dressed like Victorian swimmers, wearing monocles or sporting crowns\/tiaras- walk on the right hand side more often than not. There are enough people on the left that I am heartened and motivated to do the ‘right’ thing. Then I wonder if cognitive flexibility here is a matter of being able to adapt to what everyone else is doing or being able to do the ‘best’ thing, even when it’s a matter of going against the current. I could understand either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, there are awesome footpaths which bisect private properties and allow pedestrians to get to where they’re going via the shortest route- this is something we don’t have in the states (at least not to any similar degree). They’re all these weird, abandoned-seeming tunnels boxed in by trees, shrubs or menacing fences or brick walls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are a lot of passed out shopping carts which sleep in these little oases. I gave this one all my spare change.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I initially stayed with Stu and Pulkit for a span of days. It was most excellent to hang out with Stu again. I also got to spend time with Kaya and Buddy. That is to say I got to have kids sneezing directly into my mouth, which, all things considered, is the direction I’ve always wanted my life to go in. In the end I lost my voice, developed a slight cough, got to be called ‘Uncle Charlie’, and got to be a human jungle gym for two weeks. Buddy and Kaya were super rad and I’ll be babysitting them more in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kaya, mid-air<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Buddy, mid-raspberry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stu and I were able to re-tile his kitchen, which looked great when we were done! I only have mostly done images, but I’ve been told finished pictures are on their way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This kitchen is British as fuck, but don’t ask me to explain what that means.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the remaining pictures in the gallery below should be labelled. Kaya did some editing on a couple of them and took a couple of them. They’ll be clearly captioned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an unrelated note, I keep getting spam email entitled ‘Time-Share Exit Strategies’. In case you were considering getting a time-share, I wanted you to know. You’re welcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of the grass outside of my parents’ house late at night. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Iggy. Looking very penitent. She was mid-settling in, though. She squints when she’s actually penitent.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kaya took this photo of me the day we had a picnic outside. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A puzzle Kaya, Sumi and I did. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kaya took a picture of me while I watched them doing potentially injurious things on the trampoline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kaya, chilling on the trampoline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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An image of Kaya edited to her own satisfaction.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A picture of Sumi, edited to Kaya’s preference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Buddy being a wild-man. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The prior photo, but edited by Buddy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This is the River Colne. It’s low tide, but still- this is some weak sauce. All that mud makes you look like shit, River Colne. Clean yourself up and get a job. Also, the apartments to the right look like the set for a zombie movie. Shit’s wrecked.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This is Colchester Castle. Built on the ruins of a temple built by the Romans and dedicated to emperor Claudius. Claudius was a bitch, and I’ll say it to his face. He wasn’t fit to drink Augustus’ wee. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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British people fucking love plaques.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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William the Conquerer built this shit. It’s the largest keep in all of England. It was used as a jail until the 1830s. Also was involved in the murder of over 1000 witches in the area. I’ve killed 1200 Santas and nobody has ever given me a castle to work in. Bullshit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Some of Castle Park. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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An obelisk dedicated to some royal loyalists slain by parliamentary loyalists after a long siege wherein people ate candles, rats and dogs due to hunger. I guess the dead guys are martyrs for the royal religion?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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More of Colchester Castle. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That’s a blog. I’ll be republishing old photos from the prior blog more regularly going forward. In case you were interested. I’m going to guess ‘no’, but you never know. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I’ve been to the UK before, I’ve not ‘lived’ there in the resident sense. Tooling around in a country’s biggest city for a couple of weeks is different from living there. Now I’m living here. It’s a real trip, man. Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon are both from the area; exciting, right? First impressions: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[10,15,16,11,14,2,12,9],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-photos","tag-adventure","tag-colchester","tag-corpses","tag-iggy","tag-kaya","tag-photos","tag-stu","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sweetchuckyb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/IMG_9711-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sweetchuckyb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}