Three Months in Albion

23.06.12 (Cambridge, UK) - The word of the day is "traveler."

I've gone out for a mid-afternoon walk to see more of Cambridge and familiarize myself with the city. From Chesterton, I can hear the fair (in its 801st year) which grows in intensity as I turn the corner toward Midsummer Common.

You can't help but gawk at a traveler as she goes by. Their dress is decadent and very revealing on a fully mature woman, but on a girl no older than sixteen, it's gives serious pause. I'm  familiar with the gypsy wedding and traveler shows on US television, though I didn't think I'd be right in the middle of one. Before I even see the Common, I catch a glimpse of several teenagers traipsing along the bridge on Victoria Avenue, hair and makeup like porcelain dolls, skirts kicked up to their hips and two barely-there neon stripes taut across their chests. They're arm-in-arm and they keep appearing. There are several of them, I count half a dozen, perhaps walking to their caravans or to shop at the nearby mall. I reach for my camera but, disappointed, realize that  I'd left it at the Barlas'. 

I'll have to do without it today. I wander around a shopping area without needing to buy anything. We in the States think that kids are dressing more and more revealing each day, but our issue is not quite on the level of  England's. For example, I saw a woman who had a tattoo of a womb on the small of her back, visible because she kept having to adjust her skirt and pull down her top, both of which were cartoonishly revealing. Yeah, nobody dresses like that in Seattle.

Midsummer Fair is in top gear. Patrons walk dragged by their children. The whole scene of the east side of Victoria on the Common is frenetic motion and lights; the west side has become a parking lot of diminutive autos. There's a queue outside the public restrooms and one child seems to be expressing some urgency.

I continue past the fair and it begins to pour when I'm right outside the gate to the Segwick Museum of Earth Sciences. It's Alan Turing's birthday today and Cambridge, being his Alma Mater, has a city-wide celebration going on at King's College (they're to reveal a plaque honoring his achievements in computer sciences and mathematics). I decide to head inside and let the rain pass, taking note of the extreme traffic in the middle of Cambridge's narrow pathways.

The Segwick Museum of Earth Sciences is on Downing Street. Inside are casts of bones and rock (and a great deal of real bone and rock) dating back to the Cretaceous Period. There is a complete skeleton cast of a hippopotamus that was found nearby in Cambridgeshire, there's a cast of a Diplodochus, I oogle the trilobites and the grandfathers of nautiluses, I read a plaque about early geological practices under a bronze bust of Darwin. I spend about an hour in the Segwick before one attendant tells me that they're closing for the day.

Back outside, I weave through Cambridge City Centre and out toward The Backs. I see if I can get a glimpse of the proceedings at King's College, but it's closed off for the day except for pass holders. I wander along Queen's Road and am accosted by a car full of women who are looking for a specific place in Cambridge. Being little help to their journey, I continue along Queen's until it turns into Northampton and then again into Chesterton. I pop in to an overpriced Staples for some lead pencils and a small notebook, then pick up a 2.5 Litre bottle of Ginger Beer. I'm then accosted again by two lost boys also looking for directions. No help to them either, I send them on their way, and make my own back to the Barlas' house just a few hours before France v. Spain is set to begin (at 19:45).