queens of the stoneage.

a bit of a tricky title today, but it will make sense after you have finished reading the rest of this post. if you want to see a replica of my room, go to the comments from the previous post and check the picture that adam put on, its exactly the same, except its sky blue with a white roof, thanx mate. i have done a bit of touring over the last few days during my time off. On friday i was going to go into london with a mate from south africa, we had it all planned- but didnt end up making the 7am train we were hoping for so, just chilled for the day, but decided we had to go somewhere we couldnt just sit around, so we looked where the buses could take us. saw windsor on the list and jumped on. took about 45 mins (via legoland) on the dodgyist old bus you can imagine, every time it was idiling i thought it was going to blow up. the first thing you notice when you arive in windsor is the castle, obviously what its famous for, but i had pictured like, a mansion sized castle, just something the old queen could live in. but its huge the outer wall is like a 500m long, you can go inside and check out everything, but it was shut by the time we got there, and it also cost £12- would have been a tough decision, but it was cool to actually be there. i guess i actually didnt see much of the castle, but i saw the outer wall. yay. the town of windsor is really nice, like a step back in history, all the buildings are old, a heap of little cobblestone alleys and sidestreets- we were there in the evening so it was nice and peaceful, we stopped and chilled on a small little bridge, when crossed the river thames, and a busker dude came up and started playing classical guitar-was cool as just chillin. we also visited eton college which is where i believe will and harry went to school. So that was windsor really nice little place to chill.

A few days ago i heard about stonehenge, im not sure how many of you guys back at aus have heard of it, but if you saw a picture you'll know what im talking about. look it up on google pictures. So pretty much its a few circles of big rectangular rocks built into what looks like a sacred site or place of worship or something. apparently they were built about 5000 years ago by sun worshippers. Supposedly when the sun rises it shines thru one of the arches and something special happens. as you can tell, my knowledge of its history is slightly sketchy. So a mate said she'd heard of a festival which going on monday night. Its called summer soltice and its the longest day of sunshine for the year, so because stonehenge was built by sun worshippers; hippies and the like have made the habit of going out there to celebrate the longest day of sunshine. so i thought, cool, sounds interesting- so we headed out, i expected to see a few hippies and that gathering round, we got there about 9pm at night, was probably about 300 others there as well, like i expected. the day of the soltice is the only day you can actually touch the stones, so we wandered over and were looking around- and one guy started playing a djemba(big drum) so we're just sittign the chillin and talking to people etc. gradually more and more musicians came along and joined in. at its peak there were about 30 people playing drums, othere playing piccolos, recorders, harmonica, maraccas, tambourines, digeredoos, one guy was playing an indian guitar( a mandolin i think) and and another dude had a muslim prayer horn that was about 2m long..and they were all playing in harmony, one guy on a drum would give the beat, then the rest would just join in...sounded so cool, and everyone was so friendly and just chillin dancing, bobbing their head etc...was like an outside, natural night club, the tribal beats were cool, we were right in the centre of it all as we got to the middle of the rock circle pretty early...we left at about 12, so had been there for about 3 and a half hours...we left the circle and i couldnt believe it- while we were in there another 15,000 people had arrived. just everywhere. crazy stuff. one official guy said at the peak, which was sunrise, there was more than 20,000 people there, it was packed. was such a great atmosphere it didnt matter what colour your skin was, what part of the world you were from, how long your dreadlocks were, how much weed you had smoked- everyone just got along so well and chilled together, was truely awesome. No one goes to sleep, everyone is awake all night chillin/partying so they can watch the sun come up. was great. was also freezing as they day before was hot (30+) so i was wearing shorts, thongs and a jumper. so i was freezing for like 5 hours, thats why i was excited to see the sun come up- not to watch it through an arch, but to warm up.

So over all ive had a great few days, had some really cool experiences which is what i came here to do, so far so good, i hope to get some pictures up here soon, hope life is going great for you, keep smilin :) andyb