Falmer Village

Not too far from where I was living on campus was a little place called Falmer Village. I found it one day when I was looking on Google maps for a place to walk nearby, and I noticed there was a little pond just five or ten minutes away. You wouldn't be able to tell from the road that there's a pond behind thsoe trees, but there is.

Lots of birds hang out in the pond, and people are always around, sitting on the benches, or standing by the sandy parts of the shore. I noticed also that a lot of people go there to have lunch and watch the birds, but instead of going outside on a sunny day (or whatever) and enjoying the fresh air and semi-peacefulness (you can still hear highway sounds pretty clearly, unfortunately), they just sit in their stupid cars.

These aquastatues showed up recently. They hadn't been there on my visits prior to taking these pictures. It may have had something to do with the art exhibition that was going on in one of the nearby buildings.

This pond has an island, which I think it cool.

 

Another cool thing is that all the buildings are made of stone and look wicked old, or they're at least done old-school. It makes me feel like I'm stepping into 100 years ago, except for the highway noise and parked cars, the modern trash cans, and a few other modern things.

 See, they even have ye olde water pump. It's chained up, though, out of use.

There's a nice little church there, with its own cemetery. One time I want onto the grounds and saw a sign that said, "Feel free to take one of the potted plants, but please leave a donation under the church door," and those were the sorriest potted plants I'd ever seen. Another time I was walking around the cemetery and found a little dirt path that lead to the back of the land, but it was a dead end, leading to a cliff with a little wall at the edge. There was a hole there that looked like a snake hole (though probably wasn't), and I thought that must be god trying to git me, putting a path on church grounds that just leads to a snake.

Around the little village are many fields.

On the other side of the pond from the church is another little graveyard that I went into once or twice. The graves in both cemeteries go back to the mid 1800s.

Is this a crane? I wish I knew more about birds. I couldn't find any website that showed birds native to the area quickly and easily.

Anyway, the village seems quite small, with a road going around it and couple small roads that dead-end into cliffs overlooking the highway, but when I was taking these pictures I figured I'd venture over the footbridge to the other side of the highway to see the continuation of the village.

On the left is the entrance to the footbridge. On the right are some plum trees where I got some tiny plums a couple times. Down the path were a bunch of blackberries, too.

On the other side of the highway, there was a little pub, a lot of residences, quite a lot of nature trails, most of which seemed to be on the University of Sussex campus, and this pony.

This was the last time I ventured over to Falmer Village, since a few days later I had to move off campus. It's really retarded, actually. They give you a 49-week housing contract, but for graduate students whose programs run into late September, that means that there is a period of three or so weeks, crucial weeks, when they have to find someplace else to live. This is because the rooms have to be cleared out, cleaned, and any necessary repairs made for the next two or three weeks before the next year's students move in. And the university doesn't have anything set up for the students continuing short-term, even though they have hundreds of students with the problem of finding temporary accommodation and it happens every year. So students like me have to do things like use the school's accommodation page to contact people with rooms to rent to see if they'll consider a short-term agreement, which is how I found a room, but I also did things like look on Gumtree (similar to Craig's List) for rental ads, look at prices for youth hostels, and send out emails to people I know to see if they knew of a room for rent. It's a major hassle, especially during the time when finished and editing the dissertation should be top priority.

But anyway, I found a room, and I'll put up a post with some pictures of my current room and neighborhood soon.

Then Stonehenge

As I mentioned previously, Ed and I had a special reservation to see Stonehenge at sunset, so we got over there shortly before 7:30. When I told the parking attendant we had an "appointment," and could we still use the parking lot even though it was closed, he laughed at me for using the wrong word (I had blanked on "reservation"), and let us in. Here's a picture Ed took from the parking lot while I was in the ol' portapotty:

After everyone from the group arrived, the guide got us together to explain the rules. Basically, he said, we weren't allowed to do ANYTHING. We couldn't touch the stones in any way, or use other objects to touch the stones. All we could do is walk around, take pictures, and look at them. And people were allowed to do ceremonies, which a couple groups of people did. I don't know what the hell they were doing, but it was weird, so I didn't pay attention. Ed noted that one group was just one dude and a bunch of women. His harem, maybe? Who knows? The other group was just a man and a woman, and I just noticed them sitting with their foreheads together, so maybe it was more of a personal ceremony. Whatever, man.

For a while the pictures weren't very dramatic because it was so cloudy.

But then the sun started to peak out, and things got prettier.

Apparently these are called God Rays.

Then the sun went a-hidin' agin.

And then it came out again.

Then once we got a ton of sunset photos, I started wanting to do funny photos. So I did this one, reminiscent of the hand/arm port in Cyprus.

And a few of these.

And then there were the more relaxed ones.

Here's a postcardy one:

And the obligatory "Alia pointing excitedly" one:

Then the sky got pretty dramatic.

This one is very postcardy, I think.

Then we got back to business. Here's me and Ed, NOT touching the stones:

 And then we took some more artsy fartsy photos.

This one especially. Lone Man at Stonehenge, with Heavens.

Isn't it funny how the light changes so much. With the sun behind me, it still looks like late afternoon.

This one is strange because his head gets cut off by the horizon. How many people can say that?

 Anyway, we eventually decided that for thirty pounds, we had better scrutinize every single rock out there, so we went and did that, coming up with explanations as to why certain crevices, cracks, or holes formed, or what use the rock could have.

And then I decided to have a little dance, because AYE could cross over the rope barrier. Ed likes going places with me because I don't take them too seriously.

Striation speculation:

This is a totally suite kung fu move, and Ed has clearly affected the rock, as you can see from the discoloration:

Here you can see that Lego was actually inspired by Stonehenge.

Although we had until 8:30 to hang around Stonehenge and ponder the wonders of historical accomplishment, it was getting quite windy and cold, and if you can believe it, we accomplished all of the above in about 50 minutes.


So we said a blurry goodbye and went home. Goodbye Stonehenge.