ST.ALBANS - THE TRIP WHERE NOTHING WORKED

Had one of those trips this weekend. Decided to check out St Albans, a small city/large town approximately 25 minutes north of London and a place with a wonderfully varied history. The Romans joined in the farming-and-brewing fun with the locals in AD43 and transformed the existing village into England’s third biggest city (called Verulamium), then Queen Boudiccea and her All-Singin', All-Plunderin' Iceni from just up the road gave the Romans the big thumbs-down and included St Albans in their "Hadrian Sucks" Tour of England, kicking three shades of living tripe out of the place before heading on to give Londinium an even bigger Hows-Your-Father.

Being the Soviet Empire of world affairs that they were at the time, the Romans quickly regrouped and put a stop to all that silliness with some swift sword-work and quickly rebuilt everything Boddy had destroyed, but better. Before they took off from Verulamium in Ad 410 to attend to a few worrying matters in their own backyard, they gave England their first-ever Christian Martyr, a Roman soldier named Alban (hence the current name) who sheltered a Christian priest and converted on the sly, then got the chop when his buddies got suss. Must've been his reluctance to come along to the orgies. Anyhoo, he got the ol' 8-Inches-Too-Low Haircut and once Emperor Constantine told the Romans they were all Christians a bit later, hey presto, cue shrine-building, massive numbers of pilgrims and lots of inn-building as well (one of which, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, apparently started serving up the ol' Loudmouth Soup to the thirsty travellers in AD912, making it the oldest pub in England).

After the Romans exited stage left, the Saxons came through, then the Normans . A wacking great abbey, the biggest in Europe at the time, was built at St Alban's shrine to attract even more money........sorry pilgrims. The first draft of the Magna Carta was even drawn up there. More interesting stuff came after that; the town played host to two Red-versus-White matches, otherwise known as the War of the Roses. A king of France hid in one of the pubs for all of about 5 minutes before being hauled out and given a jolly good seeing-to. A local got dragged off to London and toasted for not worshipping God the right way (Queeny was Catholic, y'know), which put all sorts of noses out of joint. Oliver Cromwell even sampled the delights of Ye Olde Fighting Cocks at some stage there too. The people you see at your local nuclear sub sometimes, ey?!

The place kept growing due to its location on the north road from London, but had its population swiss-cheesed by WW1 (of the first 100 locals who joined up, not a single one survived, and apparently every officer from St Albans was killed in the first 15 minutes of the Somme offensive. Yep, the first 15 minutes. Nasty stuff). In WW2 St Albans gave shelter to lots of the London kiddies who were getting sent away from the nightly Herman Goerring London Redevelopment Extravaganza, and the local factories built the famous wooden-framed Mosquito fighters. St Albans was even a hub of intelligence work - so much so that they fed the Nazis false information that persuaded them to bomb the bejeesus out of areas south of London instead of north. Talk about looking after your own backside.

After Dubya-Dubya Two the joint grew even more rapidly, as every other place did. Lots of Oh-My-God ugly buildings and suburbs went up very fast before anyone could stop and think about what they looked like, and the town got its first highway as well, further fuelling growth. They’ve hung onto most of their valuable old buildings though, unlike Brisbane (thanks again, Sir Joh, you miserable rat-b*stard - Expo 88 doesn't make up for the State Government building on George Street , in my book). Today, St Albans is a nice enough place, with a fab Roman museum, nice countryside, a bit expensive but it does the trick if you're after a simple weekend out of London without wanting to go too far.

Anyway, onto the reason behind this week’s blog title. The weekend seemed pretty straightforward - unplug and jettison from London for an entire weekend, without going too far or spending too much money, get to see some countryside and nifty architecture to boot. Little did I know. Saturday morning The Fates descended on me with their ethereal jackboots and decided to give me a kickin'. It went something like this:

(1) Forgot umbrella (in my defence, it WAS 6am and pitch black and I WAS still half-snoozing as I hit the streets to London Bridge Station). Tone was set.

(2) Kings Cross station staff couldn't tell where train to St Albans left from. Passing Dutch backpacker thankfully provided necessary information. Sweet Lord preserve the Dutch for their fine cheeses, liberal attitudes and extensive travel experience.

(3) Hotel wasn't at address provided and no-one in entire town of St Albans had ever heard of it. This included shopkeepers, cab drivers, posties and local constabulary. Made smiley-sheepish-friends with 41 locals (kept count after first 5) trying to find someone who'd heard of Hotel St Albans. No dice. Felt like the guy in The Twilight Zone episode who wakes up one day and everyone's started speaking another language.

(4) After hour-and-a-half of trudging arctic, frost-laden dawn streets and approaching people sporting Lost-Tourist-Apologetic-Smile (painfully aware that if in Albania or Hungary doing same I would've been bundled into a van by large men with no necks and lots of heavy jewellery and sold into slavery to a magnesium magnate far earlier in the piece) admitted defeat and checked into Comfort Inn for 60 pounds. Debit card wouldn't work. Could see expression on clerk's face changing from compassion at tale of woe to that unsettling blankness that suss service staff slip on while their brains calculate how long it would take the Bill to arrive, so quickly brandished remaining fistful of cash and was efficiently ushered into warm, sterile, blandly-pleasant McRoom to dump backpack and hit the streets.

(5) Got to first sightseeing destination, whipped out camera….... deader than John McCain's election prospects. Despite being on battery charger all Friday night. Fists were shaken skywards at the Fates. Unwise choice.

(6) Attempted to get to bottom of banking problems at ATM - no luck. Went to branch to have thrombo at them and possibly lay smackdown, where an emotionless android dressed in bank's uniform droned that three transactions made in first week of October had just been put through yesterday and that account was overdrawn. Emotional soundtrack in head went from punk to Slayer, before remembering that it was possible for bank staff to transfer some of savings over. Visions of Rent-a-Tourist schemes and street-corner begging receded. Hit sights once more.

(7) Rest of the day went well until deciding to do solo pub-crawl of sorts. Note: St Albans has copious amount of pubs for a place that size, all claiming to be even older than my jokes. Romans had malting crews in St Albans back in the day, and its been prolificly serving up pints ever since, apparently. Decided to hit them all in one afternoon, just for something new, having half-pint at each and striking up conversation with friendly sorts at each stop - just like earlier on but with less mutual confusion and head-scratching. Until that point Fates must've been off having bite to eat or torturing kittens or whatever they do when they're not messing with yours truly. Final score was:

Historic Pubs Visited: 6
Total Units of Alcohol Consumed: 6
Total Conversations Attempted: 9
Total Conversations Achieved: 0

Must've been my incredibly intimidating appearance.........uh huh. Stopped at Pub #6.

(8) Sunday - after a shufty at the surprisingly-good St Albans museum and some countryside, went to Tourist office to join guided walking tour, but it started raining and office..... was shut. Despite the lovely old dears spoken with day before saying to come along and pay at start of tour in morning. Started laughing maniacally on Tourist office steps. Hit Pub #7.

I shouldn't make out like the whole weekend was bad the way Michael Bay movies are bad, though. St Albans has some stunning Georgian and Tudor streets (the black'n'white buildings that lean like a drunk at closing time, for those not familiar), and those pubs I mentioned, plus a massive market that's been jumping since the 9th century and a back-story that a history geek like me couldn't resist. Just make sure you've got cash and a booking at a hotel that actually exists in this dimension.