would not be happy. Nor Dad.
Well, they're not here, then, are they?
The tourists drove me out of Oxford–them and their buses. The buses are the oddest thing. The companies run them and the tourists use them to get from place to place, but it's more like a city bus, running all the time, and mostly empty.
I hate diesel fumes.
I found a karate dojo in Knightsbridge run in conjunction with a fancy gym. It was expensive and I had to fake my dad's signature on a release, but they had a really nice locker room with showers. I paid for a year.
It was my birthday present to myself–I was thirteen.
I'd had it with cold sponge baths in the Hole, but the local solution called for more construction, maybe a propane water heater, and let the soapy water flow away with the clean under the flowstone wall, but I hated the idea. I pictured some desert spring where the bighorn sheep came to drink, foaming up with soap suds. It was the reason I used a bucket toilet odorized with pine–scented disinfectant back in the smaller chamber and, when I needed to, dumped it at one of the park's picnic area pit toilets late at night.
I was still careful. I certainly didn't jump anywhere near the dojo. I used the Underground a lot, jumping to lots of different stations, always trying to pick a place, before I left, that I'd never jumped to before. Also someplace the video–cameras didn't cover–where phone stalls or info signs made a blank spot.
Leaving, going back to the Hole, I just jumped from the moving subway, whatever train came. I'd either pick a mostly empty car and jump when no one was looking, or I'd move to the next car, jumping when I was between the doors in the noisy, rattling space.
But having classes to go to was good; it meant I had a schedule, a structure that I didn't have before.
It meant I had to buy a watch.
It was one of those time–zone clocks, showing the time in two different places at once. I kept it on U.S. Pacific Time, minus seven, and
London
,
Greenwich
zero. If I hit a button it would show me the time in Phuket–Greenwich plus seven.
Breakfast, cereal, I tended to eat in the Hole. Got a little twelve–volt fridge to hold the milk. Eight o'clock in the morning and it was time for the four o'clock afternoon teen class at the dojo. I wasn't the youngest one there, but I was the shortest.
But I made up for the lack of size.
"Fierce 'un, eh?" That's what the senior instructor, Sensei Patel, would say to Martin, the junior instructor who had our lot, after watching me spar. I was swathed in pads and usually picking myself up, yet again, but I was right back in there, punching and kicking.
"Not right, that one," Martin would say, a big smile on his face. He knew I could hear. He was just teasing. "Oi! Less blocking with the head, there."
After class I'd drop off my laundry (done by the pound), usually yesterday's clothes and the day's practice gi and the linens every week or so.
Lunch was whatever, usually in
London
, without jumping. Sure it was evening there, but if you want a particular type of food and you can't find it in
London
, you aren't trying very hard. Well, except Mexican, perhaps. I ate Paki, Indian, Chinese, and the occasional bit of fish and chips.
There was a library branch not too far from the dojo where I'd do my homeschooling workbooks. I was still working through the French science series and the Spanish math so the ladies who worked there kept coming up to try out their "Bonjour, mon ami" and "iComo esta?". They were a bit disappointed when they found out I wasn't so foreign, but they were always good for a pointer or two when I got stuck on a bit of math or a bit of chemistry.
Reference librarians, they explained, lived to answer questions. And I was a nice change from the kids who wanted them to tell them "where the reports are kept" or came to snog in the stairwell or score some weed back by the toilet.
Dinner might be anywhere. Morning in Phuket, something in
San Diego
.
Well, they're not here, then, are they?
The tourists drove me out of Oxford–them and their buses. The buses are the oddest thing. The companies run them and the tourists use them to get from place to place, but it's more like a city bus, running all the time, and mostly empty.
I hate diesel fumes.
I found a karate dojo in Knightsbridge run in conjunction with a fancy gym. It was expensive and I had to fake my dad's signature on a release, but they had a really nice locker room with showers. I paid for a year.
It was my birthday present to myself–I was thirteen.
I'd had it with cold sponge baths in the Hole, but the local solution called for more construction, maybe a propane water heater, and let the soapy water flow away with the clean under the flowstone wall, but I hated the idea. I pictured some desert spring where the bighorn sheep came to drink, foaming up with soap suds. It was the reason I used a bucket toilet odorized with pine–scented disinfectant back in the smaller chamber and, when I needed to, dumped it at one of the park's picnic area pit toilets late at night.
I was still careful. I certainly didn't jump anywhere near the dojo. I used the Underground a lot, jumping to lots of different stations, always trying to pick a place, before I left, that I'd never jumped to before. Also someplace the video–cameras didn't cover–where phone stalls or info signs made a blank spot.
Leaving, going back to the Hole, I just jumped from the moving subway, whatever train came. I'd either pick a mostly empty car and jump when no one was looking, or I'd move to the next car, jumping when I was between the doors in the noisy, rattling space.
But having classes to go to was good; it meant I had a schedule, a structure that I didn't have before.
It meant I had to buy a watch.
It was one of those time–zone clocks, showing the time in two different places at once. I kept it on U.S. Pacific Time, minus seven, and
London
,
Greenwich
zero. If I hit a button it would show me the time in Phuket–Greenwich plus seven.
Breakfast, cereal, I tended to eat in the Hole. Got a little twelve–volt fridge to hold the milk. Eight o'clock in the morning and it was time for the four o'clock afternoon teen class at the dojo. I wasn't the youngest one there, but I was the shortest.
But I made up for the lack of size.
"Fierce 'un, eh?" That's what the senior instructor, Sensei Patel, would say to Martin, the junior instructor who had our lot, after watching me spar. I was swathed in pads and usually picking myself up, yet again, but I was right back in there, punching and kicking.
"Not right, that one," Martin would say, a big smile on his face. He knew I could hear. He was just teasing. "Oi! Less blocking with the head, there."
After class I'd drop off my laundry (done by the pound), usually yesterday's clothes and the day's practice gi and the linens every week or so.
Lunch was whatever, usually in
London
, without jumping. Sure it was evening there, but if you want a particular type of food and you can't find it in
London
, you aren't trying very hard. Well, except Mexican, perhaps. I ate Paki, Indian, Chinese, and the occasional bit of fish and chips.
There was a library branch not too far from the dojo where I'd do my homeschooling workbooks. I was still working through the French science series and the Spanish math so the ladies who worked there kept coming up to try out their "Bonjour, mon ami" and "iComo esta?". They were a bit disappointed when they found out I wasn't so foreign, but they were always good for a pointer or two when I got stuck on a bit of math or a bit of chemistry.
Reference librarians, they explained, lived to answer questions. And I was a nice change from the kids who wanted them to tell them "where the reports are kept" or came to snog in the stairwell or score some weed back by the toilet.
Dinner might be anywhere. Morning in Phuket, something in
San Diego
.
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