A DAY OF REST(?)

Wednesday morning, April 19, I woke up feeling like crap. The Skyrizi I had just started can lower my ability to fight upper respiratory infections, and I was struggling with a cold. When I woke up, I felt that my energy levels were really low, and we would struggle with doing the things I wanted to do. I asked Robin if she was fine with taking it easy that day. She said, “Duh!” So that was our plan for the day. Hang out in Conwy, take it easy, rest up. That was my plan. Yup. Plan on taking it easy. Rest up, hang out, recover from our whirlwind vacay thus far. It was a great plan.

Man, I apparently suck at following plans.

We went downstairs, looking to get some breakfast. We saw the the church located behind us, St. Mary’s and All Saints Church, was open. This church has been in operation since the 1200s. It is the oldest building in Conwy, so we found it of interest and went inside. It was beautiful!

As we were leaving the church, Robin looked at me and said, “We should attend service here on Sunday.” I looked at her. She looked back at me. Clouds above her began to darken, and plant life in the church yard began to wilt. “Okay,” I said. Immediately the skies lightened and the plants sprang back to life. I have to have a serious discussion with Robin about her deadly microclimates.

We go down a short alley north of the church and walk east down High Street. We stopped and grabbed a coffee and some breakfast. One of the things I love about the Welsh is they make their mochas with chocolate milk. No shit! It makes the mocha transcend to Nectar of the Gods. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. All I know is, I had a Welsh mocha, and all of a sudden, I felt better!

From the cafe, we walked east toward the river. We decided it was time to visit the Smallest House in Great Britain. As we did, we passed by a slate board for the Liverpool Arms, a pub on the riverfront. On it it described a ghost story that said the appearance of a ghost at the pub meant that someone was going to die. They say the appearance is accompanied by the scent of vanilla in the air. I showed it to Robin, then I had the temerity to observe that the appearance of a ghost meant that someone had already died. She looked at me for a moment, and I noticed, a scent of vanilla in the air. This was very noticeable, as it happened all of a sudden, and I don’t have a sense of smell. I surmised that my observation did not meet with my wife’s approval. I steeled myself, muttered, “I love your new fragrance.” And walked past her, leading us to the Smallest House in Great Britain.

The Smallest House in Great Britain is as advertised. It is a tiny, tiny house. A woman in traditional Welsh outfit was posted outside, and she let us know how many pounds we needed to pay to enter the diminutive domicile. Let’s just say the number of pounds we paid was more than the square footage of the house. We went in the door. The first floor was a small bench, a small table, a small fireplace, and a small ladder leading up to the second floor. Behind the ladder was a water spigot.

Needless to say, I was unable to stand erect in the house. I sent a picture to my daughter Jessica, who’s takeaway from the whole picture was, “Why was there a brain corral on the table in the living room?” I confessed I didn’t know, but that since we were in the Smallest House in Great Britain, what was on the table was irrelevant to the visit. Robin likes to call me Grumpy Cat, and it’s times like these that make me grumpy. I tried to get up the ladder to get a picture of the upstairs bedroom, but I couldn’t fit. It would take a gastric bypass surgery and a year or two of half calories to get me slimmed down to the point where I could fit up that ladder. I stuck my phone up there and tried to take pictures blind.

The Welsh curator told me that closing the trapdoor provided more floor space upstairs. I felt myself getting grumpy again, because the the two square feet of the trapdoor wasn’t adding significant floor space to the upstairs. But hey, she had a job to do. She told us the last occupant of the house was a 6’3” fisherman. I’m 6’1”. I was still wrapping my mind around that fact when she hit me with another one. At one point, the house had a family of six living in it. She goes, “They all had to share one bed.” My right eye went dark as an aneurysm blew up in my brain. Why anyone would think there was room for more than one bed upstairs literally blew my mind. Perhaps that extra floor space from closing the trap door would have room for another bed or two…Apparently, the occupants of the house would go to a bathroom shared by 100 people living on the riverfront. <Sigh>. People in the US have no idea.

After prying ourselves out of the house. Robin looked at me and said, “What would you like to do now?” Remember back in the first paragraph, when I mentioned the plan? Here’s where I bored a hole in it, packed it with as much dynamite I could get, and blew the hell out of it. “Let’s walk the castle walls!” Look, if you are going to blow the hell out of your plans, don’t just do it a little bit. Sell the house, auction off your worldly possessions, and get as much explosives as you can to make it a spectacular fail. My wife has MS and can struggle walking, especially on uneven surfaces. I have poly-neuropathy in my legs, so I also struggle walking on uneven surfaces. Add to that the fact that I was not feeling well. Yup. Time to walk the castle walls. If you don’t reach the conclusion by the end of this that I’m a moron, then you aren’t paying attention.

Robin and I found some steps up to the wall, and from there, our walk was uphill. Literally. In most places, the battlements were sloped toward the inside of the walls. The walls followed the hill up away from the river. That meant most of our walk was literally uphill. That meant, for our whole walk up the north wall, there were dark clouds swirling overhead, and an overwhelming smell of vanilla. The back of my neck tingled, the hairs on my body was standing straight up, and I did not dare turn around, because I was sure I would be turned into a pillar of salt. In several places, I had to really focus to make sure I didn’t go pitching over the railing. How anyone ever thought this battlement was safe to traverse was beyond me, and more than once, I thought longingly about the plans I had blown up, and wished I had used much less explosives.

We made it down off of the wall, had to walk a bit around the outside of the wall, came through a tunnel under the railroad tracks and came back into the town on the south side of the castle. From there it was a short walk back to our condo. We decided on a place called Watson’s Bistro for dinner. Fed and refreshed from our travels, we headed back to the condo for the night.

After all that, will someone explain to me, please, how a man who has not smelled a thing in his life knows what vanilla smells like? That’s just creepy. And scary. And scarily creepy. I await your explanations.