20/03/2003
17/03/2003 I woke up and went to the library to update you lot on what's been going on. Mam and Dad rang and I went and had lunch. Then I went out to go and see Trinity Church in Copley Square, near the main Boston library. It's in the top 25 places to visit in Boston. It's a Romanesque church, often described as America's masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture. Yes, I'm sure it is. In typical American style this visit was free according to the guide of Boston, $3 according to the brochure, and $4 according to the desk where you had to pay! It was probably all charged as tax. If you go to MacDonalds and buy something off of the $1 menu, it costs you $1.05. Maths obviously isn't USA's strong point. That's probably why they spell it without an "s".
The church was founded in 1733 and built in 1872 (?). Maybe they sat outside for the sermons for 139 years. Who knows? It seats 1,400 people and sits on recovered land, filled in between 1851 and 1894. So, some the land that church sits on was actually filled in after the church was built... It is supported by 4,500 wooden piles and has a pumping system which ensures the wooden piles don't come into contact with air as this would make them rot. The central tower in the church weighs over 11,000,000 pounds (that's 22,000 Big Shows), and sits on 4 granite pyramids. Each pyramid is 35 feet square, 17 feet high and rests on 400 piles. In 1878, after an estimate of $280,000, the building cost $435,000.
Phillip Brookes served as the Rector from 1869 to 1891. He was so popular that when he died, the city of Boston closed for the day. All offices and shops shut, even the Boston Stock Market stopped trading during his funeral. He is famous for writing the Christmas Carol, Oh! Little Town Of Bethelehem.
Trinity's organ is actually 2 organs. Another amazing feat of American construction. This combined organ has 6,898 pipes ranging in length from less than 1 inch, to 32 feet.
Restoration is very expensive. The cleaning and restoration of one stained glass window can cost over $500,000. I took 2 photos before seeing the no photographs sign and this lady kept turning around and smiling at me. I carried on looking around the church and she came up to me whilst I was reading part of the guide booklet. She asked me if I had been to the church before. Yes of course I have, that's why I'm taking the tour! First the lady with the dog and now a crazed religious woman! I explained that I had just come over from England.
"I knew it," she said " I felt the presence of Prince Harry in the room!"
Oh my God (no pun intended)! Not only is she insulting how old I look, but she's even more crazy than I thought! What is it with Americans?!! I assured her that I was not Prince Harry and she went on to explain that she'd lived in London for 7 years, so she "knew how English people thought!"
I'm sure you do, you psychic.
It turned out that she was an Usher. I tried to look interested at the same time as not having a clue what an "Usher" was. We had a discussion about Iraq and the Bravo Two Zero SAS mission from the Gulf War. She then asked me to hold the church doors open while she brought in some signs from outside and explained when the services are. This was after I had nicely informed her that I wasn't very religious. She assured me that I could sit at the back, where I wouldn't have to take such an active part in the service. I was flattered, but eventually I managed to escape into the lovely sunshine and made my way home, checking over my shoulder every 10 seconds to make sure I wasn't being followed! I won't be going back there ever again!
Peter, my brother, had sent me some recipes, so I got the ingredient to make spaghetti bolognaise, but forgot to get an onion. To compensate for this, I grabbed random spices off of the spice rack, including "Pizza Spice" and shoved them into the sauce. It actually tasted really nice! I ate that whilst watching President Bush's hypocrytical speech, watched Cast Away and went to bed listening to the David Bowie mini-disc Peter had sent me.
18/03/2003 I awoke to the phone ringing, but couldn't get up in time to answer it. I re-awoke to the doorbell and managed to get downstairs for the second time that it rang. I opened the door to a short man with 2 suitcases, asking if this was the Yellow House. I gave a groggy response and the man asked, in bad english, if there were any rooms available. I explained that he would have to talk to the Eve (the lady who owns the house), as I didn't know and it wasn't my place to say. He said that he had got the address off of the internet and I, once again, explained that with or without the address I still couldn't help. I advised him to ring the work number, but he said he had already done that and had reached the answer machine. I told him to come back at 8pm and he would probably be able to speak to Eve then. Louise rang and I spoke to her for a while, before going to the library. I forgot something and came back to the house to find the same guy at the door talking to Ingo. This was about 45 minutes after I told him to come back at 8pm. It was now 1pm! Ingo referred him over to me, because he was on the phone to his wife. He said he had let the guy leave his luggage in the hall (?) and would let him use the phone to ring Eve. I showed him to the phone completely baffled. The strange man asked if I could ring, because he wasn't good at "the English". You're not very clever either are you? Anything to get rid of him! So I rang and got the answer phone, ushered him out and told him to come back at 8pm. I was thinking of hitting him 8 times with the door to make sure he got it!
Wrestling was good. Wagner was back from England. He hates round-a-bouts though, so I asked him if he'd found any. He said that,once, he hit 5 in a row. So I asked him if that was in Swindon, and guess what? It was!
April came over and told me about English wrestling, because I had asked before they went away. She gave me some websites to go to, but overall advised me that I should learn as much as possible over here! Apparently, the women's wrestling is better in England than America, but the men's wrestling is much worse. But it was good to get the information anyway.
The chocolate over here is really quite bad and she said she'd put on loads of weight from eating our nice English chocolate! We started off with the usual warm-ups and were interrupted by this freak coming in and loudly talking to Walter. He started saying how he couldn't believe he was meeting Killer Kowalski! Walter replied,
"I do own the place!"
It turned out that these guys were back-yard wrestlers. They're the kind who teach themselves. They'd rented the ring before and had completely broken it. So when the guy told Walter they were going to hire the ring again, Wagner told everyone to take a water break and kicked them out!
I teamed up with Eric, he's really good and has crazy hair! I learnt 3 new moves, the backslide, the victory roll and the small package. I showed Wagner my moonsault, which he upstaged with his full standing back somersault!
At the end, we watched one of Wagner's matches against Tough Enough's Jonah. Tough Enough is a program run by the WWE, where people who want to become wrestlers are picked and trained by WWE superstars. Each week, 1 male and 1 female are kicked out until they are left with 2 females and 2 males. Then one of each is awarded a WWE contract. Jonah got knocked out and signed up for Killer Kowalskis, but only turned up twice. He's not very good though. I think it's more the fact that he's famous which gets him matches than his wrestling ability!
If your opponent is bad, then it makes your moves look ineffective and so makes you look like a bad wrestler. But Wagner did his best, made it look like a good match and retained his title.
When I got in, Eve came and told me that the guy from earlier had come back and Ingo let him in. So when she came into the house there was a random guy sitting at the table! I'm not degrading Ingo, but that was a bit stupid!! Anyway, she sent him packing. I told her about the backyard wrestlers who had come into Kowalski's, and she couldn't believe that I was getting trained by the Hall Of Famer himself! She wants to come and meet him sometime.