The Mike Haddad Show: This is relevant to my interests.

Today I went to Stonehenge. I should state for the record that the only reason I went to Stonehenge was because I play Dark Age of Camelot. Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) takes place after King Arthur's death, and the realm I play is Albion (England).

For this reason I went on a lot of the optional trips. Being able to make connections between the real world (or history of it) and the game is fun for me. Hearing about the barrows around Stonehenge was one of those connections. In Camelot, under Stonehenge (it doesn't look as destroyed in the game) there's a dungeon called The Barrows, where spirits of the undead spend the rest of eternity. One of the legends is that Uther Pendragon (Arthur's father) and his brother are buried there. In DAoC, the Barrows ghostly occupants include Uther and his brother. For me that was fun.

Stonehenge itself was horribly boring. All we got to do was walk around ina giant circle listening to the stupiid audiowand. If I never seen abouther one of those again, I couldn't be happier.The look like oversize remotes, with phones in them that have recordings of horrible voice actors giving tours. As a drama student, it was appalling. I did manage to take a lot of pictures though.

After Stonehenge we went into Salisbury to see the Cathedral and the Magna Carta. The cathedral was really nice, but for someone who has a lot of little faith in a bunch of religions, it didn't have the same effect on me that it had with Steve (it was actually a little amusing, though I feel bad saying so). We tried walking around afterwards but everything was closed. That's another thing I will never understand. Everything closed by 6:00 pm. Which meant we had an hour and a half to waste outside the cathedral. You'd be surprised how entertaining that can be.

We ran into a group of five local kids who had been talking to some of the other kids in the group. Three boys (who claimed to be 17, 12, and 11) and two girls (who claimed to be 12 and 12). I say claimed, because they all looked younger than that, and they changed their ages like three times. It was an experience I will not forget for a long time. They all smoked, they all swore and they talked a lot about doing drugs. I managed to tranlaste some of what they were saying from English to Canadian - I think they said four of them were related. Now which four, I couldn't tell you for the life of me. They said their parents gave them cigarettes (which wouldn't have made much of a difference, the 17 year old would have been able to buy them legally for over a year).

They really need to look at the social norms here. Everyone smokes (no wonder they all have bad teeth). Everyone drinks (you can buy alcohol at cornerstores). They're all aggressive drivers, who don't care about pedestrians. I know a lot of people who would be dead.

If I ever come back to England, or maybe even Experience England, I would go on the trip again. So only so much you can take in at once, and I'm willing to bet I missed a lot. I might even be able to make some new connections.

Thanks!
Mike.

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Comments:You are an interesting albeit opinionated guy.