Pretty things

Celebration cakes...




Not as pretty as the ones in the recipe book, but yummy.

Swings and helter-skelter





There's a funfair in the park this weekend. I love the way the fairground rides are decorated. Sophie is getting so independent; she walked down to the fair with two of her friends and the three of them explored on their own. Bobby and I followed later; treated the kids to some candyfloss and then parted ways with them again. Must be exhausting working the fair; all that work to set everything up, for just two days.

And my beautiful new, pink, filing cabinet, which I believe marks the gateway to a new, fabulously organised life.





I spent this morning going through our papers and filing them. A slight upgrade from our previous filing system, which involved a collection of papers in a magazine holder thingy, stored behind the bicycles in the garage.

Getting outdoors while we can...

Thursday evening found us picknicking on top of Reigate Hill.




It is becoming increasingly difficult, as they get older and busier and more independent, to get all three children in the same place at the same time; however, it seems that food is still a powerful motivator. It was good to collect everyone together, and we all enjoyed the evening.

Couldn't entice any of them out of bed this morning, however, so Bobby and I went on a long bike ride, just the two of us. I love the countryside round here...




However, 30 kilometres (or, less impressively, about 18.5 miles) later, I understood why such things as gel-filled saddles exist. Ouch.

Midsummer Day

Work was tedious today, but this evening has been lovely. We went for yet another bike ride; I think I'm addicted. Can't bear to think that in a few months time these fabulously long evenings will be replaced by darkness at 3.45...





We live just the other side of the band of trees you can see beyond the cluster of houses.

Not entirely sure I understand this sign...




More pictures here...

Peaceful Tuesday

Yesterday was a bank holiday, and it poured with rain, all day. It poured all Sunday, too. The picture was taken from the car on Sunday, in a traffic jam in rainy Norwich. Tedious and frustrating - and having diesel cost £1.25 a litre definitely added an extra edge to the experience. It was good to see my folks, though. The sky is grey today, but it's not actually raining, and I'm not at work (we have this week off, it's half-term) so life is good! Sophie has a friend arriving in an hour or so, so I'm making the most of the peace and quiet while it lasts. And I suppose I should get going on my assignments - I have two 3000 word essays due on Monday...

The bluebells are out. The ground in the wood is a haze of blue; it's amazingly beautiful. I took the picture above as I walked in to work this morning, and the one below on my walk home this evening. I'm still amazed by the contrast between 5 on a summer's evening in the park - families relaxing on the grass, dads flying kites, children riding bikes - and 5 on a winter's evening, when it's been pitch dark for more than an hour, it's freezing cold, and everyone is hunched against the rain, heads down, walking home as fast as they can. Probably people who grow up with clearly defined seasons don't find the contrast as dramatic as we do



I'm loving the warm sunny weather we've been having recently; am hoping it's a sign that this summer will be a good one (unlike last year's soggy disaster). The only downside is that the students have run amok with the fake tan in preparation for summer; I had a hard time breathing in class this morning, the chemical reek emanating from my orange blotchy class was so strong.

Beautiful Symonds Yat

We went climbing at Symond's Yat yesterday. After we rappelled down to the cliffs, we climbed the pinnacle you can see part of in the picture and picnicked on top of it. It is a fun climb because it's so airy and exposed, and you get amazing views over the valley as you climb.



The view from the top is gorgeous, as you can see above.

Here's me on the rather muddy second climb. Sophie got really freaked out by all the creepy-crawlies she encountered on the way up on this climb. I was more freaked out by the holds that come off in your hand. At least these days we know to avoid nettles. (Learned that the hard way - at Symond's Yat, actually, just after we arrived here).



We did one more climb after that one, and then repaired to a pub for a very very late lunch/early dinner.

We had perfect weather, which was sort of surprising as it poured with rain almost all the way there. We actually came quite close to turning around and going home; the only thing that stopped us was our innate stubbornness. Glad we were unreasonable!

The rest of the pictures are here.

Voting - because I can!

It's local government election time here, so after work today I walked over to the polling station (the local infant school) to cast my vote. I arrived there with my voter registration card (which is just a piece of cardboard with my name and address on it), was given a rather scrappy looking ballot ballot and waved towards a booth by a custard-cream eating, bored-looking woman. After I'd marked my paper (with a last minute moment of dithering - Lib Dems or the Greens - tiny chance vs no chance?) I posted my completed ballot sheet into a disconcertingly unofficial third-world-ish looking box. The thing I found most disconcerting in the whole laid-back process was that nobody asked me for any proof of identity at any stage. Sadly, our borough is solidly conservative (41 out of 51 councillors are Tories) so my vote probably hasn't achieved much... Still, after our disenfranchised years in the US, it's good to be able to take at least some token part in the political process again.

Talk like me

Sophie is in the garden playing netball with one of her friends, and I'm struck by how her accent changes depending on who she's talking to. She's gone all london-y at the moment - no t's. She's always been quite easily influenced in that way - when she was five her best friend was Indian, and she developed a very strange South African/American/Indian twang. These days, I tend to forget that I have an accent myself - it sometimes surprises me when people ask where I'm from. And I still often use the wrong words - discovered last night, for instance, that people here don't refer to ATMs. I guess because I know what they mean when they refer to "cash points" I hadn't actually ever registered that they never refer to an "ATM". I think my vocabulary problems are compounded by having lived in the US before we moved here - South Africa, the USA and England often have different words for the same thing, and I sometimes get mixed up about which word goes with which country. For instance, it's a jersey in South Africa, a sweater in the US and a jumper here.
Tank tops over here don't look like this, they look like this. Then there's dhania, cilantro and coriander - all the same thing. And brinjals, eggplants and aubergines... I think I must gradually be acculturating to life here, though - these days I can say "jumper" with a straight face. For ages, it sounded so odd to me that I couldn't say it without making little quotey marks with my fingers.

Camping, eh?

This is what we woke up to on Sunday morning.





Glad we'd brought the washing in!

We went for a walk on Reigate Hill...





... turned into more of a battle than walk after a while, though.





I pleaded journalistic immunity.





We're off to Cornwall early tomorrow. Have decided that camping may be unpleasantly chilly, so we will be staying in the Tintagel Youth Hostel instead. Can't wait!

Spring is in the air....

Everything is coming into leaf, the days are getting longer (with a vengeance, since daylight savings began yesterday) and I am starting to feel that winter may end one day.

It's still wet though...





Hence the wellies. Nothing says "I live in England" like a wellie-wearing walk.

Hidden Gardens of London

We went on a chilly but fascinating guided walk yesterday - the hidden gardens of London. I was amazed to learn about green, quiet spaces I'd walked right past, not knowing that they existed.





The picture is of the Japanese waterfall outside Liverpool Street Station. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know that this green space existed, even though this is the station we leave from when we visit my folks in Beccles.

Part of the Broadgate Venus - a voluptuous statue that one can't help but touch.





Obviously I loved this statue..





and the birds like this one.





The rest of the pictures are here.

I think the gardens I liked best were the rooftop garden at the top of No. 1 Poultry (there's a restaurant up there, wonder what happens if you ask for the fish?) and the garden courtyard at St Vedast's church. You enter that last one through an unmarked blue door in the street, and find yourself in a quiet, tranquil little haven. Quite magical.

The snowdrops are out.

We discovered this on an abortive bike ride yesterday; abortive because I got a flat tyre about twenty minutes into the ride, so we had to push our bikes all the way home, smiling grimly at all the ancient walkers who kept addressing us with witty comments such as "Shouldn't you be sitting on that?" as they strode on past us through the mud utilising their ski pole thingies to the full.

It was a pretty walk though.




And apparently the cyclescheme vouchers which will enable me to purchase my new bicycle (so that I no longer have to borrow Steve's clapped out one) should be here in about ten days, so that's exciting. (Don't feel too sorry for Steve, by the way - he destroyed my original bicycle before he did for his own.)

Tonight will not be exciting, however. It's onwards to Crawley, or, as I think of it, to the armpit of the South East. Just think, only another ... hmmm ... 16 months of gruesome Monday evenings till I'm done with this course. And tomorrow, after work, my annual mammogram. Not sure which event will be more painful...

Diesel is now £1.10 per litre.

Which gives us even more incentive to reduce our car usage.

As it is, I only use the car on Mondays (it's cheaper to drive than to take the train to beastly Crawley) and Bobby uses it on Wednesdays (because he stays at work for an extra hour every Wednesday evening so the traffic is really scary when he leaves). The rest of the time, we either bicycle (Bobby) or walk (me and the children). Unless it's really pouring, in which case Bobs takes the car. We do tend to use the car quite a bit on weekends, though, and I think we are going to try to cut back on that.

The other incentive we have to reduce car use is the Great Parking War in which we are currently embroiled. Someone else on our street has taken to parking in the spot we think of as "ours" - the one outside our kitchen window. (Like most other streets here, 99% of homes don't have garages - and any garages that do exist - like ours - are seldom actually used to house cars. Space is far too precious for that!) So we're thinking if we never move our car again (we're in The Spot right now) we'll win the war. Never mind that it'll be a rather hollow victory if it means we can never actually use our car...

I'm so glad that the days are already starting to get longer. The sun was just setting when I left work at 4.30 today - a huge improvement from the gloomy November/December days when it's pitch-dark before 4.

I'm feeling unsettled and restless at the moment. In the mood for change... Bobby's department has been outsourced to an India-based company. His conditions of service and salary will remain the same (and he'll still be working here in England) but I can't deny that, if we were offered it, I'd be tempted by the opportunity of spending a couple of years in India. Almost certainly not an option for us at the moment (house, kids' schooling, my job, the course I'm doing) but the thought is awfully tempting ...

Kew Gardens is beautiful in winter.





I plan to go and see the Henry Moore exhibition yet again in Spring.

Looking up...





and looking down.





One more for luck...





The rest of the pictures are here.

38 feels pretty good.





Better than 37 did, oddly.

My birthday celebration on Saturday was lovely. Bobby cooked us all pancakes before we took the train to the Tower of London.





Steve very sweetly took my mum-in-law around the tower (those two have such a close bond, it is wonderful...) while the rest of us skated on the moat.





The fog made the river look just like a Monet print, we thought.





And from Monet to monkeys...





And then we ate a totally delicious lunch at Wagamama - though people still had room for extra goodies afterwards.





Aaargh! You shouldn't have pushed it!





All of these pictures (and there are more here were taken with my birthday present from Bobby - a tiny, beautiful, pink camera. It's perfect - has really good resolution, yet is small enough to fit in my purse. And I wasn't expecting it at all, since I happen to know what I'm getting for Christmas, and we'd agreed that it would count as a combined Christmas/birthday present... I'm very lucky.

And in the evening I forced the family to watch Elf with me. No-one ever believes me, since it's really not my usual style, but I love that movie. So there. The other thing people seem to have a hard time getting to grips with is our family's habit of relocating birthdays to more convenient days. If I'd celebrated my birthday on its real date, I would have had a full day at work - with my less pleasant teaching groups at that - followed by a neurologist's appointment in the evening. So, not great. The normal solution for most people would be to open presents etc on the real birthday, and do something fun on the next free day. But I think that just dilutes both days, because then you just get two half-hearted birthday celebrations. Whereas if you simply pretend that your birthday falls on a different (convenient) day, you can make sure that you have a wonderful day all day long. I know most of you are probably still making that "huh, she really is crazy" face that I see every time I tell someone about this method, but seriously. Think about it. I'm right!

The neurologist's appointment was sort of unsatisfactory. The really good news is that the MRI and all the blood tests came back perfectly normal. The bad news is that I still have my weird symptoms, and am likely to have them for the foreseeable future. The neurologist thinks (guesses, since the MRI didn't pick up any visible signs of damage) that the symptoms first arrived as a part of viral infection which has affected my brain stem, leaving some residual inflammation. This inflammation is responsible for the numb feeling on the right hand side of my face, and the pins and needles I keep getting in my hands and feet. And for the off-balance sensations that still bother me. Sadly, he says that since it hasn't cleared up in 6 months, it's probably not going to. But, it won't get worse. So, not the end of the world, but a bit frustrating.

Today is going to involve getting the house ready - my parents arrive this afternoon, and will be spending the next few days with us - and the board game Sophie gave me for my birthday. Chocolate and Doctor Who, what could be a more perfect combination?

What a weekend.

Friday night, Bobs and I had a party to go to, so that was good.

On Saturday we took Bobby’s mum to see Dover Castle (which is a really interesting day out, as you can see the castle itself as well as tour the tunnels in the famous white cliffs). We went home via Canterbury, so she could visit the cathedral. Canterbury is always beautiful, but at Christmas time it becomes quite magical, with all the lights and decorations. So that was also all good.

Sunday morning, Bobby went to his model plane flying group, I tackled the housework, and Bobby’s mum walked into town to go to church. Which is where things became less good, because she tripped on the kerb and, when she fell, her glasses frame cut her forehead quite badly, over her eye. First I knew about it was when I got a phone call from the hospital at lunchtime, telling me what had happened and where she was. We got to the hospital in time for me to go in with her when she was seen, and, seven stitches later, she looked a lot less frightening. She is feeling fine today – or so she says – though she has a terribly swollen face and a truly impressive black eye.

Seems like yesterday was an accident-prone day for Bobby’s family generally, since we got an email today from his sister, saying that she’d had a fall while shopping, and broken a rib.

Can only hope that they’ll all manage to stay on their feet for the rest of the holiday period.

Meanwhile, I’m counting down the days till term ends. Just four and a half more, and then I’m free for two whole weeks. Can’t wait.

Eek.

The bird flu in Suffolk is the H5N1 strain.

The affected farm (free-range turkeys, apparently) is in Diss, about 20 miles from where my parents live.

We'll be in that area on Sunday, visiting my parents. We're going to pick up a bed that they no longer want, to put in our soon-to-be-completed loft. We'll have to make sure we don't get too intimate with any birds along the way.

The loft is starting to look pretty good. Bobs has been working like crazy. He and Soph are up there right now, laying floorboards. They took a box of Rose's chocolates up with them, to sweeten the experience. Less than three weeks now till my mum-in-law arrives, and it looks like we may actually have the loft sleepable-in by then!

I keep catching myself wanting to talk about the weather, and I know it's boring, but I just can't help it. It's been so stunningly beautiful recently - all blue and gold and green. And I know it can't last forever, which makes it all the sweeter.





We took the picture above near our house; it's a view of the fields taken from the footpath.

And then, yesterday evening, we went to Brockham (a neighbouring village) for Bonfire Night. Sophie was rather devastated because she didn't get to hold a flaming torch (we weren't quick enough off the mark when they were dishing them out) but I'm secretly rather relieved that she lost out.





The fire itself was pretty impressive. Three stories high at least, and frighteningly hot, once it was lit. And the fireworks afterwards made a great display. This picture doesn't really show the fireworks terribly well, but I like the leafless tree; would make a good setting for the witches in Macbeth.





So it's been a good weekend. Even Bobby's and my trip to the supermarket this afternoon (since we'd forgotten to schedule a grocery delivery last week, and hence had completely run out of food) was quite enjoyable. If only there was one more day of weekend, I might get all caught up on everything before the work whirlwind started again...

I need a cook. And a cleaner. And a gardener. And a builder. And a personal masseur.

And in the short-term, I need a cup of coffee.

I'm managing to keep my head above water at work, but just barely. I'm loving the actual teaching, but it's a lot of work. As is all the administrative stuff that goes along with it. And the new departmental dynamics. Add mothering, cooking, cleaning and a couple of houseguests into the mix, and I am just a few breaths away from desperate flailing as opposed to controlled swimming.

Still, it's Friday today, I've (almost!) made it through the week, and we're going to be celebrating Bonfire Night tomorrow night. I'm definitely in the mood for flaming torches, fireworks, and mulled wine.