Rambling around Staffordshire……..

 
 
 
 
……we move down to Essex this week and so have spent the last few days saying farewell to Stafford and getting used to having a car. It’s always scary buying a new, old car and this was no exception. However after a few teething problems things seem to be settling down and we are finding all sorts of little extras that we didn’t even know we had e.g. a sun roof. How could you miss that you ask? Dunno, but we did! Guess it was something to do with the interior cover thingy that slides back and then today we found that if you pressed a button on the interior light…..it actually opened up and ‘voila’ open air sky!!!!! It’s diesel, so sounds like a traction engine, but runs really well. We are beginning to relax and really like it. Phew!
Went for a lovely long walk tonight and the thing about England is you don’t have to go very far to be in the country and before we knew it we were rambling over paddocks and fields with hedgerows and wild flowers and cows and squirrels and mole holes and horses and goodness knows what else, now I’m not a country girl, but it seemed very civilised. Speaking of which our new home and job in Essex is 35 minutes from London by train….but more about that later……..Love getting your emails, wish it was easier to comment on the blog but never mind, keep those emails coming. By the way, the photos only loosely relate to the topic, they weren’t taken in Stafford because I forgot to take the camera tonight, however I took a bit of artistic – ‘artistic’?? license because I really like them……..the deer and wild flowers were taken in Scotland and the monkeys in a ‘Monkey Forest Park’(that’s another blog in itself) we visited on the weekend.
Miss you heaps xxxxx

Accent on Stafford…….

 
 
 
 
….this is our last few days in Stafford and it’s been great having a place to call home. Brian’s been fantastic and we will be sad to leave in some ways, it’s been fun. A funny conversation we had the other night was about ‘accents’. Rod and I had experienced some conversations between locals during the day that we could not make head nor tail of “know wad I meen?” (That is the only bit we sometimes understand, it is used as punctuation!). Anyway Brian stated out of the blue “yeah! well of course people from the Midlands don’t have an accent…well some might have a bit, but I certainly don’t, know wad I meen?!” Now, those of you who know Brian will agree “Yeah right!!!!! ” So then we said “nah! we are the ones without an accent” (I’m sure you’ll agree?). Brian said….”You’ve got shocking accents!” What the hell is he talking about……………????
We have put all our energy this week into buying a car….we seem to have more energy than the people selling it because we still haven’t got it!!! Maybe today will be the day?
Start work towards the end of next week in Essex – I don’t think it’s ‘googleable’ because our employers are very onto it but not into ICT.
We may disappear into a black hole until we get our broadband up and running. The incumbent has it but we have to get our own. We are looking forward to finding out what is in the bottoms of our suitcases (funny how you never go below the third layer!)..it’s been great wearing jeans and a black (doesn’t show the dirt) top for 3 months!
Love you and miss you heaps xxxxxxxxxxxx

John Constable..Robin Hood and Lord Byron....

 
 
 
 
.....we decided to drive down to London last Friday and hang out there for a few days. We had an interview in Essex so it seemed like a good idea. Found a 'lovely sounding' room online, hired a car, loaded our bags and off we went. Driving on a Friday afternoon, to London, in the pouring rain is quite challenging....but wait, there's more! Arrived at the address (no mean feat, a lot of teamwork involved), and the room had been very creatively described, couldn't stay it was horrible. So off we went (thank goodness we had a rental car and weren't schlepping our gear!), found a habitable hotel in Essex and stayed the night there. Had a great interview for the job the next day (which we got...more about that next time). Then drifted into Constable Country, the hotel shown was over 600 years old, very Dick Turpinish! Very hard to sleep...too much of the past still going on............perhaps the cajun chicken with several pints didn't help. Awoke to the clack of hooves on the cobbles......Up and onto Sherwood Forest. We stayed the night with friends and visited an Abbey once owned by Lord Byron. Silly man ran out of money doing mock sea battles on the lakes and firing canons at servants and had to sell it. Note the peacocks in Nottingham cafes behave like the sparrows in Ponsonby cafes...I bet the sparrows wish they looked like that. Start work next week in Essex, more about that later. Thanks so much for your emails and for keeping in touch, it keeps us going. Love you and miss you heaps xxxxxxxxx

What the…. #@^+#%...!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
 
 
 
…….here we are, in a hotel room literally on the ‘Firth of Forth’. To the West the sun sinks dramatically over Edinburgh, to the North sits an oil tanker at anchor and to the East is a… @#%^+..!!!!! Nuclear Power Station waiting to do goodness knows what!!!!
In the restaurant tonight a gentleman told us how they hadn’t been able to eat the fish out of this bay for many years….gulp! Guess what we’ve been eating all the way around the coast??????? We will be checking our ‘glow in the dark factor’ throughout the night!
Staying with some people tomorrow night we met at the ‘folk festival’…Barbara’s hoping they don’t expect her to sing and Rod has lost his drum!!! Looking forward to checking out the Edinburgh ‘culture’ for a few days then back to see Brian, we must buy a car and get some ‘dosh’ happening. Love hearing from you all, thanks for the emails , do feel free to comment from time to time, it’s lovely for us to know you care. xxxxxx

Birds of a feather…….

 
 
 
 


….have we told you how much we love Scotland? It has been a fantastic experience, we loved being in the Highlands, the Lowlands the inbetweenlands. Swung around a corner and found ourselves in a Falconary. The birds were awe inspiring and we learned that the relationship between the falconer and the bird is all about food!!! There go the romantic notions of relationship! The little fishing villages along the coast are beautiful and romantic beyond belief. And the people friendly and welcoming. We happened upon a “Folk Festival” in Stonehaven. The funny thing was Barbara was recognized as a ‘singer of no mean talent’ and Rod was acknowledged as a fair to middling drummer. (In the absence of a guitar he played an upside down metal wine cooler!!). It was a very good night and we laughed as we staggered home along the quay about “how the mighty have fallen”!!! Fortunately our B&B couldn’t accommodate us for a second night, in spite of popular demand…so the legend lives on……….we are on the other side of the world and so everything is upside down…wish you were here, miss you xxxxxxxx

Funny sort of a day......

 
 
 
 
....left Skye this morning and came across this double padlocked gate to an open moor, however, just in case one opened the gate you had better have a fair sized fork lift handy to shift the rock, this wasn't random, there were several gates over a area of several miles (as roads are measured in Scotland - not Km - which is why it has taken us longer than expected to get anywhere!!!), similarly locked and rocked!!! Now, strolling through Inverness we happend upon two enormous owls, chained to a perch, as one would expect. They were collecting money for endangered species, they were about 2 feet tall, gorgeous! Then we ended up at Culloden Field, the site of the 1746 battle that ended the Jacobite Uprising (The MacKinnons fought bravely there), anyway, the part you get to see is a little brown pile of dirt, now we had been seeing these all over the place and I thought they were nice little piles of plant mix in preparation for planting, to save digging etc. Moles!!!!...they are mole hole diggings and if you come upon them soon enough they move!!
Onto Findhorn (some of you may remember the 70's??), for a glorious seafood platter. Aberdeen tomorrow and we begin the descent back to England and work again........Loads of lovexxxxxxxx

‘Speed Bonnie Boat………

 
 
 
 

…….like a bird on the wing over the sea to Skye’…actually we took the bridge. What an emotional day it’s been. There is no way to describe the impact the Highlands have had on us. The heather is truly, truly ‘purple’… the colours in pictures show pale lilac…heather is PURPLE!!!!! Bright, in your face purple! We stopped to view a loch from a mountain top, and there, miles from anywhere was a lone piper in full regalia, we wept. Onto Skye and immediately found the ruins of Moele Castle, ancient seat of the MacKinnon Clan since 1236. Ate local salmon and drank local ale and local whiskey, listened to a Scottish folk singer and once again home to a B&B for a FULL International breakfast! We thought we’d be back in Edinburgh on Thursday, but no way….we’ll go back when we are good and ready, rental car permitting. We will have to get a job soon though!!! Lots of love, miss you heaps xxxxxxxxxxx

Edinburgh to Oban…..

 
 
 
 


…..Via the Lommonds…Loch and Ben..wow! what a trip. Scotland specializes in dramatic skys, remininscent of Harry Potter movies, rolling thunder and then lashings of rain, not your gentle Irish drizzle or polite English cascade, we are talking torrential, just to show whose boss. We think it’s just to compete with the dramatic landscape!
Loch Lommond..it deserves every bar of every song written about it! Went to the end of the road, hailed a fisherman in a small boat, and he waved back with a metre long salmon! We arrived in Oban, exquisite little fishing village and ate at the local equivalent from the ‘pie cart’….Gordon and Haffey cooked us salmon and scallops while we went off to get a bottle of wine which we then drank in their paper cups sitting on the quay in front of the ‘pie/fish cart’ watching the local boys doing dangerous things with fishing lines and hooks and getting into all sorts of tangles with their rods and the local boat’s mooring lines.
We walked along the esplanade and then as the sun set at 10.25pm we decided it was time to head back to our B&B!!! Lots of love, would love you to be here xxxxxxx

Edinburgh

 
 
 
 
Just when we thought we'd settled down from being 'wide eyed, gob smacked tourists' it's happened all over again. We LOVE Edinburgh. Found a nice B&B and then spent hours wandering around, talking with people, sampling the odd dram and just being generally amazed at how a city could be so 'right'. It's hip, it's cool, it's beautiful and it's fun. There was a piper busking as we arrived and street performers all over the place and it's not even Festival time.....they deserve 'The Festival'. We finally dragged ourselves back to the B&B after spending some time talking with a couple of kilted, burly young Scots in a pub, they were so interesting, informed and epitomised the quote we've shown. We snuggled down under a 'tartan' duvee and woke up to a hearty 'Scottish Breakfast' which is identical to the Irish, English, NZ breakfast...we think cooked breakfasts should be 'International Breakfast' so you could have a 'Continental Breakfast' or the other.....blah. blah, blah....now we must hae awa ta the Highlands and Skye....thanks for keeping in touch, miss you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx