A visit to Kew Gardens…finally……

……. seeing we had the Botanist and the Entomologist members of the family staying with us (Sarah, Alan & Molly), we decided that it was a “must do”. Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens, is one of the world's leading botanic gardens, holding over 1 in 8 of every known plant species, amazing really when you consider the size of the whole world and they fit an eighth of all the plants into 300 acres…..most impressive! It was a perfect day and we set off with our picnic. We love traveling by public transport (trains mainly), the Brits moan constantly about the awfulness of British Rail, but we smile, we know what rotten public transport is really like! Unfortunately British Rail was having a bad day and while it only took us 30 minutes to get into the centre of London from here, it took nearly an hour and a half from London to reach Kew…….a nuisance, but not a real problem, Molly loves traveling by train.
We spent 4 or 5 hours there and saw only a small part of it, the glasshouses were amazing and we only did 3 of those, there are about 8! It’s a remarkable place, it was first established in 1700 and in 2003 was made a World Heritage site – I did, for a mad moment, imagine holding a Lantern Festival there!!!!! Checking their website, one finds the ‘events’ are far more sedate! It’s a wonderful ever changing place and well worth visiting again and again (British Rail notwithstanding!)……meanwhile the bluebells have been doing their thing and the rape fields are also going “off”….it’s a beautiful time of year! We are catching the Eurostar through the Chunnel to France this week for 10 days, can’t wait…….lots of love xxx

Life as a servant continued………….

……….our employer (he of many ‘gongs’) attended the annual Calvary Parade today in Hyde Park. Rod being his ‘person in waiting’ had to drive him there and attend upon him. Our employer no longer marches in the parade, but was seated in an area for VIPs - Rod was relegated to stand with the hoi polloi. The class system in England never fails to amuse and confound us. It is especially evident in the armed forces which of course the royal family ‘lead’!!! The officers (who ‘fought’ in the war) – distinguish themselves by wearing bowler hats and carrying furled umbrellas????????? They lead the parade from the front. The soldiers (who also fought in the war) wear suits (sans bowler hats & umbrellas) and bring up the rear. This we believe, was not the case during the war, men out front, officers to the rear…….who knows? But we can’t help wondering if the gongs were so freely given to the guys without the bowler hats and umbrellas????? Rod caught the eye of one of the Royal Household attaches (takes one Kiwi to recognize another!!); he invited Rod into the ‘seated area’ – right in the front. Hence Rod caught on camera HRH. After studiously ignoring Rod while he snapped away, he then turned and said ‘hello’…..”I sleep with the man who spoke with the Prince of Wales” (reminiscent of the song “I danced with a man, who danced with a woman who danced with the Prince of Wales”)…………..as I write this the cuckoo is being totally ‘cliché’…..did you know that cuckoos only cuckoo for a short while, we think it’s to announce summer, but maybe it’s something else they have on their mind…….lots of love xxxxxxxxx

A rainy day in London……..

………beats a fine day in a lot of places. London has so many things to visit (especially on a rainy day)………We have Sarah, Alan and Molly staying at the moment and so we initially decided to go to Kew Gardens (more about that later)…..however, it wasn’t a good day for Kew, so we opted for the National Museum. Such is the collection that you can really only do ‘one room’ properly per visit. We decided to do ‘Celtic & Saxon Britain’ but on the way there, Rod & I got waylaid by the Aztec’s – those guys were so clever (not clever enough to survive tho!!!!), their art is still very relevant today. The round thing (like a lavvy seat) is a type of basketball hoop. Apparently the game was played all day, the ball going through the hoop to score and at the end of the day for the honor of winning you got sacrificed to some god or other, no wonder it took all day to score!!! Yay! We finally extricated ourselves from the Azetcs and reached our goal of Celtic & Saxon Britain, Rod is holding a silver dish from that era, this particular dish was discovered in the 1990’s by a guy with one of those metal detectors – those sort of people are still finding buried ‘hoards’ all over Britain from time to time - I want to find a hoard!!!!! Lots of love xxxxxxxx