What a difference a day makes………

……….all week the locals have been saying “Arrr…it’s gonna snow ‘n Sundee”. We have been having the most glorious 7 sunny days of 13-14° - “Snow on Sunday??????? Really???” So on Friday, one of the drivers came in and said “Are ya ready for the snow on the weekend?” Thinking he was just making conversation about the weather as people do, I said, “do you really think it will snow?” Sniggering up my sleeve!
He said “Oh, yeah…it’ll snow.” Now I had been scornful about this ‘snow on the weekend’ trip all week. We have a four day forecast on our homepage with no mention of snow. Sure the temperatures were going to drop a bit, but snow?……not a chance!
“I don’t think it’ll snow” I said to Mick. “Want a bet?” said he. So we ended up having a £5 bet ($12.63 in real money), and shook on it. “I think, I’ve done my dough” say’s he!!! “I think so too” thought I. All yesterday, I kept thinking “snow, shmow”!!!!! It was hardly even cold!
This morning, it was very quiet when we woke up, we pulled back the curtains and sure enough……thick, glorious snow!!!!! Because I never win bets - I feel I’m the one completely responsible for it!!!!! AND it’s worth every penny – off to play in it for a while…….lots of love xxxxxx

Tom Toms and Pocahontas……….

We decided that we were a little tired of getting lost…it was okay at first…. then we told ourselves it was part of the adventure….but eventually it became down right embarrassing and a bit of a nightmare, especially when we picked up the family from Heathrow and promptly got lost, taking several hours to get home, after tackling the centre of London on a Friday afternoon! We haven’t been altogether technologically lacking through all this, we have planned routes on the computer and then printed off the maps and directions, but, due to no fault on our part, they keep changing the road signs or worse still there aren’t any, so in light of all this stress and drama we bought a Tom Tom GPS.
Oh my goodness….what a delight…we decided to go to Gravesend, an historic maritime town on the southern banks of the Thames. Which took us to Pocahontas…. Apparently Pocahontas visited Gravesend in the 1600’s and is buried there, they even have a statue of her! It is the last place one would expect to find what one had always imagined to be a fictional character. So much so, that I didn’t even take a photo, but found out all this in retrospect, (which is usually how we find our information)! Anyway we keyed into the sat nav where we wanted to go….and a female voice said….” Proceed down driveway 400yards to Mill Green Road and turn right”…. Now we would have turned left, but no matter, we always do as we are told!!! After taking us on a rather round about way to the A12 we were on our way and in spite of a few hiccups, it was a hell of lot better than me trying to navigate from a computer print out! We love the way it tells you when you are in 6 lane traffic..“stay in the left lane” or whatever….it’s great. Two days off, starting tomorrow and we are going exploring. We just have to figure out now, how to change the very ‘British’ female voice to a Kiwi bloke, apparently that is an option?????
Spring has well and truly sprung, the daffodils are still going mad….the trees are all bursting into leaf and the goose is grumpily sitting on eggs….so much for the dreaded ‘blackthorn winter’!!!!
In the meantime we have booked 3 days and nights in Amsterdam mid April and can’t wait………..miss you all heaps…still!!

Beware the ‘blackthorn winter’……….

…….the locals, including our employer, have been warning us of the ‘blackthorn winter’, (see the dear little blossoming shrub). Granted it has been a great winter. Officially spring was declared several weeks ago and the birds and plants have been responding accordingly. But, our employer has been going on and on about the dreaded ‘blackthorn winter’!!!! The reasoning goes like this – if the blackthorn flowers all together, beware, you are in for weeks of nasty late winter. Now our theory is – if something flowers, it flowers and so we’ve been rather skeptical. However, on a trip down to Thorpeness on Saturday we couldn’t help noticing that there was rather a lot of blackthorn flowering ………The following day we woke up to an Easter Sunday covered in snow – it was gorgeous and only stayed until late afternoon, but it was enough to play in and have some fun. Whether or not we have weeks of a ‘nasty winter’ remains to be seen, but it could almost be worth it for a glorious day of loveliness!
Thorpeness was interesting – the photo shows a house build over a water tower – they call it the ‘house in the clouds’ – quaint! Thorpeness has a very posh Country Club, golf course, tennis courts, splendid weekend retreats etc etc as well as a very ominous looking nuclear power station!!!
Off to Amsterdam in a few weeks, you have to love the proximity to Europe…….can’t wait…..more about that later……xxxxxxxxxx

A special time………

………it’s been a lovely few weeks, having Ana and the boys here. It’s been great to be able to share with them just a few of our favourite places and also to re-experience these again through the eyes of loved ones. It’s been much too short though and on Friday they fly back to NZ – D Day (Dread Day!)…….In the meantime, we’ve taken 4 days off and are making the most of these last days. Sera arrived last Friday (she has a job as an au pair in Holland) and will stay a few more days – so we can enjoy the family time for a little longer. The good thing is, she is only going to be an hour or so away….yay!!!
Yesterday we visited the Tower of London and were most impressed by the Crown Jewels – you aren’t allowed to photograph them. I’m not a ‘jewelry’ kind of a girl – but they were pretty spectacular… Surprisingly they have only been almost stolen once – in 1671. Having read hundreds of historical novels it was crazy being in the midst of where most of Henry VIII’s stuff happened and to see the messages that people like Walpole, Raleigh and many others have carved into the walls of the towers.
Meanwhile the daffodils are going crazy and ‘hosts’ and ‘hosts’ of them are everywhere and in between all the excitement of having family here – ‘Life as a Servant’ has had to continue…….

Walking paths and badger trails…..

England is crisscrossed with ancient public walkways over fields and farms, through forests, public and private land. The walkways are sacrosanct and are kept up and maintained by the landowners. We have one going through our place. The other day we set off in the late afternoon and after walking through the woods came out at the end of Maple Tree Lane, decided on a path which went by a friends house, carried on past his place sure that we would link up soon with one of the paths that go through our place. Ha ha ha! Strangers in a strange land…..what would we know?…..We hooked onto what looked like the path, but was in fact a badger trail. Now badgers, which are nocturnal animals, about the size of a middle sized dog, follow the same path each night on their excursions, see photos…..one is a badger trail and one is a walking path (a special prize for picking the right one!!) Anyway, we followed a badger trail that led us into a hedge!!! It was starting to get dusk and we began to get a bit panicky……there we were in the middle of rural England, trying to find our way home…..we finally got to another lane which runs along the back of our estate…..there was a telephone box, in the middle of nowhere (just in case we had 20p and knew someone who cared!). We found our way home, just as the mist rolled in……exquisitely beautiful.
Ana and the boys arrived a few days later and in our excitement, having picked them up from Heathrow, lost our way home and spent the next few hours trying to find the A12 to take us back into Essex – now that doesn’t sound like much, but in Friday traffic, the smallest distances in London take hours……we incurred congestion charges, cause we accidently ended up in the centre of London…….and that’s another whole story. It’s unbelievably fantastic having Ana and the boys here……..more later……lots of love xxxxx

Cambridge…….

…….it was a beautiful day and so we decided to visit Cambridge. It’s glorious, it reminded us a little of Auckland, a lot of Edinburgh, but it’s Cambridge - what else could it be but a beautiful university town steeped in tradition. Without getting too metaphysical about it, you feel you are walking in the presence of greatness. The buildings themselves give a sense of what has gone before and the throng of students provide hope for the future……answers to global warming etc, which is very much in evidence here….. It has been declared officially Spring (about 6 weeks early)….and it is lovely, but rather confusing, some birds didn’t even bother to migrate! The bulbs are bursting out of the ground, the wildlife is getting very frisky! We are thinking about turning off the central heating and are quietly thinking “call that winter!!! ”
We visited King’s College and went to Evensong as the Choristers were singing. We have observed that England is quite conservative and reserved in a lot of ways, particularly around religion and as we sat in the chapel we were aware that this service had been taking place in the same way for centuries, (since Henry VIII) who would want to change it?
We didn’t have an epiphany, but it was very nice………lots of love xxxxx

There really are a lot of people in this part of the world……..

…..as mentioned previously 80,000,000, give or take a few. Because of this things take longer than we are used to. The distances are the same as in NZ and the roading system is brilliant, but it always takes longer than you expect to get to places…..and to get things done.
Anyway…we had to ‘tax’ the car – we call it Registration, but nobody here knows what we are talking about! Anyway, should be simple, did it six month ago. Off we went down to the PO…”no, love…you haven’t got the log book(????), you’ll have to get that from the DVLA” …..You what????? Anyway we finally had to go to the place where we could get this sorted..shouldn’t take long we thought.. wrong! We were number 365 and they were only up to 330, we took heart from the fact that the place was closing at 3pm (on a Friday?) and hopefully they’d see everyone before they closed! We got our ‘tax’ finally and we are driving a legal car again…for another 6 months.
We came back to our local for a pint and the pub dog was wandering around hoovering up the crumbs off the floor from lunch, we shared a plate of fish and chips…..pub culture is quite different to café culture but equally satisfying!
We went to London on Thursday, it was a rainy day so didn’t take the camera – damn! You always should. Anyway we spent a wonderful day doofering around the National Art Gallery and then the National Museum….we only did the Impressionists at the Art Gallery and the Egyptians at the National Museum….. plenty more to do on the next rainy day in London…………..wish you were here xxxxxxxxxx