I AMsterdam……..(part 1)…..

…….sometimes 3 days feels like 3 weeks and after spending a couple of days in Amsterdam we feel as if we have been away for ages. Living in England is like having the keys to a very large sweet shop. Whenever we have more than a couple of days up our sleeve the big decision is “where shall we go????” Sera is now living in Holland so we decided to visit Amsterdam and catch up with her……that didn’t happen…. she went off to Spain with her employers!!! Anyway the good thing is, without that incentive, we probably would have opted for somewhere supposedly more exotic and postponed visiting one of the coolest, funkiest, easiest places to be in …40 minutes by air from here……….
We knew Amsterdam was a bit ‘naughty’ (more about that later), and we knew there were a few canals, BUT it’s gorgeous….. canals everywhere, walking is a breeze (Holland is sooooo flat), the architecture is beautiful and 37 museums (if you like that sort of thing)….we “did” the Van Gogh Museum, Riksmuseum and the rest of the time, wandered around with silly grins on our faces, trying not to get run down by cyclists (more about that later…). Everybody spoke English and was incredibly helpful…to be continued xxxxxx

Life as a servant continued………..

……has it’s up’s a downs and we are still very much strangers in a strange land. The class structure here never fails to astound us and we are constantly faced with this in many subtle ways.
We have had three luncheon parties this week and we have been reminded of what servants are about – they serve!!! Now food and presentation is very important to me, so I unwittingly suggested that, with the intention of bringing ‘hot, visually interesting’ food to the guests, that I plate each course in the kitchen and then bring them to the table. (As happens in restaurant?) I was told…. “NO! NO! NO!….that won’t do at all! What an insult to our guests!!! – they MUST be served at the table!” Standing at somebody’s elbow, like Mr & Mrs Jeeves, waiting for a gap in the conversation to plop food on someone’s plate is not our idea of fun……but it does have it’s upside – we hear the most interestingly ‘classified’ snippets of conversation. It’s astonishing being so invisible. However, that is the small price we pay to live alongside the aristocracy in Britain, in park like surroundings, with the use of a tennis court, a swimming pool, a games room and to drive the BMW (which we are probably about on a par with to our employer)…… We are very useful, a nice symbol of wealth, but unlike the BMW we take time off and are reluctant to be at our employer’s beck and call 24/7 as much as he would like us to be ……we figure 12 hours a day – 5 days a week is a good deal for him. He begs to differ – “What!!!” he says, when it comes to the end of our working week “Off again – damn! More deprivation!!!” That’s a compliment!!!!!…….. With that in mind off to Amsterdam in two days ……………miss you all heaps and wish you were here xxxxxx

Badgers, moles and other jungle creatures………

…….. We’ve mentioned before about how living here is like living in the “Wind in the Willows”. One of the locals had explained to us that the badgers were preparing to give birth and so were changing their bedding each night. We had seen evidence of this during the day as we walk past the setts.
Now, one of the ‘badger setts’ on our estate, is huge, it covers a hillock and has masses of entrances with extra entrance holes up to 20 or 30 metres away. We were very surprised to learn that in this condominium type affair (that we call ‘badger city’) there are only about four badgers in residence. We were equally surprised to learn, from the ‘mole man’ (not the skin variety that we are accustomed to), that our present mole infestation, that covers an area of about 2 - 3 acres with little mole hills every couple of feet, is the work of about 3 or 4 moles!!! You never get to see moles above ground, but the other night we decided to go down to the ‘badger sett’ and observe the badgers as it got dark. Badgers are very, very, shy, but if you are lucky and they don’t smell you, you can watch them. So we went down early “sans perfume” and waited. On the way to the sett, we met “Ratty” from W in the W. Ratty is actually a vole and was very cute, his home is the first photo and if you look very carefully you can just see him. We positioned our selves in the hedgerow and after about ½ an hour we had become part of the surroundings and the rabbits and foxes started appearing, but no badgers. About 20 minutes after we’d seen our last fox, I noticed something watching us from within the hedgerow about 15 metres away, and then it came out and stood in the field watching us. We both signaled to each other “what the……..!!!!!”
And with that it bounded across the field out of sight. We had just seen what looked like a lynx, but it was black with a very long tail. “Nobody’s going to believe this!!!!” we decided……but a search on the internet showed ‘panther’ sightings covering a huge radius of about 40 miles. Mmmm…..so the next day we mentioned it tentatively to the other staff, one had seen it in the woods, the others think it’s fanciful…but those of us that have seen it………. we know what we saw…………….
p.s We didn’t see any badgers!!!

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…….