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June 27th, 2009
10:32 pm
WOW!!!!! Deafened, awed, glued to the sky and thoroughly entertained. Lots and lots of planes doing fantastic things today at the Biggin Hill International Air Show - a private airport just 20mins or so south of here which used to be a RAF base and played a major role in the Battle of Britain, and now has an annual show which is the biggest private airshow in Europe. I'd been wondering all week whether to go or whether to just find a free patch of grass in an adjacent village and watch from there (many people did with full picnics and tents n all), then yesterday afternoon at work we could hear some of the planes practising - attempting to catch sight of them out of the limited view of our office windows when you know full well that by the time you hear the sound the planes are long gone! And last night when we a group of us OT's went to one of the girls' homes quite close to the airport for a swim in her pool and BBQ we saw a couple more out practising aerobatics, and that does give one a taste of the excitement.... so I went.
Jumped on the bus right outside my door and got off at the airport - I am very conveniently located for lots of things here in the hospital accommodation. Of course the place was packed with people already set up with their picnic chairs and tents etc, but I managed to find a little spot for me with a good view. It was soooooo hot too, was going to be about 25 degrees today but with something like 50% humidity - ughh. They kept making public announcements reminding people to cover up and use sunscreen and drink lots of water but Red Cross were still treating lots of people for sunburn and sunstroke.
Anyway the show was fantastic, 6 hours of almost non-stop aerial displays. Planes like the RAF Hawk, RAF Typhoon and the Vulcan that make tremendous amounts of noise and indeed it actually vibrates through your whole body - hope no-one there had a pacemaker! The Hawk was doing some flypasts at 600mph (~960kph) and both these planes and some of the much smaller ones doing spectacular aerobatics were pulling G-forces of up to 6 or even 8 at times!!!! You forget what's happening to the people inside when planes are doing fun things for you. There was a pair of biplanes with two girls doing 'wingwalking' on top, fastened on by a harness until the last couple of slower manoeuvres but doing all sorts of things like waving, starshapes, handstands and sideways positions right on the top of the wings and at speeds of up to 150 mph - imagine the feel of putting your hand out the window while driving along the highway at full speed, then double the amount of pressure on your hand and imagine trying to hold any position against it!!!
Other exciting things included the world-famous RAF Red Arrows - 9 Hawks doing very fast and fancy formation flying, helicopters doing loop-the-loops, dogfight displays by Batttle of Britain biplanes and triplanes, a glider demonstrating his world-unique skill of doing continuous 360 degree rolls while on tow, both the glider and several of the smaller aerobatic planes doing things like vertical climbs then sliding back down tail first until the plane tumbles nose over tail and eventually rights itself, or even stopping at the top of the climb but still at full throttle and actually holding the position completely still for about 1.5 seconds... amazing!!!! And of course many planes of different sizes and speeds doing loops, barrel rolls, dives, twists, hearts, crossovers.......
And as I've finally got back on here again with life in summer being so busy, I'd better fill you in on the rest of the last few weeks.
Since my last entry of going to Chelsea, I spent a week at Swanwick Bible School in Darbyshire. We had a lovely warm spring week with a bit of cooling rain and lots of lovely sunshine. It was a very refreshing week with three series of excellent studies and lots of likeminded people to share it with. We had lots of time to just relax and chat, watch or join in some of the afternoon actvities, and a variety of evening activities. I also joined the small choir for song and praise evening. I knew a fair few people who were there including some of the handful of Aussies (David & Mary Evans, Stephen & Di Hill, Stephen & Susannah McGeorge & family, and 3 Brisbanites I didn't know and who made me decide I really don't like Qld accents), and got to know a few more.
Swanwick finished on the Friday so I spent the weekend back in Birmingham with Phil & Rita. Mark & Dan were getting ready to move into their new much bigger flat on the Monday, and Rita was looking after wee Jacob, so I went round to help for a while and have lots of lovely cuddles of Jacob. He is very cute. In the evening we went out to tea with a young-ish couple from Hall Green who live in Wythall just on the edge of Birmingham, they had a few people around for a BBQ sitting in their beautiful garden enjoying the spring warmth. Sunday afternoon I went and joined some of the young people having a picnic in Brueton Park, and eventually drove back to London.
Back at work we found that they had coped with far too many seniors being off on holiday the week before, except for the Friday when A&E had gone a little crazy and apparently at one point most everyone was down there helping to assess people!! Since then work has really quietened off - I think the 'locum effect' has finally kicked in, it just took 5 months. We've now had almost 3 weeks of unusally low amounts of referrals and work to do, have had to scratch around to actually keep occupied at times, and the new Home Support Team which has started a 3-month pilot has had about 2 people in 3 weeks. Oops.
Anyway the week after Swanwick I was terribly naughty and missed Bible Class... to go to a concert which was only on one night, a Classical Gala at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philmarmonic Orchestra playing. It was a stunning evening. I raced home from work to get ready and gulp some tea down, then walk to the train, into London, onto the tube and walk 10 mins or so to the Hall. That was the first (and probably last) time I've been into the Royal Albert and stupid me was in such a rush I forgot to take my camera!!!
For the uninitiated, the Royal Albert Hall is a unique and beautiful round hall with fantastic acoustics, ornate on the outside and as posh as the best West End theatres on the inside - with layers of galleries divided into their individual boxes in true aristocratic style, low-lighted columns and archways on the highest level, the great domed roof and everywhere plush red and gold.
I was sitting in the 'choir' section, front row, looking directly down onto the orchestra and with the stunningly beautiful pipe organ looming above me to the left. It was a fantastic location as I was right in the music and could see all the conductor's expressions and directions and see the musicians close up, only couldn't see the actual faces of the soloists when they were on. The evening started with Bernstein's Candide Overture and the music just washed over one in a wave, then a Piccolo Concerto arranged for vibraphone which was played by Dame Evelyn Glennie who has carved herself a unique career as a solo percussionist. Her hands were simply flying around. In Mozart's Clarinet Concerto the clarinet appeared to be just an extension of the person and she seemed to put no effort whatsoever into playing, and in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto the young violinist was putting her whole body into the passion and energy of the music, rather a little too much I thought but superb playing. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra which is an arrangement of a fugue which then pulls other themes in, and works through different instrumental groups then through individual instruments to teach young people about them. The grand finale was Ravel's Bolero, starting off with just the one drummer and gradually building till there were 16 of them all playing. I was right behind the main drummer and could even read the rhythm on his music - I'd never considered before the intense effort that must go into both physically managing the rhythm for a full 15 mins and mentally actually keeping track and not once losing the rhythm or you would be completely lost. WOW.
On the first weekend of June I joined Nick & Dee and a handful of Aussies, Kiwis and even English in London town, for Dee's birthday bash - picnic lunch in the Tate Modern, then I left them to their birthday activity of watching a Shakespeare play at The Globe theatre, as they were all 'groundlings' standing in the yard and there was no way I could possibly have stayed on my feet for 3 hours. I walked on along the south bank of the Thames to hear a short lunchtime concert by the St Andrews University (Scotland) Madrigal group in the wee chapel of Guys Hospital, in which a young Christadelphian boy I know sings. I found I wasn't the only C'phian who turned up to hear them, and we all went for a wander around The City afterwards.
The City is the financial district of London and is actually pretty dead on the weekend, even the few scattered shops there aren't open. However we found the London Monument, a 200 foot high memorial to the Great Fire of London built in ~1670. It is now rather dwarfed by the office buildings around but is still the tallest free-standing stone column in the world. And you can climb all the way up to the top via a non-stop spiral staircase with 311 steps for a good view over the Thames and nearby districts. So we did. It is somewhat nerve-wracking to peer over the banister rail right down the centre of the staircase from top to bottom... mum don't go near it!! After wandering past the old and beautiful buildings around the area of the Bank of England and Royal Exchange and along Cheapside and Gracechurch Street (fans of Pride & Prejudice anyone?) we ended up by St Paul's Cathedral just when its bells were ringing loudly, and we sat outside at a tea cafe to enjoy both.
I joined back up with Nick & the girls again and we had some fun for a while playing on an interactive art display in the Tate, then had dinner at a nearby pizza restaurant and eventually all made our ways home. For the second time in a week I found myself on the Tube and then a still crowded express train to Bromley very late in the evening, then a quick taxi ride to my flat.
On the Sunday I drove over to Ealing for the meeting, it was another lovely sunny day after the previous day's greyness and a big group of us went out for lunch afterwards, sitting in the garden of a nearby pub. I went back to the girls house for a bit afterwards, then home across London but actually the traffic was better than normal that day - only an hour in the morning and less than 1.5 hrs in the afternoon.
Sisters Class on the Monday, so I went to Southgates for tea first then got dropped home afterwards as I'd taken my car in for brake repairs. I've been catching the bus to work most of the time anyway, it's so easy from here and means I don't have the hassle of finding a spot on the road to park then walk 10mins into the hospital grounds.
That Thursday after work I caught the bus to John & Enid's, an older couple from Thornton Heath who live only a mile or so from the hospital. I had tea with them, interspersed with watching the vixen and her three cubs who had come into the back garden. She was sitting there just watching and waiting to be fed and the cubs were very cute tumbling around with each other, but I still wanted to shoot them all - English people don't have a clue how much a problem foxes are in Oz. I have several times seen a few of them out scavenging on the oval just behind the flats, very early in the morning. Anyway, I went with John & Enid to Bible Class then they dropped me home again.
On the Friday I caught the train into London after work, and went to stay with the girls in Ealing (Liz Peronace, Rachel (NZ) and Tash (UK)) who were having a girls night. I stayed over and eventually ended up staying for the whole weekend, as the next day we decided to be really proper tourists.
This involved jumping on the tube into London, off at Green Park, and joining the crowds heading down The Mall and gathering around Buckingham Palace.
To be continued....
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June 6th, 2009
10:09 am - Chelsea
Chelsea Flower Show was amazing. I arrived there nice and early just 15 mins after the gates opened at 8am when the crowds were still small. They had special buses going from Victoria Station to Chelsea, I sat on the open-top of a double decker and although it was sunny twas rather chilly still.
Apparently due to the credit-crunch, Chelsea only had 13 Show Gardens this year instead of the normal over 20, and sadly the Aussies were amongst those who didn't come. Never mind, it was still beautiful with such a different range of gardens including all the smaller Urban Gardens, many modern styles, some just so plain weird that I wondered who would ever want to have a garden like that. One of the Show Gardens was a meeting of Japanese and English styles and included two water harps - two large glass bowls full of water on glass pedestals and lots of water underneath the ground (I was watching them fill it up just pouring water into the gravel) where the harp mechanism is. The man would then check the sound through a long glass tube resting on the gravel then invite people to come and have a listen. I couldn't quite see the point of a musical instrument providing lovely restful music if you had to pick a glass tube and lean over and stick your ear on it to hear anything!!!
The strangest garden would have to have been the one made completely from plasticine - a double-fruited tree, statue of the inventor of plasticine, vegie garden, vines, flowering plants, a picnic, a mole poking its head out by the tree roots and even its own gold medal, all fashioned from brightly colourful plasticine. Although Chelsea approved it to be in the show it didn't have a chance of winning anything as it apparently got huge mark-downs for having no real flowers/plants in it!!!
My favourite garden was one of the Show Gardens, a traditional one from Yorkshire with a wee stone cottage front, terraces carved out of Yorkshire rock, rockeries and a stream running through and a beautiful selection of trees and plants and some gentle flower colour. I also rather liked a large asymetric garden which had flowing lines of greenery with some beautiful soft colour from roses and irises, fanning out from its central point of interest - a tall sort of conical glass rose petal distiller for perfume. It wasn't actually producing anything but very interesting to see, and they had done it especially with a secret old recipe for Elizabeth I's perfume - which they'd had made up by a French perfumer. So now I have Good Queen Bess's scent to enjoy!!!
I spent an interesting hour watching a demonstration of floristy by a London expert. He did about 8 or 9 arrangements and although I didn't like the style of several of them (me being too much of a boring traditionalist) it was fascinating to watch him work and know just where to put what and what would go together and knowing without thinking the different lengths of stems and such like. The couple of posies he did were the most amazing, he would just keep adding another flower and another flower to his hand, each one would sit perfectly in place and just stay there as he effortlessly and almost invisibly rotated the posy around in his hand. Practice!!!!!
The Grand Pavilion houses all the floral displays under one humungous roof, and the scent of all those thousands of blooms is so strong when you enter. Massed displays of many varieties of a single flower such as chrysanthemums, sweet peas, cactii and horrendously bright tropical flowers, beautiful 'miniature' gardens designed to feature a certain type of flower or plant, huge floral designs by big floral/horticultural organisations (in areas of 20 x 20m sort of size). Always the one I like best is by UK Horticulture for which they keep winning gold medals, with an amazing and beautiful display set on so many different levels, with the colour groups changing from white to yellow to orange to pink to purply to red, with each colouring made up of flowers and fruit and veg - lots of things I didn't even know the name of, and the closer you looked at part of the display the more you saw, such as chilies and rhubarb hiding in amongst a flower arrangement or a bouquet of white lilies, chrysanths and ?alstro, black lilies, and very dark eggplants!!!
To be continued........
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May 20th, 2009
11:03 pm - Uppercrust London
Last Saturday I ventured into the great metropolis on the train and joined the inescapable crowds around Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony. This happens in the forecourt of the palace so you watch over everyone's heads until other people gradually get bored and leave, so I eventually ended up at the front with a good view between the railing. Essentially the ceremony involves a lot of marching and military commands for the regiments, and is typical English pageantry for bringing in a new shift of soldiers to stand guard while the old shift go home.
During most of the ceremony while the main bulk of soldiers were all grouped in the middle, there were two couples walking in time (not quite marching as they were chatting a bit too) backwards and forwards across the palace front, behind the soldiers. These two couples were of different regiments with one of each wearing a busby (the big furry black hat) and red jacket while the other had a dark jacket and ordinary style peaked cap. All except one were carrying their swords out and each time they stopped and turned to walk back they would put these up to attention, then down again. Only one of the busby-wearing soldiers had his sword in its scabbard still and was carrying the standard over his shoulder, and at one stage when he and his partner did an angled walk they stopped for a few seconds quite close to me and were talking to the little boys who had their heads sticking through the fence, and the busby man was very good-looking!!
The best part of the ceremony was when the soldiers got their instruments out and played lots of music. They started of with traditional military band march-style music, then I was quite amused to realise they were playing a selection of tunes from the musical 'Oliver' and a few other entertaining songs. It was quite strange standing outside Buckingham Palace with the Queen in residence, watching very smart soldiers in ranks and listening to "Consider yourself", "As long as he needs me" or "Cheerio but be back soon"!!!!!
The rest of my afternoon was spent wandering across nearby Green Park then down St James Street at the end of which forlornly stands St James Palace, the home of Princes Charles, William and Harry until the Queen Mum died and they moved into Clarence House just next-door. St James' looks very lonely and deserted and no-one answered when I knocked on the ancient wooden front door! :(
The other interest factor of St James Street is the gentlemens clubs as all readers of Georgette Heyer and the like will know. The three oldest remaining clubs are all here, namely ~330-year-old Whites (according to fiction it was the most aristocratic of them), and ~190-year-old Brooks and Boodles. Of course none of them so much as whispered out the front of what they were, we are dealing with the absolute cream of genteel society after all, but having checked their street numbers on the internet I was eventually able to work out which buildings they were. There were various top quality shops in the street of the type of leather luggage for travelling on the Orient Express, hatters, Havana cigars sellers, a proper original pharmacy, and proper shaving gear. Don't dream of walking into any of them with just a few pounds spare in your pocket and actually being able to purchase anything. I was also quite amused to find that the few people I saw around there (it was fairly deserted being a Saturday and rather windy and chilly) were men fully kitted out in posh suits, waistcoats, ties etc, including a few exiting a very old little pub tucked away in an alleyway. Rather a different lifestyle methinks...
The area of St James blends into Mayfair, the most expensive shopping area of London. I wandered around some of it, living in a different world. Into Fortnum and Mason department store, which is sort of along the lines of Harrods but smaller and with several things that are actually vaguely affordable, but beautiful architecture/decor and fantastic displays of fantastically beautiful wares. I was slightly tempted by a hat made by Phillip Treacy who makes hats for the queen, but the pricetag of 800 pounds did put me off a little.
Just across the road was Burlington Arcade, the longest in London and extremely posh, mainly filled with jewellers with and occasional vintage watch or cashmere clothing shop thrown in. Down Old Bond Street again with loads of jewellers and famous fashion names. It's quite miraculous when anyone walks vaguely towards a doorway it opens for them to enter - but no tacky automatic sensor system here, it's an immaculately suited doorman just the other side waiting all day to just open and shut. I kept glancing at the quite ordinary looking people going in and out of the shops wondering how on earth they had the money to spend there. Apparently looks are deceiving!!
Later in the afternoon I managed to meet up with Nick (Onley, cousin) and we sat in some sunshine in Green Park having a drink and catching up.
Then it was home to Bromley and out again in the evening, just walked up into the town centre to the theatre there for a performance of Cinderella on Ice. Beautiful, colourful, lively and very entertaining, even though they had significantly changed the story and Cinderella married the Lord Mayor's son not Prince Charming.
On Sunday I went to meeting at Thornton Heath and played organ for them again (!), went out to lunch with Steve and Ann Lander and a few others, then back for lecture later. And it was a rather strange day that couldn't make up its mind whether to be sunny or pour down rain.
Now I only have one day of work left before a break as I'm going to Swanwick Bible School next week, plus on Friday I'm going to Chelsea Flower Show. Yaaayyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!
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May 14th, 2009
05:55 pm - Leeds Castle
Last Saturday ended up being another lovely day/afternoon in the country. I was doing things at home until nearly lunchtime, then with ridiculous English Saturday traffic it took me ages to actually get out of town. So it was off south into Kent countryside again, to wend my way across country along the byways and via old wee villages, avoiding all big towns and roads.
I passed a couple of Kent's remaining or replanted orchards here and there, but the trees are mostly in leaf now, only an odd flower or two left. Eventually arrived at my destination of Leeds Castle, in the vicinity of the major town of Maidstone. Leeds Castle has existed in one form or another since Saxon times - over a 1000 years ago. It was a royal castle for many centuries but then was bestowed on someone in royal favour and after a few centuries in that family it ended up as the home of a society hostess in the 20th century, who left it in trust to be used and enjoyed by the public. So if you happen to have a mint to spend you can even have your wedding there. Hmmm, I wonder how much the farm's worth...?
What makes it worthy of being a great castle is its beauty, it's actually not all that big as royal castles go but is a fully moated one with the castle built on two wee islands linked by beautiful bridges, and the whole set in stunning parkland. I did the tour of all the rooms that are open (most of them) and have at look at the great hall where tables were already laid for some company's 10th anniversary dinner that evening, the boardroom where conferences can be held, and one of the many bedrooms which can be slept in by conference delegates. Why didn't Stawell hospital ever send me to a conference in a castle?
The grounds include a golf course not open to the general public, a lake and small river, woodland walks, a couple of garden areas, a dog collar museum and a maze. Unfortunately I ran out of time to explore the extra areas but a ticket to the Castle actually lasts for a whole year so I might just go back again... I did see a lot of the water fowl that live in the grounds though, including black swans which became the symbol of the Castle when the last owner Lady Baillie was the first person to import them to the UK from the Australia. How dare she!!
The sun was still shining brightly as I wandered back through the parkland to the carpark, this time scorning the little people train that is the alternative method. Then I wandered on and across another motorway and up into the laneways of the Mid-Kent Downs, and past more beautiful farming areas and happened upon another woods of thick, thick bluebells. It was getting towards evening time so lacking a bit of light under the trees but still very beautiful and scented.
On Sunday I drove all the way across London again to go to meeting at Ealing and met up with Nick and Dee again, it happened to be a weekend when they had an ecclesial lunch and afternoon talk so I stayed for all that, then enjoyed fantastic Sunday afternoon traffic and sooooo many cyclists out and about all the way home.
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May 9th, 2009
11:20 am
I have been very behind in finishing off the tale of my May Day long weekend. Last Sunday I went to Thornton Heath meeting, and had been planning to meet up with Nick Onley in town later but this didn't happen. So I went out to lunch instead with Neil & Sally Mullen from TH, who live in Tooting, south-west London. Their daughter Sarah was there but busy with homework, and the Southgates (with whom I was living earlier) were also guests so we had an enjoyable afternoon sitting in the sun in their TINY back garden, then back to TH for the lecture in the evening.
Monday was the bank holiday for May Day (in Britain the 1st of May is a celebration day). So I tootled off into the country, via a stop at the supermarket near work to use the ATM. When I turned out of my accommodation I had to wait for a whole group of bikies to go past, then another group came up alongside me, then at the intersection where I was turning another big group rode across - I started to think there must a rally on somewhere. I turned the corner and met the rally - the street was invisible beneath the mass of bikes and bikers and a few hundred people gathered to watch them, with just an odd car or bus trying to get through. I turned around pretty immediately but even that was nearly impossible as every spare bit of space was taken up with bikes!!! So I turned tail and ran, passing many more groups as I went - apparently it's a May Day event and they all go on a big drive to Brighton.
I escaped and wandered back out of town into the quiet country lanes, and found a gorgeous bluebell wood right beside the road. It was all in the shade as on a west-facing slope and still rather chilly at that time in the morning, but oh so beautiful with such a thick mass of bluebells in full bloom. I wandered on, found myself through a slightly flatter area where there were actually still a couple of orchards, one still with the trees half in flower, half in leaf. Eventually arrived at my destination with hundreds of other people, The Hop Farm.
This is actually a 'family park' that I wouldn't have dreamt of visiting normally and even more so when I saw it's standard attractions - fairground type amusement stalls and rides for kiddies, with presumably a few animal things thrown in somewhere. Anyway the reason for visiting was that the Kent County Fair was on there all weekend. So I joined to the queue for tickets and went in to enjoy myself. Except that the promising bit of sun soon disappeared and the wind got up more and it actually turned quite cold so I was shivering all afternoon and the place was nearly deserted again by about 3pm.
I enjoyed watching lots of the activities that were on, including: dog agility courses (over jumps, through tunnels, weaving in & out between poles), dash'n'splash competitions (throw the ball into the pool so the dog dashes and with a big jump splashes in to retrieve the ball, seeing how far they can jump), vintage tractors, shire horses, big gentle newfoundland dogs pulling wee decorated carts, terrier racing, gun dogs retrieving 'rabbits', a rabbit show with big floppy eared bunnies, cute dwarf bunnies and at least spaniel sized giant bunnies, falconry with a bald eagle, some harrier hawks then some kestrels, and pony club games.
The best was the dog agility courses with mostly collies but a few other breed dogs whizzing around the courses and often so excited that they missed a pole or a jump, or a lumbering German Shepherd doing it accurately but relatively slowly then the next collie doing an accurate course and absolutely whizzing around particuarly the weaving between poles. Also the pony club games where teams of about five from five different south-east pony clubs competed in various picking up bits, putting down bits, handing over bits, and weaving bits all completed from their ponies backs. Except if they missed something or dropped something they often had to get off to pick it up again, or sometimes were supposed to get off to collect something, and don't worry about the stirrups when re-mounting. They just held on and did one forward facing feet together jump as the pony moved off then a sideways jump and completely flung themselves up into the saddle, accurately, and some of the best girls even did this with their ponies going at full pelt!!!!! I kept expecting one of them to not quite get it and fall in a big heap.
The rest of this week has been rather grey and windy and cooler with the sun appearing occasionally. I was out to TH bible class on Thursday but otherwise a quiet week. Now what shall I do today....
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May 2nd, 2009
10:05 pm - Kent & Sussex
Sun, green, hills, green, valleys, green, fields, green, hedgerows, green, sky, blue, flowers, pink n white n blue n yellow.
I've been off tootling around in my car, down into Kent proper and just over the border into Sussex, and wandering off the beaten track onto the byways instead of the highways as much as possible. After a couple of traffic jams anyway (!) including at the carpark, my first stop was Sissinghurst, a National Trust castle and garden. The castle is really only the remaining tower and buildings of the old manor house, but somehow it got that name through various re-buildings over the centuries.
The garden is the main attraction, a very beautiful one designed last century by famous writer Vita Sackville-West and it's apparently one of the world's most celebrated gardens. Don't ask me what she wrote or why her influence made it so celebrated, all I care for is that is was delightful to wander around. There are several old buildings of various ages, including a barn from Elizabethan times, some oast houses, and cottages with lovely diamond-paned windows.
The garden itself is not really all that big (as far as manor house type gardens go) but it has been very-well designed and laid out with lots of different garden 'rooms' separated by hedges or mellow brick walls or terraces or tree borders or the remains of moat. So imagine lots of smooth green lawns, neatly clipped hedges, flower beds full of many varieties in various stages of growth and bloom, a nuttery with woodland flowers underneath, a well-stocked herb garden, fields and lambs and lakes along the outside edge, and most beautiful of all an old orchard with apple-blossom and still a little cherry-blossom on the remaining trees scattered throughout tall grasses and wildflowers.
I had both morning tea and lunch there and it was almost afternoon tea time by the time I managed to leave, finishing with a climb to the top of the tower for a lovely view over Kent countryside. Then I tootled on into smaller and smaller lanes, with high hedgerows close on either side, green arches formed by the trees overhead, bluebells always here and there in the hedgerows and woods, up hill and down dale.
Just over the border into Sussex (the next county west) I stopped in Bodiam for afternoon coffee and a brief wander around the outside of Bodiam Castle, I think the first I have ever seen with a proper moat full of water all the way around it. Also saw the little steam train that runs close by, the same that used to bring Londoners out into the country for hop picking.
Having now mentioned both oast houses and hops I should explain. Kent is known as the Garden of England and besides once having had huge amounts of orchards it also had many hop gardens. Lots of fruit still comes from Kent but nothing to what it was in the past. Hops were used for brewing into ale, I'm not exactly sure what they are but the plants climb up poles and are apparently some relation to cannabis!!! Anyway when it was hop-picking season all the poor East-end Londoners had their annual countryside experience, going down on trains into Kent and Sussex to stay for a few weeks picking the hops to earn a bit of extra money. As part of the brewing process (in preparation for it?) the hops were dried in round brick buildings with cone-shaped shingle rooves and funny white cone-shaped hats on top, which are called oast-houses. There are not many hops and hop-brewing left now, but on my drive today I have seen dozens of oast-houses scattered around the countryside, many now converted into houses or even village pubs. Indeed there's a couple just 5 mins down the road from my hospital.
I tootled on around the High Weald area of Sussex and back across into Kent, finding the smallest, quietest lanes I came across and just meandering. They were only single car width with high hedges on both sides so one had to be rather careful on all corners. But the hedgerows were just so beautifully green and abundant in fresh growth and scatterings of wildflowers. Also lots of lovely views of the up and down countryside.
My dinner destination was a gourmet pub attached to a vineyard where I had a scrumptious dinner, then home in the twilight. There, I think I've waxed lyrical enough for the whole of spring, now I'll just go hop into bed.
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May 1st, 2009
10:29 pm - Bluebell Weekend
Oops, I've forgotten to tell you about my bluebell weekend. After threatened forecasts of heavy rain until about mid-afternoon last Friday, the weather bureau finally changed their minds and gave us a beautiful sunny weekend.
I joined Ealing ecclesia's Spring Walk, with about 30 people meeting first at someone's house in the Kingston-on-Thames area in south-west London, then driving right out of town to the north downs of Surrey. Here we enjoyed a picnic lunch on top of the downs with a lovely view and sunshine but a bitingly chilly wind, then descended into the much more pleasant hills and vales lower down. The walk was about 7 miles round trip, but for those who couldn't manage that far (me included) there was a shorter 4 mile version. We walked up and down, along ridges, by streams, through bright spring green woods and open fields.
And best of all we enjoyed several wooded areas with bluebells carpeting the ground beneath the trees. Soooo pretty. And I discovered that even English people who do a bit of walking don't know the difference between Spanish bluebells (the ones commonly found in gardens) and wild English bluebells (protected).
Towards the end of our walk we were able to rest and recover at a little village pub for which we made a slight detour, and their cappucino was very nice indeed especially enjoyed sitting outside in the sun. Afterwards we all went back to London and enjoyed tea together. Dee got a little anxious and confused when she was told we were having 'supper' - she's still not familiar with all English terminology!
On Sunday I met up with Nick and Dee again at Watford for meeting, we then went back to lunch at the home of a brother who is still an extremely knowledgeable researcher and chemistry professor at a university and hospital in London, even though he's in his 70's!! We then spent the afternoon in the beautiful sunshine wandering around woods just on the edge of Watford which Nick and Dee discovered last year, and were very full of bluebells. The scent of massed bluebells is delightful too, and all the trees were dressed in their fresh spring best. Then it was back to Watford in the evening for the lecture, and for me a drive all the way back around the M25 to the opposite side of London, about 1.25 hrs.
This week has been just a week of work and BC on Thursday evening, with lots of wind and rain on Monday and lots of hot sunshine since though the evenings are still cool and surprisingly it was only 4 degrees when I went to work (without a coat) on Tuesday morning! The major event of the week has been trying to avoid catching the gastro which is making its way around patients at the hospital, only a couple of nursing staff have actually caught it so far but one of them was one of my flatmates. :(
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April 23rd, 2009
04:12 pm
A warm and sunny and fairly uneventful week, with not even bible class tonight as TH has a business meeting. I've been for a wander after work to discover the shops just a few mins walk away, and found they keep on going forever and ever plus a big posh shopping centre off the side.
Oh actually it hasn't been completely uneventful. About 7.30pm on Tuesday when I was just about to put my laundry on and cook tea, the fire alarm went off, so everyone in the block of flats trooped down the stairs and congregated in the reception area to await the fire engine. There was only about 20 of us so it would seem there are lots of empty rooms.
Anyway we checked the fire panel which was flashing up a room on the 2nd floor, then waited and waited, and waited and waited, someone came back and said they could smell smoke outside, and we waited and waited. Eventually I suggested the other girl from my flat ring 999 (UK emergency number) as she had her mobile with her. Within about 2 mins two fire engines arrived, and a few mins later a third pulled in.
They checked around and eventually found that someone had broken one of the little break glass alarm boxes on the ground floor - we later wondered if it was guy I noticed acting a little strangely and who someone else had passed earlier and reported he reeked of alcohol and had locked himself out of his flat.
The firemen let us all go back to our flats and use the lifts, but unfortunately were unable to turn off the fire alarm as the key to the clear door of the fire panel was not hidden away anywhere for them to access and the manager of the flats was not answering his mobile. So it wailed on. And on. And on. Someone came home and had the number for out of hours oncall and finally someone arrived and turned the alarm off about 9.30 - 9.45ish.
I was able to comfortably manage while the noise continued as for some reason there was no alarm actually going off in my bedroom or in the kitchen of our flat.
So we had fire alarm systems with apparently no automatic call through to the fire department, an inaccurate fire panel, an inaccessible fire panel, and no fire alarms working in 2 rooms of at least one flat - just as well there wasn't actually a fire!!!
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April 20th, 2009
04:51 pm
A rather on/off week, bits of grey, bits of sun, bits of showers, bits of heavy rain, but generally getting warmer and warmer. My accommodation room is quite warm enough, indeed sometimes a bit stuffy, but my towel or my washing doesn't dry too quickly in there.
We had a big leaving lunch for one of the other OT's at work on Wednesday, then Friday evening was her proper leaving 'do'. We went out to a Tapas restaurant (that's funny spanish sort-of bits of this and bits of that dishes that you just have a little bit of and it all somehow adds up to a full meal) in Bromley - just 5 mins walk from my accommodation which was rather handy, except that was while it was still raining heavily :(. Then those who were brave or foolhardy enough jumped on the train into central London for a rollerskating disco. Not me!!
Saturday morning I actually got to sleep in. And enjoy the sunshine. Then onto the train into town which is actually only 20mins to Victoria station as it's express directly from Bromley South station, which is again just 5mins walk from home.
I met up with Nick and Dee for an afternoon tour of Kensington Palace, which includes the state rooms (they don't quite compare to the likes of Buckingham Palace) and whatever exhibition they have on at the time from the Royal Costume Collection. This time it was 'Last of the Debutantes' - about the final presentations of debutantes to the queen in 1958, after which it ceased and high society changed irrevocably. There were lots of interesting examples of fashion from then, plus a collection of a dozen or so of Princess Di's dresses (obligatory in her last home), some mens and ladies courtwear from a century or two back, a high society tailor's establishment and a dressmaker's room with some absolutely exquisite examples of lacework and embroidery the poor underpaid women used to do on aristocratic dresses.
We were also able to practice some of the 5 essential social graces - learning to glide gracefully along with your feet neatly aligned and able to balance a book on your head (and yes I could be very graceful!), curtseying properly to the queen, and waltzing - the steps were enormous though.
After the Palace we had a lovely wander in the hot sunshine through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, watching many others being very energetic and exercising, lazing back in the sun, boating on the Serpentine, or just enjoying the afternoon like a family on bikes and their lovely little spaniel Patches who kept racing madly all about the place and was a joy to watch just having so much fun. I miss my dogs!! We ended up in Borders - a bookshop where you can have a free read of anything in the shop while you consume something from the cafe there, I think it's one of Dee's favourite places in the country.
On Sunday it was back to Thornton Heath for meeting and I was able to play organ for them again. I went home to someone's for lunch, and after the lecture we had a farewell supper for a young couple who have flown out today for 5 months touring the world.
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April 15th, 2009
04:14 pm - Easter in London
What a grey weekend. Friday = grey and showers. Saturday = grey and supposed heavy rain which was just showers. Sunday = grey. Monday = grey until we got out of London and found the beautiful sunshine.
I drove over to Ealing (west side of London) on Thursday evening to stay at a house normally lived in by Rachel (a Kiwi who was away), Liz Peronace, and Tash (a Brummy). Nick and Dee were still in residence as their studio flat had not yet been cleaned ready for their occupancy.
Friday was our day for an outing to Greenwich, which is on the eastern side of central London, still on the Thames. We caught the tube into London then the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) out to Greenwich. Once this surfaces it runs on a raised level between all the buildings, winding in and out around old and new docklands developments and the many channels and inlets of water, and finally through the middle of the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf.
We visited the main attractions of Greenwich: The National Maritime Museum and Queen's House which were both beautiful old buildings, Greenwich Market with interesting arts and crafts, and the Royal Observatory. The Observatory is perched right up on a hill with wide views over the Thames and east London and right to the centre of London except it was rainy and unclear, and is set in the middle of beautiful parkland where lots of people were walking, kids playing and dogs running.
The Observatory area includes a huge telescope in a big dome that opens and rotates for nearly full views of the sky, a museum all about the development of clocks and sea clocks and the measurement of longitude and latitude, with lots of interesting examples of clocks and astronomical instruments to look at - particularly if you're Nick Krul. There was a Camera Obscura where you go into a completely dark room and see an image from outside being reflected onto a white surface from the camera above, except as there was no sun we could hardly see it.
We arrived up on the hill nicely in time for it's most famous 'activity' - watching the timeball rise and fall. This is a big red ball on a black pole, which moves just once a day, rising up in 2 stages ready for the exact second of 1300 hours standard time or summertime when it drops quickly down - the old method for the captains of ships on the Thames to set their clocks accurately by, as they could see the Timeball from the river.
When I say standard time I refer of course to Greenwich Mean Time, which is the internationally agreed Prime Meridian for time across the world, with 24 different time zones (meridians) altogether - I wonder how South Aus fits into that with its 1/2 hour difference? The Prime Meridian is therefore the basis for longitude, with everywhere in the world being measured in distance east or west from there, it being Longitude 0°. So you can stand right on the line (after queueing for a while) and look along the Prime Meridian, and straddle the line so having one foot in the Eastern hemisphere and one foot in the Western hemisphere!!
On Saturday we tried to find more indoor (out of the potential rain) things to do that either Nick and Dee or I hadn't already done, and ended up in Kensington in the Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, though they had seen most sections of these already.
On Sunday we went to Ealing for the meeting, then off to Camden Market which is a very large, very multi-cultural and endlessly interesting market, at the end of a street full of goths and punks. We had lunch there then wandered around doing various trying on, considering, and occasionally purchasing.
Monday was time to leave London for the only day of sunshine we looked like getting - and by the time we'd got out to the M25 it was starting to appear. Nick drove use down to Brighton and traffic was pretty good until we got into Brighton itself. We parked, wandered through the interesting narrow streets and very varied little shops of the North Laine area, then found the seaside, the pier (with funfair and rides), and by lucky chance ran immediately into Karen Levett and Megan Ashton who'd been down there all weekend. We sat on the lovely uncomfortable pebble beach with hundreds of others and ate fish and chips and icecreams while soaking up the sun, with the blue water sparkling in front of us.
Back into town and it was time for a wander around the gardens and tour of Brighton's fabulous Royal Pavilion with exotically over-the-top oriental architecture and interior design. I have been there before the first time I came to England but it is so fantastic I loved seeing it again, and Nick and Dee were suitably awed and impressed.
After filling up with a cream tea (Devonshire tea) in the sun on the Pavilion's balcony tearoom, we wandered back down to the seaside via The Lanes' tiny alleyways, twittens and catcreeps, then along the shops/markets/activities/crowds between the beach and the promenade above. Our aim was the original Brighton beachboxes and the lovely Regency seafront area, but they were still not visible when we were all getting too tired. So off we went back into town and home again, with hardly any traffic jams even at teatime on Easter Monday.
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April 7th, 2009
08:49 pm
The sunshine and warmth continues, some of the cherry trees have already finished a very short blossoming and turned to leaf, the daffodils have also shrivelled early in the warmth although there are lots of white ones come out now on the square green just at the end of the road.
On the weekend I accompanied Ivor and Moya down to a village hall further into Kent for the Kent Prophecy Day. We left before the 3rd talk in the evening as Ivor had too much work to do, and this was probably the most interesting one with more current events stuff in it, unfortunately the speaker giving the two afternoon talks didn't have anything very interesting or inspiring to say, it would have been more appropriate to a young people's study session sitting around a table. Oh well.
On Sunday I played for Thornton Heath meeting again, as I did on Thursday at bible class as Moya has not been feeling well for a few days. Sunday afternoon we had the visiting speaker and his family back for lunch and the Southgates' son William was also home, and between them all lunchtime was fairly hilarious.
As of tonight I am moving out of the Southgates as they need to have the room available for family that may be needing to stay due to family problems and/or health reasons, so I am going into hospital accommodation. Except it's privatised hospital accommodation and unfortunately not even on site but still 10 mins up the road.
It's called welcome to London - this is your rent (waaaaaayyyyyyy more than I've paid anywhere else), then there's this much more for car parking, then there's this much more for expensive washing machine costs, then there's still this much more for you to buy electricity cards which you are somehow meant to share evenly with whatever flatmates you have, to pay for electricity/hot water/heating on top of all the rest!!!!!!! And there's not even the civility of a payphone somewhere so anyone can ring me. Aaaagggghhhhhh.
So you may not hear from me for a while, though I'm hoping to stay with some girls in Ealing over Easter, by which time Nick & Dee hope to have moved into their studio in Harrow, and various of us are hoping to do some day outings down south into Kent or places on the coast or some interesting spots in London....
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April 3rd, 2009
08:59 pm
A fairly uneventful week with bits of sunshine and yesterday and today were quite grey and very low foggy until at least lunchtime. I got to go out for a nice drive into the country south of the hosptital for a home visit yesterday, for a lady who is palliative and is going to live with her daughter who is just across the border into another borough. Nothing in England is as simple as we were able to make it in Oz for where to provide care services from and where to get equipment from, so I had already spent 2 days liaising with any number of different people trying to determine that. Then this morning both the family did a back flip and realised how much care the pt was going to need (we were going to send her to nursing home a couple of weeks ago but they insisted on taking her home) plus the doctors decided after all that she wasn't fit to even have palliative radiotherapy as was planned and her prognosis is actually much shorter than they had said before, and she isn't even for nursing home but for the palliative hospice. So 3 days of trying to sort out her equipment provision and suddenly it was all for nothing!!!!!
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March 30th, 2009
10:10 pm
Another weekend in Brum staying with Phil & Rita, for the second and final presentation of Messiah at Warwick on Saturday afternoon. All went well again, with a very full hall and only the disturbance of a very sudden and heavy shower of hail during one of the solos!! I drove up on Fri evening, collecting Nick & Dee and a NZ girl Rachel from one of the tube stations near Heathrow, as they were all going/returning also. Then on Sat morning I drove off to Leicester to take my car back to the dealers AGAIN, left it with them and got a diesel Peugot to drive instead... lets hope this one doesn't break down on me.
I joined a crowd of young people mostly from Hall Green going out for dinner in Knowle on Sat evening, for the joint birthday celebrations of Keren Harrington, Karen Levett, and Megan Ashton (another Kiwi). And on Sunday it was back to HG for meeting, home with Nick & Dee for lunch, and eventually back to London with Rachel to keep me company. Oh and if you haven't heard Nick finally has a job again, in fact it's his old one in Watford back again.
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March 24th, 2009
08:20 pm
Last week was a fantastic one of almost non-stop sunshine, though it still got quite chilly as soon as the sun went down. Daffodils are blooming madly and even a few early tulips are trying to show their colour.
I had all last week by myself looking after the general surgery wards and the palliative care ward as the Senior OT I work with has been off with shingles! Miraculously I think I got two referrals from surgery for the whole week, though I had plenty else to sort out from palliative care and a couple of complicated patients I'd taken on from other wards. Now I've got this week by myself also as Emma (the OT) dragged herself into work yesterday morning as her GP and Occ Health were really only concerned with whether she was infectious still or not, but we all sent her home again as she's still in pain and sleeping for hours extra a day. And this time the GP listened and gave her another week off.
I've had a few interesting patients lately: a man in his mid-fifties who had oesphageal cancer but then they found he had end-stage renal failure and the doctors gave him 4-5 days to live. So all possible help was mobilised to get him home with his family that very same day, including with lots of equipment from us... and he actually died the next day. Another one was a man I did a follow-up visit with to check something at home, and I arrived there about 1/2hour after he'd got home with ambulance transport... and he was still sitting inside the front door feeling lightheaded and dizzy. After a couple of attempts with myself and the OT Tech to get him to stand, checking with the hospital, and getting the feeling that he was getting worse not better, I called 999. The ambulance and rapid respond vehicle were there very quickly and found he had very high pulse rate and blood pressure and low oxygen sats, so straight back to hospital he went! And it feels like I've spent half of today arguing with nurses on a ward about one patient they're trying to get me to see, but from the information they were giving me and from checking with the physio he actually had no need for an OT assessment, but just didn't want to leave hospital and was trying to think up delaying tactics and the nurses were at a loss how to actually get him out the door. I hope he's not still there in the morning!
On the weekend I went up to Brum to stay with Phil & Rita, and spent Saturday morning sitting on the patio in the sun with Rita drinking tea then ending up moving our chairs around the patio as we weeded between the paving stones! In the afternoon it was down to Warwick for final rehearsal followed straight after by the choir and orchestra's first presentation of Messiah. We had a full hall and all enjoyed it, despite the few times where timing went rather haywire. Thankfully nothing fell completely to pieces but the expression on Derek's (our conductor) face at the end of a couple of songs was rather like "Phew, we got to the end".
Caught up with Nick and Dee on Sunday, who are currently staying with Keren and the other girls in Acocks Green. Also briefly met and held wee Jacob Norris (Mark & Dan's baby).
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March 16th, 2009
08:56 pm
We had company this weekend, in the form of Ivor & Moya's daughter Lara and her husband Steve, both of whom I know from when they were at Hall Green, before they got married. So I got to move out of my spacious bedroom into the spare bedroom for a couple of nights, a bit like having a holiday in the same house, taking everything I needed for the weekend and putting it in a different room!
Saturday started off sunny which I dozed in while still in bed, then went rather grey and murky, but sunny again later in the afternoon. Ivor's dad had come over for lunch, and we went for a short drive to Coombe Garden & Woods late afternoon. It's just a council park/garden but was beautifully landscaped and with lots of lovely flowers appearing both in rockeries, around wee ponds, larger flower beds and a pretty mix of crocuses and daffodils mixed into the lawns.
On Sunday I drove across to the west side of London to Ealing meeting, which as usual was full of Aussies and a Kiwi or two. It only took 1.25hrs to get there but a drawn out 2 hours to get home again in the afternoon, but I didn't get lost and didn't even really need to look at the map or my directions again once I'd checked my route thoroughly!! If you're wondering who was there: George Weedon, Liz Peronace, Jason & Sharon Edgecombe, Nathan & Melissa Archer, Shane Farren, Rachel Farren, Heather Brumby (hmmmm, do I detect an Adelaide flavour?), someone male Cridland, and someone mentioned Michael Linke whose name vaguely rings a bell...
A group of use went out for lunch at a nice hotel close by, we even managed to get a table outside to enjoy the beeeauutiful sunshine.
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March 12th, 2009
05:58 pm
The days continue to get lighter and warmer and sunnier, so nice after the freezing cold bits of winter we've had. The crocuses are nearly finished but the daffodils are just starting to open their cheery buds.
Talking of crocuses I returned to Kew Gardens (the Royal Botanical Gardens) on the weekend, after my not so successful attempt to see the Crocus Carpet there last year. And my timing was perfect. They were a mass of deep purple and white, or the smaller pale purple ones, plus a few beautiful golden ones scattered in smaller areas.
There's meant to be about 2 million of them in the main carpets, which are massed plantings in several large curving areas along both sides of the pathways. Looks so beautiful with solid swathes of colour. The sun was out earlier in the day but unfortunately had disappeared while I was wandering the gardens.
I climbed up about 108 steps to the Garden's new Xstrata Treetop Walkway, which swayed quite a lot when you were standing over the stairs - don't think mum would have been able to let go of the handrail to even make it straight back down the stairs!! And I nearly got locked in, heading back to the Main Gate along with a few other people at closing time, to discover it was already locked and we had to walk ALL the way back to the Victoria Gate and were the last few out!
Work has calmed down quite a lot, I've even been scratching around trying to pick up an odd patient or two from other people to have enough work to do. I'm sure it won't last.
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February 28th, 2009
09:00 pm
England is warming up. Well, we've had some very mild springlike weather, it actually got to 14 degrees yesterday and I went out on a home visit in the afternoon not just without my coat but without even a jumper on! The snowdrops are out (apparently late because of the snow), crocuses are popping up in people's gardens, daffodil buds are getting ready, and everyone has forgotten it snowed. Even the week I returned from Russia, which was the week after the country-stopping snow, it did actually snow a couple of inches on the Thursday afternoon/evening, but not enough to cause much chaos. Moya did dash out to the driveway with some salt though when Ivor was arriving home on his motorbike.
I'm actually managing to have a weekend off. On the Sunday I returned from Russia I dropped my car off with the dealer I bought it from in Leicester and took one of their other second-hand cars in replacement, so they could get the garage to check why it kept showing warning lights and get it fixed. So I had a yucky Volvo to drive for the week. The next Saturday I drove all the way to Leicester and back (2.5hrs each way) to collect my car which had had a sensor on the wheel replaced or something, and drove off to a shopping only 5 mins away from the dealer. When I started the car again the same warning lights came back on.... so I drove straight back to them and left it with them for another week to be checked again.
This time they found it needed a new catalytic converter (I'm glad they had to pay for that!) and they had to wait for the part, but did say they would get it brought down to me as it wouldn't be ready till the middle of the next week. So last weekend I toddled up to Birmingham on Friday night in the Volvo, to stay with Phil & Rita ready to go to Messiah orchestra practice in Coventry on Saturday afternoon. Except halfway to Birmingham I was zooming along the M40 when the engine died, literally. When the RAC arrived they said the cam belt was gone. So I completed my journey to Birmingham in a towtruck with a very amusing Glaswegian.
So now I was without a car at all. A ride to orchestra was easy enough, then caught the train and a local bus home to Shirley, where I was alone as Southgates were away for the weekend, and like the previous Sunday I was playing the organ for Thornton Heath as Moya is their main organist. I was thankfully able to get a ride to meeting with the only couple who live vaguely near Shirley.
Then it was off to work this week on the bus, catching two buses each way and taking 3 times as long as in the car. :( It was nice to have a slightly different perspective on the world though. The dealer was going to try and get my car fixed by Tuesday, then it was Wednesday, then they'd had to get something re-programmed after it was fixed so it was Thursday lunchtime when a driver could get down here. Thursday lunchtime came and went but my car didn't, somehow they hadn't managed to get a driver... so eventually it was Friday morning when my car finally arrived at work. And now it better be fixed properly cause I just want my car to drive!!!
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February 16th, 2009
06:33 pm - Russia
Before the Aussie bushfires hit international news headlines and stayed there for at least 2 or 3 days (!!!) you may have heard of the British headlines... shock, horror, Siberian weather, a blanketing of snow across the whole country varying from about 3" to 22" in depth and of course stopping many trains, closing the airports, closing about 3000 schools and causing many thousands of workers to have an unexpected holiday (or even worse, get stranded at work!). However I missed it all. Well except for a pretty whiteness blanketing the whole country as I drove from Birmingham back to London on Sunday, and the grubby piles of compacted snow still sitting at the edge of people's driveways.
I was of course in Russia though not over the Ural mountains into Siberia... the English would die if they did actually have to bear Siberian weather.
After a very early start on Saturday (we met up at the airport at 5.30am) the group of 10 from Britain flew to Moscow via Frankfurt. It's quite strange being asked in English if you want a Russian newspaper, while flying on a German plane!!
Russia was strangely, well white! The policemen wandering around the airport had the most comical hats, similar to an ordinary policeman's hat but the whole crown extends out a lot further at the edges and is sort of one big scoop shape. I wondered if it was to stop the snow dripping onto their shoulders?!
You walk out of the hot airport, enjoy the fresh cool air, begin to think it's quite cold and maybe you should have got your hat and scarf out even if you're just going across to the bus, then really wish you had as your head starts to hurt with the cold! One of the Russian brothers met us there and we caught a bus for about 50 mins to the nearest Metro (underground) station, and on the Metro for about an hour from one side of Moscow to the other. It surfaced once in order to cross the very wide Moscow River and someone could see a sign telling us it was -15 degrees (about 6pm ish) and we thought it wasn't that bad, but after the train sat there delayed for a couple of mins the cold very soon seeped into the carriage and we reached for hats and gloves!
I have never seen so much fur in my life - short coats, long coats, collars, trim on hoods, gloves, boots, tassles, almost living collars, and sometimes practically whole animals sitting on people's heads.
We exited the Metro to be hit by a wall of blasting icy air, so cold you could hardly breathe. Five more bre/sis met us then we slipped and slithered in the freezing dark along pavements with uneven rivulets of filthy ice hiding in the blackness, somehow balancing with our luggage as well. For most of us who hadn't actually travelled with every layer under the sun on we weren't even fully dressed for the cold, and by the time we reached our basic old cold little bus my thighs were so cold they felt like they were on fire.
This bus took us nearly another 1.5hr drive out through the suburbs of Moscow and on into the country, to somewhere in the middle of nowhere that we were to stay for the week. And the heating wasn't working so there was ice on the inside of the windows and some people did exercises in the aisle to keep warm, making the bus bounce a bit... can you imagine an Aussie driver putting up with that?
We finally turned off the sealed road onto the lane to a village and our holiday camp Avesta Park, which lane was just a snowy icy trail in the dark along which we bumped and occasionally slid around and struggled up the slopes. The bus tried to turn around just before the camp without going down the last short but steep slope to the gate, but couldn't get any grip so had to go down anyway. Not sure how it managed to get out again.
Now began a week of beauty, interesting experiences, making friends with or without word-based communication, and learning that the standard answer to any why's is "This is Russia"!!!
The rest of the group coming from around Russia and Kazakstan arrived on Sunday evening, and nearly everyone had travelled far longer time and distance than us, some up to 54 hrs on the train. Another brother was meant to come from Belarus halfway through the week but tried to get there cheaper than a train by catching a lift on a lorry, but went home again after waiting in a queue at the border for about 24 hrs. Russians have to carry an internal passport with them at all times, whatever they're doing. If any authority person stopped them and they didn't have it on them, they'd be taken in until their identity was established. It allows them to travel within Russia and states of the Russian Federation like Kazakstan and Belarus.
The week sailed past with a daily mixture of readings and thoughts, two studies (a mixture cobbled together between the English brethren as Nigel Patterson our intended speaker for the week, returned home shortly after setting out from Cornwall as his mother died), a seminar, and various enjoyable afternoon and evening activities.
We certainly had some strange and interesting food, most of it quite tasty and edible. Three cooked meals a day with variations on sloppy rice porridge for breakfast, with bread, soft cheese and salami, and usually different varieties of sweetish doughnut/pancake/pikelet things with a spoonful of something like creme fraiche (which is some sort of cross between sour cream and cream cheese and yoghurt). Lunch and dinner both had a little salad mixture for starters (ever tried beetroot with prunes?), then soup with meat and vegies in it followed by some cooked meal like rissoles with rice or buckwheat for lunch and 3 times we even got some fruit, and a meat with little bit of vegies for dinner and usually a sweet roll of some sort. Breakfast and dinner also came with black tea/coffee (you pay extra for milk, Russians never give away anything they can make you pay for), and lunch had a cold drink of pink sugary nothingness, which changed to pink sweet thick gloopy undrinkableness by midweek, and finally ended with a plum juice. A lot of things including most of breakfast have a slightly sourish taste that you just get used to, though the brown bread positively tasted as though it was mixed with vinegar. And you just don't wonder too hard what any of the meat you've eaten might be, mostly it's impossible to tell or guess!
The first few days it was cold enough for even the Russians to be complaining, and we found out later it was -24 in Moscow on the Monday!! You just get used to wearing longjohns and a couple of jumpers all the time inside, and taking about 5 mins to pull everything possible warm on before you waddle outside to walk to the dining room or across to the conference room. And it is the weirdest sensation ever to feel the inside of your nostrils freezing at every breath!
But it was soooooo beautiful, the majority of our days were clear blue skies and bright sunshine. The snow (1-2 feet or so) was very dry and you could see individual snowflakes so clearly, ~2-4mm in diameter and with the feathery 6 pointed star and all. It was also sooooooooooooooo sparkly, like someone had scattered Swarovski crystals all over it.
Unfortunately the dryness meant it didn't really stick together so we never had much of a snowball fight, couldn't make a snowman though some very well sculpted ones were still there from previous visitors, and in our team snow sculpting competition everyone opted for vaguely mountain shaped things. We did have fun doing a bit of sledging though, down a slippery slope in the road.
The Russians/Kazaks were mainly bre & sis including two married couples, also one Jamaican boy at university in Moscow and doing an online course but still going to his own churches, the wife of one of the brethren who is now doing a correspondence course herself, and a girl who's mum and younger sister are both baptised but she seems to have gone off the rails a bit. There were 5 people who spoke English well and did the translating, two spoke a reasonable amount and 4 who didn't speak any at all.
The Jamaican boy learnt English and now Russian, and he explained how he'd acclimatised himself to moving to Russia... he used to work in some meat place with big freezers of different temperatures, so he just spent more time in the coldest one!!! And Olga the wife of a brother, spent all her education at a music school/conservatorium and is now a concert pianist teaching at the school and doing professional accompanying for instrumentalists. She could sit down and just play and play and so beautifully.
For many of the Russians/Kazaks the Youth Week is one of two possible times a year (there is a summer bible school) when they get to meet up with more than half a dozen other bre/sis and to meet with other young people, and certainly a rare chance of enjoying singing, learning and asking questions about simple Bible things, discussing life in the truth, having fun, playing games/sport, and just sharing time together with each other.
And don't worry, I'm still in one piece even after leaving the camp in true Russian style, cramped 8 people into 5 seats of a minibus with no seatbelts, slipping and sliding back along the icy lane including into the soft snow at the edge as we successfully skidded down past two cars also going into the soft deep snow as there was nowhere to pass and neither of us could stop....
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January 27th, 2009
10:13 pm
Another week of fairly mild weather, it's been positively hot at 7 or 8 degrees going to and from work several times, and absolutely boiling compared to what I'm going to experience when I arrive in Russia on the weekend.
Last weekend I had the novel experience of spending a day at home in the daylight in Shirley, except for an afternoon drive 10-15 mins down the road to the city centre of Croydon where I needed to shop for things like ski gloves.
On Sunday I was up earlyish to drive an hour and a quarter or so around the M25 to Watford on the north-west edge of greater London. Went to Watford meeting and met up with a few southerners: Jim & Colleen Berry (nee Kingston) and family, and Tim & Lorna Yearsley (well he's Kiwi, but she's english). Lots of other friendly people wondering of course if I was just visiting, and all remembering Nick & Dee who went there a lot.
I went back to lunch with John & Jean Jones who live in the village of Abbots Langley on the outside of the M25 (so most definitely not London at all), and their daughter Amanda, then she and I spent the rest of the afternoon planning a quiz we are running in Russia.
As I had the evening to get back home I decided to brave it and try the route directly through the middle of London which is much shorter and should be quicker when the traffic's light, with just a mapbook to guide me. Down the M1 to it's very beginning, down a main route but still quite busy with traffic and loads of buses and lanes up with roadworks and lots of traffic lights, past Marble Arch, down Park Lane, around ultra-busy 5 or 6 lane Hyde Park Corner, and across the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge where I managed a glimpse down the river of the London Eye and just the top of Big Ben. Thus far and the only place I went wrong was getting from the end of the M1 onto the next road, and that only because I followed someone's directions instead of checking the map.
On the south side of the river the route was rather more zig-zaggy but I managed by checking the map everytime I stopped at lights, hopefully following the signs correctly and otherwise just going after the car in front and hoping it was right... and it was. I even went through the suburb of Brixton which Moya later told me was a rather unsafe area that she would never go through!!
Anyway, sorry for the long scrawl which will not make geographical sense to most of you, but I'm rather proud of the fact that I managed to conquer London and drive right from one side to the other with just a map with essentially no wrong turns, plus in the dark and the rain. :)
I suppose as you may be wondering what Russia is all about and I may not actually have time to return here before I go, I'd better just explain that I'm flying there on Saturday with a group from England for a youth week sponsored by the CBM. It's only the second one they've had and is for the various young people scattered across Russia and surrounds who don't get the chance to meet up with anyone very often.
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January 19th, 2009
10:02 pm
I have actually seen my local environment in the daylight, finally being present here on Sunday. It was a lovely mild sunny day with beautiful blue sky, almost springlike (yeah it was still only 7 or 8 degrees), and I discovered things in the garden I hadn't seen before and found out what the houses opposite actually look like!
I went to Thornton Heath meeting where the Southgates (with whom I'm living) go, it has about 36 members including 5 or 6 young people, and a small handful of children. I've already been there for Bible Class during the week, and had actually met a few people from TH at Christmas time when I went to the Winter Studies (ie. anti-Christmas group!) in Castleton up in the Peak District.
I went home for Sunday lunch with a young couple, along with two of the lively older SS kids, so we had a fairly noisy afternoon. Then back for Bible Hour in the evening. It was nice to have a rest after a fairly hectic day on Saturday.
Sadly no sleep in on Saturday - it was up and off just after daylight for a trip to Coventry via Leicester. That's a bit like going from home to Geelong via Melbourne. But I needed to get something checked on my car by the dealer I bought it from in Leicester, and at least I was going to the Midlands anyway. I did a nice circular trip - directly east from here to the M25 (London's outer orbital motorway), all the way around including through a tolled tunnel under the Thames, to the M1 motorway... only an hour and 10 mins to get to the opposite side of London, and that was in very good early morning weekend traffic. Then it only took another hour and 20 mins to get all the way north to Leicester.
After the man checked my car, I continued on my circle going south-west down the M69 to Coventry, where it was our monthly orchestra practice for the Messiah, but for the first time with the choir. We nearly filled Grosvenor Rd hall and made a lot of sound!! All good and in tune of course.
Then I drove home down past Warwick to the M40, ending up back at the M25 but on the west side, and home to Shirley. A circle of about 400 miles with 4 motorways passing through about a dozen different counties!!!
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