Jul
26
Sundays nights are fast taking on the title of ‘blog night’. I quite enjoy reflecting back on the week gone by, thinking about the wins we have notched up and the mistakes we have made. It also gives me time to think about the week ahead.
I have started to notice a marked changed in the length of the days now. A few photos taken in the week when we arrived are bathed in sunlight, despite the fact that they were taken very late at night. When the change becomes noticeable it is a far more significant than in South Africa. It is still light until about 20:45 in the evenings but it is changing fast. While I am on the subject of seasonal changes I will mention the storm we had this week. On Friday we took Mitchell, Jenna, and James to play putt-putt (crazy golf, as it’s known over here). In the distance I could see a massive storm on the brew (someone once told me that storms over here were not really as exciting as I knew them back home, so I wasn’t expecting it to develop into much at all). I sort of fobbed off the black sky and we all got our putters. I started off lecturing the kids about how rude it was to go ahead and start the next hole until everyone had finished the previous one… Well, a few loud thunder-claps and a couple of bright lightning-bolts later I was reviewing my moral-highroad on the etiquette of crazy-golf… Everyone was told to finish every hole at their own pace and in record breaking time! Clouds that looked like they could have been from a wild typhoon were closing in on us at speed. With just moments to spare we shoved our putters through the window of the office, having completed 18 holes, and we sprinted the 3 or so blocks to where we had parked the car. Every man for himself when that kind of torrent comes down! We just got into the car on time and before we had got to the end of the street we were in a deluge! (My hard-learned lesson for this week – It is not a good idea to open the car sun-roof when it is covered in water… even after the rain has stopped. Ha ha ha.)
On Tuesday Jenna’s new bed arrived. 1 wooden cabin bed in a flat-pack box! When these people say they will deliver sometime between 08:00 and 12:00 they really mean business. 07:30 the truck was outside! So there we were: 1 comic-strip family, 1 flat-pack bed in a box, no tools in the house and a set of paper assembly instructions. Who writes the assembly instructions for things, anyway? Comedians? Well, 2 hours later, 1 book of swear words, fits of laughter and a bleeding knee and Jenna finally had a new bed. Mike had read somewhere on the internet how satisfied lady customers of this product had said they had put these beds together single-handedly within a few minutes. He had some choice words for them. Ha ha.
Wednesday was our day in Dover. It was Jenna’s birthday. She woke at 06:30 to take her new bike out for a ride! SkyTV had arranged to come and do the installation between 09:00 and 11:00. I was afraid that they would be late and we would not be able to go out for the day, but of course they arrived at 09:00 and within an hour we had the dish installed, SkyTV active and were on the road to Dover. The channel tunnel, pebble beaches, long piers, clean water, magnificent ferry boats, castles on hilltops and hundreds and hundreds of seagulls made for an awesome day. The Dover Castle was probably the best castle I have ever seen. There is something very moving about standing in a 2000 year old lighthouse overlooking the English Channel. You cannot be there without being in awe of what people could do with so little resources. The White Cliffs of Dover lived up to every expectation that I had ever had of them. We left Dover and travelled to Folkestone where we stopped at The Battle of Britain Memorial. I am amazed at what Mitchell knows about this part of history.
All my blogs so far have been filled with what I have liked and enjoyed about the UK, so being here 3 weeks, I feel that at least I can list just 1 thing that I don’t like. SPIDERS! They are everywhere! How did I choose to move to a country that is covered in the very thing that I am the most afraid of? I got onto the internet this week to read up on them and this is what I found… “There are around 640 named species of spider in Britain. About 100 species live in the average garden, and a dozen species are found in the average house.”
The kids are enjoying a lot of the activities over here. Jenna has spent quite a lot of time at Honnington Equestrian Centre with her cousin, Kirstin. She enjoys mucking out the stables, brushing the horses and sneaking the odd ride. Mitchell spent some time at the village cricket ground with some of the boys, hitting in the nets and getting in some bowling practice.
Today we finally made it to a car boot sale. I think you can honestly furnish an entire house at a car boot sale for around £10. We bought a toaster for 50p! Mitchell bought himself a set of golf-clubs (you see, all that lawn mowing is finally paying off) and is looking forward to his bike arriving on the ship in the next 2 weeks so that he can cycle to the golf driving range in Tonbridge.
This weekend we had our first braai! Braai-ing (spelling?) on gas should probably not be called “a braai” at all. I think we will call it a barbeque over here when we use gas, just so that the word “braai” can be exclusively reserved for those special moments when the Thornwood crackles and fragrant smoke fills the air.
Last week’s blog stated that I am missing Crosse and Blackwell Mayonnaise… Well, I popped into the South Africa shop this week and they stock it!! YAY!! So, scratch that off the list and we are back down to only the tea bags. I think it’s not too bad that I have been here 3 weeks and the only thing that I am missing is a brand of tea bags.
Looking forward to the week ahead…
This is Kerry Wright!
