Nov
15
I have felt a renewed motivation about the blog this week. So many people who I never suspected were reading this blog contacted us this week with loads of compliments. Nicky, your reaction was undoubtedly the best! Nicky only found out about the blog this week and she sat down and read almost all 19 weeks in 1 go. Her words to me were: “I am hooked, please keep writing”. So, Nicky, “Here it is, please keep reading”. This blog started off as a double-edged sword. It was meant to keep people informed about what we were getting up to on this side of the world, but I also started off writing so that I could use it as a outlet for my feelings about the move – I had hoped to draw strength from documenting what we had achieved, to get across to everyone what kind of emotion goes along with a move to another country, it was meant to record our wins and our losses because there are certainly loads of both. There is no doubting the fact that you feel a sense of loss sometimes, loss of your old friends, loss of family contact, loss of familiar things, but that sense of loss is mixed with a strange hopefulness and a deep sense of excitement.
What a weird and wacky weather week this was. Twice during this week we had torrential rain and gale-force winds tearing through Kent like a tornado. At one stage I thought our bikes and their tarpaulin were going to take off over the garden wall. The wooden garden furniture was blown across the yard, our big garbage wheelie bins were toppled over in the alley, all along the roads branches were stripped from trees like they were just toothpicks. According to Sky News we have another one on the way this week, so batten down the hatches boys and girls, we are in for a fun ride.
Mitchell got his school report this week, and Matthew, as I promised you my boy, here is a breakdown of the scores that he got. The scoring system is very different to what we are used to in SA. They get a score for Attainment, (which is an A, B, C… etc) and a score for Effort (which is a 1, 2, 3…etc). So you end up with a rating of A3 or B2 etc, with A1 being the highest that can be achieved. Mitchell got and A1 for Art, Design and Technology, English, Geography, French, Science and Phys Ed. He got a B1 for History, ICT, Mathematics, Music and Religion & Philosophy. For a young boy who has been through one of the biggest changes and moves of his life, who is on the brink of adolescence and dealing with a move to high school, he just continues to blow us away with his attitude and his achievements. Another great hockey match this morning, my boy.
Jenna also got her school report this week and what a fantastic review she got from her teachers. Having started off being 15 months behind the other children here, Jenna as taken just 1 term to catch up to where she would have been had she done Year-2 on the British system. This means that she has catapulted forward at the most incredible rate. She is doing Kumon maths every day now and enjoying it. Her reading and writing has grown in leaps and bounds. She has started music this term and when I fetch her from school on music days she is skipping and jumping and so excited about what they have done. The theme for this term is Egypt and she has already come home with the most incredible knowledge about Egyptian things.
On Friday night Mike went with the Bidborough Cricket team to their end of the year function and prize-giving at The Plough Inn in a little village called Leigh (pronounced Lye). Mike tried to describe the building to us, just how beautiful it was with the old wooden beams and timeless qualities. I went with the cricket team wives on a ladies dinner night to a beautiful pub called the Beacon in Langton Green with old pressed ceilings, big stone fire-places, a beautiful deck overlooking the lights of Tunbridge Wells in the distance.
On Friday evening James Joyce travelled down from London to have dinner with us. James was one of my students in the first year that I was a lecturer for Port Elizabeth Technikon. He works for Icap in London. I had bent James’ ear for the fact that I had already been in the UK for 18 weeks and we had not seen him yet, but I considered the bad break of his leg, that he has been nursing, and decided to cut him some slack. [superemotions file="icon_smile.gif" title="Smile"] A fantastic evening of wine and dine, memories and a whole load of catching up. There are just some people who come into your life and it doesn’t matter how many years pass by or how far apart you live from one another, it just takes a walk through a door and all the years fade away. It is like you were never apart.
This afternoon Mike, Jenna, and Mitch went to the golf driving range and I decided to take a long sunset walk in the Kent countryside. With all the rain we have had it made for a fantastic squishy, muddy, slip-sliding walk through the farmlands. 
The autumn leaves have almost all fallen now and with the rain that we have had they have formed a thick spongy mat under foot. There is a different sense in the air now. There is a definite smell of autumn about. One of the things that I find difficult to get across in this blog are the moments that touch on my other senses over here, the smells and the sounds that I experience on a walk. The smell of the rotting, wet leaves on the ground mixes with smells of wood-burning fires when you walk past farmhouses and little streams of smoke are billowing from the chimneys, while rotting apples that lie strewn on the ground in the orchards give off a sweet smell. All along the roads are signboards offering logs for sale. You cannot deny the beauty of a log burning fire in the winter time. The sounds that I loved today, that I wasn’t expecting to hear was the sweet chirping of 3 little birds in a tree that had no more leaves on it. 
A little further along the farmlands and the sound of running water captured my attention. With the rains that we have had, the dams have filled up and are overflowing, forming the most beautiful little streams. Its these smells and sounds that I cannot share with you here, but I hope that you can get a sense of how peaceful and pleasant it is.
Foxes and squirrels still run in the streets , birds are chirping in the trees, horses on walks and ducks on the lakes… Autumn is not a season that should be seen as a time when things begin to fade – instead it is brimming with a beauty of its own, its own sounds, and its own smells.
The coming week has Mitchell heading off to France and 16 of us head en mass to Wembley stadium to watch the Springboks. I am just really hoping, more than anything, to see some Christmas lights this coming week.
