Nov
29
(My apologies for the quality of the photos used in the blog this week. The only photos that I took this week were taken with my mobile phone camera.)
Ok! So, it is officially getting cold, even by my standards. This weekend sees the arrival of a bit of an Arctic blast! Our temperatures have plummeted by about 5 degrees, but seeing as we are already in the last few days of November, surely this was expected? To be quite honest, I love the cold weather over here at the moment. I love to wrap up in a scarf and gloves, put on a lovely fluffy warm coat, and step outside. It is absolutely beautiful. Then there is the “mud, mud, glorious mud”! Well, now that is a whole different story. The parking area where I drop and fetch Jenna at school every day is not tarred, so with all the rain we have had, it is now just a field of mud, and I dare not tread upon it lest I am wearing boots suitable for the terrain. I am also waiting for the day when my car gets bogged down in the mud. That would surely give me something to write about.
This certainly was a week of “Christmas light moments”. Lights that you just want to sit and stare at for a moment and wish they’d stay lit up in front of you all year round. Christmas lights that are not frilly and overdone, just simple and wonderful, that when you stare at them you can’t help but know that it is less about the actual light and more about how it makes you feel inside. You know that feeling, that inner glow, the same one that comes from simple things like the gift of friendship.
Today Jenna met Santa at the Royal Victoria Centre in Tunbridge Wells. He was seated inside the biggest Christmas tree I think I have seen and each child who entered the big red doors at the bottom of the tree was given a gift. Jenna got the most beautiful craft project. It is a handbag that she has been sewing on all day and I promise that when she is finished I will post a photo of it here. Now, let me say that I have bitched and complained about paying for parking on this blog, on more than one occasion, but all of a sudden today I realised that all those pounds I had been pumping into the parking meter came back to me in the most special way today when Jenna’s little face lit up and sparkled in that moment, in the tree. A full-circle moment?.
Mike attended a two day Personal Finance Conference in London this week. He has been so well accepted by colleagues in the field. He also met a few other South Africans, some that he had met before at conferences in South Africa. He seems to have a renewed sense of purpose over here and I think it has a lot to do with the puzzle pieces all finally starting to fit in place. The picture, the direction and the scope of opportunity unfolds a little more each day. Mike’s boss, Charles, is wonderfully supportive. On all the occassions that he has been around to our house, he has shown a genuine interest in how we are doing and how we have settled in.
On Saturday we went shopping at Blue Water Retail Park which is just outside the M25 ring road, where the Thames flows into the English Channel. 
The Centre is surrounded at the moment by magnificent animals made out of fairy lights and I think an evening trip may well be on the cards, to go and see what they all look like lit up under the night sky. Now crowded shopping centres are not my thing at the best of times, but we discovered the Winter Wonderland and Ice Rink which are set up at the centre. The Winter Wonderland is made up of little wooden stalls which create a small Christmas flea market, rides for the kids to enjoy, Santa’s grotto, and an outdoor temporary ice-skating rink. Mitchell decided to take a ride on “Freak Out” and boy, didn’t he just!! Mike, Jenna, and I stood next to the ride and 
watched as absolute terror fell over Mitchell’s face. Now some people may wonder how I could stand there and laugh at the sight of my son’s absolute face of fear, but there is only so much you can do as a parent. There is only so much that you can warn them, and then as long as you know they are going to be safe , you are within your rights to stand back and watch as they make up their own mind to follow through against your judgement. He absolutely hated it, but he certainly learned a value lesson about understanding his own limits.
This week Jenna took an introductory gymnastics lesson at the Weald of Kent Gymnastics School in East Peckham. Ever since she could, 
Jenna has been doing handstands and tumbles, all sorts of rolls and flick-flacks, but gymnastics is not a big sport in South Africa, so we never really got her involved in it back home. I took her along to the lesson which takes about 1hour 15 min and I was absolutely amazed at what the children of her age could do. What shouldn’t have surprised me is that she took to it like a duck to water. Her coach came over at the end of the session and was surprised when I told her that Jenna has never had any gym coaching. I think we may just have found the right thing for Jenna to do. Jenna is not a ball-games child, but give her a stage, a chance to dance and do gym and she is in “her own little place”.
Tonight was the official switch-on of the Christmas lights in Tonbridge. On a cold, rainy night thousands of people lined the High Street as floats passed by, music played, bands marched. The cast of the Peter Pan pantomime joined in the procession with Santa and his elves, as a beautiful fireworks display lit up the sky over the castle. After the festivities were over we went to have dinner at the Oriental Buffet Club which is situated on the High Street and within a few minutes of being seated the street cleaning truck drove up the road with bristles scouring the tar and cleaning up. We walked out of the restaurant a while later and you would never have said that thousands of people had lined that street a little earlier. It was spotless. (It’s strange what you will notice over here, what stands out at you.)
The pretty hanging flower-baskets of summer, that made me fall in love with England have all gone, but they have been replaced by the shining, shimmering glow of the Christmas lights. I remarked to Mike this week that Jon will not be seeing England at its best, that he will be visiting us here at a time when the trees are brown and have no leaves, but Mike replied… “It’s still beautiful, just in a different way”. That, it certainly is!
