Bye, London, I’ll miss you!
Ooohhh, but I had a lovely weekend. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
I’ve been trying to make regular mad dashes to London (my favourite city in the world — I don’t get the fascination with New York at all, though now I have a new publisher ensconced in the Flatiron building, I may have to make a quick trip…) to do overnight stays and cram in as many museums, art galleries and shows as is humanly possibly. Last weekend, I made what will probably be my last trip for a while. While I was there, I did a retro Mini tour with a company called Small Car Big City. For the last year or so, I’ve been writing a (humongous, gigantic, it quite seriously almost ate me alive) e-serial for St Martin’s Press which will be launched starting next January and will be published in six episodes of around 20,000 words each. The e-serial is set in London in 1926 and as it mentions all kinds of yummy places, I thought I’d retro Mini tour the sites and make a little video to put up on my web-site when the e-serial comes out. So, here I am, about to Mini off… don’t I look fabulous, darling (seriously, it’s like being a sardine in a tin can, but who cares when you look so darn cute getting about town in the thing)?
We went to: Belgrave Square (where most of the e-serial is set), Russell Square, Hyde Park, Liberty, King’s Cross station, the Savoy hotel and all kinds of other places besides. Afterwards, I also managed to fit in seeing Singin’ In the Rain (brilliant) and a bit of sale shopping (also very nice).
I’ll miss being able to pop down to London in less than an hour on the train, that’s for sure. I’d better find myself a UK publisher fast, so I have a Very Good Excuse to go back again soon…
This. This is travelling with children…
So we took a quick drive out to one of our local stately homes the other day, Wrest Park. I’m fascinated by all the gates out there. So many gates and all so gorgeous. Example:
I took many photos to set my desktop by at a later date, but it wasn’t until we headed down along the water toward the park’s pavilion that Ms8 became animated, running up to me and begging me for my camera. Amazed that she was suddenly interested in visiting her 5345th stately home in less than a year, I quickly passed it over. Only to download the pictures a couple days later and find approximately 234 photos of this…
The Queen came to tea! The Queen came to tea!
Fine, so it was hundreds of years ago and she didn’t quite come to tea, but was banished here and locked up. But it’s close enough for me!
I recently found out that Katherine of Aragon once lived in our village for around a year. Apparently after Henry VIII had his marriage to Katherine annulled, she was sent to live just up the road from us. Here…
How cool is that? The ye olde stuff around these parts really does blow one’s mind…
Queen of the daisy chain
Remember those few Summer-ish days I mentioned way back, a thousand or so years ago, when everyone went slightly mad?
Yeah, I barely do either.
After those three heady Summer-ish days it rained for three weeks straight. It was cold. It was miserable. And, of course, during this time, we had two sets of guests. Those lucky guests got to view pouring rain, light rain, medium rain, medium-to-light rain, light-to-medium rain and a whole lot of mud in its various forms.
Then they left.
As soon as they were gone, the weather came good. And now, oh now!, it is truly, honestly (and probably for about five whole days)… Summer!
Woo hoo!
Like everyone else, we have been doing much celebrating in the lead up to the Jubilee (which we’ll be in Denmark for… whoops). The bunnies are hopping, the lock is working overtime, the bulrushes are blowing crazy white fluffy stuff everywhere and the spiders are inviting themselves in through the windows (oh, joy).
And me? I am the Queen of the daisy chains, making them every afternoon on command…
It’s all about the jacket…
One of the first things we noticed in our initial few weeks in England, was that everyone seemed to own a waterproof jacket. Now, I don’t know about you, but not being the outdoorsy type, I had never owned a waterproof jacket in my life. Or a pair of wellies. For a while, we resisted the waterproof jackets (because they’re just so freakin’ ugly) and tried to use umbrellas. Yes, well, there’s a reason people don’t use umbrellas in Cambridgeshire, where it tends to be quite windy (read: you will be blown sideways several days per week). So, after we had turned not one, but three Ikea umbrellas inside out, we succumbed to the lure of the waterproof jacket. And after we had been up to our knees several times in mud and horse poo on the walk to school, the wellies also came into play.
Oh, but how things have changed on the jacket front. These days I own several waterproof jackets in varying degrees of warmth, length and cuteness and am now even on to my second pair of wellies (the first pair were destroyed in a freak Husky sledding accident — don’t ask. I can, however, highly recommend Norwegian hospitals if you ever need one).
We have obviously come a long way on the understanding the weather thing, because when Aussies come to visit us now, there is much sighing between us when they do not have Appropriate Clothing. Such as waterproof jackets. And wellies (I mean, really, how can they not know?). They do things like look at the sky at 8am when it’s sunny and say, ‘Oh, it won’t rain today, it’ll be warm! It’s May for goodness sake! I’ll just wear a long-sleeved t-shirt. And my sneakers will be fine,’ (fools! Fools!).
Anyway, this morning, after three weeks of solid rain, the sun came out. I must have officially turned English, because I went outside to the flower meadow for a romp (though, come to think of it, I’m probably still holding back a little. A real English person would have stripped off to the waist…). While I was down there, I took a pic. of the new wellies. Cute? I think so…
Nature, you suck.
Oh, but I was so excited two months back when one of the pairs of swans in the area began to make a nest right below our little Juliet balcony. I watched their progress several times a day and Googled to see how the swan nesting process works (as it turns out, the female lays an egg every day or so for a while, before sitting on the nest full-time for around six weeks or so). We went away for the school holidays and, when we got back, the swan (Hildy? Maybe!) was sitting on the nest all day every day. I couldn’t wait to see those little fluffy grey cygnets emerge from under her and started counting down the days until they might hatch.
Until now, that is. Wah! Because it’s flooded. Several times over, in fact. The first time the water came up, the swans panicked. For 24 hours straight, they carted sticks to and fro, building up the nest. We watched, amazed, as they managed to turn the eggs over with their beaks and push more sticks under the eggs themselves (swans — they’re smarter than you give them credit for). The water began to recede and we thought the eggs might be okay. Sure, the nest would soon look like a penthouse apartment, but at least there would be cygnets. Then, yesterday, the water came back up again. Further, this time, to the point where our road has been blocked off by the police…
The swans began working furiously once more, building up the nest. This time, however, they might have started building too late. Because, this morning, it seems the female has abandoned the nest. Even during the building-up of the nest, she was so careful not to be off those eggs for more than a few seconds. But now, even though the pair are continuing to build the nest up, she has been off the eggs for an extended period (hours now). I’m guessing it isn’t a very good sign…
And, yes, I know that last year she had eight cygnets (if it is Hildy, and there’s a 50 per cent chance that I’m right as there are only two pairs of nesting swans around here), while two or three is normal. But, wah! I so wanted to see those cygnets. It was all so exciting.
Nature, you suck.
Ten kinds of AWESOME!
So we’re just back from two weeks in Berlin, Prague and Vienna (I need a holiday now — only vast quantities of Easter chocolate, mucho cake in Vienna and a whole lot of cheap alcohol in Prague has kept me going).
While we were in Prague, we saw pictures of an ossuary about an hour out of the city and decided to take a trip out to see it, because the pictures of it looked amazing. We booked a day tour, because the train and tram changes were frequent (and because guides always know where the best toilets are — crucial when travelling with kids). When we fronted up for the tour, the guide was pretty excited to be setting off, even though he’d been hosting this tour for five months. This seemed like a long time, but his eyes still lit up when he spoke about the ossuary. ‘It’s AWESOME!’ he said, time and time again. ‘Just AWESOME!’.
Well, finally we got to the ossuary. And it was…
AWESOME! With 50,000 or so bones, how could it not be? There was a coat of arms made of bones, pyramids of bones, bones with axe marks in them, bones with spear marks in them. There was even a bone chandelier. Hello, AWESOME! Check it out for yourself…
Entering the ossuary... AWESOME!
Coat of arms made of bones. Even more AWESOME!
Over lunch, our guide asked us how we liked living in the UK. We did our usual shuffling of feet, before quickly saying the opportunity for travel had been… AWESOME! And that’s the bottom line. Nothing will ever beat Australia for the lifestyle factor, but living there really does hold you back on the travel front. I’ve just been flipping through our photos now and realised that if we hadn’t come over here for a full year, there’s no way we would have been able to…
Take a husky ride (and then a trip to a Norwegian hospital!).
See the Northern lights.
Rekindle my love for terrible English beaches.
Research the book I'm writing in real time (characters have a little orgy here...).
See smokers in cages (Vienna airport).
Visit Downton Abbey (swoon!).
AWESOME! I also wouldn’t have…
Spent approximately $1 million at Legoland.
Patted bloody bunnies for bloody hours.
Gone on every open-top round-town bus tour in existence.
Paid to see a whole lot of miniature $#%*.
But that’s travelling with kids, I guess!
