Thetford

We went to Thetford today, which apparently used to be the chief town in Norfolk. It isn’t any more, and though it has the usual churches built in 1100 and such, it didn’t strike either of us as very interesting a town. Maybe we didn’t see enough of it. However we did find out that the Dad’s Army series was partly filmed there, that Thomas Paine the great political pamphleteer was born there, and that the place was burnt to the ground by some Viking whose name I’ve now forgotten.

We bought ourselves a GPS system today, (which was why we were in Thetford in the first place), one that’s a bit more user-friendly and that we can also use when we go back to New Zealand. It’ll help in those awful cities - Christchurch and Auckland - where we can never find our way around.

Thetford also turned out to be full of Eastern Europeans and Portuguese (amongst others), people who are there to work at jobs that Brits are no longer doing, but who, by all accounts, may not be very well off. I’m only hearing about it secondhand, so I don’t know the details, but the number of foreign-speaking people walking the streets of Thetford was rather high.

Royal Norfolk

Long day today. Didn’t even sleep in as we have been because our hosts were having a dinner party tonight, and we needed to help get things moving. Not that I contributed much, but Celia made two quiches in record time, and generally organized other things in advance of the meal tonight.

But we also had to be out by 8.45 because our niece and her husband were taking us to the Royal Norfolk Show. This event has been going in some form since the mid 1800s, and has occupied it present space of some 375 acres. There are a number of permanent buildings, but today the place was loaded with tents and marquees and open-air rings (the largest would be two or three acres on its own, I suppose).

I had in mind that it would be like the A&P show that we have in Dunedin, which is a bit of a dud these days, as far as most people are concerned. Not so this show. Over 105,000 people attended last year, and judging by the number of people there today – wall-to-wall they were – that figure would have been surpassed. The weather was great, for a start, and though it threatened to rain at one point, it never did. Apparently last year the people selling raincoats made a killing!

Of course there were farm animals galore, including great hulking bulls and their cows and calves; a bunch of geese being herded by a sheepdog around several groups of schoolchildren and up and over a bridge; huge pigs; owls, ferrets, and you name it.

Everybody and his uncle was there selling stuff, and in the food building they were giving away samples of food in a way I’ve never seen at any of the shows in Dunedin. You could have had a taste of practically everything that was on display – we tried out quite a bit ourselves.

Our relatives paid for us to have an excellent meal presented by the Catering School, and we sat at a table which included one of the vice-presidents of the Royal Norfolk, his wife and son.

There are several entrances to the grounds, each of them leading to a car park connected to one of several main roads in the area, so that you can come in from Dereham, or Wymondham, or Norwich itself. The car parks were expertly handled by a large team of mostly young people. You wouldn’t want to forget where you parked your car, however. The car park we were in would have held a couple of thousand cars, I’d think.

There are a few photos of the facilities here.

And gardens, and volunteers, and a bookshop

I barely mentioned the Gardens in my last post. Blickling Hall has enormous cultured gardens, with trees shaped in certain ways, thousands of plants of every kind, long walks both amongst trees and out in the open, a 'temple', various gazebos and so forth, and a lake. It's possible the lake is man-made, as was often the case with these stately homes. But I don't have anything to back that up, except that the other night I was watching a television program which talked about the way at a certain period in English history, the owners of such homes tended to reproduce the art of other countries, and to make their own lakes. These lakes were supposed to add to the beauty of the already beautiful surroundings, and often had little classical temples dotted around the banks.
It would take a month of Sundays to explore the gardens in their entirety, and it must take a large number of staff to keep them as beautiful as they are. I saw at least five workers while I was there, but I'd suspect there are a great many more.
There's also a secondhand bookshop within the grounds. Now you'd expect the restaurant, and even the area where they sell plants, but a secondhand bookshop? It's not just you're 'fit-in-the-corner' type bookshop either. It's very extensive, and has a great collection of books. It must do well - certainly there are plenty of visitors to Blickling, I'd imagine. It does have a name, but I can't remember it.
And one other point: the volunteers. In each room we went to there was at least one volunteer person directing traffic, or answering questions (with considerable knowledge about the place), or greeting people, or helping disabled people in and out of the lift, and so on. Most of them were well past retirement, and I don't think I'd envy the job of standing in a room for several hours at a time. But they all seemed to be taking it in their stride.

Blickling Hall

Today we finally did a bit of real sightseeing stuff and went to Blickling Hall. No, not Blinking, but Blickling, which is a marvellous old house/mansion/stately home near Aylsham (pronounced Aylsham!).

It’s a Jacobean house, which means it’s nearly four hundred years old – it was built between 1616 and 1627 – but it’s in great condition, and much of the original interior is as it was when it was built. There have been numerous alterations as well – like my wife, the owners of this house have never been content to keep it as it was – and the main staircase in the front hall is different to the way it began, and now goes in a different direction; various bathrooms have been substantially altered and rooms that were something before are now something else. Sounds so much like our place!

The house is full of paintings – most of them portraits, including one of Henry VIII by Holbein. There are a couple of Van Dyks, and no doubt there are other famous ones that I missed noting because I was overawed by the place.

The library is a massive long room with a plaster ceiling, which has a basic pattern to it, but between the pattern are a considerable number of separate sculptured sections of people and insignias and so forth. Below this is a painted frieze that goes all the way round the hall; it must be very early as the colours have faded a good deal and the detail isn’t as clear as it would have been. Below this again are some 12,000 books, scholarly works that a cousin of the then owner collected.

The plaster ceilings throughout the house are extraordinary, filled with detail, as are the fireplaces, some of which stretch from floor to ceiling. They’re enormous works of art, two or three metres wide, and three or four metres high.

The house we saw today is the second to built on the site: the original house was substantially pulled down and rebuilt for the Hobarts in the early 1600s. It had a proper moat – there’s no water in the current ‘moat’ – and it was also famous as being the family home of the Boleyns. Anne Boleyn, as you might recall, became the second wife of Henry VIII (who can’t keep out of the picture, apparently). Her ghost is still supposed to haunt the place, as is that of her father. He runs about the place once a year, and Anne appears on the anniversary of her execution. Which apparently wasn’t today.

I said to Celia on the way into the building: this is like the setting for some film, and it turns out the The Wicked Lady, with Margaret Lockwood and James Mason, was filmed there in 1945.

Blickling Hall – and 4,500 acres of estate - was left to the National Trust in 1940. It was used as an Officers’ Mess during the War, and finally opened to the public in 1962.

For more detail on its history, click here.

Photo by Nick Meers, copyright National Trust

Ceilidh

Celia and I went to a ceilidh tonight with my brother-in-law and his wife. It was held at Barnham Broom, where we’ve also been swimming three times this week. Barnham Broom is actually the name of the village nearby, but the hotel and conference centre and gym etc all go under the same name.
The evening started with a dinner: a whole hog cooked on a spit, rather like the meal we had at my son’s wedding a few years ago. The meat was very tender, and there were a number of vegetables and sauces and such to go with it. Plenty to go around in fact. (And Anchor butter again, which seems very popular over here.)
After quite some time – time enough for Celia and her brother and me to go and have a coffee in a different part of the complex – the dancing started. A rather loud but efficient band provided the music, and Celia and I joined in the dancing. All our years of learning dancing proved beneficial, as we felt quite relaxed on the floor doing various movements and routines. We even danced a waltz, and only stopped when Celia realized we were the only couple on the floor doing it.

The old alma mater

Just need to make a quick mention of the cricket match we went to yesterday afternoon. One of my great-nephews has only just turned eight, but he’s playing in the school team that has eleven-year olds in it. He’s a bowler, primarily, and is apparently showing great promise. (His coach lives next door to him!) He also batted yesterday, and did well, getting a four, and some other runs.
The game was held at his school, Taverham, (pronounced – roughly - Tay-vram), and it is an amazing place. Huge grounds, with woods and parks, and an enormous old English monument of a building. The kids have mini-boiler suits, apparently, and when they don these and gumboots, can go off into the grounds/woods/whatever and play during their breaks without getting their uniforms dirty. There are even deer wandering around in the woods – we saw a fawn as we drove in. The cricket ground would have taken up possibly a twentieth of the ground space, if that.

Wireless, market, church, library.

Celia and I went into Norwich today, intending to have a look round the place, but also to try out our wireless laptop, which we haven’t managed to do so far. We paid for three hours of use on wireless with The Cloud before we left, but I’m not entirely sure we need it. Time will tell. Anyway, today we sat just near the market in Norwich and opened up the computer and voila! we were online. It wasn’t quite as easy as that, but it was pretty straightforward.
By the time we’d got all that sorted out, and rung one of the kids (Celia was going to Skype him, which was the idea behind the excursion with the laptop, but then realized he isn’t on Skype!) and walked from the car park and back to it within an hour, we didn’t get much else done. However, we reparked the car in an area where there were no restrictions, caught a bus back to town and walked about without the weight of the laptop or the backpack – both of which we’d brought with us on our first trip in. Sounds complicated? Yup, we seldom do anything without complication.
Anyway, the market has all been upgraded, and all the stallholders now have permanent wooden stalls, closed in above, and closeable at night with shutters and such. This means that many of them look much more professional than in the past. The secondhand bookstall, for instance, was so tidy I didn’t want to disturb the displays. Didn’t buy anything from there but did buy a copy of Dombey and Son (which I think I’ve already got at home) from an op-shop later on.
I did get a watch from one of the stalls – again, it was much more like a little shop than a market stall. The watch is very similar to the one I’ve had since Celia went to England the time before last (around twenty years ago). My old watch has suddenly come apart, which is distressing, as I’m not a person to change watches at the drop of a fashion. I’ve only ever possessed two: one I got for my 21st and the other one I just mentioned. Now that I’ve said that, it’s possible I did have another earlier one: I seem to remember a rather ugly thing I was glad to replace with my 21st birthday present.
The weather continues to be mild and often hot, and we both came home exhausted from traipsing around and not really seeming to achieve anything much. I did have a look around the library, and even joined up on the off-chance that I might borrow something from there during our stay. The library is only seven years old, with a great deal of glass, a huge covered forecourt (there was a careers display going on while we were there) and three stories high. When you look out through the glass from the inside you can see the wonderful old church of St Peter Mancroft just in front. (It’s next to the market.) The church has all these plates in the floor where either people have been buried or that are just memorial stones; I’m not sure which. It also has three marvelous series of stained-glass windows; stone heads sticking out from below the upper-level windows, and a blazing gold altar of carved statuary. Quite a place.
There isn’t a saint called Peter Mancroft, by the way. The church was originally St Peter and St Paul, but St Paul got dropped at some point and the Mancroft bit was added. It’s thought that it relates to the name of a person who owned the piece of land where the market is now situated.
The other remarkable thing about Norwich is that much of the original city wall is still standing: it wouldn’t actually keep anyone out, but it’s been there for an awful long time.

Locked In!

One thing that has changed here in Britain since I was last here, I think, is the sense of being security-conscious. When we were in London, during a very muggy spell, there were never any windows opened, and even the door to the outside, which was actually slightly below the street (so it wasn’t particularly obvious to a passerby), was kept shut. Here in Norfolk, all the houses we’ve been in so far have locks on the windows – we haven’t been able to find the keys to the windows in the place we’re staying at just now – and there are keys and bolts and safety chains everywhere. Even the car we’ve bought has got a security code on it that won’t let you start it up until it’s entered.
Coming from NZ where we now lock doors after years of never bothering (even the daughter we stayed with before left, and her partner, are still casual about locking doors overnight), it gives a bit of a sense not so much of security as claustrophobia. I know that London has suffered a number of nasty shocks since I left, in terms of terrorism particularly, but I wouldn’t have thought that Norfolk was quite as badly off.

Sheringham...at last!

We made it to Sheringham today, the place my wife has most wanted to come back to. It’s where she grew up, and she has a great fondness for it. Consequently I got a running commentary on everything we passed, things that were still there and things that weren’t (such as one of the hotels near the beach), things that had changed (like houses on Beeston Bump) and things that had improved (the way the lifeboats go in and out), people who’d lived in certain spots (like the boy who wet his bed – hopefully he doesn’t still after forty something years), and who’d married who.
She met up with at least five women who knew her or other members of the family, from the two elderly ladies who lived in the same ‘Close’ as her family, to a woman selling crab meat from a stall, to the librarian who at first claimed vehemently that there had never been a Methodist church on the corner near the library and then had to admit defeat when Celia found it in one of the library books, to a woman in a pet shop who had worked under Celia’s big sister.
The houses in Sheringham have been greatly improved over the last few decades: everywhere you find solid plastic window frames (instead of aluminium ones), and plastic decoration around the doors and so on. The picturesque feature of these houses (it’s common throughout the coastal area of Norfolk, I think) is that the houses have brick corners but the central area of the outside walls are made of beach stones set in concrete. Nearly all the houses are two storeys, and many of them are attached to other houses. Brick is everywhere. Those houses that aren’t built with the stones, are all brick. Brick, with tile roofs, so there’s an overwhelming red brick feel to all the housing. (The beach stones make a nice contrast).
I must say I liked the place – and didn’t remember anything about it at all, even though I have been there once before with Celia, thirty-odd years ago. The beach isn’t my style of beach, with it’s heavy pebbles and stones before you reach the sand – and the sand is more orange than white, and more gritty underfoot. But the buildings around the beach area are delightful, all squashed together, with little yards and alleys running between them. It’s all very clean, and it looks as though the place is prospering. Certainly it was busy, even though it’s not the ‘season’ yet.
Just while I remember: a curious piece of Norfolk speech is that they say things like, ‘Come round to ours,’ or, ‘we’re going round to his,’ the ours and the his referring to the person’s house in each case. We’d say, ‘come round to our place,’ but the place gets lost in Norfolk.

All Saints' Anglican Church, Gresham, Norfolk

Our plans for today shifted a bit as a result of visiting some of my wife's relations. Instead of going to Sheringham, the town she calls home, we finished up going about six miles inland, to Gresham, where at least one of her brothers was born, and where her mother and father are buried in a churchyard, along with several other relations.

Part of the church is 1000 years old, dating from Saxon days, according to my brother-in-law. There's a large round tower, and at least two sections to the church, where an extension has been put on at a later date. Even the extension is very old.

While we were there, some workmen were doing repairs. This is an ongoing job, apparently, as the church requires some extensive renovation. However, it's still being used, and that's a plus in itself.

You can read about it in more detail here, especially about the octagonal baptismal font, which has renditions of the seven sacraments, plus Jesus' Baptism.

The graveyard had recently been mowed, mostly, and wet grass was everywhere, sticking to the soles of our shoes. The oldest gravestones seem to be from Victorian times, but that may only mean that earlier ones have vanished into the earth, or have been removed, or never existed in the first place. There are a number of recent headstones, since people still have connections with the place, and presumably they have family plots.

Such antiquity brings a sense of awe to people visiting, but awe of a different kind occurred when I rubbed my hand against some of the ancient beach stones that made up the round tower, and half of one fell out. Oh, dear. Celia picked it up and claimed it: a family heirloom, perhaps?

GPS: Go Pray Somewhere? You'll need to.

After almost two weeks of being with people, we’re starting to need space. We’re now babysitting the house belonging to our nephew and his wife and family, and the only other human company is their delightful labrador, Cissie. She’s about a year old, black, and very friendly. We’ve got to know her over the last couple of days, so she’s accepted us as being okay. The house is a lovely place out in the country, not far from a small town called Barford. There’s an enormous field out the back, all fenced in, so Cassie can’t escape but can have plenty of space to roam. The grounds round the house are also fairly extensive (I think the property’s a half acre or so all up) and full of English country flowers.
We’ve been using a GPS system that belongs to my brother-in-law, in the car. It nearly brought Celia and I to blows this morning (after church) when we tried to find our way back to my brother-in-law’s. What a job! It would have been okay, and was going well, until we struck a procession in the middle of Attleborough, and had to turn around and go a different way. From then on it was all downhill – not literally. The GPS voice, whom we called Margarita (though my brother-in-law has a much less polite name for her) led us on a merry dance around the countryside, back and forth, hither and yon, up a dead end (she’s slightly out of date on her facts) and finally caused us to ring the in-laws for help in absolute desperation as we were both going crazy and shouting at each other (in spite of a very positive sermon!). It probably would have got us home, but once we felt she wasn’t quite behaving according to Hoyle, we began to distrust her and each other and not listen to any of the three of us. Never mind, the in-laws came and rescued us – we were only about a mile away from home at that stage.
We used it again to find our way to the present house. It did get us here, but seemed to take us all the way around the mountains again (again, not quite literally). I’m sure Margarita knows what she’s up to, but she’s left us totally exhausted.

The church in the photo is St Mary, Attleborough - it's not the one we went to this morning, however.

London, part two

On Thursday morning we roused ourselves out of our jet lag and, with our friend, made our way on the bus to Regent St, where our bank is. Suddenly we were back in Korea again, by which I mean that someone directed us to the right floor in the building, told us how long we’d have to wait, showed us where to get a free cup of coffee, where the toilets were, and in general treated us as worthwhile customers. More than that, the person who saw us in due course was exceptionally friendly and had everything ready to go for us. (And she had just been speaking to her friend from Attleborough, where we were due to stay in a few days’ time with our relations!).
After that we made our way to the Southbank, because my friend wanted to show us the refurbished Festival Hall. We finished up having a very nice lunch of paninis with roasted courgettes, humus and mint – interesting combination. After this we had the first of our many long walks around London. I’d forgotten just much walking you have to do: there’s plenty of transport (buses, trains, tubes, etc) but that doesn’t mean you never have to use the old-fashioned process of one foot after another. Anyway, we walked along the embankment remembering places we knew from the past, and in general re-acquainting ourselves with everything.
The Tate Modern was new, and we headed for it. It’s an interesting building – must contain some hundreds of thousands of bricks – and is enormous. Unfortunately, the exhibitions I saw didn’t grab me greatly. I think it was that they just weren’t modern paintings of the sort that I enjoy: lots of stuff that gives modern painting a bad name, even though some of the artists, like Francis Bacon, are huge in the art scene.
The following day we wound up on the Southbank again (after having done a patch of time in Camden Town, which was crowded). We had some very large and tasty filled rolls (handmade, as it were, in a Greek/Italian? place in Camden Town). We watched a guy painting, very meticulously, the railings along the Embankment. I spoke to him and asked how much he had to do – he claimed ‘down to the mouth of the Thames’ but I think he may have been kidding. He said he’d only done two sections of the railings since he started in the morning; that’s how slow the job was. In view of the number of buskers in the area I told him he should have put out a basket for some cash. I felt there was something familiar about his accent, and said so to Celia. She went and asked him where he was from. Taranaki in New Zealand...!
Footnote to the last bit: we went to church this morning in Wymondham (pronounced Windham) with our neice and her two children. Of course, we met someone who was married to a New Zealander, and he turned out to be from Rotorua.

First London days - part one

Arrived in London late on Wednesday. Nearly didn’t get into the country because the customs official I met up with decided that I really was some ancient terrorist (something that I felt my passport photo made me look like) and questioned me pretty thoroughly about what I was going to be doing, whether I had any money, how long I was staying, whether I’d be working, whether I’d be bleeding the country dry or not and so on. Celia had gone through customs with ease, and we only found out later that I should have gone through with her. Instead I started out in a queue of some 200 people. After she got through (in the British line) she waved at me to move into another lane, and, after I’d finally figured out what she was on about, I got into a lane with no one in it!
Anyway, we got out of there, found our bags without any problem (which I regarded as a miracle in itself), and didn’t even have to go through any bag search or whatever. But then the fun started. Remember that we now carrying: a lap-top in a case with umpteen cords for cellphones, lap-top, Ipod and so on; Celia’s handbag; her backpack; my backpack (full of books and such); and pulling two suitcases which between them weighed 40 kg.
We discovered that it was better and cheaper to get the ordinary underground (from Heathrow) directly through to Kentish Town (where we were going) rather than the ‘Express’. This meant changing at Bank (if I remember rightly – things are getting hazy by this stage) and going onto the Northern Line. That would have been okay, except that at the changeover of lines we found we had to climb up two flights of stairs because there was no escalator!
Anyway, we got to Kentish Town and I pulled out my instructions for finding our friend’s flat. Somehow I missed the fact that it was only two blocks away from the station (at least we were going in the right direction) and as a result we were still trying to find the street several blocks later. Someone took pity on us and re-directed us back along the road, by which time we were at a point of exhaustion. It was very muggy (and remained so during our three days in London) so we were sweating profusely.
But! We finally got to the flat, dragged our bags down the stairs to the doorway, and voila! our friend’s son greeted us with great friendliness, even though the last time he saw us he was only four…

Korea to London

Forgot to say that we came across a chapel at Auckland airport, and sat in there for a while together, singing and praying out loud - since we were alone. There was also a prayer room at Incheon, but it was multi-faith, and had no focus: no cross, no nothing, just a blank wall at the end of the room. It looked a bit like it had been spare space, rather than a designed prayer room. The Auckland one was obviously designed as a chapel. The Incheon prayer room had a few shelves at the back. On them were a very small number of Bibles and Korans in various editions. And a novel by Kathy Reichs. I went in the room first, before Celia, and another man, a Korean, came in after me and bent over to pray. And his cellphone rang. So he answered - quietly, at least - and then prayed a bit more.
Celia told me that in the toilet there was something like gladwrap around the edge of the seats. If you pressed a button the old gladwrap rolled away, and a new lot rolled in! However, the gents weren’t so well favoured. On the other hand, the men’s toilet seats have a gap in the front; something that makes them slightly more convenient for men, I think, as a full toilet seat can be difficult to get everything comfortably situated on (!)
While we were waiting, we came across free internet for transit passengers. Celia was pleased, as I’d been tempted to use the computer in the hotel room, until we discovered it would cost about 20,000 won, which she worked out to be about $40NZ. So we got the same for nothing, and another bonus: I’d sent an email to the kids, and was just writing one to my granddaughter, when my son Ben popped up on the gmail chat. It was fabulous being able to type back and forth, and we did it for several minutes. I think this is a thing that’s making us feel not so far away from home. We have the means to communicate easily,and sometimes surprisingly!

On the way to Korea

I’m trying to write this over the Pacific Ocean - with some difficulty. Turbulence has started since I got the laptop out, and as well I’ve just managed to lose the paragraph I had written. Anyway, we’ve not long passed over New Caledonia, which wasn’t very visible, as there was a lot of cloud about. Nevertheless, the long white beaches and the bright blue waters inside the reefs were plain to see.
We’d had lunch not long before that, which for Celia and me was a great relief, as both of us had had breakfast about 6.30 am, and it’s now 3 in the afternoon. I had bought some Oddfellows (the last packet of ordinary ones they had on the shelf in Whitcoulls - the others were Spearmint and Strongmint which I don’t like so much) and at the same time had bought some top-ups for our cellphones (for some reason Vodafone couldn’t accept my ordinary credit card, even though I bought the top-ups and Oddfellows with it a few minutes later). While I was busy paying for the purchases, my precious wife was hassling me in the background, telling me how clever she’d been to prove that the card was working, and I left the Oddfellows on the counter. Of course she’ll blame my imminent dementia, but! (We discovered these a couple of days later in a different part of our baggage.)
So we had lunch, as I was going to say. And what a lunch! Wine was served with it, for starters - as part of the package. Celia had a Korean meal, with steamed rice and vegetables and beef and hot pepper - which came in a little tube you mixed in with your rice and sesame oil. She also had seaweed soup. (And her neighbour’s little container of salmon and potato salad - this was from a family who had brought a pile of food on board with them, so perhaps they weren’t hungry by that time. We’d been sitting here enviously smelling the wonderful aromas wafting across the aisle.)
We both had melon and pineapple pieces for dessert. I had a more European-style meal with pasta and beef and vegetables. Delicious. I think inflight food is always nicer because you have to wait for it so long. I had a small bun with Anchor butter spread on it - and the wines were NZ too.
At present we’re doing 896 kilometres an hour - that seems a phenomenal speed. But in spite of that we still have a long way to go: about the equivalent of a full working day According to the little map that keeps coming up on the computer screens we’re heading towards the Coral Sea at present, Cairns is off to the West, and Fiji to the East.
The terminals (one on the wall and one hanging from the ceiling) keep going all the time, either with advertising or clips from movies, or sports, or news - or our present whereabouts. We don’t have little screens on the back of the seats in front of us, unfortunately, but we can listen to our own choice of music via earphones plugged into the seat arms. However, these haven’t proved very satisfactory. The classical selection is very much top of the pops classical, and with all the noise from the engines, most of the time you can only hear the loud stuff, not the quiet.

The Trip Begins

The day started off with a heavy frost, but fortunately the roads were clear, and we had no real trouble getting out to the airport. The plane went off on time, after we'd said our last lot of goodbyes. A couple of guys who saw us hugging a son and a daughter and a daughter-in-law and a grandson said they wished they had someone to hug them goodbye. I offered, but they seemed to think that was going a bit too far.

By this time the day was beautiful and we had a smooth trip. There was some concern on the part of the hostesses early in the piece about a petrol smell that was obvious around the area we were sitting in. It turned out that a guy accompanying someone who looked like a wrestler (his name was Big Boy, apparently, and one of the hostesses said she was a fan of his), had some petrol on his shoes, and had to go and wash them. Celia noticed that the hostesses had a partly-finished crossword on the bottom of their drinks trolley, and said she had our crossword machine with her. They told us that they were trying to finish the crossword before the pilots, so we offered to have a go, and in due course got it done - after some making some false starts.

Libby picked us up from the airport after we'd left our two big bags at a storage place in the International section, and we drove out to her new flat - they only moved in last weekend. It's a two storey unit, one of about twenty identical attached ones, and it's very nice: lovely big open plan living room/kitchen, three bedrooms upstairs, three toilets (one downstairs in the laundry, one in the bathroom, and one in the en suite next door to that!). There's a garage, and an outside area at the front, but no grass. Although along the back of the units there's a long stretch of (very wet) grass, and a path leading down to the marina. Hundreds of boats moored, almost as far as the eye can see. Beside the pier at the end of the path there were dozens of little sprat-like fish leaping up above the water level and vanishing again. Further along there was a dredge digging great slabs of mud out of the water, and further along still was a curious device that took boats out of dry dock in the boat-builder's yard, on a kind of sling slung from a crane-like machine that slid along a track on wheels. Very cunning.

About four Libby took us to our friend's place, where we stayed the night. She managed to get a bit lost - although she's doing very well in the Auckland traffic - and while her trip there took nearly an hour, her trip home took about ten minutes!

SO Day

Tomorrow is SO Day - Start Off Day. We leave Dunedin about 9.45 am and fly to Auckland, where we'll spend the day with my daughter and her family. They've only just moved up there. Later in the day we'll go to the Young's house and stay there overnight. They'll drop us at the Devonport ferry terminal, and we'll get a ferry across to the quay, where we should be able to pick up a bus going directly to the airport.
We then fly off to Korea and stay overnight in Seoul. We don't have a lot of time there, because we leave again the next day, but we should be able to fit in a couple of hours in the area near the hotel, and get a little feel for the place. After our overnight stay in Korea (courtesy of Korean Airlines, who have to stop overnight, and therefore have to provide accommodation for their passengers) we fly directly to London. We've been told by some friends that we fly over the Arctic in the process, something the travel agent didn't mention. That will be interesting: as long as we're not asleep!
We arrive in Heathrow about 5 pm, English time, and will make our way to an old friend's house. Old in the sense of she's been a friend for a long time. She's the sister of the bloke who was best man at our wedding. Unfortunately her brother died suddenly quite a few years ago, so we won't be able to catch up with him.
After a few days in London, when we'll be sorting out our English bank account - hopefully all the correspondence we've been getting from them means it's all organised and we only have to pick up eftpos cards and such - and then on the Saturday we leave for Norfolk with my brother-in-law. He's coming down to London to pick us up.
On the Sunday we begin baby-sitting our nephew's house while he and his family go off for a holiday. We'll also be baby-sitting their year-old dog, which will be fun - and will assure we get out and do some walking, something we've been badly lacking in over the last few weeks.
That's the current plan; we'll let you know whether it all goes according to Hoyle!

Snow

Snow.

Just to let us know that it really is winter we're escaping from (on Monday) it's been snowing since last night. First thing this morning, the ground was covered, but it's cleared a lot and I was able to drive to town comfortably for a last lunch with Ben, (last before we go overseas - not the last ever). However, the rain and the wind are bitterly cold, and even standing for three minutes waiting for Celia after lunch was very chilly round the head.
We're going to have to wear winter gear as we fly out of Dunedin, and somehow metamorphose into summer gear when we get to Seoul. Might be a bit of a trick!
Celia's plan is to leave our heavy bags in Auckland airport overnight, when we stay there on Monday, and just use our backpacks for everything essential. We'll try and do the same thing in Seoul. The suitcases we have aren't too bag to cart round, but by the time you've got a backpack on and you're holding something else, carting a suitcase, even on wheels, is a bit of an issue.
Meanwhile, we're relaxing at my daughter's house, where I've commandeered the computer.

Champing at the bit

I'm at the point where I can't wait to get away, now. Not that I'm not enjoying being at my daughter's place; we feel at ease there, and it's not like we're 'visitors.' And the agents who are looking after the house have already rung twice about things; I passed the woman onto Celia the second time. She'll sort 'em!

I don't feel as though my house is home anymore – no doubt it will be once we're back and settled again – but in the meantime, we're in a kind of limbo, and still not thoroughly packed. At the last stages of leaving home, we still hadn't decided exactly on what we're taking, and so we have some clothes that we'll be leaving behind. It's hard trying to think about dressing for six months.

I don't remember having this kind of indecision when I first went to England, forty years ago. Being young, I probably ignored all my mother's advice about what I should take, and took things that I thought were important, such as books, and music and so forth. This time, the books are a bit thinner on the ground, and there's no music. But there is a laptop, a thing that hadn't been imagined in 1967, and there are clothes. Probably a better selection than I had previously, but still probably too much.

Last minute things

Last night we came to stay at our daughter's house, with her man and her three children. We exhausted ourselves doing the final clean-up of our own place, spending most of the day at it, with occasional interruptions, and pushed the last bag of stuff into the store room about six o'clock.
Just before we went to bed, Celia realised she didn't know where her glasses were. We looked through all sorts of things, and no sign. Of course, neither of us slept well - one, because we were in strange beds, and two, because of the concern that the glasses might be in the house still.
This morning we got up even earlier than usual and went back to the house. It didn't seem like ours anymore: so tidy and so uncluttered! Not a sign of the glasses anywhere, and to make matters worse, Celia couldn't remember when she might last have had them. We even opened up the store room and searched through the last bag of clothes that had been put in there, as well as amongst the bits and pieces. Hopeless.
She thinks she had them on at church on Sunday morning, but she wears them spasmodically, and it's not easy to remember - for either of us - when she last had them on. I wear mine all the time, so it's no problem! In the end, she decided to go to our eye guy, and see if she could order another pair, if hers didn't turn up. She could, but she'd need to definitely order them, not order on the possibility. So she did. And then she rang the insurance company to see what they'd do if they couldn't be found at all (which they still haven't been). They'd pay 75% of the cost of the new ones. That relieves the burden a bit!

Seeing each other

While in the midst of all the Skype stuff (talking through the computer rather than a phone) Celia has also considered the possibility of a Web Cam. One of her favourite occupations has been looking at the Sheringham (in the UK) Web Cam that’s focused on the car park. Sounds boring, doesn’t it, but to her it’s a way of seeing a little bit of home. And it changes every thirty seconds!
We haven’t gone any further with the Web Cam idea, since it would mean someone here would have to buy one, as well as us. One of the kids may have one that he’s never used, but if so, it would still mean everyone in the family would have to gather round at a certain time to show their faces on the computer. Think this is one to put on the back burner.

Counting Down

This weekend is our last in the house for six months. It's a bit scary, knowing that we're going to do the final lot of sorting out of the place out in preparation for other people to live here. This weekend will be a time for clothes-packing and clothes-putting-away; for making final decisions on what we take in that line and what we don't – and how much of my suitcase can be taken over by my wife. And then there's all the bits and pieces: medicines (of which we seem to have an abundance - because of our age); umpteen cords to charge up cellphones, the laptop, the MP3 player and so on; papers we need to take; bags for bits and pieces that we'll carry on the plane. It's all a bit mind-boggling. Normally, when you're only going away for a week or so you can just get on and assume you'll manage with what you've got; six months is a bit different.

The thought of sleeping in other people's beds for six months is a bit weird, too, and never having places to put things where they'll have any sense of permanence. The thought of not being 'home' for six months is strange. I've obviously become so settled that the idea of such a big change is almost too much for me!

And then there are things like needing to get up in the night to go to the loo. One of the women who used to volunteer in the shop was away from home once (when she was only about 75) and got up in the middle of the night – and walked into the edge of a door. She had a mark right down her face and chest, and wasn't well for months afterwards. I don't usually walk into things in the night (because I know where everything is) but in other people's homes it's a different story. And you don't want to wake anyone! As I say, I'm normally familiar with my own home, but one night I woke up, didn't quite bring my brain with me, and scrabbled against a wall trying to figure out where the door had gone – and it wasn't even the wall that the door was in. Fortunately such times are rare.

The nifty bedfellow comes from a StumbleUpon page.

Bearly Coping

The half a dozen teddy bears that we've got in the house (there are two more upstairs) have been ganging up on us. They want to go to England, and definitely don't want to be stuck in a room with all the bits and pieces that we're storing, for six months. They sit together with one of the large rugs wrapped around them, either watching telly, or muttering amongst themselves, and the other day, we came into the small lounge to find they'd written a note on an envelope: We're going to England, and we don't have to pack! I've tried to convince them that bears hibernate in the winter, so they won't even notice that we're gone, but they're not persuaded.

I'm not sure where all these bears have suddenly come from: there's Teddy, of course, who've been round almost as long as I have and has come back into view again after having been in hiding for years; there's Bill, with his little hooded jacket, his fluffy hair that gets in his eyes, and his please-love-me-because-I'm-a-pathetic-little-bear look – I suspect he's the ringleader because he thinks he's the most favoured. Balthazar, of course, just sits there being good and never saying a word out of place. He came to NZ from England with P G Tips, the scrawny and rather ugly little white bear who unaccountably went missing when the kids were quite young. He and Balthazar were in a trunk that got delayed on the way back from England, and I think we were more upset about not seeing them again than we were about the rest of the stuff that was in the trunk. And then there are a couple of other smaller bears who have come from nowhere: we think bears are breeding in the house.