Malvina

One of my regular readers wants to know how we came to name our Sat Nav Malvina.
It was a brief but convoluted process. We’d been calling our borrowed Sat Nav, Margarita. Our Sat Nav comes from Garmin, but I think initially I read the company name as Garvin. We couldn’t give our SN the same name as the previous one, so we came to call her Malvina, because of the V in Garvin, and because Malvina is the name of one of NZ’s greatest opera singers. Still confused? You should be!

Selling the car

Over the last few days we’ve had a bit of concern about being able to sell our car. We’ve put ads in the windows of the car and sat it outside the local supermarket. This was quite effective, as when I turned up to collect it (after having left it there for just under two hours) a couple was looking at it, and I was able to give them one of the signs to take with them. When Celia went back to do some shopping later she also found someone interested. However, nothing came of either of those.

I also advertised it online in the Eastern Daily Press (EDP), the big Norfolk-wide daily newspaper.

Out of this I got two calls, and as well as this my brother-in-law had an inquiry from one of the people he works with. So we were feeling as though we might get it sorted.

And we did. The second person to call, a woman from Norwich, wanted to check it out today, so we went to her home on our way back from Cromer, where we’d been staying overnight with one of Celia’s brothers and his wife. We found the house via our faithful friend, Malvina, and within half an hour the car was sold, and a deposit made on it. It’s going to be picked up on Thursday morning from Attleborough.

Hallelujah! This will also give us a bit of spare cash, as we were getting very low on funds.

October 09 holiday - first post

I've just introduced this latest holiday on my main blog- it gives a bit of background as to why we were on holiday in the first place.

We both flew to Wellington on Wednesday the 21st - on separate planes. This had come about because when we were booking online a few months ago, we had to book separately, because my wife was doing a multi-stop and I was only doing a return trip. Consequently, Air NZ's online system couldn't somehow see the point of putting us both on the same outward flight - or perhaps it was trying to give us the cheapest options - and we took 'em!

We actually asked the guy at the desk if we could be put on the same flight, but he'd had something unpleasant for breakfast, apparently, and didn't even give the idea the time of day. (My wife later told me her flight was half empty.) I put my suitcase through, and my wife put her rucksack through (one of those we carted around Europe in 2007) and we assumed we'd meet up with them later. The rucksack had the items of food we'd brought (we were going to be staying in Youth Hostels) along with the toiletries and some clothing, and a few other odds and ends.

She duly got on her plane - the one which would stop in Christchurch, and then arrive almost at the same time as mine, which left an hour later (!) - and I sat down and waited until my own flight left. Officially it took off late - by about ten minutes - but I still managed to arrive only minutes later than my wife, who was standing by the baggage carrel when I got there - waiting for her knapsack to arrive.

And then we both waited. My suitcase came through, but no knapsack. Finally a young man from the baggage section came over to see if everything was all right. No knapsack. Did lots of tapping on his keyboard, couldn't find why it had gone awol. Assured us that it would probably be on the next flight out of Christchurch, and if so, he'd have it sent round to the Youth Hostel.

We went to get the hire car; they came and picked us up and took us to their base, and then it was off into the Wellington traffic, using my wife's recently acquired iPhone with its GPS application.

This one got the name Frankie (his predecessor in England had been Malvina), and in general he was pretty good at guiding us around the country. I'll talk about the Hostel in another post, and finish off what happened about the knapsack.

I rang the baggage people back later in the afternoon as there'd still been no sign of the pack - and no word from them. Of course, I got someone else and we had to start all over again. Still no sign. Finally, about 10 pm that night they rang: still no sign.

We had had to get some more food in (fortunately the Hostel is across the road from a New World supermarket), and we had to get some more toiletries as well. Next day still no news, and finally, late on the second night in Wellington, we got a call: the bag had gone to Auckland and then onto Napier!

They were merrily chirping on about getting it sent back to Wellington when I informed them that we were leaving for Napier in the morning, and would appreciate that they didn't start sending it around the country again. So finally we met up with our food and toiletries and odds and ends in Napier when we arrived - at the youth hostel there. The boiled eggs weren't too healthy, but the cheese survived, as did the margarine and the rest of the items.

The joys of travelling. [Photos of this trip are on a smart card in Auckland at the moment; my wife took them with her when we split after our return trip to Wellington, so they may get added in later. The photo here was taken by Stephanie Anne (flickr.com) and shows a bed/room similar to the ones we had in the Wellington YHA.]

My Sat Nav says...

I mentioned a while ago that we’d bought a Sat Nav (as they call them here) - in other words a GPS - for finding our way around the country. We called it Malvina.
Firstly, let me say she's been invaluable. We’d still be trying to find our way out of some back lanes without her. And she's user-friendly and mostly up to date. However, she also seems to have a mind of her own. When we asked her to take us from one large town to another, she would opt for the faster routes in terms of A roads, even though there were often shortcuts she could have used. When we started driving round some of the lanes nearby, on the other hand, she seemed to think that we’d like to go everywhere by back lanes, and we’ve had a frustrating couple of days trying to convince her that she needs to think about the best route, not the one that’s of the same kind as the last one we went on. Much and all as we enjoy country lanes, because there isn’t much traffic on them, they aren’t necessarily the fastest way to get to some places.

I've had to alter this post slightly, changing the pronouns, as I realised that I was calling Mavlina 'it' throughout. Oh, dear.

Rochester and Braintree

Our trip back from Rochester took all day, but that was okay as we were just wanting to meander. We’d stayed at a Youth Hostel at Gillingham overnight - it was fine, a bit expensive, I thought, and very noisy (not helped by a baby who woke up several times during the night screaming, Mummy!)
We began our meandering by going back into Rochester again. Just a few hundred yards away from where we’d had the party the day before (at the Quaker Hall) we went into Rochester Cathedral. It’s a smaller Cathedral than Norwich, for example, but it has a more welcoming feel as a result. Not only that there was a choir there practicing for Matins, which was at 9.45. So we sat listening to the wonderful music in excellent acoustics, and then joined in Matins by sitting in the choir stalls themselves, just a few feet along from the singers. Apparently they were an ad hoc group. Celia had met one of them the night before at the Hostel, and she told us that they used to sing together in Southampton years ago, but because they’d all gone their various ways they only got together like this once a year or so, and this year they were spending a week singing in Rochester. Fortunately for us!
The cathedral also had an exhibition by Robert Koening in situ. It consists of a large group of figures all carved from lime trees - the trees had all grown in the area near where his family had come from, in Poland. The twenty or thirty figures, men and women, stand all facing one way with pain and hope on their faces. Their clothing is painting in simple colours, though the bumps and bruises caused by the sculpture’s travelling around Europe and England have knocked some of the colour away. There were four other smaller figures, done in greater detail.
We then went on to have a brief look at the Castle, which is literally just across the road. We didn’t go inside the building itself, as it cost more than we felt was justified at the moment, but the castle is still fairly intact given its age.
Set our Sat Nav to go and find the couple who had held the party the day before, to see them once more before we go. They have a house that by NZ standards is very narrow - one room across, and three deep, with presumably a similar arrangement upstairs - and it’s set in a street of similar houses. Still, its value has more than doubled since they bought it, so that’s a plus.
Onto Braintree, where Celia’s niece and her family live. She was surprised we found the place so easily, but Malvina had taken us there fairly straightforwardly. She was in the middle of finishing of an assignment for some higher degree she’s doing, so we didn’t stay too long. We may go back there when we head off to Luxembourg next month. (We’d had a bit of a panic about our possible European travels, wondering whether we needed visas or not, but after some calls today found that any places we’re likely to go to we don’t need them.

Couple of quiet days

We haven’t done a great deal that’s unusual over the last couple of days. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to make my bloggers more productive, income-wise, than they are at present; Celia went to Norwich with her 11-year-old great-niece, and hada ball buying clothes for our granddaughters back home; we had a family meal - a Chinese, that cost us a lot in weight-watchers points; I played cricket very badly with my great-nephew, who plays cricket very well; our Garvin Sat Nav continues to take us from A-B and in general we don’t go down the wrong road too often. Although one of the turns we’re supposed to make when coming back from Attleborough to Wicklewood is a few hundred yards beyond the one we have gone down - twice. And the wrong turning (where Malvina cries out in mock alarm: Recalculating!) takes us miles out of the way.
Attleborough (two of them) and Attlebridge and Attleton Green are the only places in the UK starting with the odd word, Attle. According to one online dictionary, the word means: Rubbish or refuse consisting of broken rock containing little or no ore. It’s a mining term. (There now, wasn’t that interesting?)
I’ve been playing the piano again, because there’s a rather-out-of-tune piano here and I can practise as I please. It’s not a piano made in the fair village of Roade by the Pianoforte Company run by Mr Cripps; nope, it’s an Eavestaff made in London, a make I must say I’ve never heard of. Last night we had a bit of a sing around the piano, working our way through some old jazz classics and some modern love songs. The others enjoyed it, even if the piano-playing and the singing were both a bit shambolic.
Just a postscript: I wonder why Buckley’s Canadiol Mixture is such a popular search term? It’s always been one of those names I’ve delighted in; compare it to the modern names for cough mixtures: Robitussin, for example. What the heck does that mean? Does it grab your emotions the way Buckley’s does?
And the ad that goes with Robitussin is awful. Mummy, if we say Bless you when someone sneezes, what do we say when someone coughs? Robitussin.
Robitussin? Good grief.
I've just discovered that Buckley's Canadiol has a rather delightful site - with an ongoing competition where you can send in a photo of your 'bad taste' face, or a story about taking sour medicine.

Heading for Birmingham and the PodCamp

We drove to Birmingham today, after having spent most of the morning cleaning up the house we’ve been staying in for a month. Celia doesn’t do a cleaning-up job by halves, so the place is probably better off than it’s been in months! (Nah, my niece is a pretty thorough cleaner too…)
The trip to Birmingham was supposed to take two and a half hours, and would have done if we hadn’t got slowed down in a couple of place. All in all it was a pretty straightforward trip, even if our Sat Nav did seem to be taking us an awful long way south before she sent us west. But we had a couple of mishaps with reading what she said, and had one detour while on the M1, and then another couple when we got to Birmingham city itself. We didn’t either of us see much of the city because we were so focused on Malvina that we had little time to notice anything else.
Anyway, we’re ensconced in a hotel out in the suburb of Edgbaston, which seems to be on one edge of the city (there’s a Welcome to Birmingham sign just along the road). Edgbaston has seen better days, I think, and a major rebuilding program must be due to go on. More than a dozen grand old three-storey houses on the other side of the main road are due for demolition, and the hotel we’re in has seen better days by far. It’s a bit of a rabbit warren. After we’d parked the car round the side of the building, we went in the front and were then taken by the proprietor along two or three corridors and through the dining room (one table and four chairs, tv, fridge, two microwaves), through another corridor and found that our room was right beside where we’d parked the car.
Later on we went out and found a Chinese (sorry, Cantonese) restaurant, and ordered takeaways. While we were waiting we were asked to sit in an area lower than the main restaurant. It smelt dank and musty, and there was no carpet on the floor. Turned out that with all the rain this summer, the place has been flooded out, and they’ve had a real job drying it.
I’m in Birmingham to go to the Pod Camp - not sure what it’ll be like, and whether I’ll enjoy it at all (I’ve lost some of my initial enthusiasm for the idea), and I’ll probably be the oldest there. Time will tell. Celia is going to check Birmingham out on her own tomorrow, which will probably mean we’ll go home with a good deal more than we came with. As it was we loaded up the car when we left the place we’d been staying in for a month.

Broads, Cripps, Roys

Don’t think I’ve mentioned that we went to Wroxham - by accident. We were intending to go to Riverside in Norwich, and put in Riverside Shopping Centre on our GPS only to discover that Malvina (as we’ve named her - after a famous NZ opera singer) thought we meant the RSC in Wroxham. That was okay, as Wroxham is on ‘The Broads’ as the many waterways around Norfolk are called, and Celia wanted to go back and check them out. She’d sailed on them as a schoolgirl. They are lovely: houses built right down to the water’s edge, and boats galore. We debated hiring a boat for a week and exploring them, but that’s still up in the air at this stage, as it’s quite costly.
Anyway, the other interesting thing about Wroxham is that in the distant past a small corner shop named Roy’s once existed. Roy must have made a great deal of money as his name is now on a dozen shops, all within spitting distance of each other. The Riverside Shopping Centre is part of it, and there’s a DIY, a garden centre, a food hall, and you name it. All of them have “Roy’s” plastered over them. Obviously Roy was pretty canny with his money - and his buying up of properties. Anyway it gives Wroxham a very prosperous feel.
Roade has had a similar thing. Sir Humphrey Cripps began his working life as a very much underpaid factory worker. Over the course of his career he was able to buy out the Pianoforte Supplies business, which was at the time a very large company in Roade, and later took to making metal car parts when the piano scene quietened down. He owned an island in the Caribbean; he bought up Waterford Crystal in Ireland, and he owned companies in Canada and elsewhere. All in all he was a very wealthy man, He was also a very generous man. He built an entire secondary school; funded umpteen things at universities, old churches and the like (including doing a good deal of restoration work at the Roade Anglican Church: St Mary Virgin). There’s an old people’s home with his name on it up the road from where we’re staying, and no doubt there are dozens of other things that he paid for. The great blessing of a truly wealthy man is that he can give most of his wealth away.

The photo was taken at Horning, along the road from Wroxham - we forgot to get our camera out in the latter town.

Two hectic days

Two full-on days. We drove back down to Northampton yesterday, aiming to arrive for lunch at 12.30 but were already running late by the time we left, and finally got there at 12.45, which was pretty good considering that there’d been delays on the road. Nothing like the last time we went, though.
It was my oldest sister-in-law’s birthday, and Celia had made her a birthday cake, and bought a bunch of food to take. Far too much food, of course, but that’s always the way with any Crowl celebration. We stayed with my other sister-in-law and her husband, again, and I finally remembered to return the key we’d borrowed last time. It was a blisteringly hot day - the hottest we’ve had since we’ve been here perhaps - and major change after all the rain.
The birthday party went off well, though most of them had to retreat in out of the sun because it was too hot. It wasn’t much cooler inside, however. At the end of the day we offered to take my nephew back home to Milton Keynes. This set up a chorus of ways we should gon to take him there (he doesn’t have his own car at present), and we had to leave in the end, and rely on our Sat Nav as there would have been no consensus from the other four. We went via a back road rather than the M11, and that was much more pleasant, and quicker!
Came home to our hosts and watched Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s first outing as director. More of that on my other blog.
Slept in this morning, and finally got away about ten. Arrived home at Wicklewood some ten hours later!
We wanted to take a quieter route than the one we’d come down on, and also see some other places. Headed to Wellingborough, which was a pleasant town, with op shops, a church with a spire in the Market Square, and a market in progress. In the church there are a number of new stained-glass windows - new in the sense that they were made in the 20th century. The creator of a couple was John Piper, and these are startlingly beautiful in a modern way, when the sun is shining through them. The woman who greeted us and talked to us about the place said that the minister who’d been there for some forty years (if I remember rightly) had had a way with getting people to part with their money and help improve the church. Consequently it has a mural over one altar painted by a Dutchman called Hans Feibusch (the woman said she’d never got to like it, even though she’d been longer than it has), the several stained-glass windows and several other modern works. Unfortunately the church is in a bad way outside, with the stonework deteriorating rapidly.
We went on to Oundle - don’t ask me how to pronounce it - where all the houses and buildings seemed to made of the same light-grey stone. There was such a uniformity about the colour that it almost didn’t seem real. Probably a very pleasant place, but that stage it was very hot again, and we didn’t stay long. Another church with a spire. (The Norman and Saxon towers aren’t much in evidence around here.)
We were going to go to Peterborough, but didn’t make it due to the fact that we decided to look up my cousin who, with another woman, runs a Christmas tree business. She also works at a full-time job. It took us two or three attempts to get to the place: for some reason our Sat Nav took us to a completely wrong place, recommending we pull into a private driveway where three houses were situated. Two little dogs gave a sort of effort to warn me off, but it was too hot for them to be really bothered. The man gave me fairly clear instructions, and we allowed Malvina to offer to put us on the right road as well, and eventually we got to the place - after first driving up a farm road that ran straight into a field.
My cousin wasn’t home when we arrived, so we walked around the house - and found a photo of one of my NZ uncles was up on the wall, which confirmed that we had the right place at least. And then, after we’d had a cup of coffee, my cousin suddenly turned up as we were about to leave, telling us my NZ uncle was coming along behind with the other woman - on bikes. He’s only 82.
Finally, after this, we headed straight home. It was a couple of hours of travel, and finished up taking us back down the road we’d come from King’s Lynn on Thursday.