We're off! We're off!

Twenty years or more ago, I began writing a children's opera, in which the children sang a rousing chorus, We're off! We're off to the Fantabulous Mountains.
The song is buzzing round in my head. This is the last post I'll be writing from Attleborough (certainly in the foreseeable future), and in an hour we catch the bus to Heathrow, and not long after get on our plane for Korea.
The phrase, mixed emotions, doesn't cover it. We had a family tea here last night with all the family connected to the people we've stayed with the most, plus another of Celia's brothers and his wife. Last Tuesday we said goodbye to another couple, and Celia's just been on the phone to both her sisters. We're feeling keen to get off yet know that we won't see any of these people again in any hurry - in some cases we may not see them again at all. (The older members of Celia's family are getting up round the 70 mark.)
Four of the great-nieces and nephews were here last night, and two of them went home in tears, apparently. One of the little g/nephews did an anagram puzzle of his family's names for us, as well as a kind of poem of the important things he's done with us, and a maze, in which I was stuck at one end missing the flight, while Celia was on the plane. Help Mike get on the plane, was the instruction.
Both the nephews were here this morning for an informal breakfast, so we said goodbye to them again; one of them prayed for us as well. We're going to miss all these people we've got to know while we've been over here, as well as those we've known before.
There have been times when we thought we hadn't had much of a time here, but in fact, when we look back and remember things, it's been a great time. The bad days are nothing compared to the highlights and the general times of just enjoying other people's company. We've been very well cared for by the family, and we've met dozens of people both here in England and on the Continent who were friendly and helpful. It's been rare to be rebuffed by anyone.
How much longer this blog will carry on after we get on the flight is a question. No doubt my inveterate writing fingers will insist on adding some more, and no doubt we'll have other things to say about our travels.
Meantime, we watch the minutes go by and keep breathing.

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.

Catching up

Spent our last morning in London in the launderette where the woman in charge, with some amusement, was letting one of her customers show us how to work everything. The women were all giving each other cheek and generally enjoying themselves.

Before we left London, we had a cup of coffee in a café run by a man who was more than a little off the wall. He sang, and he made ridiculous jokes, and claimed that the old woman assistant and the attractive young assistant were both madly in love with him. He had a voice like a door in need of oiling, and appeared to do far more talking than working. But it was fun to be there watching and listening.

Onto Northampton to see Celia’s two sisters and their husbands for a couple of days. This is the last time we’ll catch up with them and it was all a bit sad when we left. Watched the latest James Bond movie on DVD because my brother-in-law is a mad Bond fan, and has all the movies in his library. (When he came to NZ a few years ago he watched most of my son’s collection of Bond movies…!)

We also went to see Ratatouille, which Celia had been keen to see for a while – even though it’s an animated movie and she normally falls asleep during them!

Stopped off in Cambridge on the way back, a place we’d talking about going to see a couple of times previously but hadn’t ever managed to do so. It’s different to Oxford, which appealed straight away, but it has its own charm – and when we went exploring St John’s College (pretending we were students rather than tourists) we discovered just how pleasant it must be to attend University there. The buildings, dating from the late 17^th century, are certainly very pleasing to look at, and have been built to delight the eye. We didn’t explore a lot more (apart from a wonderful bookshop and the market) because it was getting colder and colder and a chilling drizzle was starting.

It's also a bit strange wandering around a town that has an area called Jesus.

And so back to Attleborough, by which time a cold that’s been hassling me for a couple of days decided to get itself into full gear.

A bit of a rethink

We’d thought that Celia’s foot had reverted to her old problem from a couple of years ago, but we’re now wondering if it’s not a reaction to when she was walking across the Cathedral Square (which is just a couple of blocks from our apartment) and missed seeing a step down at one point. She jarred herself badly and it may be that her foot is reacting to the mishap. In a way that would be better than if the heel thing had started up again. In a way.
Anyway, it’s caused up to rethink our options, and so it may be a good thing that we couldn’t book Madrid to Paris yesterday. We’ve decided to go back to England the day after Valencia week rather than heading up into France. Our concern was that with her foot being so sore to walk on, another series of walks with the full rucksack wouldn’t help things to heal. So we got on the Net this morning and rearranged our flight. It cost us a bit more, but it’s better that she gets ‘home’ to Attleborough as soon as practical, where at least she may be able to talk to a doctor who understands English.
Unfortunately it means we might not be making the fullest use of our Eurail Pass, but again, her health comes before that as a consideration. Our ‘landlord’ here in Valencia has kindly said we can go to another one of his apartments for the extra day at the same price as we’re paying here. It’s only five minutes away, so it shouldn’t be too much of a shift!

Different links

We went to the local Attleborough Anglican church this morning. Think I’ve mentioned visiting it before, though I can’t find the post at the moment. (It has the grand title of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the way, but I think is called St Mary's, locally.)

It’s full of history, as so many Norfolk churches are, and there is evidence everywhere of the many Christians who’ve gone before, from the faded paintings on the reredos to the almost as faded paintings high up on the wall above the altar; from the stones showing where people are buried beneath the stone floor to the extraordinary design of the ‘other’ pulpit (the one that was nicked from another local church, if I remember rightly).

There’s something about worshipping in a place that’s been inhabited by Christian brethren for centuries.

The other good thing about the Norfolk churches is that all seem to be open all the time; further north we found churches were more likely to be closed to the general public.

And, while I think about it, there’s the way England and NZ are so inextricably linked: everywhere you go you find someone who’s got a relative in NZ (think I’ve mentioned this before too). We were at the 30^th birthday party of our niece last night, and Celia spoke to at least three people who had relatives in NZ. This morning, after the service, we had coffee with a couple who’d travelled throughout NZ, and then met another group who all had connections, including one couple who’s son had studied at the Otago Medical School.

Home from the Holiday

Well, home in English terms. We’re back to base after our tenting/travelling trip. Both exhausted, perhaps because we travelled too much and didn’t rest enough. We’ll try not to make the same mistake when we go to Europe next month.

Our trip today was from Kidderminster to Attleborough, some three and a half hours drive if we’d done it all in one go. We didn’t, as both of us were very tired from last night, and anyway, driving that far in one go just isn’t the sort of thing we do very often.

We were tired because we had the heaviest rainfall last night that we’ve experienced while tenting. It poured, and poured – and did I mention? It poured.

But not only that. Sometime between three and four, the wind came up out of nowhere, with huge force, and we were startled to find the tent rocking back and forth, as though it was planning to take off into outer space. We thought it was going to do itself some damage, but nothing got broken, and the worst that happened was that some plastic plates and stuff on one of the tables inside the tent got thrown around, and wound up on the floor. Celia got up and rescued the laptop, which was in its bag in the front section of the tent – the part that doesn’t have an inner skin. Where we were, things were perfectly dry, amazingly enough, but the front section does tend to get a bit of water inside.

I got quite agitated about the tent doing its crazy house thing; started praying loudly, rather like the disciples on the boat when the storm blew up on the Sea of Galilee. Of course Jesus told them to cool it – after he’d dispensed with the activity of the storm. Celia did much the same, finding my agitation somewhat amusing.

It turned out that various mini-cyclones (that’s what the radio was calling them) flickered throughout the country last night: we may have got the tail-end of one.

Wrapped everything up this morning. It had stopped raining by then, but because the tent was so wet outside and the grass too, we stayed in our pyjamas until we’d got everything sorted out, and then went and had a hot shower. I cleaned my teeth, and went to put my dental plate in. For some reason it seemed to catch on one of my other teeth, and next moment there was a nasty little crack as I shifted it in my mouth. The front false tooth had snapped clean off the plate. Great.

We went into Kidderminster and found a denture specialist, but he couldn’t do anything till four in the afternoon. Decided that it wasn’t the end of the world and that it would be easier to get it done back in Norfolk, so I walked around today with a gap in the front of my teeth.

Got ourselves some breakfast – on a takeaway plate (Celia had seen the place advertised at the camp, and it was just across the road from the denture place), and bought some lunch for later too.

Photo on the right is from a site called Dental Distortions. The teeth bear no resemblance to mine.

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.

Roade

We arrived in Roade today, after a much lengthier trip than we expected due to spending almost half an hour moving at a snail's pace in an enormous queue of traffic. The cause of the delay was an accident on one of the turn-offs - the one we wanted to go on, naturally. And while we were crawling along yet another one of the current series of thunderstorms struck, pelting hailstones down on the cars, and sending lightning streaking across the sky overhead. We didn't much enjoy driving on the A roads (they're a step down from the M roads). Even though the traffic isn't going full bore, there are usually three lanes of it, with dozens of immense trucks roaring along beside you.
I'm not sure why anyone would call a place Roade; it's a bit like calling a village Streete, or Footpath. Be that as it may, Roade is pleasant little town (it's rather more than a village, as it has at least two pubs), and I went for a walking survey of it this afternoon. After my comments about bricks everywhere in Norfolk yesterday, it was interesting to see that here in Roade they use bricks still, but much softer in colour; they're rather more sandy than red, though often red ones are mixed in with the lighter colours to produce a mottled effect. And they use flat stones (I'm not sure if it's slate) in the same way the people in Sheringham use beach stones. The town is a real mix of modern housing and old ones restored. But interestingly enough, while in Attleborough (where we've been for the last week) there's a real uniformity of design (to my eye, anyway) with lots of fairly square two-storey homes, often joined to at least one other, here in Roade, the more modern houses have a variety to them. There's the same basic brick structure, but there are interesting things done within the mold.
The Anglican church is well cared for, and has a modern hall built onto the back end. Obviously people still go to church in Roade. (Norfolk is packed with churches, with a mixture of square Norman towers and round Saxon towers. Many of them are in a bad way - having survived nearly a thousand years.) There's a street called Tithe Lane that leads down to the church - a nice reminder of one's duties! - and the usual bunch of Roads that have identical names with Closes. We're in Hyde Close, and originally went to Hyde Road (next door) where we knocked on the door of the house we thought belonged to our rellies, only to get some poor woman out of bed.
As I was walking around, I kept hearing what I thought were trains. I was right, as I discovered in due course. Running through the middle of Roade is a four-track railway system, and electric trains go speeding past with great frequency. I stood on an old stone bridge and watched them zipping their way beneath me.
I don't know how easy it's going to be for me to keep up my blogs for the next week or two: I'm having to use the laptop without any access to wireless or broadband. Still, one of the pubs is supposed to have wireless available, so I may have to sit there and type away, and drink the local ale!

The advantages of relatives

We’ve either been staying with relatives or baby-sitting their houses since we got here, and that’s the way it’s going to continue till the end of August. As you’d expect that’s been great in terms of saving on accommodation. After August, of course, we might have to start paying our way!

But it has other advantages too. We have time to spend with people we only see rarely (some of them have been to NZ to visit us, some, particularly the younger generation, haven’t), and time to sit down and get to know each other better. Time even to spend helping with things like shifting a pile of roof tiles from the front of the garden – where the lorry dropped them off – to the back, beside the garage they’ll go on top of on Friday.

Roofs here are almost invariably tiled; some older houses are thatched, but obviously that’s not such a long term solution to roofing, though there are still thatchers around. And unlike NZ there are almost no houses with walls made of wood, or roughcast. Bricks are king here, and bricks are what houses are made out of. Bricks and more bricks. And more bricks. Bricks as far as the eye can see. The bricks in England will probably number more than the entire world population. I think I mentioned that the Tate Modern in London is made of brick: hundreds of thousands of them.

Even the houses in Sheringham, which have walls mostly made of the beach stones (the older houses, that is), have brick corners for support. It gives a very distinctive flavour to the urban landscape.

Another curious thing is that where we’re staying at the moment, in Attleborough, many houses don’t have a street address. They’re known instead by names: The Elms, The Grove, The White House, Casa Novo, and so on. It must be a nightmare for a new postie!

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.