Geoff & Chris in the UK     Letters & Photos: Previous Next

UK News April 2004

the birthday boy

Our most important news: Chris is recovering really well from her operation. The lab report gave the all clear, so that’s a relief. She goes back to work on Monday 17^th May. In the meantime, she’s getting very bored and restless. In the last few days, she's started dabbling with painting again, (and has joined the gym/swimming pool!). We're just so thankful that we took out medical insurance last year, meaning that Chris was able to go to a private hospital, with her own room, and a greater level of care than the NHS could have offered. We were certainly impressed by the thoroughness of the cleaning does every day - every surface was cleaned every day, a welcome sight in a country where MRSA kills thousands per year.

Perhaps I've been affected by worry over Chris's health, or just busy at work, but I've found this months newsletter harder to write, my muse has been missing... My writing was becoming a mechanical record of who, what, where. Let's see if I can do better!

While in NZ, meeting up with as many friends and family as possible, it dawned on me why writing this newsletter has been so important to me. I've warded off home sickness by keeping an emotional connection with you, via my writing. Even though we can seldom talk, I know that we're in your minds from time to time, as least when you read my ramble. So we've not become strangers due to the 12,000 miles between us. Well, that's my theory anyway...

For Chris’s birthday on 25^th March we went to a pub at Lowsonford – the Fleur de Lys. This pub has very recently reopened after refurbishment – as a smoke free pub. We applaud the idea of smoke free restaurants (quite rare in the UK), thoroughly sick and tired of breathing others’ cigarette smoke. We’d been to this pub before, sited next to the canal, with a kids playground for Geoff & nephew Michael (photo) to play on. This pub has a reputation for wonderful pies, though they have changed their ‘recipe’, so they are now presented as a plate of stew with a lattice of pastry sitting on top. Still nice, but not as good as they used to be.

And just to show that romance isn't dead, I bought Chris a new set of saucepans. Never have I known a domestic appliance to be so well received! In truth, they're the best ones (Marks & Spencer) we've ever owned, and will have to be shipped back to NZ when we return. Chris raves on about the even cooking that the heavy 'encapsulated' bases gives - especially on our gas hob which has been a pain.

I had a relatively quiet birthday on 1^st of May. We went out to the ancient Bear Inn at Berkeswell, one of our favourite places. One of Chris’s work mates came along with her husband, Sheila & Jeff. We drank NZ champagne (woops… champenois), one we’ve not had before – “Bluff Hill” from Montana. 

On the Monday following, which was “May Bank Holiday” we went to Charlecote Manor & Deer Park (designed by Capability Brown) in Stratford Upon Avon to see some May Day celebrations. We finally got to see people doing a dance around a maypole, intertwining the coloured ribbons. Charlecote is a huge manor house, now acting as a museum. The stables were full of wonderful old horse carriages, the massive laundry and kitchen were left almost as they would have been in their hey day, and the house even had it’s own brewery. The property is famous for William Shakespeare having been caught poaching deer there. I do think it’s a wonderful thing that the UK has a public holiday in celebration of my birthday!

Spring has now sprung, we’re enjoying light evenings and drives in the country. Tiny lambs are seen bounding around the paddocks, and masses of daffodils line the country roads (and on roundabouts), along with tuplips and other spring flowers. The squirrels have woken from their hibernation, crows & magpies are building their nests, and everything is growing at a fast rate. Trees that have been barren for months are virtually exploding into leaf. I've even enjoyed cutting George's lawn!

We have returned to walking around Berkeswell, which we first visited with Lynda & Dave Stiles. The Church there dates from 1200, with the original Normal period crypt underneath. The church warden told us about the Easter celebrations the Church holds with the local community, including ‘Mary’ on a donkey riding from the town green to the Church, going down to the crypt, and "Surprise! Jesus isn’t there!". In the accompanying village, there’s oddities including a set of stocks with 5 holes.

Spring has sprung, and we’ve thrice been walking amongst the bluebells at Hay Wood. That's where Chris took the photo of me, at the top of this page "my simply beautiful photo of my simply beautiful man". Every time we've been there, we've seen deer wandering around. They're quite shy, and so small that we initially thought they were dogs. 

When I started work in July, there were about 20 staff. Now there's 40, so it's quite a lot busier, and things like photocopiers breaking down nearly every day. I do the training of new staff in all the computer systems, and provide ongoing coaching and support, as well as problem solving & liaising with our system suppliers.

We watched a documentary about ambulance crews in London attending incidents of people falling underneath trains “One-unders”, nearly 40 people per year suffer this grisly fate. Usually these are suicides, but there have been incidents of people pushed into the path of oncoming trains. Ugh! When trains zoom past a station, they make quite a tail wind - so it does pay to be standing well back from the edge...

On 22^nd April, it was really nice travelling on the train to work. A lot of the train track is on elevated ground, so you get an interesting view over the back yards of houses, backs of factories, alongside canals and through areas of woods. The back yards of terrace houses can be quite interesting to look at, very narrow and quite long yards - some beautifully gardened, others massive tips of rubbish, miniature trains, fish ponds, all sorts of things. The sun streamed in through the train windows, illuminating the pale faces of the sun starved poms... The winter has been quite mild, we luckily missed the worst bit in February when we were in NZ. We have had only 3 days of snow and about 20 days of frost.

Soon after Chris came out of hospital, I drove her to her Dad's place in Druids Heath, and then caught the bus to work. Definitely not as nice as the train, congested, dirty. But it's still novel for me to be on a double decker bus, at the very front of the upper deck gives a great view. (except when there's a bus accident - a common occurance in the city of many buses, low bridges and trees). You see so much more from a bus than when in the car, especially of the architecture of old buildings. At street level, these buildings have been stripped bare when shop windows are installed, but above that, the buildings are mostly left in their original design. Birmingham was obviously a very wealthy town in the 1800s, evident by the ornate design of most of the old buildings. Beautiful brick and stone work, carved window arches, all sorts of intricate details that is so seldom seen in NZ buildings. The building owners must have had a lot of pride, and even competitiveness when it came to design of buildings during the prosperous days during & after the industrial revolution.

I'm really into people watching. The trains are quite a fascinating social study. Different classes of people on the train, gents in flash suits, pensioners with their shopping trolley, the occasional bike rider with their bike on board. Oh, and at the station - the desperate smokers sucking like there's no tomorrow, trying to have as much of the cigarette as possible before the train arrives. And then just throwing the butts on the ground or onto the railway line. Yuck...

St George’s day was celebrated in April. Hundreds of St George’s Cross flags were flying around the town (including quite a few on car aerials), St George & the dragon displays in the town square; quite possibly this will become a public holiday in the future. By comparison, Anzac Day has zero profile here (except a very small item in the newspaper about no royal family members attending any Anzac ceremony this year, and hearing that the Australian Prime Minister had made a surprise visit to Iraq to be with his troops for a ceremony).

Interestingly, some people complained that celebrating St Georges Day was a form of racism. Now that's political correctness gone horribly wrong... All nations should be able to have some celebration of their culture, as long as it is sensitive and inclusive. This is England after all!

Singapore Sling
30ml Gin
15ml Cherry Brandy
120ml Pineapple Juice
15ml Lime Juice
7.5ml Cointreau
7.5ml Benedictine
10ml Grenadine
a dash of Angostura Bitters

Shake with lots of ice
Serve in a tall glass
Garnish with a slice of Pineapple and a Cherry

Sit back, with a big bowl of cashews, in an elegant room, with a piano player to entertain you. Very nice.