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

UK News June 2004

Summer is upon us, it makes it so much nicer when traveling on the train, as the foliage has grown and covered up all the rubbish which has been thrown over fences. They're a grubby lot in the suburbs which my train passes through. However, this summer turned out to be not as nice as that which we enjoyed last year...

Like NZ, we've had some periods of surprisingly heavy rain and flooding. A stream developed in Georges back garden, coming from the grounds of the closed down psychiatric hospital next door - Monyhull Colony which was built on the site of Money Hill Hall (Hall is old name for a manor). So I got out there and dug a drain in the mud like the big kid that I am!

The countryside is again full of brilliant yellow fields of rape seed, which is harvested to extract canola cooking oil. The colour is so bright that it almost hurts your eyes looking at it. The region around Solihull 'Warwickshire' is very similar looking countryside to the Waikato. Many dairy & sheep farmers have found it more lucrative to convert to oil crops. What's not so good though is that most of this crop is genetically modified...

While enjoying the moderate summer here, I got a glimpse of the NZ weather by watching the Hamilton Fieldays on web camera, it looked like utterly disgusting wet windy weather!

The tiny bit of lawn outside our flat provides a sample of nature. One morning we were watching a squirrel and a crow fighting (or playing?) in the garden. The squirrel would hide under the bushes and rush out when the crow landed on the grass to feed. The crow would then jump up and chase the squirrel, which would then retreat under the bushes again. This went on for about 10 minutes, with much screeching and squealing. We attempted a vege garden by planting two tomato plants by our front door, amongst the NZ hebes and wrought iron fence. They are not growing well, and we probably won't get any ripe tomatoes from it this year.

We had been meaning for months to contact another side of Chris's family, and discovered that two from Canada were visiting in June. So we caught up with Marilyn & Fraser Reynolds, their Mum and other members of their family at a country pub. 

Spice Club
Keen to develop our social circles and go to some interesting events, I have joined an organisation called the Spice Club. Chris reckons it's mainly for single people, but I'm a bit more optimistic than that! They put out a huge monthly newsletter with a wide range of events, which can also be seen on their website. I've been to four of their events now, Kenilworth Village Walk, Rugeley Power Station, Photography In Natural Light, and Central Birmingham Walk.

Our first activity with the Spice Club was a guided walk on 6/6/04 of the village of Kenilworth. It's somewhere we would never have thought of visiting on our own, but found it to be a wonderful little place when shown it's delights by the very talkative guide. It has some very impressive castle ruins, another of the grand castles which was destroyed as an act of spite. Among it's curiosities was a pub which was called the 3 virgins, renamed the 2 virgins (we can guess what happened...) but then miraculously became 3 again. How the heck did that happen! We learnt lots about thatching of roofs, including that it costs $100,000 to rethatch a house roof. If you ever see a thatched roof with straw peacocks on top, have a look at which way they are facing. Tradition has it that if they are looking away from each other the thatcher was not pleased with the owner of the house - so it is a snub!

Another highlight of our trip to Kenilworth was being pulled over by police for parking in a bus stop to look at a fountain. Fortunately the officer was bemused by our taking interest in the fountain - declaring that it was a dreadful waste of public money "yet another white elephant for the millennium". It was made of a 4 ton perfect sphere of marble, sitting on top of a very powerful jet of water, making it freely rotate - very easy to push it with your hand. It's the only time we've had any dealings with the constabulary here, haven't ever seen any breath testing being done, very seldom see any police/traffic cars on the motorways, very seldom see anyone pulled over. And yet the roads and public seem quite well behaved (around these parts anyway!).

We started at the Copt Heath wharf in Solihull (by the M42 motorway) and headed south to Lowsonford. The first afternoon was quite sunny & we moored for the night near the Fluer du Lys pub. The crew knocked into shape fairly quickly, everyone had a go at steering and working the locks. Our evening meal at the pub was a bit of a disappointment, with the limpest salad we've seen for many a year. They responded with free dessert for everyone, so that cheered us up (as did all the wine we had). Chris took this great photo of a passing swan.

The following day we headed south on the Grand Union canal, then swapped over to the Stratford canal at Rowington (Kingswood Canal Junction). We had the choice of going through a tunnel or over a viaduct, opting for the latter. Our trip took us over three! First a very short one, perhaps 20 feet long. 2nd over a road at Wootten Wawen and 3rd the longest one at Edstone which crossed a valley, road and railway. 

On the same weekend, our friends from Reading, Lynda & Dave, were in Birmingham for a 'magic competition' at the NEC. So they stayed in our flat and joined us on the Sunday night for the Balti meal, at Zebs restaurant in the SparkBrook area (the 'Balti Triangle').

I'm really impressed by the amount of fund raising and effort put into charities here.  Every month we have a dress down day at work and are 'fined' £1 for the privilege. One of my work mates Simon Hartley is doing a charity funding raising Trek to Peru, and I was pleased to help him by auctioning my services in an "auction of promises"  for £25 - to give a lesson on how to use a digital camera. We arranged to do this one evening after work, and the people enjoyed the lesson so much that they forgot about our dinner in the oven, which burnt to a crisp!

But I'm not happy about the 'professional' charity workers who work the street talking the public into signing up for automatic bank payments to a charity. These people receive a large commission for signing people up, and the charity receives quite a small portion of the donated sums. It's the same with some of the charities in NZ which make phone calls for fundraising. The Fair Go TV programme exposed these a few years ago, sometimes only 30% of the donation goes to the charity, 70% to the organisation making the phone calls. Disgusting.

Jazz Club
Went with some of Chris's workmates to a local Jazz club, Ty's Jazz & Spice, in a very suspect part of town (ironically on the intersection of Priestley Road). We arrived at 7:30 and almost got told off for arriving too early! We discovered that the show started at 10, with most customers arriving after 9. We had expected a dark smoky club atmosphere, but were delighted that hardly anyone was smoking in the dining/stage area – smokers were going to the bar or outside to smoke - thank you! 

Euro Football cup - the whole country is in mourning - after weeks of incredible patriotism, thousands of St George flags flying from almost every car & truck, flags hanging out of office windows, it all crashed horribly when wonderboy Beckham missed a vital penalty kick. This photo shows beautifully the desolate mood of the country. Perhaps it's a good thing, as the AA calculated that he amount of fuel wasted by the additional drag caused by flags flying on cars at $40,000,000 of petrol! Even court cases were adjourned when the final was played, with judges declaring that the jury would not be capable of concentrating on the case, when their minds were elsewhere.

The patriotism has taken some silly turns though, with some councils stopping their workers from flying St George flags on council trucks as they might be considered racist! This reminds me of Auckland City Council no longer funding a nativity scene at Christmas time, and hot cross buns having their crosses removed in case they offended non-Christians.

We spent a rather nice weekend in June at Whittlebury Hall, a modern hotel, spa and conference venue near Milton Keynes. It's a very popular spot with the motoring fans, as it is right next to the famous Silverstone motor racing track (including it's own private access walkway to the track). A sumptuous bar was lined with trophies, awards and autographed clothing from grand prix racers. Shoosmiths was having a weekend retreat for the partners of the firm, and they wanted an IS expert to be on-site in case of any problems with PowerPoint etc. I was the only volunteer, figuring it would be a free weekend at an exotic location! By paying a supplement Chris was able to come along, and we spent many happy hours swanning around the swimming pool and the grounds, whilst I stayed on-call via cellphone. Included was a sumptuous dinner in their restaurant with rather nice wines. 

Working in a brand new office is mostly a delight, though it was dramatic when one of our floor to ceiling windows shattered. This brought back memories of an Auckland businessman who fell to his death from a building when he leaned against the glass. In our case, the glass shattered with a vertical 'tear' down the middle, though it stayed intact due to it being laminated and 'safety glass' (breaking into tiny fragments just like a broken car windscreen). It was quite a drama getting the glass replaced, causing much disruption to our staff and those people working on floors below - the window was onto the 8 floor high atrium).

Among the curious pieces of architecture in Birmingham is the ever present BT tower, a square concrete edifice towering above the central business district. It is far higher than anything else in the city, and is home to some peregrine falcon - which enjoy the high roosting position. It is as prominent as the Auckland Sky Tower, but not accessible. Rumour has it that there is a top secret nuclear bunker 500 feet below the tower, from the cold war years.  The recent innovation is coloured lighting for the tower, which changes colour according to the weather forecast! It harks back to ye olde farming days when the farm clock was a central point of reference for the villagers. This reminds me of the "internet toaster" invented by UK University boffins of a few years ago - which imprinted on your toast an image (of sun, dark clouds, or rain drops), depending on the weather forecast for that day.

In the UK, paying a TV license ($230 per year per household) is compulsory. Fortunately this provides for some excellent TV (without adverts) and radio programmes. Terry Wogan seems to have been on radio forever, having amused more than one generation of listeners.

Chris is really enjoying that we've joined the gym. She's going swimming about 4 times a week, and I'm managing 2 or 3 times a week. The gym is part of the Solihull Marriot Hotel, has a small pool, steam sauna, dry sauna, spa and gym with bikes, walkers, treadmills, rowers, steppers and our favourite - the elliptical walkers. As you can see from the swimming pool photo above, she's looking really great!

Low point of June 2004 was George's health, with his suffering from a collapsed lung (twice). He was feeling short of breath, so we called the doctor to visit him at home. She came within a couple of hours. She wasn't sure, but recommended that he go into hospital for an assessment, and that we use an ambulance rather than we take him in our car. There was a 2 1/2 hour wait for the ambulance, then a 6 hour wait for assessment. It was quite late at night before they decided to admit him. The treatment for the collapsed lung was promptly done in the assessment ward, cutting a hole in his chest so that the air could escape from the chest cavity. When his lung collapsed again two days later, they opted to treat it with what we initially were told was some type of 'super glue' but in fact turned out to be talcum powder! This simple treatment has a very powerful effect - the irritation of the powder being sucked into the hole in the lung causes the lung tissue to clump up and form a barrier. A few days later he was discharged. We counseled him that he really wasn't well enough to live on his own just yet, and so he moved in with us for 3 weeks.  Our coming to the UK was principally to be here to care for him in any way possible, and we were pleased to be able to provide this support for him. That's why we moved from a 1 to a 2 bedroom apartment - so that we would have room for him and visitors. It was a very exhausting time, especially for Chris.

All the best, thanks for your emails - we love reading them!