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

Turned 44 last week, on 1st May, hope that my midlife crisis is at bay... Chris shook her head at the sight of me dancing around the local maypole late at night on my birthday. I've got to admit, I like being in a place that has a public holiday to celebrate 1st May (May Day). Lots of people dancing around maypoles, and Morris dancers flinging their handkerchiefs around… 

George (Chris's dad) gave me tickets for the three of us to see the show "Miss Saigon" at the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre at the end of May.

Rob (Chris's brother) also had his birthday last week. His dinner party was at a little pub called "The Peacock", when was hidden away amongst a maze of tiny country lanes south of Birmingham. The name of the lane was Icknield Street - one of the original roman roads that cross this country in amazingly straight lines. Roman soldiers were amazing in the way that they marked out such straight marching roads - despite many hills and valleys. Looking at a map of the whole of the UK, they are very obvious, as all the modern roads curve all over the place.

We survived Easter, and didn't eat too many Easter Eggs - but we can't get marshmallow ones here! And all the hollow ones weren't properly joined, so they were broken in half as soon as you open them. Missed out on the pleasure of having to smash into it, to start eating it…

Chris & I went to a painting 'demonstration' with a very witty presenter, and I won a print of one of her paintings. She has a technique in acrylics of very quickly doing paintings - although they're not really our style. At the evening, Chris found out about a painting workshop on the weekend - a whole day of painting with others, with a male model. After I had checked that he was to be fully clothed, I gave my ok! Her painting of him is really quite good. She is now going to painting every Tuesday night - that will be a great social activity.

The old electric milk carts still exist, exactly as you see them in Coronation Street - silently gliding through the streets, in the wee hours of the morning.

It's funny how the little things of life catch you out - eg we're used to our NZ rubbish collection being done on Tuesdays, when Monday is a public holiday. But here they collect on the Monday regardless. Also, the post is delivered more than once each day, so even if there isn't any mail first thing in the morning, there may be later in the day. We don't have the traditional mail slot in the door, as most British houses do, we have one of the few letterboxes that I have seen here.

I was really sad to hear of Possum Bourne's accident and death last week. I met him once, when he borrowed the wheels of my car. True! At that time he was racing Suzuki Swift GTI's, which were identical to my Holden Barina GTI. For one race he was doing, there were strict homologation rules, i.e. the car had to be exactly as per factory specification, but he no longer had the original wheels - so he borrowed mine for a couple of weeks.

It has just been announced by Buckingham Palace that the Countess of Wessex is pregrant. I thought he had a twinkle in her eye, when we saw her at the concert the other night! Yes, 'tis true, Price Edward and Sophie were at the Birmingham Symphony Hall for the performance of Verdi's Requiem. We waved, but they didn't see us… We had cheap seats, on the 5th level (climbing ropes supplied - shown with yellow arrow on the picture), which were right above the orchestra and choir. So we had a fantastic close up view of the show, and the sound was fantastic - of course very spatial, with our being virtually overhead! The Birmingham Symphony Hall is a wonderful building, although the red and chrome interior design will probably date quite quickly. (click on the picture to zoom in).

On Monday 5th, we returned there, with our two young nephews Tom and Michael. The hall hosted an 'organ fun day' (no rude jokes please!), at which the kids could try making pan pipes, trumpets, etc, workings of the instrument were explained, and they played a variety of music to demonstrate their 6000 pipe organ to the full. Wasn't as much 'fun' as we'd expected, we'd expected the MC to be in a silly clown costume or something. Well, it gave us an excuse to have lunch at McDonalds anyway!

I have registered for work with another agency: ManPower, and enquired at another 'Office Angels', but I think that's a bit too Farrah Fawcett for me…

The fine weather here has meant that we have done more 'rambling' - on our own and with the local rambling group. We arrived a couple of minutes late, only to see the group of over 60's striding off into the distance - took us about 10 minutes to catch up with them! It was great walking with locals, who know the history of the place, giving us a greater appreciation of the area in which we live. The grand union canal is even closer to where we live than we had thought (only 10 minutes walk away), so several of our walks have been partly along the 'tow path' where the horses would walk. Some of the bridges over the canals still have grooves worn in the top surface, where a hundred years of roles being pulled over them have worn down the brickwork. (click on the picture to zoom in)

(click on the picture to zoom in)
The bluebells are now out in the woods and in peoples gardens. They are indeed quite a pretty sight. 

Even more dramatic are the fields of rape seed - used to make Canola oil. They have a really vivid yellow green colour, and the fields of them are huge. We walked through some while rambling around Hatton Green last weekend. The beginning of the walk saw us getting quite lost, and quite annoyed that the walking map didn't have road names on it! So there was much scratching of heads trying to work out where the heck we were. Oh yes, and some lingering at the antique 'kissing gates'. 

There is a little red robin that lives in the hedge outside George's living room (Chris's Dad). Every afternoon he/she pops out and has a bath in the little bit of water on top of the rubbish bin. Cute!

Much drama here recently, with the court case for the 'who wants to be a millionaire' fraud trial. The documentary about the case was fascinating, with those coughs being far too obvious to be an accident. Amusing that the first advert during the program was for cough mixture!

We are now booking our flights to return to NZ for Aidan & Rachael's wedding on 14th February 2004. We plan to be in NZ for about 20 days, perhaps from 10th Feb to 29th Feb. Hope to catch us with everyone we can in Auckland, Hamilton and Rotorua. Just not sure yet about traveling via Asia, with SARS quite a worry…

Cripes - that's a long email, hope I'm not boring you… If anyone no longer wants to receive these weekly rants and raves from an estranged Kiwi, just let me know & I will take you off the mailing list!

Cheers, Geoff

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