Spot the Canadian

Back in February, I blogged about snow in a mild climate. Well it has snowed again here in southern England and once again there is chaos on the roads. I will cut slightly more slack for yesterday, when it rained in the afternoon which slowly turned to snow as the temperature dropped. That, on top of the snow that has been around since Friday made for very slippery conditions. People in the nearby towns abandoned their cars and walked the couple of miles back home, rather than spending another several hours in stopped traffic. I've read accounts of people taking over an hour to move 200 metres down the road and four hours sitting at the bottom of a hill with plenty of others stuck in their cars for company.

Once again, I was one of only two people who cleaned off our sidewalk. It surprises me how ingrained it is into me to shovel off the snow, but it is. The only other person I saw removing the snow last week? A woman sweeping the snow away from the front of the pharmacy. She used to live in Germany, so once again the old connection pops up (read my other blog post if you don't know what I mean). As I'm the only house that has clean sidewalk, if you live in Cookham, it might be fairly easy today to spot the house where I live, hence spot the Canadian.

I know when I walk down a snowy street I find myself alternately thanking and cursing the owners of the house I was walking past, depending on whether they have bothered to clear their sidewalks. I'm not bothering to curse at anyone, but I am feeling slightly smug, thinking that people might be inwardly thanking me for my consideration of them. They may be thinking I'm a fool to have bothered, but I will continue to take pride in having a cleared sidewalk. As long as it remains a novelty of once or twice a year at least!

Dark and Light

There's several things that I don't understand about the UK, but the one that plagues me the most is why they insist on being in a different zone than most of the rest of Europe. Right now it's 4:30pm here and with the rain, it's horribly, horribly dark and depressing. If it was 5:30pm, like it is in France and Spain, due south of here, it might be almost tolerable. But no, being an hour later means the sun sets an hour earlier.

Actually, it's in summer that this bothers me the most. On June 21st, the longest day of the year, the sun rises in Dover at the excruciatingly early hour of 4:36am. In Calais, a mere 34 km to the south-east and for the purposes of my rant, close enough in longitude and latitude to be the same, it rises at 5:35. Does this seem fair? Birds and small children don't understand clocks, they understand the sun is up and therefore you (that is, ME) should be up as well. Nearly all of Great Britain is in longitude line with France and Spain, which both use Central European time. Why doesn't Great Britain? WHY? Why make such extraordinarily early sunrises in summer and early sunsets in the winter? It's hardly like this country gets moving at the crack of dawn.

Mission plan

We have a mission. We have the attack clones, now we have our mission. We've decided while we are here in Britain, to try and spend the holidays that take place in this country visiting the various British major island groups. So far we have been to the Isle of Wight and to the Inner Hebrides; specifically, the Isle of Mull. That takes care of two of them. What do we have left? Well, the Outer Hebrides obviously, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkney Islands in Scotland for a start. If we get through all of those, we can start to work on all the little "Firth" groups up there. The Isles of Scilly and the Islands of Furness in England. Anglesey in Wales and then the separate islands of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Oh, a visit to Northern Ireland too. I think I've covered the major ones, because there are thousands of little islands around the British Isles. But if I've left something out, please let me know. I am after all, an uncivilzed colonial who doesn't know any better and I will need to add any missed ones to the list.

Why the mission? Because I think it's a good way to get to know the country we are living in. We might be here for just another few years, we might end up spending the rest of our days here, but either way, I wouldn't like it if at the end, I couldn't say I had seen a variety of places around the country. Our families live far away, so that will always slow us down from exploring locally, but local exploration does need to be done.

So if you have any great tips or ideas of when to visit any of these places, where to stay or the address of your great-aunt Bessie who would love to have cake and tea with us while we are visiting near her, let me know. The mission has started.

The 2nd Invasion Force

Sorry I was so quiet over the summer. It was a busy time, with lots of long-term visitors and also the birth of our next clone/colonial, Mitchell. He's a wonderful little guy and I will post some recent pictures in the next day or two, but I'm guessing most readers of this blog will have seen pictures of him already, hence my lack of urgency about this.

I have lots of ideas for new posts, so assuming I can find some time, you should see semi-regular updates from me. Today I'll just leave you with something that local readers of the blog might find interesting. The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead (I do get a kick out of living somewhere "royal", even if no one issued me with a crown when I moved here) is hip and up-to-date with the latest technology. They have two Twitter feeds; one for events: http://twitter.com/rbwm_events and one for the borough: http://twitter.com/RBWM. I've just signed up to them, so their usefulness has yet to be proven. None the less, I think it's a great idea.

Even better than Twitter feeds though, is the Cookham page on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cookham/116477699826. It's of course not working for me right now, but it's probably a temporary Facebook glitch. This has been a good source of info about things in Cookham, along with the excellent website they already have and which you can find by following the link in the right column.

So with this short post I hope to be back to blogging. Hope to see you here again soon.

A Package to the Future

We are redoing the floors in our house, replacing the carpet with new floor boards. G and his dad found a few pages of newspaper under the boards in the living room dated May 31, 1974. It's from the Maidenhead Advertiser, the local once a week paper. The pages are quite interesting. Let me quote you one of the ads of a house for sale: 

"COOKHAM DEAN: This charming semi-detached cottage is situated on high ground ina semi rual area, overlooking orchards. Complete renovation has been carried out, including a new kitchen and a new bathroom. Two bedrooms, bathroom, lounge, dining room, modern fully fitted kitchen, ample space for a car, large gardens. Central heating. £15,000." Just so you know, a house described like that would now go for around £320,000 pounds today! 

The ads for help wanted are good too. They advertise specifically by gender if they want, even listing a different salary, depending on whether you are male or female. An audio typist (female) with Black & Decker would have earned £26.34 per week. Part-time help at Marks and Spencer earned 52 pence an hour. They did have the benefit of a 3-course lunch for only 5p at least, amongst other things.

We thought it was kind of nifty to find these things, so we decided to make up a time capsule to put under the floor before we lay the new boards. I was pretty keen and eager with this and if we had had more time or thought of it earlier, I would have gotten all high-tech with the container and found lots of fun stuff to put into it. But the boards can't wait and we didn't think of it earlier, so what we have will have to do. Here's the letter I put into it, minus some personal details:

"April 28, 2009

 Dear Finder,

 I am writing to you from the past. How far in your past I can’t say, but past it definitely is. We are laying new floorboards in our house (address) and after finding bits of the past under the old boards, thought it would be a fun idea to leave some more history for others to find. I don’t know if it will be us to find it in 4 years, or some total others to find it 40 years. I just hope you enjoy the information and things we’ve provided for you to get a glimpse into our lives and the world of 2009.

 We are a 3, soon to be 4 person family. My name is A. I’m 37 years old and was born in Canada. My husband’s name is G. He’s 30 and was born in Australia. We met and married in Munich Germany when we were both living there and moved to the UK in October 2006. Our daughter is Lena and she is 2 years old. We have another child due at the end of July and I feel a bit sad that I can’t include any information about him (we were told it’s a boy after having my 20 week ultrasound scan). But the floors can’t wait until then to be finished.

A bit about what is happening in the world today. The main story of today is the start of a scare about swine flu. Over 100 people in Mexico City have died so far and cases have been confirmed in the U.S.A., Canada, the U.K., Israel and New Zealand, among others. So far, no one outside of Mexico has died of the flu, but the World Health Organisation has raised its pandemic threat level from 3 (where it has been for ages due to possible risk of bird flu for the past few years) to 4. The max is 6, which is global pandemic. I’m not worried yet, but I did pick up a few extra groceries and disinfecting hand gel today, just in case. When people in places other than Mexico start to die, then I will start to worry. The really potentially scary thing about this flu is that people from ages 20-50 have been the ones who have died, not the very young or old. That’s the age group who died in the 1918 pandemic, so it’s something I will be paying attention to for the next week or so.

Our hobbies right now include gardening, cricket, music and cooking. We love living in Cookham, as we find it is a peaceful village, quite different from the hustle and bustle of London. We often go for walks along the river, or up the hill to the pub, The Jolly Farmer, where we enjoy a pint or two and then head home.

I’ve included an inventory list on another piece of paper to help you identify some of the things in this time capsule. Please try and contact us when you find this, we would love to hear from you. Here are our contact details at the moment.

email addresses: a@gmail.com, g@gmail.com, l@gmail.com (no, Lena doesn’t write emails at the young age of 2, but depending on when this capsule is found, she might be a better contact for the future)

website: http://cloneattack.blogspot.com

I hope that’s enough to find us. Enjoy this little slice of history and good luck with your lives and future."

Included with the letter was the inventory list, a current picture of the 3 of us, the grocery order list from Tescos that was delivered today, the first few pages of The Daily Mail and a central bit about St. George’s Day, just past. (We aren’t regular readers of The Daily Mail, which is generally considered to be fairly right in politics and conservative in beliefs. More they had the best freebie giveaway out of the papers on the weekend. It has some information on the swine flu and some current sports news.) A brochure for Rebellion Beer Co. Our local microbrewery just across the river in Marlow Bottom. Some pages again from the current issue of The Maidenhead Advertiser, including the news from the Cookhams, house prices and some help wanted ads. And finally some coins. Some Aussie and Canadian ones since we are, and some British and Euro coins. We figure there's a good chance one of the last two won't exist anymore at some time in the future, so it could be worth something. 

It all got put into a box that arrived today in the mail from Munich (thanks for returning the books Inessa, you are far more efficient than I ever will be), then wrapped it in plastic and tucked it under the boards. Tomorrow it will be nailed in and within the next few days, sealed off until an unknown time in the future. Here's a picture of it just before it got put under the old boards. 

I'm actually pretty excited about this, and hope that it is eventually found and that we are all still around for the future finders to locate us. I'm in a good place in my life right now and to get a reminder of it at some point in the future is something to look forward to. 

Buried Treasure!

Today was rather exciting, as we found buried treasure in my garden! My father-in-law was helping me dig over the allotment and he found an old coin. The date on the coin is 1735, which makes it really old in my colonial eyes. I cleaned it up a bit to have a better look at it and as much as we can tell, it's not a British coin. Here's a couple of pictures of both sides.
You can see the date at the bottom of the coin, 1735. Above it looks like three letters, Η Γ Α. Above that looks like it's less clear, but looks like a fancy A, with the middle cross bar extending past the angled sides, followed by possibly an F. 

This side is far more difficult to decipher. We think the bit to the left of the corrosion at the top might be a bird head and neck, with a wing on the right side of it. But it might not be, it might be a scroll, it might be anything. This picture is actually pretty good, you aren't missing anything in the photo that we can see in person. 

So if anyone out there has ideas of what this coin might be, or where to research it more, please leave a comment! 

EDIT: Through the power of the internet and my supergoogling friend, Babs, we have found that the coin is a Russian Denga. Not worth a fortune, but an interesting find. What is even more interesting is to ponder how it ended up in an allotment plot in Cookham??? 

A Glorious Week

The past 7 days have been absolutely spectacular spring weather. It's been sunny and warm every day. It's still only spring, because as soon as you are out of the sun you can feel there is still a nip in the air, but out in the sun you would think it was late May rather than late March. Lena and I have been enjoying the backyard and also trips up to the park and the allotment. Lena is much more into the allotment this year. She enjoys digging around with the little trowel. I have a toy one for her somewhere which I should find as sometimes I need the trowel and she's not quite willing to give it over. The hoe is also something she enjoys; by pretending it's the see-saw and singing Margery Daw while on it. I'm very impressed at how well she can sing it. I'm also happy to say she has no fear of bugs or worms or anything, whenever I find a worm to show her, she wants to have a "little talk" with the worm and give it a kiss. One day after being up at the allotment and putting in potatoes, I told her to tell G what we had planted. She happily told him, "We plant worms!" 

To me, it's unusual to get such a long period of time with steady good weather here in the UK, so I have really been enjoying seeing the sun everyday. Coming from one of the sunniest parts of North America, (Alberta gets more sunshine hours per year than Florida) it makes it easier to get things done and to get out and about when the sun is shining. Of course, now that I've blogged about it, it will likely rain to biblical proportions or descend into the next ice age or something.

Review: Eats of Eden in Bourne End Flowerland

I really don't want to give this review because it's a bad one and I have been really hoping this place would be a success. But it's not. 

Eats of Eden has both a cafeteria and a farm shop set-up within the Flowerland garden centre. I don't have any complaints about the farm shop and often buy bits and bobs there. In fact, I heartily recommend the great selection of bread from the farm shop. This review is exclusively about the cafeteria. 

The atmosphere is quite bright and cheery inside the shop. It's well-lit and has nice solid tables with wooden chairs to eat at. There are magazines and newspapers on the back wall that you can borrow and read whilst enjoying your meal or beverage and there is a children's play area too. Unfortunately, other than a table and chairs and one push-the-beads-along-the-wire type toy, there is nothing else in the play area. There is a black chalkboard, but no chalk. There is a TV, but I've never seen it on. There is a big plastic bucket that at one time might have contained toys, but now is empty. It's a bit of a shame because the area is nicely set up, but it didn't hold Lena's attention long with nothing to do there. 

The service from the actual personnel is a bit lackluster. Twice I have stood in front of the hot food and had to wait several minutes to be served, despite staff having seen me. When served, everyone was pleasant enough. They have an assortment of different sauces all easily available and on Sundays when they are busy, I have seen pitchers of water and glasses out for customers to help themselves. However, several of the sauces had a crust on them like they had been out for a very long time. I'm sure they probably refrigerate them overnight, but it wouldn't kill them to put some plastic wrap on top to stop them from getting crusty and looking so unappealing. 

The real let-down is the food. It's very mediocre. I wouldn't call it bad really, but it's institutional food. The first time I ate a meal there was on a Sunday and it was a bit late, so I thought perhaps we were just unlucky with the timing. The last time though, we were the first people to be served for lunch and it was the same. I had salmon the last time and it was dry, even though as I said, we were the first people served for lunch. The side dishes of broccoli, carrots and chips (I will give them credit for having 6 various sides to choose from and a help-yourself philosophy to them) were very so-so as well. Even Lena, usually a chip fiend, left a couple untouched. It wasn't so bad that I didn't finish it, as I said, it was just mediocre. But at the prices they are charging, I can go somewhere else and either get pretty good food for just a pound or two more, or no worse food for a pound or two less. 

So my rating:

Ambiance: 2 For a cafeteria, it's nicely set-up. Shame about the children's area.

Service: 1 At a cafeteria, I expect a bit faster service and the crusts on the open sauces isn't nice. 

Food: 1 Edible, but that's it. And overpriced for what it is.

So a poor rating of 4 out of 9. We won't be eating there again. Perhaps a coffee/tea and cake are within the realm of possibility, but certainly no more hot food. And if I just need something to eat, I'd rather go next door to the farm shop and get some of their nice bread or pastries. 

Snow in a Mild Climate

This week it has been snowing all over in the UK. And this is actual snow, not just what Canadians would dismiss as dust. Monday, February 2, was a big downfall, followed by another load overnight to wake up to on Thursday and now today it's snowing again as I type. It's pretty warm still, hovering around zero, so it's not going to last forever. But it was enough snow to build a snowman on Monday and it's been cold enough that until yesterday that he held his shape (although he did look like he was doing the Limbo as the head tilted backwards with the melt). Here he is in his full glory:

 

It snows so infrequently in the southern parts of the UK, and it usually melts so quickly, that the country is really unprepared for snowfall. I understand that it's a silly waste of resources to have a fleet of sanders and snowplows when they get used at most once a year, more likely every 3 to 4 years. None the less, I find how the whole country shuts down because of snow quite amusing. There was about 6-7cm when we woke up on Monday morning and every school in the area closed. If that were the amount of snow that would close schools where I grew up, I would have stayed home from mid-November until April. 

I also know I'm the only Canadian or North American who lives on my fairly long street, as our sidewalk was the only one that was swept clear of snow first thing in the morning on the days it snowed. It must be ingrained in my system. I belong to a mail group for parents in the area and there was a mail this morning from another Canadian woman, suggesting to people that they clear their sidewalks of snow as well. I wrote back to her as I thought it was funny that all the Canadians in the area were out there cleaning snow. She said she received several responses from Canadians and Germans, all who had cleaned off their walks and were the only ones to do so. This made me laugh even more, that the Germans did it too. The two countries I've lived in previously have obviously had some impact on my behaviour.

So if you still have snow in front of your house here in England, "be nice and remove your ice". I'm sure everyone walking past will appreciate it. 

Going with my gut

One of the negatives of living as an expat means that your extended family usually isn't close. Some people might actually view this as a positive, but they tend to be wrong. If for no other reason that we can't take advantage of Lena's grandparents for babysitting opportunities. It's hardly like we are total socialites with a busy events calendar, but there are occasions when it is an adults-only affair, or we would simply like a couple hours together without having to include a near 2-year old in the conversations.

The first time we used a babysitter it was on a recommendation from a random person on a local parents' email group. We've ended up using her many times since, but the first time it was really a case of her showing up, us spending 10 minutes talking with her, then walking out the door to leave our small sleeping child in the hands of an unknown person. This didn't bother me that much actually, for a couple of reasons. One, we were only a 5 minute walk away, so could be home easily in case of emergency. Two, I think I'm a fairly good judge of character and don't need that long to make a decision about someone. I have made mistakes in the past, but these are rare.

I think for lots of parents, this must be something really hard, to be able to leave your child in basically a stranger's hands. Of course you don't have to live in a foreign country to face this situation, but it does make it more likely. I can only hope my judgement remains accurate in the future for any new babysitters.

First of the Culture Clashes

Lena is starting to talk quite a bit nowadays and this is great. But is presenting me with an interesting question to ponder.

She spends most of her time with me, so she is learning most of her language from me. And I don't say things always the way the Brits do. I've mentioned before about bilingual baby vocabulary, and now I have a bit of toddler vocabulary. When Lena gets dressed, she wears socks, a shirt, panties and pants. Least she does when I dress her, which is at least 5 out of 7 mornings. G puts socks, a shirt, pants and trousers on her. So Lena says panties and pants.

My word for her outer clothing is G's word for her undergarments which is also what the Brits say. Pants. Not a big deal, but knowing how kids (and adults) are, it will be noticed that Lena talks about pants rather than trousers. And I'm wondering if I should start calling them trousers, just so she doesn't have problems with this later on. Don't misunderstand me, I am more than happy for her to pronounce tomatoes "to-MAY-toes", but I don't want her to be the butt of any toilet humour over pants. I know that it could be an issue, as I've had 1st-hand experience.

On our trip last year to Scotland, I got drawn into a conversation with an eight-year old girl on the ferry back to Oban. She was chatting quite happily to me, telling me that she was off with her parents to buy new clothes. I asked her what she was buying, "Are you getting new pants?" Upon the fit of giggles that burst out of her, I realised my faux pas. Despite saying with much more emphasis, "I mean trousers. TROUSERS," it more or less brought the end to our conversation. God forbid I was a man and someone had happened to overhear that tidbit of conversation; I would have been locked up.

I don't want Lena to have to face teasing over saying that one word differently. Kids can be cruel, and I also know that children can get picked on for any reason, or lack of reason. But I don't think she needs to hand it to them on a platter either.

Beer, Glorious Beer!

We were in Munich a couple of weekends ago for another visit. G had to go for work, which he does on occasion. It just happened that this occasion was also during Oktoberfest. Last year was the first year time I missed it after 14 years in a row. Last year I didn't mind, but this year I really was pining for it. Oktoberfest is not for the faint-hearted, or is it for a quiet tete-a-tete with a friend. But neither is it only about the beer. Sure, that's the image most people have of it, but it's also a fun fest where families can have fun on some rides. I will be honest though, and admit that it wasn't the fun fest carnival rides that I was pining for. So when G said he was going to be there for the Munich Hash House Harriers Oktoberfest weekend bash, I decided I should go along too.

Munich always has a great atmosphere during the 2 weeks of Oktoberfest. There seems to be a sense of anticipation in the air, people are walking around wearing traditional Bavarian clothing of Dirndls for the women and Lederhosen for the men. There are lots of tourists and they are pretty excited. Well, when they aren't already drunk or nursing hangovers, haha. Actually, if you only do Oktoberfest, you have to work really hard to get a hangover, as they stop serving beer at 10:30pm and close the tents at 11pm. If you are sensible, you go home at that point, get a decent night's sleep and don't feel too bad the next day. Of course, not everyone is sensible.

Anyways, we had a great time at Oktoberfest, seeing the Hashers and seeing our friends Dee and Martin, who kindly put us up despite jet lag from their own very recent trip. I took Lena on Friday morning to the Fest, meeting up with some other new moms I know. It was funny being there as a parent, you certainly see the thing through different eyes. Lena was very keen to go on the rides, which I indulged her in, as it's not like we will be there every year.

Speaking of beer, I just baked Beer Bread tonight. A very simple recipe actually. 3 cups of self-raising flour, 340ml of beer and 3 tablespoons of sugar. Mix enough to wet everything, whack it in a loaf tin and bake at 190°C for close on an hour. This recipe will obvious vary in taste depending on which beer you use. I used Carlsberg because that's what we have (reasons given below) and found it okay, but in need of tweaking. With this mild beer, the 3 tbsps of sugar made it a bit too sweet. It's a nice quick bread, but to me it didn't really taste or feel like yeasted bread, which was what I was craving. But again, as a quick bread, it was okay. If you make this, I'd like to hear how it turned out and which beer you used.

The reason I used Carlsberg is we *still* have several cartons of it after having 2 big events back in May and June this year. The last one was G's 30th birthday party. The problem we have is that we keep estimating alcohol amounts based on the parties we had in Munich. Now, that doesn't mean all our friends in Munich were lushes who drank like fish. Okay, they are, but that's not why we overestimated here (just kidding folks, you aren't really lushes. Well, not ALL of you). Living out in the countryside, at least half the people came by car to the party, which cuts out a drinker. A lot of the people we invited were also from our NCT group, so with a little toddler to look after, no one is going to drink as much as they might otherwise, simply from lack of time and opportunity to get a new beer! Plus I think that women in the UK drink more wine than beer than the women in Germany (I noticed the same in Australia too), so yet even fewer beers drunk. With so much beer left over, G has being doing his best to finish it off and I've been helping him on occasion too. But there's enough to try out any other lager-based recipes I might come across or any recipes someone reading this blog might care to share.

New Blog about Town

For anyone who would like to know more of the history of Cookham, a fellow blogger, James Hatch, has set up an interesting blog called Historical Cookham. James is a bit of a windbag on the Cookham forum (sorry James), but the posts on his blog are worth a read. A good perspective into Cookham 60-120 years ago. Oooh, I correct myself, there's a new post from yesterday that talks about the area 300,000 years ago! Heh heh heh. Anyways, certainly worth a look.

Missed the Grand Prix Race

I'm very annoyed that I missed the Cookham Gravity Grand Prix today. Lena had a long nap, which she very much needed, but it meant that by the time she woke up, it was nearly over. G was playing cricket, so I couldn't go without her. What made me very annoyed is the fact that I missed it last year too! I was very ill on the day and couldn't go. G managed to go and take some photos, so a couple of pictures from last year's Grand Prix to give you a feeling for the event and for me to console myself with.

Next year to make sure I make it, I might just have to get a team together and enter the damn thing!

Review: The Royal Oak, Paley Street near Maidenhead

We went to dinner at The Royal Oak earlier this week. The Royal Oak is partly known for being run by Nick, the son of Michael Parkinson. In case you can't be bothered to click, Michael Parkinson used to be a famous TV interviewer. I never saw any of his shows, other than his final goodbye program. I've seen more of him doing ads for some sort of retirement scheme on TV than anything else. Still, according to Wiki, he's a keen beekeeper, something I really admire, so he must be alright. But I digress - back to the restaurant.

The restaurant is what I would consider to be your typical old style English pub, but more restaurant than pub nowadays. It's nicely decorated with original artwork and photos on the walls and has nice clean lines to everything. The bathrooms were very very nice, a spot in restaurants that is often overlooked. No table cloths on the modern tables, which makes for an interesting change.

The place was very busy when we arrived, we had to wait for our table, but were given the menus and a chance to order a drink while we waited in seats in the front. They were a bit slow in taking our drinks order, but the drinks themselves came quickly enough. We were shown to our table a little while after placing our orders and getting our drinks. I had scallops with celeriac cream and a hazelnut dressing as a starter and my companion had duck, chicken liver and pistachio terrine. Both starters were good, the scallops were very well cooked, very tender from their light cooking. The terrine was also very good, but unfortunately the grill-toasted bread that was served with it was burnt on the grill marks, which totally overpowered the terrine. Eating it without the bread was much nicer. The grill unfortunately proved to be a problem with my main as well as I had ordered the Angus steak. After a few bites and tasting nothing but the charred marks of the grill from one side of the steak, I knew that something was amiss. Somehow, the grill must have been overheated or something, because both the bread and the steak tasted burnt from being on it. They didn't look burnt, but they certainly tasted it. G. had ordered sea bass and it was extremely good. As I wasn't enjoying the steak, he kindly offered to trade with me. After he took a bite of the steak, he also said it tasted burnt. At this point I finally knew it wasn't just me being a bit fussy, the steak was burnt. We sent it back, with which the waitress apologised profusely and did seem honestly concerned. She offered to bring another main or some more side dishes. We had enough to eat from the mains and decided to leave a bit of room for dessert instead. Desserts were burnt raspberry cream (G had his tongue firmly in his cheek when ordering that I tell you) and blackberry trifle. Once again, delicious. It was a real shame about the steak, because the rest of the food was very good.

So my rating (see here for my personal ratings guide):

Ambiance: 2.5 The atmosphere was good as I said, and the bathrooms knocked it up a notch.
Service: 2.5 Everyone who served us was friendly and efficient. I did think we waited a while to place our first drink order while waiting for our table. But the problem with the steak was dealt with professionally and an offer of a complimentary dessert and coffee was immediately put forth.
Food: 1.5 This is the sad bit. The Royal Oak deserves a better food rating than this. And although I can accept it was an anomaly, especially considering how good the rest of the food was, I can't ignore that I had to send my meal back.

So despite the problems, a good rating of 6.5 out of 9. I feel that another visit would cause the rating to go up, so I will link if I go again. For a special evening out, but with a casual atmosphere, I certainly would consider The Royal Oak.

The Royal Oak, Paley Street website: http://www.theroyaloakpaleystreet.com/



P.S. I have been to more than the few restaurants I've reviewed here. But due to unusual circumstances of our visit or more likely, lack of time to post, I've not put any others here. I will try to do more though in the future.

The Littlewick Show

So I've finally made it to another show, after being at the Thame Country show last year. We went to the Littlewick Show yesterday. My favourite bit there was the traditional gardening and baking competitions. Some of the baked products looked very nice, but to be honest the vegetables on display were nicer. I was very impressed with some of the carrots, onions and leeks that were there. The size and quality were very good. Even if I got myself organised next year, I doubt I would even place, nevermind win in some categories. But it might be good for a laugh next year, so we'll see. The baking competition should be easy enough to enter. I mean, they even give you the recipe to follow for 2 of them. I'm not saying I would have any chance of winning, but I could at least probably produce something that looked edible with just a couple of days of work. Something I can't always say even after months in the allotment!

Grand European Tour - with child

Once again, we have been on holidays. This may seem rather excessive to some, but I always say everyone makes their own choices in life. We live in a small house, only have one car and live well within our means. We choose to spend our money on travel. Others make other choices and that's their choice. Plus, if we didn't travel, we'd hardly ever see any of our family or friends. So this trip was a trip around Europe to see friends scattered around the continent. We were in France, Switzerland, Germany and The Netherlands. Only Italy was missing for the classic Grand Tour. We took our car and did around 3720 km or 2310 miles. We were gone 16 days in total. Sounds a bit insane to most people, but the trip went exceedingly well. No major meltdowns along the way, we saw and did lots. Some tips if you think you are crazy enough to try it yourself.

Our daughter was 19 months old for this trip and still takes a long nap every day. So we tried to plan most of the driving to happen over this nap so that she didn't get too bored. Children nowadays are so strapped down into their seats, it's hardly a wonder they get bored, despite all the distractions. When I was a kid, I could move around, change position, fight with my sister and stretch out for a nap which helped make long journeys easier. As we went through the trip, we saw that so much driving would never have worked without these naps. So if your kids are past napping, I'd reconsider so much driving. Maybe some things like DVD players or such would help keep them occupied, I couldn't say at this stage.

We tried to break up 2 days driving with at least 2 overnights in the same spot. That way there wasn't a constant packing and unpacking of stuff, plus some consistency in location. The longer you can stay in one spot, the better. And other than one major drive of 6.5 hours (which took 10 hours with breaks), the most driving we did on any one day was 3.5 hours.

Accept the fact that you are going to explore a new town via its playgrounds and parks.

Packing was tough, but we went as light as possible. G and I shared one suitcase and laundry had to be done along the way. Having a super-light and small travel tent for Lena was good for packing. Everything we packed, we used, but even so, the back of our little hatchback was full. In fact, G was the only one who could properly pack it. Anytime I tried to do it, it was piled too high to see out of the back window.

We took a cool bag that we kept stocked with both things Lena liked for snacks and things for lunch for all of us. This saved us both time and money by not stopping in a cafe or restaurant to eat or being forced to buy expensive food from the highway gas stations.

For goodness sake, don't forget whatever blankets, lovies, teddies or dollies makes your child feel secure. Lena is pretty easygoing, but with all the changes in location and new people, she was very attached to her blanket and her "nu-nu" (dummy/soother as she calls it) during the time. I was a bit worried at first with her having them so much, I thought she would become too dependant on them even after the trip. However the day we came back, she hardly needed them at all. Having them at her beck and call during the trip offered her a good deal comfort.

If you are interested in a rough picture of what we drove, check out this link of our driving route.

Once again, thanks to everyone we stayed with and good to see all of you.

The (Semi-)Local Cusine

I made a Yorkshire pudding today. It was the first time I ever made one and it was a great success, if I do say so myself. I was a bit worried about it, having tried to make popovers before and failed. As it was my first attempt, i just made it on its own, rather than putting sausages in it to make the very amusingly-named Toad-in-a-Hole meal. They were good sausages from Maceys, so I didn't want to ruin them with my inexperience. I think next time we have sausages for dinner, I will go for it. Just look for yourself:




My pride swelled nearly as much as the pudding when it came out so nice and fluffy.

Keen North American observers will notice that the object in the pictures looks nothing like a pudding. You are correct. The British usually use the term "pudding" as a general term for dessert. This isn't a dessert though. It's more of a simple bread that you eat normally with gravy and roast meat or sausages. So why is it called a pudding when it isn't dessert? Ask those wacky Yorkshire people, because I don't know. What I do know is that the leftovers are pretty nice with honey as a late-night dessert. Yorkshire pudding as pudding.

Comparing Homes

I'm back in Canada at the moment and have been noticing some of the little differences between where we live in England to where my parents live in Canada. Just a few things I've noticed this past week.

• Rounded curbs, rather than straight edge ones, are the norm here in the suburbs.
• Bigger parking spaces everywhere, but not much reserved parking for parents with little kids.
• Cheaper gas. It's $1.30CDN/litre (£0.65GBP) here compared to £1.20GBP/litre ($2.42CDN) in England.
• My elementary school no longer has school patrol in the mornings or afternoons because hardly anyone walks to school anymore. I will post more on this another day. Stay tuned.
• There is just starting to be organic products in the grocery stores, but it is still a young market. This was similar when we were in Australia too.
• 30°C is more scorching here as there is no cloud cover with that kind of temperature, so you get no breaks from it. However England tends to be more humid and therefore feels stickier at that temperature.
• As in Australia, there are lots of garage sales around. In England there is very rarely garage or yard sales. I've never seen one at least. It seems most people take the stuff to boot sales, where you sell your stuff out of the back of your car.

That's a short list of small differences. It's funny what you notice and what you don't. I'm sure there are other obvious things that I just don't notice because I'm too used to both the English and the Canadian ways.

A Boring Gardening Post

I know that gardening isn't everyone's idea of a fun activity, and even fewer find reading about it to be stimulating. Hence the warning in the post title today. My husband could be considered one of those who don't find gardening that thrilling, which is part of the reason I went to the Open Gardens Day in Cookham Dean on Sunday without him. I made it to 4 out of the 5 gardens and it looked like the day was a big success, as there was loads and loads of people around with programs in hand. I paid extra for good weather on the weekend (we had a BBQ to celebrate someone's 30th birthday) and it was well worth the expense, plus the open gardens benefited as well from the mild good weather. As all the money was going to charity, Thames Hospicecare, so I'm glad so many people came.

It was a good mix of gardens, from some small ones about the size of our back yard to a big acre and a half plot which I didn't make it to sadly. I guess it makes sense to show a variety, rather than just the same type. I liked the two that also had vegetable plots the most. Partly because I liked the vegetables, but also because they felt like gardens people actually use and enjoy, rather than something created for a look or maintained to keep up the good surroundings of the house. But it was interesting see all of them. I'm sure lots of people were like me and were checking out the houses as much as the gardens. Cookham Dean is considered to be the rich part of Cookham, and there are some mansions about the place that would help you confirm it (not that the Rise or the village don't have them, but the Dean has more). So it's fun to have a gawk about and see how the better off live.

On my own allotment, I was getting a bit disheartened with the slugs eating my squashes, the grass growing better and faster than any of my plants, etc etc. But there is one thing that is keeping me going - I've had some absolutely fabulous strawberries this past week. They are one part of my plot where I've managed to keep the weeds in check and there were giant, sweet and flavoursome red jewels for me to pick as a reward for my vigilance. Lena likes them too. In fact, she currently doesn't make too much fuss leaving the playground and the swings to head over to the allotment, because she knows that the strawberries can be found there. G. has had very few of the strawberries, as between Lena and I, we usually manage to eat all the berries right there and then. Perhaps it will be encouragement for him to go up to the plot and do a bit of watering and maintenance for me while I'm away with Lena in Canada the next 2 weeks. A girl can hope.