Here is a gratuitous photo from our day.

Actually, several photos. This is the little park behind our house. We've never been in it before. Usually the man-screams of basketball or soccer games are broadcast from here.



The park mostly consists of a half-basketball court, and an obstacle course. I've just been for a run here (4 miles) so you can see my workout gear and my brand new running shoes. I always wear this little shrug (grey jacket) when I run, since my arms get cold.

Out of nowhere a blurry grey shape with bright blue eyes jumped all over me and then onto Brendan. It looked like a wolf. Here they are playing. (My white t-shirt wasn't happy with the muddy claw marks.)

The dog was ecstatic, running around the small park and playfighting with Brendan. The owner came along, and explained the dog was a teenage puppy, and it had escaped. Dog and owner left at a run as the dog pulled on the leash.

The village of Romsey

... is apparently our next housing destination. We've had no luck finding something in Winchester itself, or even Eastleigh for that matter. We confirmed the details with the landlord today, and we're moving in on Sunday! Thanks to everyone for thoughts, prayers and general sympathy. (I was going to show you all where Romsey is on the map, but you'll have to look it up yourself. Google Maps and Blogger are both non-cooperative today.)

We're also looking into getting a car. I'm in two minds about this: on the one hand, I'd prefer to support public transport for the environmental aspect. I'd also prefer not to deal with the hassles of a car, and car insurance and ownership is far more expensive than the US. We'd pay the same amount in insurance per month here as we did in the US per six months!

On the other hand, it's hard to get around without a car, especially since we'll be living in a village, and public transport is extremely expensive. (E.g. travelling by train from here to Winchester is 64 pounds each!) So if we want to do any travelling, a car will pay for itself in train tickets over a year. Also, I may still end up working in London, although I'd prefer to work closer to home to avoid a two hour commute.

G, our ex-flatmate currently living in London, and used-car mogul par excellence, is helping us search. It would be great to find something by the weekend, so we can move all our stuff. G's also graciously agreed to teach us "the ways of the Force", as he calls it: driving "stick" shift. Last time he tried to teach me, the story became a Wellington urban legend amongst certain New World Thorndon (supermarket) workers .... F

Thoughts? Car? No car?

We're moving!

Brendan has been offered a job in Hursley, a little village down near Southampton at the bottom of the country. So we're leaving Milton Keynes and our obsessively tidy Sri Lankhan flatmates* behind and moving to Winchester.

Winchester has apparently been voted "Best Place to Live", and was the ancient capital of England. I'm particularly interested in Winchester Cathedral. It's the longest cathedral in Europe. Building started in 1027 AD, and by 1100 the monks had moved in.

Winchester Cathedral is also famous because Jane Austin, writer of "Pride and Predjudice" is buried there. Plus, it has ice-skating! (Brendan jokes that it combines two of my favourite things.) Unfortunately I won't be able to sing in the choir there, but oh well. The Girls choir is limited to age 17 and under.

So this weekend we hope to do some intensive searching for a new room, and collect our many boxes where they have languished for the past week on a London dock somewhere. Wish us luck!


*Only one is obsessively tidy, but it affects everyone. "Tee - na! Never, never [put dirty pot in sink, etc. etc.]."

Bedford

About two weeks ago, Brendan and I took the bus to Bedford, a town about 14 miles north of MK. We went to jump through official hoops to get a National Insurance Number. This is your tax number.

However, unlike the US, you're not considered a non-person without one, and you can still work. You just end up paying the maximum tax rate (which I think is around 25% in Britain - hardly a lot compared to NZ's 40% max rate!), and companies are a bit shy of hiring you in case you're not 'legal'.

In the true tradition of UK weather, it was lovely and cloudy (note: not actually sunny) the whole 40-min trip on the bus. As soon as we got off the bus, the heavens opened and it poured with rain. It did this on the return trip to Milton Keynes, too, with even more vigour. Luckily Brendan insisted on bringing both umbrellas.

Compared to NZ or the US, there are so many little villages. You only have to drive about 5km most of the time before getting to another little village with its own strong sense of community. Most of the little towns have satellite villages all around. It's very picturesque. Milton Keynes itself is made up of 3 larger towns and 15 villages combined! (I have the feeling I may have mentioned this in another post - apologies if so.)

This house was for sale opposite the Job Center - it even has a tiny clock! I love it.


After, we went for a walk around Bedford to find some food. Brendan ate fish'n'chips while I was in my meeting. By the time he came out of his meeting, after mine, the shop was shut!

We couldn't find any other fish'n'chip shops, so instead I bought chocolate biscuits (cookies) and we wandered around a central shopping street until we arrived back at the bus station. Another fish'n'chip shop had been there at the bus station all along! So I had my first chips in the UK with salt and vinegar on them. Overall they were OK, but I felt rather off-colour later since I hadn't eaten chips for about a year! Plus the bus driver was rather mad since we arrived just as the bus was leaving (we didn't know the timetable), and had to eat hot chips not-so-secretly on the bus....

Milton Keynes sightseeing...

Today Brendan and I biked up to Stony Stratford, the Marina (posh shopping area) of Milton Keynes. There was much village-y quaintness. I love village-y quaintness. There was even sunshine!

We stopped for lunch at the Secret Garden, a small piece of green in the middle of Wolverton, next to the canal and the railway lines.

In 1999, some residents of Wolverton managed to convince the railway to sell them the land to make a garden, for £1. The garden is shaped around the contours of the remains of three villas, called the Limes and the Hawthorns, the homes of senior managers in the early railways era. They cost only £400 each in the 1850's... a steal nowadays!

Wolverton has a cute village area, and a 24-hour Tesco (supermarket). Except for Sundays, of course, where by a curious quirk in Britain, all shops close at 6pm.

Wolverton is actually one of the three towns which amalgamated into Milton Keynes, as is Stony Stratford and Bletchly. As a town centre, the town dates back to Roman times!

Look, cute village!

Stony Stratford is also cute village-y. It has two pubs, the "Cock" and the "Bull", which apparently gave rise to the phrase, "a cock and bull story". The Bull was advertising its service as suitable for wakes and weddings. Stony Stratford has lots of other pubs as well. The British love pubs.

Brendan is standing underneath the sign for the Bull.

Self-explanatory.

Brendan is trying to convince me to have fish'n'chips for dinner, since our flatmates are cooking for 12 tonight so getting into the kitchen might be an issue. I had chips about a week ago, and felt quite ill. I hadn't really had chips before that for about a year, if not longer, and I think I'm ready not to have chips again for another year.

Over here, they call it "The Slug and Lettuce" for a reason......

The unpleasant thing about the UK is that everywhere you walk, especially after rain, there are huge disgusting slugs. These are not the little greyish slugs you find in New Zealand, crawling around in the bottom of your salad. Oh no. These are usually between 2-4 inches (5-10cm) long, thick and brown, sometimes with an orange or yellow mantle along the bottom. They remind me of the banana slugs you find in Californian redwood forests, except brown instead of bright yellow.

I got a bit of a shock tonight when I ventured outside to grab my mini pot of various baby lettuces. Glancing at the pot, there was something sitting in it, munching away at my lettuces!



Look at that trail of devastation!

Brendan had to get rid of it for me. While I generally class myself as a strong, independent person, insects are pretty high on the "disgusting" list for me. Especially slugs. Especially these slugs. He couldn't get the slime off afterwards.

Exploration of space

Today I dragged Brendan out of bed (at 5pm!) where he'd magically disappeared again post-lunch, and we went on a walk/bike ride around Milton Keynes. I'm calling it a walk/ bike ride because we only have one bike (borrowed this week from Brendan's boss, thanks muchly!) so we alternated.

The "redways" in Milton Keynes provide a means of walking/ biking around the city - otherwise, the only navigation would be via cars, a la most American cities. I'm using them to train on for my half-marathon in March. (1 week of running down, 25 to go.....)

They mostly consist of red tarseal walkways with grass or small parks which look all the same, and not that many signposts.... There are an awful lot of small parks / playgrounds around here. This one is down the street from us. The area to the left is suitable for soccer, but the guys here seem to prefer to shout loudly and play soccer in the tiny park behind our house instead.

Today we discovered many things about Milton Keynes, most of them comparatively dull, including "The Concrete Cows" sculpture. A woman I met here told me she once joked she would chain herself to the cows when the council wanted to remove them to London - it sparked a huge media storm ("Pregnant woman threatens to chain herself to cows!") and even Parliamentary ministers got involved... but the cows remained.

We also discovered a cute little church called St. Lawrence Church. The lady who had the key had just locked the building, and offered to let us look inside. The church dates back to the 1200's, and has many original features. It also has two of the oldest church bells in the country, apparently. It seems to be a busy little church.

Some of the graves in the cemetery surrounding it were so old that you couldn't see what was written on them anymore.

Here is one of the stained-glass windows, relatively new aged mid-1800's.

I think we got off lightly in Florida.....

Currently there is a Category 4/5 hurricane, Gustav, heading towards New Orleans, only about a week after we left. The whole city is being evacuated. And we thought our Tropical Storm Fay was bad enough!

So we left poor Geoff alone on Tuesday morning, and moved into our new flat in Milton Keynes. (Geoff has very graciously been putting up with having both us and Donna in his room at his flat - there was no actual floor space left!)

Carrying two huge bags each onto the Tube was a bit of a hassle, since there are lots of steps. The British are actually really nice - at each set of steps, strangers have helped us carry our bags down each time! In America, people are very friendly, but they don't usually offer to help you.

Our new flat is in Bradwell Commons, one of the nicer areas of Milton Keynes apparently. We also looked at Fishermead and Eaglestone, both of which are dodgy areas, but decided the slightly cheaper rooms didn't really compensate. We have four guy flatmates from Sri Lanka. They cook really yummy-smelling curry each day. We have the downstairs room, which opens onto the patio outside. It also has its own bathroom next to the kitchen. It's about 15 minutes' walk to the railway station from our house, and about 5 minutes' walk to the city centre.

Milton Keynes ('MK') as a city is the most American of British cities. It was manufactured about 40 years ago from three different villages, so it's a series of roundabouts arranged in a grid. The city centre itself is essentially a huge mall surrounded by various bland office buildings. Walking around, you mostly see car parks. It's a car city. In fact, the whole city is rather bland and boring for our tastes.

But we do feel that we've missed the interesting bits, and the "English village" look - maybe they're in Bletchley (part of MK) or something. MK is supposed to be an extremely hip and vibrant place to live for young people, but neither of us can see it. Although David Beckham occaisionally rents out the whole of the Xtreme building, which has the largest indoor ski slope in Europe. So I think we'll have to try that out at some stage.

We're at Martha's for the weekend, since Brendan has a course in London on Monday. We're about to go to the British Museum - it's incredible! Hopefully we'll have internet and a phone by Tuesday.