2 days to go...

It's 2am, and we've finally finished packing. All the furniture has been sold or given away, and the house is mostly empty.

The movers, when pressed, gave an arrival time of "between 9 and 11am" which means either 8am or 12 tomorrow. Hence our semi-allnighter.

Special thanks to L & G for dinner tonight, and S as well. We're really excited about getting to Germany... if the car makes it. It is not well.

And a special un-thanks to the babyfood-yellow slug I stood on earlier tonight in bare feet, while walking outside to get something. I think my foot just skimmed it as it kept moving, but I was traumatised. I will not miss you, oh UK slugs of doom.

And then there was one....

Oops. We've already packed away or given away all our crockery, bar a set each. Earlier, I dropped one of the coffee mugs, which shattered completely. I'm still picking bits of melamine out of my feet. Lucky Brendan barely drinks coffee, then.

Leaving on a jet plane....

Or in this case, the Channel Tunnel, which my work friends tell me is called the Chunnel. :) On Thursday. (!!!) These next few days are going to be a whirlwind, but I'm really looking forward to travelling. I left work at 5am on Friday just as the sun was coming up... home at 6am and off to London at 12pm on Sat to see friends who flew down from Edinburgh. (Photos to come!)

Right, more packing. We have to re-show the house tonight - think the last one fell through. Eek. Missing the fishies already.

Planning... The Return

It's official - I have told most of my clients, with some sadness. We're leaving the UK in July!

We'll likely be back in Wellington in September. I hear there are tables practically booked at certain restaurants already. :)

Right now I have just under a month left at work, and so does Brendan. I've already started packing, but I keep having to unpack things I want again so probably not the best idea!

Very much looking forward to seeing you all when we get back.

A guide to British-isms of the white middleclass variety

A quick guide to some phrases you may encounter....

• "I'm not being funny but..." = I'm about to complain or say something negative
  
• "yeah" = quantifier similar to "innit"/"eh", one rung up the social ladder
  
• British place name pronounciation: "ces" = "s", "thw" = "v". Or just say it fast and you'll be right.
• "You alright?" = How are you?
• Lush = nice

Running

Another gratuitous photo for your viewing pleasure.... taken yesterday from work. The river was unusually smooth and calm, and the weirdest shade of green I've ever seen it to be. Gorgeous!

I've been training with Carrie two nights a week recently as we get ready for the Reading half-marathon (and she does the Shakespeare Marathon!). It's good to have someone else to train with, and probably safer overall given that we tend to run at night when it's dark. :S

Only a week left - and I've been a bit slack this week while she's on her skiing holiday. I've done a number of 10-milers though, and plan to do 12 tomorrow, so I'm not too bothered.

Goodbye Vauxhall!

Brendan's car has failed its MOT (WOF equivalent), and it's not worth fixing, so we've decided to scrap it. I've kept the licence plates, however - apparently the Netherlands are the only other country where the licence plates can be yellow instead of white.

It's a bit sad, but Brendan says he's not as attached to it as he was to the Fiesta, which died last year. I still felt sad as I watched Brendan drive it around the corner and onto the car ramp. A couple of photos to come!

On the other hand, I now have the sole car as Brendan's going to carpool with his friends. I forsee a lot more shopping trips in my future!

The mechanics at the car yard were a father-son team. I'd bought a car stereo for my Renault there a few months before. We talked about our travels and about NZ to them - where LOTR was shot (South Island), what the weather is like (just like Britain but without the snow that fell in Basingstoke - which is apparently extremely unusual), what we like about the UK (how old it is!) and the best places to go in America on a once-in-a-lifetime trip (LA or Florida).

A lot of British people think NZ is hot, which makes sense I guess given that it is next to Australia, Fiji and other tropical/dry/hot places. The father ate chips out of a paper packet balanced on his lap while he talked to us, with black, greasy hands.

Finally spring!

It's been a long, cold winter - the coldest on record for 30 years, according to various radio and TV sources. So I'm pleased that the past few days have been gorgeously sunny, even if not that warm yet. Bring on summer!

I'm doing the Reading half-marathon in 2 weeks... I've been going for twice-weekly runs with a friend after work, which does a lot for motivation! She's doing the full marathon so I'm running more than I need to, but it's all good practice. Especially as I've only been training "properly" for two months, and have only done three long runs of 10+ miles recently.

In other news, Brendan and I are starting to look at the next steps and future travel plans... we're very keen to visit more of Europe over summer.

Reading in the evening can be very nice

The River Thames as it runs though Reading.... post-shopping with Liz R.

NYE in London!

It was New Years' Eve, and we were in London. It was bitterly cold. We stood on the side of the Thames, watching the fireworks go off from the London Eye and hearing the whoops of people celebrating. After the fireworks ended, we walked back towards Blackfriars Bridge. It started to snow. Perfect.

Walking back into Waterloo Station, we hit the queue of people being herded around and into the station - pushing, jostling and mostly standing in the same place or only slightly shuffling forward. It took us about 1.75 hours to circumnavigate most of the streets around the station and get into the station itself, where we missed our train by 2 minutes 27 seconds. So we had to wait at the station until the next (and last) train 2 hours later, at 4:05am. It was a long, cold wait, but we listened to stories and ate chocolate muffins so it wasn't all bad. British women seem to have evolved some sort of imperviousness to the cold, judging by the number of tiny skirts/ shorts / dresses - and I counted nine women with bare feet!

Christmas at Kings'

The choir of Kings' College, Cambridge. Famous for the annual broadcast of their Nine Lessons and Carols service each year on Christmas Day. This year, we were there.... queuing up at 8am to stand in line for one of the 600 places offered to the public.

The day is probably best told in pictures.

Snow day!

Yesterday, it snowed. And I mean really snowed. There was chaos that truly put last year's to shame.

Brendan and I had separate adventures! He left work at 3:30, I left work at 3... 

His facebook update: spent 3 hours driving home in the snow. This included the battery dying, pushing the car off the road, buying jump leads, killing another car attempting to jump my car, getting a third car to jump the second car and mine, getting stuck on an ice-covered hill, twice, and then ice-driving through the frozen back streets of Basingstoke. 

My facebook update: 

So far I've spent 4 hours in my car in the same 4 miles, killed my battery .5 miles from a safeish place to park it, pushed my car, jump started it and parked at aldermaston, waiting for train that might not come...

What happened... an enormous amount of snow! Basically most of the roads in Hampshire and Berkshire were impassable. I left work at 3pm and didn't get back until 10pm! I spoke to many many people who had similar stories of being stuck in their cars for hours and hours, batteries dying etc.... My car is still in Aldermaston Wharf at my boss's house. 

It was nice though, because people were very kind-spirited about it all and helped each other. 

I spent 45 mins getting the few miles from work to Tim and Carrie's house in Aldermaston, then another 3 hours getting the next mile or so. You'd pretty much move a car length every 15 minutes - I was timing! After 3 hours of this I decided it was ridiculous, and heard a man talking about how the road was blocked by a lorry stuck on the hill by AWE. So I turned around and went back... 45 mins later I was about .5 miles from their house when my car battery died! Luckily I had jumper cables in the car (thanks Brendan!), and luckily some lovely guys helped me to jump start it and push the car until it got going again. 

However, even though I parked at Tim and Carrie's, neither of them were there... Carrie, Lucy and one of our clients were all stuck in Basingstoke at a client's overnight! So I took the train from Aldermaston into Reading, and then back to Basingstoke. Thankfully they were delayed but still running, and I managed to get home. Many other people didn't.

Here is what the BBC had to say...

And here.... 3000 people trapped in cars overnight

And here... Basingstoke still at the centre of it all

And here are some pictures.... I was on the AWE road, and the roads of the IDR in Reading are incredible as well. When I took the train home to Basingstoke from Reading I saw cars stopped there at 9 at night!

Ice-skating in Winchester....

Last year we went iceskating with Lina at Winchester,and it was awesome. This year we went with Liz and Gareth, and it was just as good if not better.

Here's the cathedral and the Michaelmas Christmas Fair... very traditional.


Here's us iceskating... I'm getting much better and can go really fast! I still can't stop as well as I want though. (I.e. only by crashing into the barriers a little...)

The days are getting very dark now- the sun goes down at 3:30. So depressing. But only another few weeks to the Winter Solstice, and it will start getting light again.


I've been extremely busy with work recently - I'm being naughty tonight and having a night off. Lots of copy to write and projects to manage! But I really do love it. And I work with the most awesome people. Brendan has also been very very busy with his work, with two big projects. He's just bought the game Dragon Age and has been rather into that as well, leaving me with less choice for Christmas presents. ;)

I also have a new car so I can drive to work by myself! :) So we have two cars now as Brendan has the other one. It's grey and has a sunroof.

Right, time to leave you all with a photo of the River Thames taken from my work in November, right before all the leaves dropped off - I can look out the window at work and see this, although it's not usually as still and reflective.

A car of her own...

I have my own little car! It's grey and has a little sunroof. (Granted, it's winter, but who cares....) I love it - it makes me feel like a boyracer. Or girlracer in this case. It's slightly faster than taking the (unreliable!) trains from Basingstoke - Reading, then another.... but mainly it's flexibility - I can get to client meetings in Thame etc, or leave late if I want to.

Here's the first frost of the winter.... my car's the third one in the picture.

Edit: I can't actually remember when it was that I bought my car, but I think it was sometime around November. Hence the photo is most likely from early Dec, and I've mostly put this post up to remind myself that it was roughly around then. And so that you can all see it!

Autum is here....

It's really rather depressing - it's already getting quite dark.

But the autumn leaves are glorious.

Scotland!

Midges, enormous blisters and rain... did we really sign up for this? 

We've spent a week in Scotland as our summer holiday, walking 80 miles in the Highlands from Fort Williams to Inverness along a walking trail called the Great Glen Way. And boy was it "summer" in quote marks. The scenery was fantastic, though. 

  

The mechanic and the concert: or, what Brendan did on his birthday

Today is Brendan's 25th birthday.

Today is "buy a dozen overpriced Krispy Kreme donuts as a special treat for Brendan's birthday and eat two before feeling sick" day.

Today is "be given free concert tickets, have trouble finding the concert and then lock the one set of keys in the car ignition with the lights on" day.

Yes, really. We tried for about 20 minutes with one of the parking marshalls to get in - now we know one way to break into your own car! The string wasn't quite long enough though. So we called our insurance** and they sent a mechanic.

Here is Brendan looking unimpressed. Look at that unimpressed-but-pretending-to-smile face!

Here is the mechanic's tow truck, which couldn't actually fit into the car park.
(He said he works for Thames Valley Police, and usually gets called out for serious crashes on the M3 and M4, and suicides. They have to take the person's car as it's evidence in case of foul play. Ick.)


When the mechanic finally managed to break into the car, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Then Brendan and I enjoyed the last hour of the concert!


The concert was all tribute bands, quite a lot of fun really. Thanks to Lynne for tickets!


Today I was in Leamington Spa for a work meeting. We took the train up from Reading, which was about an hour. My boss thinks I'm the papparazzi cos I took some photos as we left.

This is the famous Leamington Spa on the left, built around the same time as Bath Spa when "taking the waters" was really fashionable as a health and beauty aid (and rather expensive!). (Sounds like the modern spa then!)








**They must be sick of us by now. This is the second time we've called them this week, after Brendan left the lights on at a work conference in Southampton. At least it's not AAA, where they only let you have six callouts a year (each). Which is probably much more than necessary for most people who don't drive dodgy cars or suffer from overt forgetfulness about lights in winter. But only just enough for Brendan and I with two dodgy cars in San Francisco and one country-wide trip. In our mail from America after we left, was a letter from AAA sternly warning that we had one callout left each. I think AA UK has a maximum of five.

Bleeding brakes...

In the past two months, we've done a lot - I started my new job, we moved out of a house with no electricity and into a new one which has been completely repainted and a new bathroom and kitchen put in, and bought a new car. It's a Holden. Or more accurately, it's called a Vauxhall here. Being in it with the windows closed makes me feel sick, because the first owner was an avid smoker and a builder. 

We've also been to Reading a few times with friends, and I've moved offices, to a little place called Pangbourne on the Thames river, just south-west of Reading. (It's dirty and yucky, but at least it looks pretty!) 

Last Friday I was driving to work. The BMW in front of me slowed down and stopped at an intersection. I put my foot on the brakes... and I wasn't slowing down! I managed to slow down enough and turn the car onto the shoulder with a squeal (there was only a sliver of one, and then a building)! I got to work a bit shaken, with no brakes. 

Thanks to certain friends who are good with cars, I managed to impress the mechanic who came to tow our car home enough that he drove me all the way home instead of charging me £150 to go 20 miles, which was awesome. (I was very grateful.) 

 

He also explained that it was probably air in the braking system, and told me how to bleed the brakes. Brendan and I decided that this was a good idea, and we would do it ourselves. 

So, all of Sunday afternoon, and Monday evening, we learned how to take the wheels off the car and bleed the brakes. Lots of fun, arguments, swearing and four (four!) trips to Halfords to buy the right sized spanners and assorted tools. But, the brakes worked again! We are very proud. We're not particularly mechanical people!

The car is at the mechanics at the moment, though, just to double-check. Apparently the reason I stopped a little and didn't totally crash into the BMW or into the building, was that the back-up brakes went on when the main brakes failed. It looks like we do have to replace the master cylinder. Ack. But brakes are, shall we say, quite important.

Singing exams at Odiham

This afternoon another choir member and I went to the village of Odiham (near the RAF base), about 10 miles away from Basingstoke. We were to to sit choral singing exams run by the Royal School of Church Music, at the church of All Saints. 

This is a window installed in the church by the RAF. I like the helicopters!

While Sue was having her exam, one of the bellringers arrived to wind the clock in the belltower, so I got to climb up the rickety ladders to see it. The clock mechanism is actually 150 years old!

There are 6 bells. This is the one which makes the "dong!" sound on each hour. The wheel on the left is the mechanical ringer, I think. On Sundays and special occasions there are 6 bellringers to make the chimes. Sue says it's all about following the patterns.  

 

After, we had a traditional British cream tea in the local pub. Enormous, warm scones and little ramekins of jam and clotted cream, which looks a little bit like whipped butter.

We're going on a car hunt...

... this weekend. Because we absolutely need one. The bus/train/bus combo only works for Brendan if the train is perfectly on time and the bus is late. And I need a car for client meetings.

I'm really enjoying my new job, although it's super-super busy. I get to do lots of writing and work with cool people.

The other "interesting" thing is that we are currently sitting in our room surrounded by candles, because our flatmates didn't pay the power bill. And we didn't realise until Tuesday, when the lights didn't work. Tymek is on his way home from holiday in Poland, so hopefully that's sorted soon.