My dear Family and Friends, 12 May
The sun has been shining for 10 glorious days now and the long range weather forecast predicts that it's going to stay like this for the rest of the week. The next thing they're going to announce on television news is that we are in the middle of a drought – and some talking heads will come on to blame it all on global warming and my 4X4. No matter; it won't wipe the smile from my face. I've been wallowing in the sunshine in shorts and a T-shirt. It's been fantastic to sit in the cage with the dogs at the quarantine kennel reading my book in the sunshine. Every now and again a gentle breeze will blow through bringing country and farmyard smells with it. It's country quiet out there too with few cars to baffle the sound of birdsong or the occasional lamb bleating in the distance. The dogs will stretch out in the sun for a bit, but their winter-thick coats quickly have them nosing around for some shade. Edgar has a way of draping himself over the cool concrete for maximum benefit. We're counting the days until they can come home now in two Saturday's time.
The sunshine also meant that I had to turn some serious attention to the garden. I spent hours last weekend clearing the flower beds of weeds (and everything else that the weeds and soil just cling to.) I also had a tough job clearing the jungle weeds from a bed of gravel opposite our driveway. A couple of years ago somebody clearly thought that a gravel bed would be easier than tending to some greenery and dumped a huge load of stones in the flower bed. They then did nothing to ensure that it remained weed free with the result that it became a tangled mass of prickly, spikey weeds. Clearing it was back-breaking work to get the weeds out at their roots. I had to bang the garden fork into the gravel and then jump on it to get it right down under the roots. I then had to leaver it backwards and forwards to loosen the gravel and finally yank the weeds out with their roots. No wonder then that I managed to bend the teeth of the fork as I yanked and grunted and banged. When I was done, our neighbour Mark, the military policeman, said the driveway hadn't looked this good in years. Now I'm looking for something reasonably toxic to spray on the area to make sure that it stays clear.
While I was doing this, Lucia was catching up on work, trying to keep her head above water. She's been working long hours fighting fires not of her making. One of the problems is simply a lack of suitably qualified staff. Warwick is a bit of a backwater that isn't really attractive to bright young graduates who invariably prefer big city charms. Warwick attracts people who want to settle down, and that means babies. It makes it hellishly difficult to budget and plan.
We did manage to to get out for a bit on the Bank Holiday Monday. Out destination was a car boot sale at Long Itchington, a picturesque village not far from Warwick. It had rained overnight so the field where patrons had to park quickly became a bit of a mud bath. The farmer was standing by with his tractor to help anyone who got bogged down, but our Honda CRV laughed in the face of such adversity. With an eye for a bargain, Lucia loves these types of informal markets. This time, a compendium of Roald Dahl's works for just £5 that grabbed her attention. No doubt it will make a suitable gift for a child at some point. Slightly less enticing were the frilly, floral second hand bras somebody was trying to flog out the boot of her car. (You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) Afterwards we went for a bite of lunch at a nearby pub on the Grand Union canal and took a long, looping drive home along back roads and byways through yet more quaint, but very expensive villages.
On Friday I decided to go wandering again looking for our nearest beach. I drove east this time all the way to Norfolk. The problem with the UK is that all the major highways run north-south along the length of the country, with virtually nothing going east-west across its breadth. So driving east-west can be a bit of an obstacle course. I headed first for King's Lynn and then followed the coast road along the north coast of Norfolk all the way to Cromer. Along the way I discovered Sandringham Estate, one of the private homes of the Queen. At first, the coast is a bit mass market with lots of trailer parks and dowdy seaside towns. But it changes completely once you past Holme-next-the-sea. The villages look and feel more French than English and the coastline becomes much more rugged and windswept with a large inter-tidal marsh. A look in the windows of an estate agent revealed house prices that look more like telephone numbers (including the international dialling code.) It really is quite spectacular. It changes once again as you get to Victorian holiday hotspots of Sheringham and Cromer which, to my eye at least, looked quite drab compared to the cobbled villages a few miles away. (Pics at usual spot.) It was getting late in the afternoon as I got to Cromer and I had to head back home – a journey of 150 miles (240km), but which took me over three and a half hours.
This weekend was a bit more busy and social. On Saturday afternoon went went to visit our zoo as usual which is always a social event as we catch up with the many other South Africans and their stories which brought them to England. A large majority of the animals in the kennel are from SA.
Some of the stories are truly harrowing tales of the mindless violence that is now endemic in SA. Everyone is hugely relieved and much happier to be in England – but then we would say that, wouldn't we. The most common observation people make, particularly women, is how much better they are sleeping here. That was quite an eye-opener for me; I used to tell Lucia that she was being over-sensitive, but it must relate to some protective instinct in women and a drive to guard the “nest”. We have become particularly friendly with another family from Cape Town who now live in Leicester, and we're having them around for dinner this coming weekend.
On Saturday night we had one of Lucia's colleagues around for dinner, and on Sunday we went to the first birthday party of the of the daughter of the Australian couple we met at a coffee shop a few weeks ago. Husband Ben is a researcher/lecturer at the medical faculty at the University of Warwick. The birthday party was thus a gathering of foreigners and academics. One young Australian couple we met is about to move to Johannesburg where the husband has taken up a fairly senior post at Standard Bank. I had to bite my tongue not to say anything. But it was a wonderful afternoon and we met some really nice people whom we look forward to seeing again.
That's it for now
As ever
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
