October 2011

Hello again!
I’m going to begin with a conversation I had recently with Kira (aged 11):
Kim: Have you got any homework?
Kira: Yes, I have to do some research
Kim: On what?
Kira: I have to find an old person and ask them what type of food there was in the olden days
Kim: Are you going to ask Nanny?
Kira: No, I’m going to ask you


Kira started at high school last month and is feeling very grown up with her new uniform and with being able to get the school bus on her own.
One day she got the wrong school bus home and ended up miles away not knowing where she was. Poor little soul – she phoned us up crying (thank goodness for mobile phones) but couldn’t tell us where she was as she didn’t know. We told her to walk to somewhere that was a landmark so she walked to a hotel. Unfortunately there are several hotels with the same name so it took us a while to find her, but luckily the experience didn’t put her off and she happily jumped on the correct school bus the next day.


One day we were looking round a college when we noticed a ‘portable’ rock climbing structure some climbing instructors had brought along. Both children had a go. Jordan used to do indoor rock climbing in NZ and also does it at school, however Kira hadn’t done it before. She LOVED it, so has now started indoor rock climbing lessons. The first time I took her she put the harness on and went up the wall like a monkey, as if she’d done it all her life. The tutor said she has a natural ability, so she is now a happy bunny (or monkey).

And talking of climbing, Jordan and his best friend Sam do indoor rock climbing as one of their after school activities. Sam fell off the wall and broke a bone in his foot. Jordan took him to the school medical centre. The school is set on many, many acres of land, and while the medical centre isn’t at completely the opposite end of the campus, it is a very long way away and Jordan had to physically carry him all the way there. We saw Sam (on crutches) and his parents the next day at the parent’s evening. “Jordan was a bit of a hero yesterday” said Sam’s mum.

He still does Cadet Force at school and has been promoted to NCO, which means he can give orders to other cadets, apparently!
He did a marching display at the school open day with some of the cadets. He is at the back.

He has also taken up rifle shooting. I took him along the first time. The shooting club’s building is quite amazing. It looks like it was bought 50 years ago for about £20 and hasn’t been updated since. It is jam packed with old bits of furniture, and is absolutely wonderful. A fascinating place. Anyway the tutor said Jordan was a natural, so we are lucky that both children have found something they love to do. Jordan wanted Jon to share the hobby with him, so Jon goes along too. He’s not overly enamoured of rifle shooting, but is very happy to have a shared interest.

Jordan has had a Saturday job for a while now. He works in a café near the fairground in Blackpool, working in the kitchen. http://russelldavies.typepad.com/eggbaconchipsandbeans/2006/09/woodheads_cafe_.html
He’s been doing well (even if he does smell of chips when we pick him up) and the money has been great for him! The summer season has finished and the Blackpool Illuminations – a 10 mile light display along the promenade for an extra couple of months to extend the tourist season - is finishing soon, so next week he will probably be finishing.

The fruit on our fruit trees has almost come to an end now too. Apparently the land our house is on used to be an orchard 100 years ago, so the trees are well established. We have had enough fruit to feed a small village, and trying to use it or give it away has been a major episode. I seem to have spent the summer going to see people I know armed with a carrier bag of apples and pears. I sometimes make apple crumble, but given that the children don’t like it, and I can’t eat the crumble bit as it’s wheat, this means Jon is then faced with eating apple crumble every day for a week.

I did buy a set of bathroom scales recently as it looks like apple crumble and similar items have increased Jon’s circumference somewhat…
Having never owned bathroom scales before, I have never weighted myself in quick succession, but I suspect there may be something wrong with the scales as I weighed 8 stone 12 at 6pm one day, 8 stone 10 a few hours later and 8 stone 4 the next morning. Correct me if I’m wrong but being able to lose over half a stone in around 12 hours without doing anything doesn’t seem terribly normal.
But what a wonderful way to make money if I could work out how it’s done…

Mind you I wish I could work out how to solve a problem I have had with my arm and shoulder for 5 months now. It seems like a frozen shoulder, but with a very painful bicep to boot. I’ve been to 3 therapists and 3 doctors and nothing has worked. I can’t use my left arm properly, so have had to stop all the exercise I was doing, and feel quite limited in the range of things I can do. Driving is a bit of a challenge as I can’t go into 2nd gear so I drive around in 1st and 3rd making the gear box complain a bit, and have to either get the children to put the car into reverse, or lean over and do it with my right arm. I can’t get undressed on my own so if I go to bed after everyone else I have to wander round the house, seeing who I can wake up to help me!
What jolly fun.

However, my arm does work well enough to use the sewing machine. Having lived in rented accommodation for the last 3 years, I haven’t needed to make any curtains, which, I have to say, has been quite a disappointment.
Jon and Jordan have been doing an excellent job of helping my Dad do some repair work on his house, and I offered to make some new curtains for him.
Wonderful! I feel much better now. All is right with the world when you can make some curtains :-)

We also sorted out his spare bedroom, jam packed with stuff acquired over many years. What an interesting experience that was. I even found mum and dad’s wedding album from 1957. Now aged 76 and 81, they were 22 and 27 at the time.

Anyway I have been doing a lot of writing recently – some brain training books - a general word games book and a word search book.
If you are interested in word searches (with a difference), I am looking for some people to try out the ones I’ve devised. If you would like to try them out and give feedback, let me know and I’ll email them to you. Thanks.

I’ve joined a local writers’ group, and my neighbour and I have joined a group for people who are interested in travelling. This is where people give talks on, and show photos of, different countries they have visited. Last week we saw 800 photos of Hong Kong. I don’t think I ever need to go there, as having seen so many photos I feel like I’ve been there already.






In a vague attempt to compete with that, here is a photo of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which we visited on a holiday to North Wales. (You can click on the photos to enlarge them)



Recently Kira and I went to the Museum of Liverpool. This is different to the ‘general’ museum in Liverpool (my home town) as it’s a museum just about Liverpool.
Anyway, when I was 5 years old and started school, we had a rocking horse in the classroom. The teacher said that everyone in the class would have a go on the horse … but I never got a go! This is very upsetting when you are 5 years old, so my Mum used to take me to one of the department stores – Blacklers - in town which had Blackie the rocking horse.
I was amazed to see Blackie at the Museum!

And so I will finish with another conversation I had.
I’d ordered a book from the library and went in to pick it up. A man and woman were working behind the counter when I arrived.
“I’ve come to pick up a book” I said.
I then said what my name was, but the man asked me for my library card at this point and so didn’t hear what I’d said. The woman had heard and so went off to get the book.
I got out my card and gave it to him, at which point the woman arrived back with my book.
He was amazed. “You must be psychic!” he exclaimed.
“No” she replied calmly, “I just listened to the woman”.
“Oh” he said “I tried that once but I didn’t like it”.

June and July 2011

It's been a while since I last blogged. I’d like to say that the reason is because I’ve been busy doing exciting things …. so I will:
‘The reason is because I’ve been busy doing exciting things’.

Today (14th August) marks the end of our first year in the UK. We arrived here on 15th August 2010. I have to say it’s been a very ‘different’ kind of year…

So, since I last wrote, Kira arrived back from her trip to Belgium and France with a jar of snail pate for me.
Well, that was certainly different… I think it must be an acquired taste.






Not long after that was her 11th birthday, and we had a party at home for family, and a party for friends at one of the local ice rinks. When we booked the party we thought an ice skating instructor would be there to help the children. Unfortunately it didn’t work like that, so while it was good fun for those who could skate, those who weren’t quite so competent spent an hour slowly going round the edge of the ice rink holding on for dear life!


At the end of June I went on a course run by the local police constabulary ‘Be a Detective for the Day’. Working in ‘police’ teams we had to analyse the intelligence information about a possible terrorist attack, profile the suspects and aim to prevent the attack. We attended briefings from a senior officer, worked through the intelligence, made decisions as to action to take and were interviewed for TV news updates.
I have to say it gave me a much better appreciation of the challenges the police have when handling difficult situations and why they give very little away during TV and radio interviews.

The first week in July was a strange time for Jon, as Jordan was away on another Army Cadet camp, this time in the Lake District, and Kira and I were in New Zealand, so he found himself on his own all of a sudden! I’m sure he managed OK. I think my mum popped round to check he was alright!

Kira and I had a lovely time back in NZ. It was three years since I was there and I wondered how I would feel going back. It was very nice, I have to say, and I felt very much at home.

As I was working in Auckland for the first week, Kira flew on her own to Wellington and stayed with her friend Emily and Emily’s family. As it was term time in NZ Kira went back to her old school where Emily’s mum, Anna, is the teacher.
Thank you all for looking after her (and me) so well. She had a wonderful time, it was great that she could catch up with her friends.





As a late birthday present, Kira got her ears pierced when she was there, and Emily got hers done too. It was hugely exciting, and she ran into my bedroom on the morning of The Special Day (14th July) to remind me in case I’d forgotten.
It takes 6 weeks of cleaning and putting antiseptic on her ears before she can change the earrings - she is doing really well and is counting down the days till she can wear her new collection of earrings.

I stayed with Rowena in Auckland for several days which was lovely, and spoke at conferences over 4 days.
There was a bit of concern over the tsunami in the Pacific as it was expected to reach Auckland one morning – during the time I was due to give a speech - but fortunately everything was OK.

(The lady in the front left is the former Governor General of NZ, I'm at the back)

A group of 3 Ugandan delegates were at one of the conferences, and it was good to speak to them – especially as my speech was about life in Uganda.


Another highlight was one evening’s entertainment where a group did a wonderful haka. It always brings a tear to my eye.



As I hadn’t got over the jetlag by the time I started work, I was absolutely shattered by the end of the week.
I then joined Kira in Wellington – fell asleep on the plane on the way down - and stayed with Janice +and also Emily’s family for the week. I had one more speaking engagement and spent the rest of the time meeting up with as many friends as I could.

I went to see our house which has been rented out for 3 years. I was a bit apprehensive as to how it would look, but although the garden was a bit of a mess, the house itself wasn’t too bad and I was pleasantly surprised.
I also went to see my cat Frankie. I didn’t think I’d be able to, as I was heartbroken at having to leave him when we went to Africa, but I’m glad I went. Thank you Shirley and family for looking after him so well.

I would like to say a huge Thank You to everyone we met up with in NZ. Those who invited us to stay, took us out, met up for coffee, invited me round, lent me the car, gave me gifts… and more. I was absolutely blown away with everybody’s kindness, and very humbled to think that I have such wonderful people as friends.
Thank you.

And so we came back from a NZ winter to a UK summer and were met at the airport by Jon and Jordan … and a huge deluge of rain. It was hard to tell the difference between an antipodean winter and a British summer!



A few days after we got back, we went to a wedding. This, I realised, was a bit of a milestone. It was the first of my friend’s children to get married! Aargh, we are getting old now.

And another milestone happened recently ... we bought a new living room suite. We had had the other one for – yes - 21 years! I got it two weeks after I started going out with Jon.
When I looked for suites in 1990, I couldn’t find one I wanted, so I had one made. I still like it and the material hasn’t worn at all. However, although it looks alright, it has been used as a trampoline by the children over the years and the springs have gone. I was always a bit concerned when visitors sat on it as I could imagine them disappearing into the suite, never to emerge.
Our new suite is plum and beige. Very nice.

It’s school holidays here and we have been out and about at the pool, on treasure hunts, visiting the science museum, watching a wonderful air show, visiting a horse farm and so on.
The local park is at the end of the street so we go there fairly often.
One time we were there we saw a man taking his pet weasel for a walk in a little harness.

And on that note I will love you and leave you.

Until next time
K J K J x

For the last few months I’ve been organising a Ladies’ Lifestyle Fair which was held last weekend and went well.

There were about 35 exhibitors, we had a cookery demonstration, a belly dance demonstration and a version of Dragon’s Den along with prize draws.

One of the prizes was a free belly dance class. It was won by an 81 year old lady who didn’t seem terribly impressed with her prize!

Anyway I have a bit more breathing space now that that has finished, which also coincides with the start of the school holidays, so that’s good. Jordan has a week off, while Kira has two weeks, then goes off on a school trip to Le Touquet in France for an action-packed week.

They travel by coach and ferry, going via Belgium.

Jordan has just returned from a 3-day school trip to an Army training camp. No creature comforts there by the sound of it - nor any showering going on it would seem!

The UK has been very windy and rainy recently … just the kind of weather for pitching a tent!

He does CCF (Combined Cadet Force) training once a week at school, and one day I went to a Mind Body Spirit Fair straight after school taking him with me. Everyone attending the Fair was female.

“Hey Dad” he said when we got home “I was the only one at the Fair wearing camo gear”.

Jon fell about laughing.

“It’s not traditional garb for a spiritual event” he said.

Jordan has got 9 weeks (!) of school summer holidays coming up, so we need to find some work to keep him occupied. He had 4 weeks off over Easter and Jon managed to find him some work experience in the IT support department of a school in Preston.

He has been going out with his girlfriend for 6 months now and is very happy.

But we are still not allowed to meet her or her parents…

Kira leaves her primary school in July, and has decided not to go to Jordan’s school.

Because she has left two groups of friends behind in NZ and Uganda, and because all her current school friends are going onto the same high school, she didn’t want to leave any more friends, and so will be going to the same high school as they are. They start in September.

In the meantime, Kira and I will be going to New Zealand for a couple of weeks in July.

I’ll be working in Auckland for the first week, and staying with Rowena, a friend from Uganda who now lives in NZ (it’s a small world!) while Kira will go to Wellington to stay with one of her friends and I’ll join her there after several days.

We are really looking forward to meeting up with our friends!

Kira’s poem features in the book ‘Once Upon a Rhyme’, so she is now a published poet!

She also delights in making fun of Jordan who happened to mispronounce the name of a famous author, calling her Agatha Crispie.

Mind you, she struggled to find the right word herself one day while we were getting into the car. She couldn’t remember the word ‘passenger’ so said to me, “Mum, you get in the slave side”.

And finally, Jordan was regaling us with one of his stories. As usual it took a long, long time for him to tell us.

After several minutes Jon said “What did you say?”

To which Jordan replied "I don’t know I wasn’t paying attention".

March 2011

There’s been some very sad happenings in the world since the last blog - the Christchurch earthquake and the tsunami in Japan. The power of nature is strong indeed.

But on a lighter note my friend Anja in NZ who runs a pre-school in NZ and is very focussed on connecting with nature, asked if I’d write a blog entry about life in Uganda.

It’s on her blog, http://www.eyesonnature.blogspot.com/ You need to scroll down to Sunday, February 13, 2011, ‘Connecting with nature in Uganda, a personal story.’

We did connect with nature a bit for my niece’s 12th birthday when my sister and her husband took Kira and I with them to Blackpool zoo!

I was quite impressed to see a couple of crested cranes there. They are the national bird of Uganda.

Not only that, but one of the presenters from the famous kids' TV

programme, Blue Peter, was doing a show there with the seals and sea lions.

And not only that, but he and the TV crew sat next to us in the café. As you can see,life in the UK is still one long whirl of excitement.

And talking of famous people, we went for a day out to Morecambe, further up the coast, recently.

This is a photo of Jon next to a statue of Eric Morecambe (of Morecambe and Wise fame).

We were quite taken by the sea front developments that have been carried out there.

It was World Book Day on 4th March and children at Kira’s school were asked to dress up as a character from their favourite book.

Kira’s favourite book is Pokémon, which if you are familiar with it (and the games) is full of weird and wonderful creatures

My heart sank when she said she wanted to go as Pikachu.

However, my heart rose again when she decided to go as Dawn, one of the vey few human characters, instead!

Only one person recognised who she was - a fellow Pokémon fan - but she didn’t mind.

They had to go to school dressed in their costume and stay in it all day. As her best friend went as … yes … a loaf of bread, I’m not sure how she managed sitting in class all day.

There were some very convincing characters, Spiderman, Harry Potter, Dennis the menace, Buzz Lightyear, Incy wincy

spider, cat in the hat, a clown, and lots of princesses.

The day before that was the 21st anniversary of my and Jon’s first date (3rd March 1990). We thought we should do something to mark the occasion, so actually went to a pub! Crikey.

There is a nice traditional looking pub near us with a real fire so we went there, leaving Jordan looking after Kira for the first time.

Obviously things weren’t going too well as after 20 minutes I got a phone call from Kira, crying. “He won’t let me play on a computer game!”

Anyway by the time we got back after our hour of freedom they were both happily playing on the computer game together.

Disaster averted.

The order of the day for women here seems to be spray on tans (along with acrylic nails and fake eyelashes) and there are many ‘tanning’ places around.

“Why are the women here ORANGE?” Jon asked one day.

There is a wonderful place not far from here - Bygone Times - a huge ‘shop’ the size of about 3 warehouses. We took my mum a few weeks ago.

They stock a

lot of antiques along with memorabilia. You can find some amazing things there - the head of a bison; an Egyptian sarcophagus, a biplane, a life-size cardboard cut out of Darth Vader; the birth certificates of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (probably a desirable item at the minute), and a tardis. Well alright, a police box, then.

This is my Mum.

I spoke at a Soroptimists conference on International Women’s Day, 8th March. Soroptimists support causes for women worldwide, and they had an interesting array of speakers giving presentations on very sobering topics.

One woman spoke about honour killings and forced (not arranged) marriages. She told of a woman who had raised two sons, now adults, and who decided she would like to find a job. Her husband and sons saw this as something which would bring shame on the family, so while the two sons held her back, the husband poured acid on her face. They felt this would make her unemployable.

She told of a man whose neighbour told him he had seen the man’s 14 year old daughter talking to a boy. The man didn’t check if it were true or not because the very fact that someone had said this had brought shame on the family. To address this, her brothers killed her and buried her body in wasteland. When questioned about it, they felt no remorse and saw it as something which needed to be done.

This is not happening overseas, this is happening in Blackpool.

Similarly there were talks on, and from, Young Carers, ie children who are caring for their parent(s) as they are not able to look after themselves. There are carers from as young as 5 years old.

This is also happening in Blackpool.

There was a presentation on domestic violence, but I couldn’t face another talk of that nature, it’s pretty sobering to hear of the range of issues facing women and girls on our doorstep.

Anyway, to finish off on a much light note, Comic Relief / Red Nose Day took place last Friday, the main aim to raise money to support people in Africa.

My sister and I went to a ‘Zumbathon’ (ie non-stop zumba dancing for an hour) which raised about £700.

Everyone wore red, and some people had some wonderful outfits -

red wigs, deely boppers, fairy wings. One woman wore a red sequinned flapper dress … and trainers!

My sister Joy doesn’t possess a red t-shirt so wore a maroon t-shirt and navy blue track pants.

Have you ever seen the ‘Superman’ film where Superman turns evil? His bright red and blue outfit turns to a dull red and blue one.

That’s what my sister looked like. An evil Superman…

February 2011

We’ve been following the Uganda general election online via The Monitor and New Vision newspapers, and it looks like things went as peacefully as could be expected.

It seems there were allegations of pre-ticked ballot papers, candidates’ names being missed off, people mispronouncing candidates’ names - to those who presumably do not read? - so they didn’t know who to vote for.

Anyway, I hope things are OK over there for those of you who are in Uganda.

We also watched a TV programme this week called ‘The world’s worst place to be gay is Uganda’.

A gay BBC Radio 1 DJ went over there recently to find out what life is like as a gay person in Uganda.

It was interesting to watch; firstly because it was great to see pictures of what we felt was ‘home’; secondly to see how a visitor to Uganda views the country; and thirdly because once you look past what he found and think about how it all came about, the factors and influences in the country over time, it made for some interesting conversation.

Although we missed having a TV when we were in Uganda, now that we have one again - even though there are about 3 million channels here - we find we very rarely watch it.

What we have noticed though is that the UK TV personalities look 15 years older than when we last saw them!

Kira has decided that the two of us have a Girly Night every week. It’s great and I look forward to it.

Sometimes we soak our feet and give each other a foot massage. Then we climb into my bed in our pyjamas early in the evening with a drink, a big bar of chocolate each and a DVD. She stays in the bed, while Jon is banished to her bedroom.

Jon and Jordan however have a Boys’ Night. They eat biscuits and watch a boys’ DVD in the living room. The living room is below our bedroom and we can hear the sound of explosions, crashes and fights coming from the DVD player!

We’ve had a pretty quiet month doing the usual stuff - school, seeing family, working etc. I’m spending a lot of time organising a Ladies’ Lifestyle Fair (http://www.chrysalisforwomen.com/ladies-lifestyle-fair.html) which is in May.

I also attended a training course on LinkedIn. It’s amazing what a powerful tool it can be. If you are on LinkedIn, you can connect via http://uk.linkedin.com/in/kimchamberlain

Jon is involved in the local LUG (Linux Users Group) - similar to the one he helped set up in Jinja. They meet weekly in Blackpool and yesterday went to Manchester for a gathering of the LUG clans.

Earlier in the month I went to a fundraising event for a local hospice - a Ladies’ Posh Bingo night! It was good fun, and though most people had never played bingo before, it’s easy enough to pick up. There were some great prizes and we raised £500 for the hospice. The event was held in a new, permanent marquee at the Villa hotel, which is where I’m holding the Ladies’ Lifestyle Fair. It’s very beautiful.

One highlight of the month was when my Mum called me to tell me that one of the local stores was having a 10p sale. There were supermarket trolleys and boxes full of goods for 10p! Kira and I spent ages there and bought about 30 items - hats, gloves, shoes, socks, ear muffs, underwear, windscreen wiper blades, craft paper...

Crikey, life here is such an excitement I really do wonder how I manage.

One thing that Jordan’s cannot understand is why anyone would want to buy a

Smart car! In case you haven’t come across them, they are tiny, two-seater cars that you can probably park sideways as they are so small.

“Look at that!” he cries out whenever he sees one “who would be seen dead driving one

of them?”

Anyway we were in a supermarket car park one time, when one started reversing out of the car park space towards me.

He pushed me out of the way - not, as he told me later, to particularly save me - but to avoid the total embarrassment of having to tell people his mum was run over by a Smart car!

And talking of children, we have had children for almost 15 years now. This is the first time we have lived in the UK with them and have registered for, and now receive, Child Benefit.

This is a benefit you receive when you have children.

Never having received maternity pay or money for having children, I find it quite incredible that the government give you free money for simply possessing some offspring! Crikey!

This catalogue came through our letter box.

I'm intrigued to know why on earth you would need a little stand to rest your finger on while you were applying nail polish!

On a sad note our neighbour in NZ, Shirley, who took on our two cats let us know recently that one of them, Freddie had died. He was around 12 years old. Those of you who know Freddie, know that he was a very nervous cat, and found it hard to let people near him. His brother Frankie was apparently very upset when he found him in the garden next door.

Thank you Shirley and family for looking after both of them so well.

And on another sad note, the husband of one of the mothers at Kira’s school was knocked off his bike a number of weeks ago. He broke his neck, damaged his spinal cord and has lost the use of the upper part of his body.

They do not know how much he will recover, but have said he will always be ‘incomplete’.

It’s terrible to think that one minute he was fine, and the next partly paralysed.

So, on a lighter note, these are some photos we took when we went for a day out in a place called Knott End.

The land formations were really interesting, not ones I’ve seen before.

The water was frozen, which is why we used the sticks to break up the ice.

For those of you in NZ, I’ll be there for the first two weeks in July, hopefully bringing Kira with me. Hope to catch up with you then!

And finally I’ll leave you with a word that Kira made up.

Jordan was doing his usual - ie talking a lot.

Kira looked at him and said “Jordan, stop blibbering!”

January 2011

Happy New Year to you!

So the temperature today was a whole 9 degrees … which is 20 degrees warmer than it was just before Christmas.

Last year I was sitting in my living room in Uganda, keeping an eye on the UK weather and feeling sorry for everyone having to cope with minus 3. I announced that I wasn't coming back unless they did something about the arctic conditions.

This year, here I am, having just about survived minus 11, and reading in the Daily Mail that this was the coldest December for 120 years. What’s going on???

Kira and I would skate to her school on the icy pavements. My brother says you are not advised to clear the ice from the pavement outside your house as if someone falls they can sue you.

My mum and my sister both fell over on the ice, hurt their coccyx and were feeling sore for a few weeks.

Anyway now that we are no longer sub-zero, it feels almost tropical. I am down to wearing only 3 tops, lined trousers and 2 pairs of socks. Sometimes it's so warm I can even take my hat off when I’m in the house. Almost tempted to get the barbie out…

I’ve taken to riding my bike round the park, which is just down the road from us, 0.63km to be exact, according to the thingy-bob you put on your handlebar which tells you how far you’ve gone and how fast you are going.

One of the benefits of living where we do is that the area is flat.

In NZ we lived on

a hill, which meant that you started off a bike ride hurtling at break neck speed down the hill, hoping the brakes would work when you got to the bottom which joined onto a busy main road.

It also meant that at

the end of the ride, when you were tired and exhausted, you had to somehow get back up the hill - usually pushing the bike up the last few metres of the 1:2 slope.

The photo of Kira was taken when the fountain pond was frozen over.

The boating lake was frozen too, and the poor geese had to walk on the ice. When we stopped to take this photo all the geese stopped walking. When we set off again, they started off too!

There was a bit of a hoo-ha during the snowy period as some council’s didn’t let their bin men collect the rubbish due to the dangerous icy conditions. This meant that some people missed one bin collection.

Crikey, you’d think the entire infrastructure of the nation had fallen apart, the way some people were talking. I was listening to people being interviewed on the radio. “I don’t know what the world is coming to” they would cry.

Get a grip! It’s only one bin collection. The world hasn’t actually come to an end.

Anyway it was nice to spend Christmas and New Year with most of my and Jon’s families. It’s not something we’ve done as a family before. It’s also unusual spending Christmas in the winter - for the last 15 years it’s been summertime for us.

BUT … I actually felt a bit sad at having to take off the Santa toilet seat cover once the Christmas period had ended.

I think I must be losing it. I’m doomed.

In the UK it seems to be the thing to have a GPS / satnav. Whenever you ask people directions to somewhere they give you the postcode so you can type it into your satnav.

Anyway Jon - feeling a bit short of a gadget - ordered one before Christmas, paid for it and arranged for it to be sent here.

Ironically it got lost in the post.

Just as well we didn’t get it I guess, it probably wouldn’t have been much use!

He did order a different one, so we are now a satnav household. Crikey.

Mind you, I have to say that the woman we have on our satnav would be an ideal life coach or mentor. Whenever you take a wrong turn, she doesn’t make any comment or criticism, she just tells you how to reach your destination from wherever you happen to be now.

It’s interesting to see the technical advancements here. Some things are further ahead than we’re used to, and yet some things are less advanced.

For example when I was paying I some cheques, I posted the two cheques and paying in slip into a slot in a machine. A few seconds later a print out of the 3 pieces of paper popped out, all the right way round.

And at the local doctor’s surgery, if you have an appointment, you have to sign yourself in, in the lobby, on the big touch screen computer monitor before you get to reception.

However, the petrol stations still have pumps where you have to squeeze the right amount of petrol in. I am forever putting in amounts like £20.01 or £30.04.

And e-bay is infinitely more complex that New Zealand’s easy-to-use Trademe.

People here seem to be keen to add apps (ie application software) to their iPhone (yes,you have to learn geek-speak here).

You can get an app for your iPhone that instantly translates English into various Afghan dialects.

You can also, incredibly, get an ASBOrometer app.

Anti-social behaviour can be dealt with by an anti-social behaviour order - an ASBO. An ASBOrometer application lets you see the numbers of ASBOs in different parts of the country.

Help help! Someone get me out of here

Anyway, despite the idiosyncrasies of the British way of living, the children are doing OK.

Jordan - complete with trendy new glasses - has taken up Warhammer 40k as a hobby. It’s a game you play with others using small models of armies which you have to assemble and paint yourself.

His romance with Lucie is still going strong, and things at school seem to be OK.

The boy who is House Captain of Jordan’s school House has just been elected Head Boy. According to the school rules devised in 1844 this means he can now read the newspaper in the dining hall, grow a beard, smoke a pipe and graze his goat on the monitors’ lawn.

Kira is fine, has just sat the entrance test for Jordan’s school and has started a blog. http://myblogbykira.blogspot.com/

Feel free to leave a comment.

We’ve done a couple of car boot sales recently to try and get rid of our 12 excess boxes of stuff. The first one we went to was cancelled, but they didn’t let us know so we turned up - as did some customers. The customers didn’t want to waste their trip there, so we ended up opening our boxes in the car park, and they all had a root through.

Generally car boot sales are held at some ridiculously early time on a Sunday morning. Jon and Jordan did the next one and made the sum of £12.75. I did the next one with Jordan last weekend and we made a whopping £10.50 after getting up at 5.30am and spending 6 hours there. We had to go twice - once to drop the stuff off and then to man the stall. As well as the cost of the petrol to do this we also bought stuff from the café, so in effect we lost money.

People want to buy things for virtually nothing. However we are now down to 4 boxes, so will just give it all away methinks.

A while ago we got a bin bag through the letterbox from a charity, with a note asking for clothes donations. The charity will send the clothes overseas for people in developing countries to sell, in order to make a living.

I gave a bag of clothes away, and then realised that I’ve actually bought - from Jinja market - the kind of stuff people give away!

Jon - who is a Star Wars fan - bought a poster many years ago when the film first came out. He discovered recently that it is the rarest of the posters and that some of them are selling for about US$12,000! http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/cinestarwars.htm#newhope

My new business for women is getting there a bit at a time. I’ve called it Chrysalis for Women and will be launching the first stage of it soon.

The website is http://www.chrysalisforwomen.com/index.html but please don’t let people know about it yet as it’s only in draft format.

Here is one of our visiting squirrels. There are two and they come every day. I do miss having a pet, having had one for the last 11 years. We're not allowed pets where we are staying, so the squirrels will have to do.

And here is a typical Blackpool photo, taken on one of the piers in a howling gale - Jon, Kira and her cousin Rachel.

Keep warm, keep well and we’ll be in touch soon.