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.