Saturday and Sunday

Pinted nails at the school barbeque.

Andrea got back yesterday from a week in Boston where she hung out with her sister and her family and attended meetings at MIT.  Perhaps the most useful information to come out of the meeting had to do with the electron scattering screening machines at the airport (or whatever they are).  Consensus among the physicists was NOT to go in the machines.  I can't remember the reason, but I remember bottom line.  Sure, you have to go through the pat-down, but... 

On the way home from the airport we got a call from the real estate agent - showing at 11:30.  Nice.  That meant that we had to go home and give the place a clean.  Well, we didn't have to clean it, but it would be nice if the place rented sooner as opposed to later.  The cleaning bit is a bear.  We got it pretty clean in a short amount of time.  They haven't shown the house for a while and with 40 days to go, I suppose they figured it was about time to start it up again.  I was stashing a milk bottle in the cabinet where the water heater is located and noticed a pool of water in there.  Yikes!  Leak in the heating system.

Photo from last week of us picking blueberries.

In the afternoon we spent a glorious time up at the Cloud hiking and picking blueberries.  We went up there last weekend with Paul and figured we would do it again and get the mother lode.  We rounded up a bunch of containers, fashioned picking buckets out of large yogurt containers (string attached so they could hang from one's neck) and hit the road.  The weather was beautiful and while we didn't get as many berries as we had originally thought we did collect enough to have oatmeal blueberry pancakes this morning.

In the evening we went over to Ben and Julie's house for a barbeque.  They also had their neighbors over and it was a wonderful time.  There was tons of food and the culinary highlight was the 5 or 6 desserts that came out: pavlova, lemon custard, chocolate meringue and others.  Wonderful.

Fancy dress at Chatsworth Hall.

This morning, after eating the above-mentioned pancakes we headed off to Chatsworth Hall in Derbyshire.  The current residence of the Duke and Duchess of Derbyshire, the place is Lyme Park on Steroids.  The house, built in the 1600's is massive and is choc full of crazy sculpture, paintings and furnishings.  Most of the art pieces are old while some have been collected by the current Duke, number 12.  Bet he was at the wedding.  Among the collection are Caravaggios, a Rembrandt, Hals and strange (some nice some not nice) contemporary stuff.

The fountain.  Way back there is a pool and house.

Sculpture hall at Chatsworth.

Our time there started with a picnic along the river with a bunch of other folks and then we toured the house, walked in the massive stair-like fountain (best of show!), took in the maze (bailed on that after a few tries), got ice cream and then spent time at the adventure playground.   The place is really popular, something I didn't understand until our time there was over.  Seemed like most people on the grounds just paid their pounds to park and then they did what they wanted - barbeques, walks, games, letting your dog chase sheep.  Actually, the latter activity drew groans and nasty comments from the peanut gallery. 


Great day over in Derbyshire - back home, dinner, blog, bed.

July Day

Busy day of sports at school, yoga at home and a BBQ in the evening. 

We just got home from an event at the school and I must start getting ready for bed having just put the girls to sleep.

Andrea arrives tomorrow from Boston and we will pick her up at the airport.

All a bit choppy.

Back at it, but it ain't pretty.

'Night.

Back at it

For fear of never getting back here, I thought I would start back with something small and go from there.

We had a great visit with Paul and Chris during their time here.  We did tons of stuff and saw a whole range of things around here with them.  We really appreciate their willingness to travel half way around the world to England.

Andrea is out of town and in addition to the time when we have visitors, it is difficult to blog when she is gone.  Thus, two weeks of scant entries.

The girls are having sports week at school where they do all sorts of activities outside.  They have been coming home dirty and tired which is good.

Today after school we went to the park to play tennis.  All of the courts were full so we played on the lawn bowling green.  It was super fun like our own little Wimbledon.  Speaking of Wimbledon, how can Murray win when the whole country doesn't think he can.  There is also a strange Tim Henman thing going on where there is almost this feeling like no one wants Murray to better than Henman.  Don't understand it.  Henman didn't win anything big.  Maybe he's a super nice guy or something.  Oh, that's right, he's English.

Woah - things are getting longer than I wanted.  Looking to relax with some yarn in a minute.

Cheers!

New School Kids, The Lord of Alderley and a visit

Met with Nicole Sauder and her friend Dave for lunch in Manchester.  Both are serious musicians, violin and piano respectively, and met traveling around in the world of music and musicians.  We had a nice chat about, well, all sorts of things.  It was great to see both of them again having met them for coffee in March in Manchester.  Fellow New School alum, Abigail Polin, is also in town and the two of them got together last night.  Abigail is here doing work with Andrea at the University and I imagine we (the girls and I) will see her several times before she heads back to Lancaster and NYU from there.
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Alderley Edge has a farmers' market.  It's called a farmers' market, but is really a food court as there aren't any farmers there.  There is a fruit and vegetable distributor and a butcher, but no farmers.  Well, I suppose the honey person harvests her own stuff, but still...

Anyway, the Lord of Alderley has emerged on the scene recently and he is waving an 800 year old charter in everyone's faces and claiming it gives him the sole right to have a farmers' market in town.  We'll forget for the moment that the two butcher shops and two markets in the village have the same connection to local farms as the farmers' market does.

I did a bit of research on the Lord.  He doesn't appear on a (super official looking) website which catalogues peers (I think that's what you call lords and dukes and all those folks who sit in the House of Lords.  There is a Lord Stanley of Alderley and I am assuming that this man is different from the Lord of Alderley.  They have different given names and the Lord Stanley fellow does not list ostrich farmer or porn star on his resume - things that some sources on the internet claim are part of the Lord of Alderley's CV.  Anyway, the guy seems like a jerk and he is all frustrated that folks have been having a market without his permission for the past 13 years.  So engaged in the community he rules over that he has not noticed the market for 13 years.  Perhaps he was busy living life under his other persona, Lord Lust, as he was known as a presenter on an X rated TV channel.

Maybe the Yank in me thinks the whole royalty/lord thing is bull, but I do know that it gets my goat when some jerk thinks he is better than everyone else and wants to throw some stupid title around.  In this case, the title may well have been purchased off of the internet.

I currently have emails out to the peerage department at Debreet's - the peerage people, and a man named Richard, the Seventh Earl of Bradford - the fake title opponent, to see what they know about this Lord of Alderley.

Hopefully I'll play St. George to his dragon.

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Finally, Andrea's Dad and Chris are arriving tomorrow.

Cheers!

Last couple of days in Bonn (and Cologne)

Last couple of days in Bonn (and Cologne), a set on Flickr.

Finally! Here are some more photos of us in Bonn - and a few in Cologne.

Gardening Club and a test

Today was the second of four meetings for the school gardening club.  Mrs. Thomas, the teacher in reception (preschool), is the leader of the group - one which started three months ago and has cycled through a new set of kids every four weeks.

It rained.  It really rained. 

While it was raining, they sought refuge inside, but when things calmed down, they were back outside pulling weeds.  They were mostly dry, but all the way dirty when I got there to pick them up.  Apparently it was a busy session of pulling weeds (apparently cilantro is a weed here), replanting marigolds and squash and digging wherever nothing was growing.  There was a lot of digging.

Calls last week to go buy gardening gloves were not heard today as both Rose and Xyla are actually quite fond of dirt between their fingers.

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Finally....

Hey, if you read this blog as an email, will you just send me an email saying that you do that.  Don't feel like you really have to write anything.  Just let me know this.  I have received a couple of emails over the past couple of months, but am curious as to the interest in this thing.  If you link from a Blogger account or your own website, no need to send anything as I can see your traffic as part of the stats that Blogger keeps track of.  Your time with this is appreciated.  I know at least that my mom is reading.  Cheers!

We have sun

After what seems like weeks of greyness, we have had three hours of sun.  Sure, we had a little bit of sun over the past couple of weeks, but it has been strange to live in a summer that feels much more like fall.  It doesn't really have an early spring feel as there is a complete lack of promise.  Reading Lojo and Ben's blog from Chile (see links below right) I learned that it is warmer there than it is here.  Umm.  It's winter there.  Indeed, it feels more like winter than the winter we spent in Sydney.  Sure, Sydney is at 30 degrees S while we are around 50 degrees N, but still...