Yes, I know, I said I'd keep going, and I will, seriously.
But things are in a sort of holding pattern at the moment, with everyone scrambling around trying to get connected to a broadband hookup. It should be easy, but we are dealing with British Telecom and the remote (hah! in this country, "remote" means eight miles from the nearest town, a very interesting phenom) rural village.
It's all very complicated and has to do with the future of a hairdressing salon on the Rows in Chester; a two-hundred year-old country farm labourer's cottage (soon to be my abode); a periodically striking postman with a large collection of Simpson's and Dr. Who memorabilia; five squabbling children; a wealthy local landowner busily buying houses in Spain; a less wealthy absentee landlady of a house in Durham but who lives in Kent; and the local Conservative party candidate for the election-that-never-was; his wife who wants her dining room redecorated; and a nice young traddie Catholic girl suffering from "ME" or chronic fatigue syndrome who wants to be a music teacher...
You'd think that having been here only three weeks, things would be fairly straightforward, and it would be, had I decided to carry on to Durham according to plan.
But that was a dull plan, and, as anyone who knows me even via the internet, should have realized by now, I hate dull.
Dull is bad.
Went to Liverpool yesterday and took a stroll 'round the Albert Docks. We had to pass John Lennon Airport, and am happy to report that the expression on Uncle Mike's
face at the sight of His Imagineness plastered on nearly every public surface, was as sour and disgusted as mine.
We discussed with great animation our mutual conviction that the 1960's was the era that ended all good things in Britain and nearly everywhere else. Uncle Mike agreed that the world ended in 1968. Happy to report that we are getting on well and are almost point-for-point of like mind on all but religious questions.
After deciding that Liverpool is exactly as horrid as everyone says (Mike worked there for some years) we ditched the joint and went back to lovely lovely Chester and took a stroll down on the river front, watching the happy Cestrians rowing their boats up and down, sculling and paddle-boating; coots; ducks; mums and dads pushing push-chairs; kids lined up at the charmingly Tudor-half-timbered ice cream stand; leaves shushing... Stopped at the tea shop and took our tea outdoors on the riverside where we talked family-talk.
Heaven.
Still trying to forget the horrors of Liverpool, we wandered up the bank and through the park that is home to a ruined Norman church. The ruins backed on to the standing church of St. John, also of the same period. We wandered about and I thought how lovely it will be when we reposess it for the True Mass when all good things are restored.
Uncle Mike bought a book and I dropped a two-pound coin in the donation box. (As long as they're keeping it up for us to use later, might as well contribute, I reasoned.)
It was a lovely autumnal Sunday. (I've learned that when the weather man in this country uses the term "fine", as in "Monday, 15 degrees in the day time and fine", they do not mean what we mean by "fine" what we mean in Canada. In Britain, I have learned, "fine" means "not raining".
Sometimes it means "sunny" but not often.
No pics, but since I've decided to stay, there's no hurry.
I might even wait for a sunny day.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Welcome to Britain...
...here's your cold.
Yep. Snuffling, snorfelling and moaning for two days. Ah well.
Sorry about the sporadic quality of the blogging lately. I really haven't forgotten y'all.
It's just that I only have dial-up and I'm trying to spend as little time as possible tying up the phone here, so I'm restricting myself to just work-related internet time. And dial-up really requires much more patience than I'm used to exercising on the net, especially for posting pictures, of which I have collected many.
Also, I really never realized how much time gets taken up just sitting about chatting and doing family and household-related things when one has a family around. It's new to me, you see.
I was going to apologise to those people whom I have chastised in the past for neglecting their bloggosphere duties by citing "family" concerns and busyness.
I say I "was" going to apologise, until I remembered my all-important blogging rule:
never apologise.
Anyway, blogging will, unfortunately, continue to be light-to-intermittent for some time to come, I'm afraid. I will say that I'm having a ripping time. Went to Nantwich yesterday for a couple of hours. Wandered around St. Mary's church there, built in the early 14th century, and v. beautiful. Got lots of pics.
Attended choral evensong at Chester Cathedral on Friday. Sat in one of the ancient choir stalls of the monks and listened to the 12 girls singing the Anglican chants and pondered how we will be redecorating the place when they finally admit their occupation forces are spread too thin and we can have it back, much as the Romans did in the 4th century when they left Chester. (Things continue to go rather swimmingly for our prospects of retrieving our purloined property.)
Have decided that Durham is too far away from relations and that Cheshire is just too damn beautiful to leave. I've discovered the canals and am looking forward to retrieving my bike and introducing it to the tow-paths. and there were many ducks.
We spent some time going through family photo albums. I have to say that I was somewhat weirded out to see the photo, taken in Alexandria Egypt in 1924, of my great grandmother, holding my grandmother as a newborn baby, standing next to my great uncle Laurie (the infamous family blacksheep and rake) who was dressed in some kind of scouting costume; he was standing next to Uncle Mike's mother, Joan, who as a middle-aged woman had looked after me when I was little and my mother was out at work and who was a little girl at the time the photo was taken and was wearing some female version of Laurie's outfit. Behind her and next to Great Grandmother Doloughan was Mike's grandmother Nan, whom we lived with in Manchester when she was an old lady. We have had copies made of this and other pictures and I will be contacting some of the remaining Doloughan relatives to see if we can fit some more of the geneological puzzle pictures together.
Took the young cousins out to the fields to collect rosehips from the hedgerows on Saturday. At least, I collected rosehips and Sophie and Millie held the bucket, until they discovered it was more fun to jump into cowflops. It was Sophie's tenth birthday party after that, but we managed to de-stem the rosehips and I'll be trying a traditional recipe for rosehip jam this week.
More, much much more, to follow.
HJMW
Yep. Snuffling, snorfelling and moaning for two days. Ah well.
Sorry about the sporadic quality of the blogging lately. I really haven't forgotten y'all.
It's just that I only have dial-up and I'm trying to spend as little time as possible tying up the phone here, so I'm restricting myself to just work-related internet time. And dial-up really requires much more patience than I'm used to exercising on the net, especially for posting pictures, of which I have collected many.
Also, I really never realized how much time gets taken up just sitting about chatting and doing family and household-related things when one has a family around. It's new to me, you see.
I was going to apologise to those people whom I have chastised in the past for neglecting their bloggosphere duties by citing "family" concerns and busyness.
I say I "was" going to apologise, until I remembered my all-important blogging rule:
never apologise.
Anyway, blogging will, unfortunately, continue to be light-to-intermittent for some time to come, I'm afraid. I will say that I'm having a ripping time. Went to Nantwich yesterday for a couple of hours. Wandered around St. Mary's church there, built in the early 14th century, and v. beautiful. Got lots of pics.
Attended choral evensong at Chester Cathedral on Friday. Sat in one of the ancient choir stalls of the monks and listened to the 12 girls singing the Anglican chants and pondered how we will be redecorating the place when they finally admit their occupation forces are spread too thin and we can have it back, much as the Romans did in the 4th century when they left Chester. (Things continue to go rather swimmingly for our prospects of retrieving our purloined property.)
Have decided that Durham is too far away from relations and that Cheshire is just too damn beautiful to leave. I've discovered the canals and am looking forward to retrieving my bike and introducing it to the tow-paths. and there were many ducks.
We spent some time going through family photo albums. I have to say that I was somewhat weirded out to see the photo, taken in Alexandria Egypt in 1924, of my great grandmother, holding my grandmother as a newborn baby, standing next to my great uncle Laurie (the infamous family blacksheep and rake) who was dressed in some kind of scouting costume; he was standing next to Uncle Mike's mother, Joan, who as a middle-aged woman had looked after me when I was little and my mother was out at work and who was a little girl at the time the photo was taken and was wearing some female version of Laurie's outfit. Behind her and next to Great Grandmother Doloughan was Mike's grandmother Nan, whom we lived with in Manchester when she was an old lady. We have had copies made of this and other pictures and I will be contacting some of the remaining Doloughan relatives to see if we can fit some more of the geneological puzzle pictures together.
Took the young cousins out to the fields to collect rosehips from the hedgerows on Saturday. At least, I collected rosehips and Sophie and Millie held the bucket, until they discovered it was more fun to jump into cowflops. It was Sophie's tenth birthday party after that, but we managed to de-stem the rosehips and I'll be trying a traditional recipe for rosehip jam this week.
More, much much more, to follow.
HJMW
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