An ordinary life?

... not exactly ordinary, but certainly settled compared with the previous phase of our ‘adventure’.

There’s a reason why you haven’t seen much of us on here …. There hasn’t really been a lot to say!!  Having said that, we have been out and about quite a bit and we’ve made further plans for the year, so here’s a bit of an update.

As Nigel indicated in his February post, Reading is only a half hour on the fast train to London.  We usually manage a trip into London, or somewhere, each week.  On at least half of those trips to London I’ve spent a few hours at the Westminster Archives Centre, furthering research into my family history.  It’s been quite special to find records of where my ancestors lived then to go and wander off through the back streets of Westminster to find the street.  A couple of my ‘wrinklies’, as I call my ancestors, got married in St Margarets, at Westminster, where the likes of Winston Churchill married.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s any indication that they were famous or wealthy, but it was quite neat to step inside and know they’d been there too, nearly 200 years ago.

My preference for family history research has left Nigel to enjoy hours, reading every word, in various museums and galleries. The first time we separated in London to do this was a bit traumatic for me …. My first time on the tube (underground) on my own – but I only needed to be rescued once – another tube traveller pointed me in the right direction as I turned in circles trying to understand where I was supposed to catch the next connection.  It’s still a bit daunting sometimes to work out how to get to where you want to go, but so far, so good.  Travelling on the buses provides a better view, especially if you can get the coveted front seats upstairs in a double-decker, but when you don’t know the names of the destinations and their routes it’s pretty hard to work out which bus you need.  Travelling with Nigel it’s so much easier (he lived in London for years) – as long as I can keep up.  On one trip we dashed down some stairs to hop on the tube and as he raced through the doors ahead of me, they closed!  I waved goodbye and turned around to work out what to do next.  The next thing Nigel’s telling me to get on – the staff on the platform must have seen me and opened the doors again to let me in.

One of Nigel’s daughters, Izzie, arrived here a month ago for her own ‘up-over’ adventure.  Luckily for her we have a spare bedroom so she’s been staying with us since she arrived.  Izzie’s as impressed with Reading as we are, but with her cousins living here it’s a convenient place for her to live and work.  As I write this she’s off to Morocco for a few days with her cousin, Stephanie.  They’ve even booked an overnight trip which includes travelling by camel.  Sounds fantastic!

We were in London a couple of weeks ago to see a show in the evening.  Unfortunately, our trip coincided with a tube strike.  Our train from Reading arrived at Paddington, as usual, but instead of most of the people then streaming down the steps to the underground, they were all walking out the doors to catch buses and taxis.  We were there mid-morning, and it was hopeless.  It must have been far worse earlier in the morning.  We quickly dismissed our original plan to catch the bus and we walked instead.  After visiting a couple of photographic galleries (anyone heard of Getty Images? J) went our separate ways and planned to meet at Hammersmith station late in the afternoon.  I left the archives centre, jumped on a bus that arrived at a perfect moment, which then got snarled up in traffic.  Two thirds of the way along the route the bus driver told everyone to get off – with no explanation – another passenger suggested the driver must have reached the end of her shift.  I started walking, and should have kept walking, but hopped on another bus, which got held up again. Meanwhile, on the other side of London, Nigel and Izzie had arrived at their bus stop and the electronic sign said two minutes until the bus arrived.  Then it said five minutes.  Then the sign went blank.  Forty-five minutes later the bus turned up, and got stuck in traffic.  Despite running for half an hour after they got off their bus, they were just five minutes too late for us to get into our show, but we were given priority tickets for the following week.

Which leads to my next ‘story’.  Walking the streets and entering most museums and galleries are free activities you can enjoy in London.  Another one is being in the audience for a TV show recording.  You have to apply for seats; they issue more tickets than they have seats because they have a lot of ‘no shows’; then you queue to get in.  If you miss out on getting in then you are offered priority tickets for another show, which is what happened to us.  I’d requested tickets for QI, Graham Norton, Top Gear and Alan Davies Untitled.  Many of you will recognise the first three.  The last is one of the comedians who regularly appears on QI with Stephen Fry.  He has a new show and we attended a recording.  It was an interesting experience.  We’ve learnt to not stand in the queue next to very large people.  If you’re standing next to someone in the queue, it’s quite possible you’ll be sitting next to them in the audience.  The audience seats are narrow.  As I went to sit down I noticed that only half my seat was available.  The other half was supporting a sizeable portion of my neighbour’s behind and thigh.  It was a bit uncomfortable.

On my first solo trip to the Westminster Archive Centre I was following my route from the tube station through the back streets of Westminster, using the map on my phone, when I discovered my planned route was blocked off by police and spectators.  I was checking out an alternative route when I noticed a black car leaving from another side street.  The car passed slowly, just a metre from me and deciding it must be someone important I looked into the back seat to see a little old lady in a hat with a slim old gentleman sitting next to her.  One of the spectators confirmed it was the Queen and Prince Phillip, and as my route was now clearing I continued on my way and saw Prince Edward standing at the door to a building.  I later found out that the Queen had been bestowing some awards.

Much of our spare time here has been spent building a couple of websites - one for one of our hosts from last year, www.villaitaliamarche.com, and the other for a group of photographers, www.agathering.co.nz, of which I'm a member.  Our host, Alex, has a large collection of books and DVDs - we haven't watched many DVD's but the books have had a lot of use. 

Bailey

Bentley

Another large part of our spare time is not really spare time - it's the one thing we live for! ;-)  Bentley and Bailey.  They're the Siamese cats we're looking after while Alex is away.  They are such characters - very talkative and demanding and entertaining.  Bentley loves being rubbed - he'll lay on the floor forever, being rubbed on his sides, on his tummy, under his legs (his leg-pits!), under his chin - and he never attacks.  He's never used his claws or teeth on us.  Bailey, however, has a thing about feet and has on a few occasions grabbed a foot and wrapped herself around it and kicked - all for fun, of course, but a bit uncomfortable for the foot.  Their favourite game is to run around after a long piece of string.  Bailey's particularly funny as if we set the string to travel in a small circle she'll follow it around and around, until she topples over from getting giddy.

Not long after we arrived here we were alerted to the external speaker on one of our neighbours’ phones, or perhaps it was a door bell.  Luckily it never sounded at night.  We assumed they must turn it off.  Anyway, it always sounded just a few notes and is uncannily similar to the Harry Potter movie theme, so I’ve been humming the theme on and off for three months.  Just another month to go!  Anyway, we were headed into town last week, walked up the road a little way and turned the corner just in time to see Gaz’s ice cream truck pull onto the side of the road, and sound his ‘I’m here, come and get me’ jingle.  We just looked at each other and laughed!  Now every time he rolls up and we hear the Harry Potter jingle we just smile.

Something that always amuses me is the view from our backdoor on calm, sunny mornings.  As long as there's no wind and a blue sky, you can look up and see the sky criss-crossed with jet trails!  At home we'll see one or two in the sky occasionally, but here, with Heathrow so nearby, it's common to see a dozen or more.

 

Something I noticed straight away here, and continue to notice, is the amount of litter.  At home they’ve pulled out most, if not all, the public rubbish bins in parks and on streets, except those next to shops.  We’re encouraged to take it home, and I think it’s fairly effective – not that I’m suggesting we don’t have litter.  But here there are rubbish bins everywhere.  We’re in a quiet, no-exit, tidy residential street of fairly nice and substantial homes, though many, like ‘ours’ have been converted into flats.  Ten metres from our door there is a rubbish bin perched on a lamp post.  Another twenty or thirty metres away, around the corner, there is another.  And yet there is also litter, though not so much on our street.  Creeks are choked with it.  Railway lines are lined by it.  It lies around in parks and forests.  Plastic bags flutter along streets.  Cans, bottles and takeaway wrappers are dumped anywhere and everywhere.

But it’s also very green here.  We always think of New Zealand as being green, but despite the huge population here there are paddocks and hedges and huge trees and forests seemingly everywhere.  Even the towns and cities have trees and parks poked into every little corner.  Huge apartment complexes will have parks and play areas – lots of green.  The country roads are very narrow and plant life (mainly what we would call weeds!) grows as close to the road as it dares.  They leave all this growth as protection for the wild life, of which there is much.  Deer, foxes, badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs (which are not considered a pest here), birds galore – there is space kept for them all.

When we arrived here our home owner, Alex, offered us the use of her push-bike so we considered buying a secondhand bike so we could get around on them.  We had particularly nice weather when we first arrived so it seemed like an excellent idea.  But wandering home one afternoon we decided to take a different route and came across a bike leaning against a fence with a sign saying 'FREE'.  According to the note, it was surplus to requirements and just needed a new tube.  We decided we were extremely lucky and pushed it off home.  We bought a repair kit and 99p ($2) later we were the proud owner of a pretty good bike - other than a bit of paint-fade it's in as-new condition.  Our first ride was up the road to the local canals.  The area was still recovering from the big floods and our route involved riding through a stream that was running along the gravel road, and wading through a less-fresh large puddle guarding the entrance to a foot bridge.  But it was nice to be out on bikes.  Our first 'big' ride was to Wargrave.  The trip was supposed to take 45 minutes, but it took us over an hour to get there.  Anyone who knows us will know we're not typically slow on bikes, and we were pretty fit at that stage having laboured our way through the summer and winter.  We were not looking forward to the ride home.  We'd discovered we were on two heavy bone-shakers with very uncomfortable seats.  The weather deteriorated after that so we forgot how terrible they were and went out on a second jaunt a couple of months later.  This time Nigel wrapped a towel around his seat, which helped, but was still bad enough for us to decide that our cycling in Reading days are over!

In July last year Mum and Dad decided they were going to come to Italy to see us, since we were having such a great time and they’ve never been to Europe.  Their timing wasn’t great as we’d just booked ourselves up for the rest of the year.  We also had to make sure they were there in spring or autumn as summer would be too hot.  Moving on several months, holiday dates were finally settled and Dad’s staying home and my sister is coming with Mum.  We’ll spend most of September and a few days in October with them.  Once the dates were decided we started planning the holiday and our other travels for the rest of the year, and a week ago we completed our plans, which is quite a relief!  When we finish here in mid-June we fly from Southampton to Nantes, France where we have two Helpx hosts keeping us occupied until the end of August.  Then we’ll fly from Paris to Nice and catch trains back to Taggia, where we return to the first host we had last year.  We’ll help Sue there for a few days, then she’s taking off on holiday with her sister for a couple of weeks, leaving us to take care of the house, garden and pool and to entertain Mum and Julie from there for two weeks.  Then we’ll head towards Florence then Rome, where Mum and Julie depart for home.  We’ll return to another of last year’s hosts, Pauline, to help her and a friend, Corrado, with their olive harvests.  In early November we’re ‘penciled in’ to head back to another of last year’s hosts, Tim, who is on the eastern coast of Italy.

Ideally we’d like to find a house/pet-sit for the European winter, somewhere in southern Italy or Spain where it stays quite warm, so we’re keeping our eyes open and fingers crossed.

I’d better stop rabbiting on now and get this posted – it’s already a week since I started writing!

Vicki