From My Office Window

As spring finally decides to make an appearance, in the afternoons out my office window I can see people gathering for a pint at the pub across the way.  Damn this working for a living!

Made Me Laugh

Two pictures I took in Whitstable made me laugh out loud.  This first is what an homage to glam rock or the band KISS in the middle of the folk CDs for sale?  And this figurehead from the Whitstable Museum looked like Will Ferrell in drag. 

More Whitstable Pics

Quick Road Trip - Whitstable

Easter Monday, no work and no school and probably our last weekend with a car, so we decide to take a quick road trip. Two options came up: Stonehenge and Whitstable. Should we really leave England without seeing Stonehenge? It is a top tourist destination but it is also top on the disappointment list of tourist destinations and after reading on the website that you can no longer walk amongst the stones unless you are part of a special tour group it was declined. Why Whitstable? It’s a short hour and 45 minute drive over the Thames estuary to Kent. It’s both a tourist destination as well as a working harbour.

It was the beach experience in true British fashion, blustery weather in winter coats praying for the sun to make an appearance. I’ve never walked along the beach that was covered in broken shells like this one is. We mostly strolled along, took a peek in the museum, looked at a few shops and tried to ignore the sulking teenager that was with us before driving home.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

As the countdown begins, I’ve been thinking of all the things I would have liked to have seen while living here that just won’t happen in the next few weeks. Forget all the trips to mainland Europe I wish we could have taken, what things would have been fun to do right here on our island.


1. Liverpool – Yes, I would have liked to have done all the touristy Beatles things in Liverpool.

2. Hadrian’s Wall – Starting in Newcastle with my camera in hand.

3. Cornwall – Like A, it would have been fun to horseback ride along the beach (minus the horseback riding)

4. The Fat Duck in Bray – Is it worth all the fuss?

5. Wales – There’s a lot of natural beauty and I would have liked to have seen more of it.

6. Ireland – Any and all of it.

7. More Scotland – Would have loved to have gone even further north and also seen more islands.

8. Isle of Man – The pictures of the motorcycle races that happen along the streets in May look amazing.

Two things have stood in the way of us checking things off the list. The first is money. Don’t move to the UK unless you’re independently wealthy, and then if you’re independently wealthy you usually move somewhere else part of the year for the tax shelter, LOL. I believe I have mentioned this here once before but American travel writer Rick Steves proclaims that Americans don’t realize how poor they are compared to Europeans until they travel. Yes, this is so, and having to work for a living just gets in the way of seeing all that you’d like to see. The other thing that’s gotten in the way is travelling with a spoiled teenager. If it doesn’t interest her, she’s not interested, in fact she’s downright rude about it. I said to H last night, I hope at some point she realizes what she’s been like while we’ve been here and what we have been trying to expose her to and what a butt she has been. H assures me in 10 to 15 years’ time it will dawn on her. I don’t know if I can wait that long!

Moving Madness

We’ve hit the point in the moving process where we are:


1. Selling off the big items.

2. Packing up the items to ship and then pulling them out of the boxes to use because it’s too soon.

3. Getting rid of inconsequential things.

4. Sitting amongst filth.

We had a four-day weekend here for Easter and besides doing some things for the move, I also wanted to do something fun. Yesterday my internal monologue was so negative that I laughed as I thought of my friend B who, if she could hear me would have said, “You want a little cheese with that whine?” I set out to walking in a nearby wood with a map and H’s phone which has GPS and ended up on such a windy narrow road that for the first time in my life, I was car sick while driving. I didn’t think that was possible. It was Easter Sunday, the sun was making a brief appearance, lots of families were out for a country walk stopping to take pictures of the horses, etc. and I was just annoyed by the whole thing. After a nap the sun was shining bright in the early evening so I ventured out again, but stuck close to home.

I will miss living close to these beautiful houses, which I will never in all my life be able to afford!

In My Own Backyard

When we lived at our other house I had a walking routine that went through some fields and in the distance I could see this large building, and I’ve been curious ever since about what it was. Thanks to the amazing Google Earth I was able to track it down as a hotel called Latimer Place and on my walk I found a way to get closer. The building was called Latimer Manor in 1615 and was a manor house of a large farm. So it’s not in my backyard, more like about a 30 minute walk away, but beautiful just the same.

Back to Reality

It’s Sunday and I’m savouring that last day of vacation before heading back to work tomorrow. January at work is going to be particularly brutal so I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for this.  I took a long walk today and took my camera with me this time. 

Rainy November

I dropped A off the other day and had to stop and take a picture as the autumn colors are fading fast.  Today I drove through the picturesque village of Winslow with a co-worker.  Unfortunately it was pouring or I would have made him pull over so I could take pictures of some of the thatched roofs.

Birmingham Photographic Grid

The shopping centre outside of our hotel had this photographic exhibit displayed and I thought it was a neat concept.  In an attempt to accurately portray Birmingham life in a systematic way, places on a well-travelled bus route were used as subjects. As the website says, "The grid imposes a system that may sometimes locate the picturesque but is just as likely to find the industrial, the rugged, the new, old, boring, threatening or just ugly". 

After all, a city is made up of all of these things.

Birmingham New Street Station

This is Birmingham New Street Station. It was voted one of the Seven Horrors of Britain. This article explains how a revitalization campaign gained momentum. I didn’t think it was that horrible.

Birmingham on a Saturday Morning

While the girls were packing up, I went in search of coffee and thought I would take a few snapshots of Birmingham. It was oh so quiet, not a brummie accent to be heard.

Everyone Should Have a Knight in the Office

One of my colleagues brought in these brass rubbings from a church no longer open to the public. They are from the 14th century.

Manchester Town Hall

We had a function at the Manchester Town Hall and it is a beautiful building. The function that was taking place in the great hall ended while we were there so we got to take a walk through while it was being cleaned.

Manchester Pics

Because I was there for work, the most I saw of Manchester was walking to and from the train station and then walking to the evening events. The most notable thing because it is different than London is the number of red brick buildings. I had lots of interesting conversations with customers, and most of them revolved around the North/South divide, accents, and the heat. Everyone looked more than a little bit wilted. One of our customers from Newcastle was telling me about moving not far up the road to Scotland and how the word “canny” has a different meaning in both places. I had to ask him to spell it and explain that word has no meaning at all to me! I found this Geordie dictionary which has a definition of canny. Geordie is the dialect spoken in the Newcastle area.

Off to Manchester

Last Thursday night, with my buddy C from Australia in town, we joined some co-workers at the local pub for the pub quiz. We mentioned that we were both going to be heading up to Manchester for work this week and several of my co-workers had a sarcastic comment to make about Manchester. In fact every time any town is mentioned there’s a sarcastic comment so I called them on it. I asked the group where I could say I was from in the UK and get a nice comment back. They sat their silent for a good bit until a few places got mentioned, all in the south besides Edinburgh. There’s some truth to the North/South divide.

I’m keeping an open mind about Manchester. I want to hear that Mancunian accent in its natural habitat.

The Fields in the Distance

I’ve been driving past these fields so I asked the walking encyclopedia at work what they were. He told me that it is what we would make canola oil from. It has a different name in the UK. We couldn’t get very close when we were out walking on Sunday without trespassing so here’s the best we could do. The walking encyclopedia did not think the color of the fields was that impressive, but last week when there was a visitor from America in the office, they commented as well.

St. Albans

This past Monday was Memorial Day in the U.S. and a Bank Holiday Monday. The weather was stunning and A was refusing to leave the house. I had been wanting to visit St. Albans which is just a short drive away and see the cathedral and Roman ruins. I had to bait her with shopping to get her interested. Because of the weather EVERYONE seemed to be out and parking spaces were sparse. In between a look through the shops we walked through the cathedral. We really had a nice day but what struck me is how different things are now that she is a teenager. We had these moments of conversation that were nothing but laughter and good times but then each of us would veer off into topics that took us to the brink of drama. For her it was me mentioning school and for me it was her thinking she’s going to go travel to America alone to visit her friends.

We will have to go back another day to see the Roman ruins. It was swimming with people and no parking anywhere. Even I wasn’t up for that. One of my work colleagues lives there and he said that basically all that is left of the Roman theatre there is one pillar but it is presented very well!