Biggest beer shop in Europe

You'll have seen from a previous post that when we were in King's Lynn we went to the biggest beer shop in Europe.  It was pretty big, and it had a huge range of beers from around the world. Here's what I made of the beers that I got (and a couple of nice ones I've had in England)....

McEwan's Champion has lived up to its name in a country where if you ask me, boutique brewing is still to catch on.  Most of the pubs that I've been to just have the same old stuff on tap. While most pubs have about 3 real ale taps, they generally have the same old stuff too.

The Champion pours a dark red and has a real body to it.  Good caramel flavours, and a suggestion of something stronger - as if it has been aged in bourbon or whiskey barrels - but that is not noted on the label.  This has been my go-to beer from the supermarket.

While I had had a fair few of the beers at the big beer store, it was great to find the Big Bear Black Stout from Bear Republic.  This was one of the ones that I got to taste straight from the brewery in the States.  Still like it - great big bear flavour - just what you want from a real dark beer.

Oh my chocolately goodness!!!  This one really does what it says on the label. It is Samuel Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout. They make it in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire and they manage to cram it as full of chocolate as any beer I have ever tried.  Not only that, but it was really creamy too. Some people might find it a bit sweet - maybe it could do with a few more hops or different ones to balance out the chocolate a bit more, but I wouldn't change a thing for fear of upsetting this recipe. Best beer in England so far.

Martha's Mild was one of the ales that I had at the Sir Walter Raleigh pub when we were in Budleigh Salterton, all that time ago. And it is pretty good out of the bottle too.  A nice rich dark ale, with plenty of malty goodness.  This one doesn't go for the chocolate as well, but it is very drinkable. I would certainly drink it again.

Here's one of those beers that exceeds expectations. Part of the reason for that was that expectations were pretty low.  It's called Stumbling Badger and so I had to buy it because of the name. I didn't expect that the beer would be any good, but it was very nice.  A ruby red ale that was quite malty and tasty.  A pleasant surprise.

This was a Scottish ale that sounded interesting from the label. It is called Black Cuillin, and brewed on the Isle of Skye. It promises a dark Socttish ale brewed with oats and heather honey.  It may well be, but I couldn't really tell.  It was ok, and towards the end I could taste the honey. Not something that I'd bother drinking again.

The Meantime chocolate porter is good. I like it. Not as chocolatey as the Samuel Smith one above, but still a very nice drop.

This wasn't as good as I remembered.  Called Fraoch, instead of being flavoured with hops, they used what they had in Scotland and that was heather.  I remembered it as quite a flowery beer, with a delicate flavour - tasting a bit of honey too.  I didn't really get that this time.

This one was called Humpty Dumpty Porter, and despite the silly name was quite nice too. While I've had some reasonably flavourless ales at pubs, this was a nice porter. From reasonably randomly choosing beers at the big beer shop, I've had a decent hit rate of beers that I'd drink again.

This was actually quite nice.  This was another I bought because of the name and cool label, and so didn't have high expectations for the beer.  But it was quite nice.  Very malty - reminded me of the Maltexo extract that we used to have as kids - in a good way.

This was ok. It was named the CAMRA stout of the year in 2009, but it was a bit too much like guiness for my liking. I prefer it to not taste quite so burnt.

This was another to exceed expectations, and by quite a margin. It is called White Wolf and so I bought it because of the name / label again.  But the white wolf was to signify that it is a winter ale, so it was dark and really very good. I think that it was a dark ale as opposed to a porter or stout, but it was way better than I expected and I'd drink this again.

This was really good. It is an imperial stout - mercilessly twisted stout. It was very smooth and with plenty of depth of flavour. Probably a good thing that it only comes in 330ml bottles though with the higher alcohol percentage. Would definitely have again. From Brew Dog, and they seem to have an intersting range of beers.

This was another great beer from Meantime.  They have a brewery bar at Greenwich.  I haven't been there yet, but I'm sure that I will make it there. This was their London Stout and I found it very much to my liking.  It was nice and dark, and very full bodied too.  Nice caramel flavour.  Perfect for a colder evening.

Alice Porter - the label really sold me on this one.  It describes itself as a renaissance baltic porter.  I spotted it in the supermarket one day.  Another beer from Brew Dog, and they 'story' that goes with the beer is almost as good as the beer itself.  The label reads:

A delicate mirage of chocolate, red fruit and burnt sugar, let Alice Porter whisk you away to a forgotten time juxtaposed against the backdrop of modernity. And then, before you know it, she's gone... tumbling down a rabbit hole into the same obscurity that first caught your attention. Leaving but the question – who or what is Alice Porter?

Getting up-to-date

Last weekend we went over to Bristol once more to catch up with Uncle Tony and Aunty Ingrid.  My cousin Teresa and her family have returned back to England after close to fourteen years working in Bangladesh.  Teresa and Mark are both doctors and worked at LAMB – the Lutheran Aid Mission Bangladesh.  They are now living in Gloucester so Tony and Ingrid had arranged with Teresa that we would all go over for dinner on Saturday.

We drove over to Bristol on Friday night, and while it would normally take only two hours, this time it took three.  The weather at our end was just awful, and the M25 was stationary.  We didn’t need the M25 but it seemed that everyone who usually did was avoiding it by using our roads.  Tony and Ingrid very patiently held supper and waited for us which was lovely of them.

On Saturday Grant and I went out shopping in the morning, and after lunch we all visited Julian and his family before driving across to Gloucester.  Teresa had planned a lovely exploratory walk from her home to Gloucester Cathedral, taking in some very interesting sights along the way.   The town centre is a fascinating mix of old and new; some of the buildings are delightful and highly original.  The Cathedral itself is exquisite; the detailing is so fine and has weathered the centuries so well.  Teresa pointed out that part of the first Harry Potter film (the bit with the troll) was filmed in the cloisters which are gorgeous.  We then walked back to her house along the river and saw a lovely shipwrights where they still build beautiful wooden ships.

Teresa and Mark had invited their good friends Colin and Chris (and their two boys), who had worked with them at LAMB, over for dinner as well.  Colin is originally from Whangarei so we had a great time talking about NZ.  At one point in the evening the conversation even turned to rugby instead of politics!  It was so lovely to catch up with Teresa and Mark and their girls finally; they have been back in the country since late July but have been busy settling back into work and school.

On Sunday morning, Grant and I were taken for a lovely walk up to the Folly, which looks out over the Avon valley.  At this time of year the colours are just beautiful, and we so enjoyed getting out in the fresh air.  The hills did come as a bit of a shock though, and made us realise just how long we have been away from Wellington.  We felt we had truly earned our delicious roast beef lunch before we had to drive home once more.

This weekend we decided to take things a bit quieter. We have a couple of big weekends ahead, and so wanted to catch our breath. Still, we couldn’t just sit around at home. Saturday dawned clear and crisp so we decided to head in to Borough market again, with the objective of getting some of the yummy food and bringing it home again. When we went there with Selwyn we were going to be out all day and so couldn’t buy stuff to bring home. Last time we’d been there, there’d also been a mix up about getting coffee too. Siobhan had had a chai tea of some description, and so when I went for coffee, I thought that I was only getting one for me. I got it from this chocolatier, and while I can’t really remember how good the coffee is back in Wellington any more, this was just divine. It made me even more popular last time.  This time, my instructions were clear though. 

You know when you remember something being really good and you go back there and it is not as good as you remember it and you come away feeling disappointed, well this wasn’t one of those times. I don’t know what they do to their coffee, but it is crazy good. It is real coffee goodness, but not bitter and oh so smooth. The place is a chocolatier called Rabot Estate, and we’ll have to take Jared there so he can tell me what they’re doing with their coffee. But before the coffee we got a boneless pheasant with plum and ginger stuffing to cook for Sunday dinner, and some venison sausages. The pheasant was very nice (a little dry even in an oven bag), and Siobhan even got a bit of lead shot with hers.

From there we wandered back past the Twinings tea shop which was very nice.  While Twinings have a lot of yummy flavours of fruit tea over here, the supermarket only seems to stock a couple of them at a time.  It was great being able to stock up on their range of flavours, and try some new ones.

As we had also been browsing clothes shops as we had wandered, we then decided that we’d go home, drop off all the shopping and then go to Guildford. I have bought a blazer as I can wear it to work and can also wear it at the weekends depending on what we are doing. I like it. I was keen to find one that was a bit different, and Guildford has some more quirky shops. So we got to Guildford and headed to the main street. The first shop we went into had exactly what I wanted. It was a beautiful wool blazer, really nice tailoring, and a really subtle shade of purple. It was so cool. It was also £995 and so we didn’t stop to see if they had it in my size. That would have just made me sadder. We wandered some more. We looked at all sorts of other stuff. I eventually got something that will be ok. Not perfect though. Anyway, it was just a jacket. Or as my old school friend Chris noted on Facebook, a decent second car (note from Siobhan – or a ticket home to NZ).

Having shopped all day, we thought that we should go do the groceries too and then we wouldn’t need to go anywhere on Sunday. And we needed to get the ingredients for making the Christmas pudding. Also, we needed to get an air freshener. You know how it is always suggested that you eat less red meat and more fish or vegetables? Well, we bought some fish from the supermarket and made a really nice fish pie. And our flat has stunk of fish for about 5 days now. Even though the pie and all the packaging from the fish is long gone.  Opening windows over here hasn’t made the slightest difference. So we got an air freshener and on Sunday morning the place smelled of vanilla fish. By Sunday evening though, it was just vanilla. The Christmas pudding is also steaming away on the stove. Nearly all sorted to face the new week at work. Well, it is for me – Siobhan has the week off for mid-term break – then we’re off on Thursday to Barcelona!!

A Ruby Weekend

After another working week, we had the pleasure of Ruby staying with us again on Saturday and Sunday.  She was full of news about Rome, Florence, Paris and Bath but also quite excited about going home.  She spent Saturday with friends (Grant caught the train up to meet her in London so she could hand over her very heavy bags) and on Sunday we all went up to London to do some exploring. 

First stop was the Leicester Square ticket booth – we wanted to take Ruby to a West End show that night.  Jersey Boys was the best on offer that morning, so we got our tickets and then went sightseeing.  On the recommendation of Grant’s colleague, we found our way to the Spitalfields and Brick Lane markets (the Borough Market isn’t open on a Sunday).  We walked up along the Thames to do this and found that the North bank is not as easy as the South bank.  We kept being directed inland away from the river but it was still quite a nice walk.  The markets themselves were certainly very busy, and we found some great ethnic food for lunch, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as the Borough Market.  Maybe we didn’t find quite the right place.

Ruby was quite keen to see Harrods, so we got on the Tube for this.  I didn’t really feel up to walking from Liverpool Street to Knightsbridge.  Harrods was kind of fun, especially the pet section (we all had a good laugh at some of the ridiculous clothes and accessories people buy for their animals) and the toy section (some awesome Lego sculptures) but I certainly wouldn’t do any actual shopping there.

From here we walked to Hyde Park, and found a nice café beside the Serpentine where we had a rest and a cup of tea.  On our way to the café we saw lots of squirrels, and one couple were feeding nuts to them while taking some great photos.  I decided to keep a couple of our chips and see if I could coax a squirrel close to us as we left the park.  It did take a little coaxing, but I did get one to come and take a piece of chip from my hand.  He was too quick for photos though, and clearly chips are not nearly as enticing as nuts as he wouldn’t come back for seconds.  Now I know what to take next time.

We made it back to the theatre very early so found a bar to have a quiet drink before we went in.  We were going to the 5pm show so planned to have dinner afterwards.  Jersey Boys is about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and while I thought I knew a couple of their songs I wasn’t overly fussed about going to this show.  I was pleasantly surprised and found the story really interesting and many of the songs familiar (admittedly from films such as Dirty Dancing rather than from the radio!).  The show was very well done, the actors were great and we all had a good time.  Just goes to show, turn up for discount tickets and you might be surprised.

This was Ruby’s last night with us; the next day she was staying with friends closer to Heathrow and then travelling home to NZ.  We were so glad to have the chance to take her out London-style, and in keeping with the Italian (think Mafia) theme of the evening we found a lovely looking little Italian place close to the theatre.  I thought I wanted pasta but their pizza selection was just too tempting.  We all decided on pizza and what we got was a 75cm long pizza – 25cm each with our individual choice of toppings.  It was absolutely delicious and we managed to eat the whole thing!  It was a great end to a fun day.

One of the things that probably hasn’t made it to the blog yet is that the Cooperation and Competition Panel that I work for is headed up by Lord Carter of Coles. Apparently, this is very handy if you would like to do a tour of the Houses of Parliament. Lord Carter very kindly arranged a tour for a group of the new people at work so we got to have a visit on Wednesday morning.  So, I got to go on a tour of the Palace of Westminster without Siobhan. We weren’t allowed to take photos though, so I bought the book so she could read about it.  Both the book and the tour were very interesting. If you're really interested, they have a virtual tour which looks surprisingly like the real thing at www.parliament.uk

You enter into Westminster Hall which was where the Queen had that big lunch event on the Jubilee weekend. It is part of the original structure that was around when William the Conqueror showed up. A lot of the rest of the building was lost during a big fire in 1512. St Stephen’s chapel (which became a hall) was then used to hold Parliament until they had an even bigger fire in 1834. After that, they had a competition for who could design the coolest building and Charles Barry won it. So he designed it as you see today with Big Ben at one end (but you’re not supposed to call it Big Ben), and the Victoria tower at the other end.  From there we were whisked down to the Victoria tower to see where the Queen enters Parliament. She comes in through the royal entrance, and we got to follow the route that she takes when coming in to open Parliament. Part of the reason that she comes in through this different entrance is apparently to remind her of her place in the overall scheme of things – that the monarch no longer rules over the people – that is what Parliament is there for. 

Next up was the robing room, where HRH gets into all of her snazzy finery for opening Parliament. This room is really interesting, as unlike the rest of the palace, it doesn’t have pictures of old dead dudes. Instead, it has pictures of scenes of King Arthur, as it was built when Queen Victoria was young and she and everyone else was really into King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table at the time. The other cool thing it had was the throne built for Queen Victoria that she used to use. It was interesting as Queen Victoria was very short apparently, so it is built for a small person with a dinky foot stool too.

After this we got to head into the House of Lords debating chamber. It was all very red and luxurious, except for the very bright and shiny gold throne and surrounds for where the Queen sits. You nearly need sunglasses in there it is so bright and shiny. We got to see the Woolsack, which is still stuffed with wool. We didn’t get to go through the corridors around the sides to determine whether we were “content” or “not content” with our visit. 

From there we went into the central lobby where there are statues of Gladstone, Granville, Churchill, and Thatcher. Down the corridor is the House of Commons.  So we got to stand where David Cameron was going to be standing in about an hour or so fielding questions in question time at noon on Wednesdays. While we think (correctly) that we have too many MPs in New Zealand, they have over 600 here. Funny thing is that they have seats for about 300 I reckon. If they all showed up, it would be more than cosy. Not sure how they jam them all in. After that, we headed back to Westminster hall and then back to work. But, all in all, a very interesting excursion.

Brussels (Europe at last!)

This week was a shocker.  Turns out Mark and family can’t have been completely over their tummy bug as they shared it with me.  Grant seemed to escape it and was a wonderful nurse, while I had to take three days off school.  And while I still don’t like that school much, I would still rather have been there than feel as sick as I did.  Luckily it was a short lived bug.

Friday saw Grant head off desperately early once more for his second day in Brussels.  I went back to work, and the last bell of the day saw me grabbing my bag and heading for home.  I had to get back to Woking, get my bag, and get to King’s Cross St. Pancras for the 18.05 Eurostar to Brussels.  It was a pretty frantic trip but I did get there in time.  I hadn’t had time to stop anywhere on the way for Euros though, so I found a currency place at the station.  Talk about a total rip-off!  We will make absolutely sure to get our Euros well in advance in the future.

The train journey was uneventful, but arriving alone at Brussels Midi was more than a little daunting.  The exit side of the station is pretty bare, all the signs are in French and Flemish only, and there appeared to be no staff about at all.  To be fair, it was just after 9pm.  We had checked on maps and looked for stations close to our accommodation that I could get a Metro train to, but in the end it was all just too unfamiliar.  I caught a taxi instead, and take my hat off to all those intrepid people who regularly travel alone.  I was most happy to reach our hotel and join up with my other half once more. 

Our hotel room was very small and, like almost every hotel we have stayed in this year, over-heated.  But it was comfortable and after such a long day we were ready for a good night’s sleep.  We didn’t do too badly in the end given the heating.

Saturday dawned very wet.  We had purchased hop-on, hop-off bus tickets via the internet and that seemed like a good first plan.  We could stay downstairs in the dry and look at the sights out the window.  But first things first; we went in search of breakfast.  There were a couple of nice-looking cafés close to our hotel – both of which were closed on the weekend.  Hungry and slightly pissed off, we went exploring in the rain.  We finally found an organic café (part of a chain) that both had good food and was open.  And we hadn’t got too terribly wet on the way.

Once fed and watered, we went in search of our bus.  We caught the Metro to one of the central stations, coincidentally close to the Irish pub Grant had found for us to watch the All Blacks at later, and found the kiosk to swap our booking notice for tickets very easily.  We had just missed a bus, so went walking to find Central Station which was a depot for the buses.  On the way we stumbled upon the Grand Place, and it truly was grand.  The buildings surrounding us were just beautiful, even through the rain.  We didn’t stop for long as it was still very wet, and soon made it to our bus.  We found that even the top deck was covered in poor weather so we went upstairs in order to get the best possible views.

These buses have two routes in Brussels, and we decided to take the red route first.  This took around the centre of Brussels (not the Grand Place; that’s pedestrians only), past the Parliament of Europe where the EU headquarters are, past some fabulous art deco architecture and the Abbaye de la Cambre.  You can’t actually see the Abbaye without getting off the bus as the grounds have such wonderful centuries-old trees.  Said grounds were lovely though.  Eventually, just as we were starting to get tired of peering out foggy windows, Grant recognised the area we had entered as being close to his course.  He had found a good café the previous Friday there so we got off the bus and went for lunch.

The café was nice, and had excellent sandwiches and quite nice coffee.  Even better, while we enjoyed our lunch, the rain stopped.  Instead of getting back on the bus we spent the afternoon exploring the streets of Brussels.  We even found the Grand Place again and got some better, less wet, photos.

Once it was getting close to 5pm, we made our way back to O’Reilly’s Bar and found a good seat in front of the big screen, ready for the All Blacks vs. Springboks game.  A group of South Africans was sitting at the next table, so it was going to be a fun evening.  When the Springboks scored the first try of the game off a forward pass, the response from Grant and from the South Africans was pretty much as you would expect.  It was all in good humour and set a hilarious tone for the rest of the game.  I am just glad we won, and won comprehensively, in the end!

We then went wandering in search of a proper dinner.  Earlier that day we had found ourselves in a little alleyway full of restaurants of all kinds and Grant had been given a card by a touter telling him if we came back there for dinner he could get a free drink.  This seemed like a good plan and we eventually found ourselves there again.  This time, the touting was really in your face and we were feeling pretty frustrated by the time we were seated.  We were even more frustrated when the ‘free drink’ turned out to be cheap horrible methode champagnoise rather than something you could choose.  We politely declined the drink.  On the up side, we shared a Chateaubriand for our meal, and while we would perhaps not have chosen French fries to have with it, the meat was absolutely delicious.

The evening of Saturday 6 October was Nuit Blanche, a night of interactive displays and performances throughout the heart of Brussels.  We had found a booklet with information about the various events and decided there were a few things that looked interesting.  We are not really into performance art, but it’s one night a year and we happened to be there.  It seemed like time to broaden our horizons.  All the events were within walking distance of the each other, and we found ourselves passing things we had not chosen to see on our way to other events.  In fact some of these turned out to be fascinating.  Among the events we stopped at were Chrysalide, a huge sculpture made from sellotape; Cyclo-Kino, where participants rode bikes to power the display of moving images on the wall; Phonoscope, where viewers could control how much picture was visible by making noise into a tube.  The louder the noise, the bigger the image.  That one was really kind of cool.  But our real find of the evening was not the event itself (called Men in a Window) but the church it was in.  The event was screened by huge projectors, so the rest of the church was really dark.  This was unfortunate, as the pulpit was amazingly carved and the area behind the altar was beautifully painted.  Like us, most visitors seemed more interested in the church than the exhibit.

That one was on our way home, as it had got quite late by now.  We left the bedroom window open as long as possible to cool the room down and got another pretty satisfactory sleep.

Sunday dawned bright and blue, a glorious day.  We planned to take the blue route on the hop-on bus this time, over towards the east of the city and the Atomium, a molecular-looking structure left over from a World Trade Fair.  We weren’t one-hundred percent sure of its route on this particular Sunday, as we had managed to hit on the weekend of the Brussels marathon.  Still, the ticket people had not said anything the previous day when we got our 48-hour tickets, so we were cautiously optimistic.

We had realised that our hotel was only about a twenty-minute walk from the area of the city we had been in for the rugby, so rather than go down into the Metro again we walked up to town.  We found a nice little café on the way to get breakfast, and soon found ourselves at the bus stop.

After waiting for about 40 minutes, getting more and more frustrated, we approached another group waiting and let them know, in slow English, that we had been waiting ages and were going to the Central stop to find out more.  We had to laugh – turned out they were from England too!  They said they had come from the Central stop and no traffic was allowed through there until 4pm.  Extremely disappointed, we conceded the bus was probably not running at all and made new plans.

We caught the Metro up to the Atomium, hoping for some spectacular views over the city.  The reality was a queue that snaked around for over 150m.  We had already spent enough of our day standing around waiting, so we went for a walk in the lovely grounds around the Atomium and got some great photos of the structure itself.  We then caught the Metro to the Parlimentarium and had a fascinating time learning more about the structure and history of the EU.

By this time we were both pretty tired and suffering from information overload.  We decided to go and get our bags from the hotel, head for the Eurostar station and sit down there with coffee and wait for our train.  It turned out to be a great idea – we were through the security gates very easily and quietly read our books until our train was ready to board.  Issues on the London Underground meant we didn’t make it home in time for Downton Abbey, but we did get a proper night’s sleep to end our weekend away.

Another London Weekend

On Tuesday Selwyn arrived from Europe.  He has been travelling the world on his own since about January, an amazingly brave step.  I have really enjoyed our travels so far, but even more have I enjoyed having Grant to travel with!  Selwyn just needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks exploring London before his return to NZ.  I couldn’t believe it when I picked him up at Woking station and he had only one small back-pack, just like the sort of thing a student uses for a school bag.  Talk about being able to travel light!

We had defrosted a leg of lamb ready for Mark and Paula and the girls on Sunday, but since they had not been able to make it we saved it for Tuesday and gave Selwyn a treat.  It was great timing, as he had just told his mum how much he was looking forward to a roast lamb.  

Of course we still had to work through the week, but Selwyn had plenty of London exploring to do.  We did make sure to take him out to our local for a beer and a meal one evening.  On Friday Grant had his first day trip to Brussels too, so he was very late home that night.  Selwyn was a very good sport about having to watch Dr. Who.

On Saturday we all went up to London to check out the Borough Market.  This was is a busy, bustling feature of a Saturday in London and we were very pleased to find a delicious bacon buttie for breakfast.  We were staying in London for the whole day though, and going to a house-warming party in the evening, so we reluctantly stayed away from the delicious bread stalls and amazing cheeses we saw.

We had hoped to take Selwyn to see Les Miserables in the afternoon but there weren’t three tickets left together, so instead we took advantage of the lovely weather and went up to the Tower of London.  This was one of the few tourist attractions Grant and I had visited on our 2006 trip to London but the weather was very different.  We remembered a dismal day with dreadful rain, and finally giving up before seeing the whole place.  On this visit, we found ourselves wondering just how much we bothered to look at last time!  We spent the whole afternoon exploring the various Towers and reading the fascinating history behind it all.  Much of the important history has turned up in Sharon Penman’s wonderful novels, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading the popular versions too.

We especially enjoyed the Crown Jewels, although I still struggle to believe that a clear stone nearly the size of my fist can really be a real diamond.  Surely a really big diamond is still only knuckle-sized?

After the Tower, we headed up to Kensington where Grant’s colleague was having her house-warming.  We were too early, so we went to a nice local pub for a quiet drink before going to the party.  It was nice to meet some of Grant’s colleagues and the evening got off to a good start.  We did need to make our home before it got too horribly late though, as it is a long trip on the Tube and Southwest Trains to get home from that part of London.  I managed to persuade Grant to leave not long after 10.30pm; Selwyn decided to stay as one of Grant’s colleagues had a sofa he could crash on and he was really enjoying the party.  We finally got home at about midnight, in time for Grant to watch the All Blacks play Argentina.  I managed to sleep through most of it.

View from Karen's rooftop balcony 

On Sunday morning we got ready to go back to London to rescue Selwyn – but he turned up before we left.  He had decided on his commute back that he had been away from home long enough.  He wanted to catch the bus out to Heathrow and see if he could get an earlier flight back to NZ.  So we walked him to the Heathrow bus before heading into town in search of coffee.

Mark, Paula and the girls came for dinner that night but we got lazy and ordered curries rather than cooking a big meal – and anyway, we had used our roast on Tuesday!  The company was still great and we enjoyed caching up on their news as a fine finish to our weekend.

Gosport once more

After a very difficult two and a half weeks at work, I decided that the school I am at does not suit my temperament.  For some reason I quite dislike being openly defied, sworn at and pushed up against doorways by delinquent teenagers.  So on Friday morning I handed in my notice. I will stay until either they replace me or I find better work as I did not like to leave my colleagues (who have been wonderful) in the lurch.  However I have begun the search for day relief work instead.  

Nursing a bruised ego, I very much looked forward to our planned weekend with Barbara in Gosport.  We had an easy drive down, after waiting until about 6pm to leave.  Our hope was that we would avoid the worst traffic by travelling a bit later and luckily it worked out.  Barbara had cooked a wonderful meal for our supper and it was just lovely to be looked after.  

We slept very late (for us) on Saturday, not even waking up until after 8.30.  Our flat in Woking has wooden Venetian blinds rather than curtains, and quite a lot of light bleeds in.  We didn’t think it was making that much difference, but clearly keeping the light out helps a great deal in sleeping late!

After a quiet morning, including a walk to the corner shops for the paper, we headed out to The Jolly Sailor for lunch.  This lovely pub is in Old Burseldon and sits right on the harbour so we could watch the sailing boats coming and going.  While it was a beautiful day, especially if you had a boat, the cold wind meant sitting indoors but we still had a lovely view.

 

On the way home we stopped in to see Jane, Phil and Yasmin.  They were all in the middle of getting Yasmin ready for her departure to university the following day, but still found the time to share a cup of tea with us.  Yasmin was very excited about starting her uni studies, and about student accommodation.  Sunday was clearly going to be a very busy day for them!

We spent a quiet evening on Saturday, which was just what we needed.  We had the crossword so we were happy.

The plan for Sunday had been to take Barbara out for brunch, but the day dawned so wet and miserable that Barbara begged off the trip to town.  We really wanted to go shopping though, so we still went and Barbara stayed home to get a lovely roast lunch ready for us instead. 

We were going across the harbour on the ferry to Portsmouth, and managed to find a park fairly close to the terminal.  We still had to do a lot of rain dodging though, even though most of our shopping was done in a mall area, so Barbara was no doubt wise to stay at home.  Grant did find a very lovely shirt to add to his collection, so it was not a wasted trip.

By the time we got back for a late lunch, we had heard that Mark’s girls’ were down with some sort of tummy bug, so our planned early departure in order to host them for dinner was no longer needed.  Given the rain, this was probably a blessing in disguise as it meant we didn’t have to try to race home.  Instead we had a fairly gentle drive home, without too many hassles caused by the sudden terrible weather.  Thank you Barbara for another restful, relaxing weekend.