Jess' Brief Pictorial Summary of Four Weeks in England

Great

Great

Good (despite ads)

Good

Fun

Handy

Invaluable

Not too bad

Good

Great

Not as great.

Promising to be really great

(V&A) Amazing.

What a great achieeevement

Tomorrow will be four weeks!

My debit card arrived in the mail today, which makes me feel like half a legitimate person. I only set up the account on Monday because I only got around to it then... but it will be nice to have a bit of plastic to pay with instead of notes and coins that I'm still not totally familiar with, and an online presence in pounds. I'm also getting registered with the health thingo - an NHS number it is. That's a good thing, I reckon. I bought me some air mail envelopes to save the post office folk some stickers, and also because I think they are doubly (if not triply) exciting with blue and red parallelograms along the edges. I tried a Daim bar thanks to my cousin Emma's recommendation and they are terrific!

We're going to Brighton for a weekend in July which should be smashing, what. I am rather excited. I always think of Pride & Prejudice when I see the name. Also, I won't be home for Christmas unfortunately. I am genuinely sad to be away from family for the first time ever on that day but I'll be in Spain watching the sun set over the ocean. Ahhh sorry I should have thought of a nicer way of putting it... No white Christmas for me, nope! Spain. How marvelous!

Well after almost a month I think I am wearing out a little. Or a lot. I may not have anything interesting to write about this weekend because I might just do a whole lot of relaxing. We're having a barbecue on Sunday and since I come from the land down under where they supposedly invented the thing, I'm to be overseeing it all to make sure they're doing it right. Pshaw, like I've ever barbecued a sausage in my life. It's a man's job! Anyway it's nice to feel important. Have I mentioned that my English family has a hills hoist (clothes line)? It's one of those silly green and yellow ones, and when I first looked at it I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. It took two weeks for me to decide that yes, the top bit is upside down like a blown out umbrella. Not sure if I'll ever let on, but it still amuses me a little.

Time to bring down the snooze mask and zzz. I can almost lie on my right ear again! If ever you want to get your forward helix pierced, expect at least 5 months of sleeping with air between your ear and the mattress - using the pillow or your arm as a prop. Second nature now.

Righto then, goodnight!

Duck Pond

For the romantics and Doctor Who fans -

It's such a pretty area.
This pond is in the middle of a huge park that I've only seen a bit of. When I'm sleeping well enough to go on early morning walks (yeah, I can dream) this is where I'll be going!

Fluff

I am so tired I think I'm beyond feeling it. I have accumulated tiredness which is the worst type because it takes so much longer to get rid of than to gather. I wasn't kidding when I said I wake up at ridiculous hours. The last few days have been 4am, and before that it was 5am and before that since the day I arrived it was 5:30am. Trying not to think about the summer solstice. Eek.
Also my job is pretty exhausting. An afternoon in the park on a beautiful sunny day is absolutely lovely, but also quite tiring and then there's still several hours of duties including cooking, bath routine and washing. At home mums are champions - CHAMPIONS. Don't ever underestimate what they do, because I have a portion of the workload and I'm going to bed at 8 tonight. Sheesh.

I feel like such a dag because I'm wearing a sleep mask. That's how desperate I am for sleep. (Why am I blogging? Don't know. I felt like it. Bedtime is a process.) I tried it for the first time last night and though I got to sleep OK, I woke up and it wasn't on my head anymore. Sneaky me. At least it did half the job. Oh and it's not over my eyes at the moment...

I'm sorry, this is not material that is world wide web worthy. I come from a family of over-sharers. (Can't wait to Skype you guys tomorrow morning! Which is tonight for you but anyway.)

Good
night.

We could all use the fresh air

People have been asking about the church I visited last Sunday night, and since there's nothing else to write about really, I thought I'd better oblige and expand on "yes."

Finding it was easy enough, but even though it was only a 6 minute tube ride, altogether it took 50 minutes to get there what with walking to the station and from the station to the church. Half an hour to get home. The weather is splendid now though and the sun goes to bed so late (not dark at 10pm!! It's killing me, I wake up at 4am instead of 5am now and doze shallowly till I get up), so anyway it's really nice outside in the evening.

It had tapestries, yes, but it's a much newer building and so people aren't there for the big old organ (there was none, but a drum kit). I was welcomed really genuinely (it makes a WORLD of difference if someone greets you kindly and someone comes and sits with you and is friendly and helpful. Seriously). The teaching was good and there were lots of songs. I didn't know any of them but I recognised the authors - you know, the 1970s crowd like Keith Getty and then some Stuart Townend.
After the service the welcoming continued (another important thing); it was almost as if they weren't letting me out the door till I'd met half a dozen people and declined the invitation to the young-people's-kick-on... twice. I liked it. I'm going back.

OK... the last time I watched Narnia I teared up, it was the fourth time this week. This time though the voices are grinding on my nerves so before I let it affect what goes into this post (too late?) I'm going to finish by saying that today I was outside in the sun with a T-shirt and was sweaty! Second summer this year, bring it on!!!

When I'm me, I'm punning.

It actually feels like summer. I had no sleeves outside at 6:30pm and sweated in my boots. It is looking up my friends! I tried elderflower cordial the other day, my host mum bought it because it's a very British thing, and it's yummy. I made a roast vegetable lasagna this week which actually worked! And then I made bolognese the next day and ate beef. Not that I'm a big meet head at all, but I don't remember the last time I ate pork in Australia. After burning myself on the oven I peeled a fair piece of skin off of my thumb, it bled a lot. But I'm not letting that bruise my cooking esteem. (Haha, steam.)

Just an aside: so far I gather that British people think Australia is this huge, glorious expanse of relaxed holiday park where the roads are straight and smooth, and people loll about all day by the pool digesting their barbeque lunch before they head to the beach. We all love cricket and rugby (?) and every day is hot and lovely and people live in Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and um... Queensland. When I'm describing where I'm from I don't bother saying halfway between Sydney and Brisbane like I would to a naive Aussie, I shape my fingers to a rough outline of Australia and point "somewhere around there." "Six hours north of Sydney" is the other one. I'm sure not everyone is that uninformed but it's fun to generalise, right?

And I visited the FIEC church nearby this night and... Yes. I think yes. Much I could write but that is all for now.

The British Museum - love the black security guard's face. Oops.

I changed my mind - here are some photos of the last few days.

Armidalesque clouds I feel

Books in the BM library. Loved it.
(Don't look closely at the reflection..)

3500ish year old dead guy in his grave. Wow.
(Sorry about the reflection)

V&A - no photos of stuff inside. Go there.

Elephants!! BM shop.

Filling up with old treasure

'Tis the first day of summer. Not shorts weather yet though.

I still like the tube, but I don't particularly enjoy busy stations or awkward standing. A lot more of it is above ground than I expected - I guess as you get further out there was more space to build, or it was built with the suburbs? I don't know. It's 150 years old - can you believe that?! 

Yesterday Little Man (was that the name?) and I went to the British Museum. It was big, and really busy. And there were so many mummies! Wow! I didn't realise so much of that stuff had been dug up and bought. We wizzed around quite quickly actually, but I'm glad we went. It's a lovely old building... And there was an old library - King George's maybe? not sure - which I loved. Heaps of old books and miscellaneous and intriguing artifacts.

Today I took the tube to South Kensington and had me a visit to the V&A: Victoria and Albert museum. I just loved it! It was much more my thing. I love museums and art galleries with beautiful things, you know. Not trains or dinosaurs so much as sculptures and relics. In my kind of museum, like the V&A, you forget that you're tired and footsore and your back aches, and when the room is quiet you forget where you are or that people might be watching and you're on a different plane of awareness. It's tranquil. It's soul cleansing & replenishing somehow.

There really was some incredibly old and beautiful stuff in there. I just finished watching series 2 of Robin Hood this morning, and then I went and saw all this medieval paraphernalia. And old bibles! As well as Romanesque statues and Victorian household stuff (I think), and old ironwork and silver stuff and glass windows, and parts of old buildings. Oh that doesn't sound like much, but you should have seen Trajan's column and the stuff around it. And the wood carvings! And the teeny little marble engravings with the story of Jesus' life. It really was fantastic. Everything was well displayed and there were hands-on activities and old stuff you were allowed to touch. A replica gauntlet and medieval tunics to try on! I only took a photo of the outside of the building and there's not really much point uploading it. There were way too many tiny, intricate, extravagant, enormous, amazing, precious and pretty things to even think about which ones deserved a chunk of memory in my phone.

I might go back there one day.