Where-ever I lay my hat

We set off from Bristol again early on Tuesday morning which was a good thing because we got only just onto the M5 and got stuck in a traffic jam when the cars oil light came on again. We called the garage and drove in traffic for another hour to get to them. After much deliberating we all decided to just carry on driving as the oil pressure was good and it was only at very low speeds the light came on. So we set off again on the M5 in order to make sure we kept our revs up enough and got most of the way to Birmingham before we had to stop again because the battery light started coming on. Another phone call to the garage and we carried on again but trying to avoid stopping or anything that drained the battery. That was a bit difficult since it was raining so we needed wipers, lights and indicators. They suspect it might be our alternator dying too so the car is falling apart in front of us and now likely to take £600 to repair so will probably go to a scrapyard instead. I guess we were ripped off – oh well, you live and learn. However we did make it to Welford at 3.30pm (having set off on a 2 1/2 hour journey at 8am) and even with a stop in Rugby for some groceries. The car may make it on a few more trips yet with any luck. Then we just chilled out, having both been very stressed for a couple of days. At least we made it here and can now regroup and re-evaluate.

I started work on Wednesday 16 January at the inpatient rehab unit (INRU) at Moseley Hall Hospital. It is a really fun job and working with Lynnie is amazing as well as the rest of the team being really nice and some great patients. However I have remembered why I ended up specialising in stroke – seeing the young head injuries and what it does to their and their families lives is heartbreaking. Lynnie says it’s a high burnout job, which I can certainly see. Steve also found a job and started on Thursday in Crick (which is just outside Rugby) working for a transport company doing fairly mundane office work, which was not as interesting as they had sold it to him but the pay is also reasonable. So despite travelling long distances each day things got off to a fairly good start.
On Saturday we went in to Birmingham to look at a flat and decided to take it till mid March. Its in a nice Pakistani neighbourhood which we find really comfortable because its an area that everyone knows everyone but we’re not sure if we’re missing something about the Birmingham culture because everyone ‘warned’ us that it was a Pakistani neighbourhood, even the people we are renting off! It’s a four bedroom house but two of the rooms are closed and not for us to use, as is the main lounge but we have a nice wee lounge with a tele and a dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms (Lynnie will stay here during the week too to save her the commute). After looking at the flat we decided to drive up to Denby (of pottery fame) and as luck would have it they had a two for one sale in the factory shop so we managed to get all the missing bits of our dinner set other than what is out of production now. It cost us rather a lot but in the long term will save a lot as we’d never find it anywhere near that price in NZ.
Sunday was a very quiet day as neither of us felt very great – Steve had drunk too much with the family down at the farm and I hadn’t slept very much. So we watched a movie and ate crisps and I had a sleep for a few hours in the afternoon. I had mentioned that if anyone happened to shoot some pheasants that I’d love a couple and in the afternoon Glynn turned up, looking very dapper and right the country gentleman in his hunting gear with Midge, the cocker spaniel and two beautiful pheasants. We left them to hang for the week in the back room where it was nice and cool.
Monday was back to work and then Tuesday after work we moved to the flat. I got there about 5.30 and waited for Steve as he was picking up some groceries in Rugby on the way. Now its him that has a long commute but its only a temp job and he will try to find something in Birmingham next week. We got unpacked a little and settled in and had a comfy nights sleep.
On Steve’s way to work on Friday, after he’d stopped to get the things for our Burns Supper, the car finally broke down again and had to be towed back to Welford, never to go again. So Steve was late for work and very stressed about having no way of getting to and from work. He had nearly gone to look at a Volvo the garage had for sale but didn’t want to make a decision without consulting me so thought we’d look at it Saturday – by then it was sold so that was a bit disappointing. I had a bit of a look around the shops in the centre of town until steve got in on the train from Rugby and we went home for a much deserved Burns Supper of haggis and clapshot with cranachan for dessert and accompanied by plenty of whisky and Scottish music. We missed the BBC Scotland because they usually show something nice for Burns nite and most people in England don’t even seem to know it exists – folk at work were astonished that we were having a burns supper and particularly that we would consider eating haggis!
On Saturday (26 Jan) we just spent the day in Birmingham, and got the bus to town and walked around the shops and the markets and then did a nice canal walk. There really are some lovely spots here and having an apartment overlooking the canal near the centre of town would be rather pleasant. The prices are actually quite reasonable too and we could get a nice canal-side apartment for the same price we had our apartment in Reading. The problem would be that you are so close to lots of great dining out places that that would take most of the rest of your money. I could just sit for hours and watch the boats going up and down the canal in the comfort of my own couch and never get anything done. The markets in the centre of town are really good and we found lots of interesting food including plantain, so we got some fish to make seray (a Belizean kriol dish we had in Gales Point). We also spent quite a long time looking, unsuccessfully, for free wireless internet access so I could post my blog (I don’t remember my username and password to log in but they are stored on my computer so I need to connect my own computer to find them out – I’m starting to get complaining emails from people that I haven’t updated the blog but I have been trying. Next plan is to try at the airport next weekend). Our seray for dinner was delicious but the fish had too many bones and I need to learn a little more about cooking plantain. A plantain is a vegetable that looks like a green banana but is actually a totally different beast and you wouldn’t want to mix it up. It has a texture like a coarse sweet-potato (or a taro if you’re familiar with pacific island vegetables) and a flavour a bit like bread. Its actually very tasty and adds a great flavour to the coconut milk for the seray.
I was feeling poorly on Sunday and didn’t want to get another cold so had a pathetic day and stayed in bed for most of it. We went for a short walk to the local supermarket to check it out and to the park which is just down the hill from our flat. The flat is actually a terrace house and its one in an unbroken line of 80 terraces. The opposite side of the street is another 80 unbroken terraces. It’s a bit difficult to work out which is our house! I never thought I’d be living in a long terrace in the middle of the second largest city in the UK. I do find it rather claustrophobic and have really concluded that I’m just not a city person. I’m actually frightened every time I leave the security of the house or the hospital so on the days when I’m not going in the car with Lynnie I find it pretty stressful. However the job is great and its only for seven more weeks and I’m learning so much at work that its all worth it (not to mention earning good money to set us up for travelling in Europe. Sunday night we had more haggis for dinner and then I dressed the pheasants that Glynn had shot for me. Their feathers are beautiful and the underlayer of down was so soft and warm I nearly wanted to keep it and make a pillow. On Monday after work I butchered them and got three breasts (the other breast had been turned to mince by the shot!) and the four drums as well as some nice liver, which I made pate with. The carcasses got turned to stock on Tuesday night and no evidence remained of the birds except and well stocked freezer and a stack of recipes!
During the week Steve spent all his time job hunting without success and I spent a bit of time arguing with payroll about not paying me because some useless person was on holiday and hadn’t bothered to send in my forms before she went. They couldn’t do anything till she got back from holiday.
Friday was a beautiful clear sunny day and steve met me from work and we walked home together. About halfway home Steve looked up and commented that there was a snowcloud just behind us. It was moving rather quickly and within ten minutes we were in the middle of a howling snowstorm. Everything turned white very quickly and then, being the middle of the city, melted again very quickly, with the exception of some grassy areas that were still dusted the next morning. Apparently we got off rather lightly because a major storm hit the rest of the country and lots of boats were washed aground or overturned and people stuck on roads for hours on end. Jay had been coming down from Orkney to visit but fortunately the ferry was cancelled (it would have been a pretty awful journey otherwise).
Saturday dawned lovely and sunny again, although a bit cool, and we went strolling round the town again. This time we started in the Jewellery quarter and went to the museum, which is free and very interesting. It shows all different materials that are used for adornment of the body (jewellery) around the world and through the ages. There were things made from all sorts of interesting things, like butterfly wings, all sorts of stone, wood, grasses and gemstones. It was particularly interesting from the point of view that all jewellery is basically just body adornment and if I’m being completely objective there is nothing that makes a diamond better than anything else. In fact diamonds, and even gemstones in general, were not the most beautiful things there at all. If its sparkly then the glass was probably the prettiest and is more environmentally friendly, and costs less. And realistically if you have ask to find out if its glass or diamond (or what ever) then surely it makes no difference to wear. (I think I just talked myself out of nice gifts of expensive jewellery though!). Some of the loveliest things were wood and grass – although obviously not sparkly. I can accept the value of gold over other metals because it doesn’t make my skin itch but I see no need to have more than gold plate thick enough to not wear off. Wandering around the gold and diamond shops after that somehow had less appeal and it didn’t take us long. We wandered back to town past the Cathedral, which is really small by any cathedral standards but especially for the second biggest city in the UK. We strolled along the canal and to the symphony hall where we found a free lunchtime jazz concert so sat and listened to that for a while. It was a great group who for their last session were inviting up and coming local jazz musicians to join them. There was some amazing talent to be seen including a seven year old boy on the sax, who was amazing. It looks like the jazz scene in Birmingham is pretty well established and very strong. Then we had a look around the library, joined up and got some books to read and strolled back through the markets to the bus home. The markets are really interesting and at the end of the day are selling off lots of stuff for bargain prices.
We had another quiet day on Sunday other than a trip to the supermarket and to drop Lynnie at the airport for her ski holiday in Andorra. That meant we had her car for the week, which made it quicker for me to get to work. The first day on the way home I turned a corner and suddenly ended up virtually surrounded by people and police cars and flashing lights. I sat in the traffic for a while and they eventually dragged a guy out of a shop in handcuffs and stuffed him in the police van. The traffic was awful and people were honking their horns as if they thought we could move anywhere but the road was blocked. Even when the police car tried to leave with flashing lights on the traffic wouldn’t let him through! They are very unpleasant drivers here.
All of a sudden it was part way into February and on the Friday night (8th) we went in to the free jazz concert at the symphony hall again. It was really brilliant. It was a woman called Esther Miller, who had an amazing voice, and Steve Waterman playing trumpet and stuff. It was a really nice evening. We had a coffee in the café there which had free wireless internet access and finally got sorted to get access to my blog other than from my own computer.

The flight was unremarkable and the man from the B&B picked us up at 12.45am and we got to bed just after 1am. It was a big change from Budapest where it had never got above –2°C to be 5°C at midnight! It felt positively balmy.
The B&B is pretty grotty and overpriced because its near the airport. We are just in a room in the family house and were asked to be quiet because their daughter is sleeping in the room next door. Our room seems to be the storage room for all the excess old furniture and is rather cluttered and small. The bathroom is the family bathroom with their towels and junk all over the place and the smallest shower cubicle I’ve ever seen. It is out in the countryside and it was nice to look out the window in the morning and see a pheasant in the field next door. The breakfast was also pretty decent and they dropped us back at the airport to catch the airport bus into Bristol. On the way in on the bus we decided to try and stay in Bristol for a few days and see if we could find work.
We started wandering round asking at hotels if they needed any workers in return for accommodation and trying to find a reasonable priced room. We also stopped at the job centre and printed out information about a few jobs and then at a recruitment agency. The girl in there said she had work starting the next day and although it was very boring the pay was ok because it was short notice and over the holidays. We decided Steve would take it and so would I if I couldn’t get anything better either at the hospital or in a shop. So we settled on the cheapest accommodation we had found which was the premier inn and dropped our bags then I went off to the hospital to find they had nothing for me and asked in lots of shops then joined Steve back at the agency to sign up for work. We had bad all-you can eat pizza and pasta for our dinner then chilled out in our new home in the hotel, set up our UK phones and got in touch with lots of people.
Friday was a training day for work and was the worst training either of us has ever done – what’s more there’s another whole day of it on Monday. The work will be very dull but its work. Its an outbound call centre making calls to shareholders of a company about an upcoming vote so it could also have been a lot worse – its not tele-sales at least. We will be working 11am to 7.45pm so not very social but at least that will give us regular working hours to find out about other jobs. We think we will plan to move on somewhere else after this 2-week job though. We had bread and cheese in our room for dinner feeling rather broke because the hotel is costing us so much and although we have work there isn’t actually any money coming in yet. We have looked and looked for cheaper accommodation and although a couple of hostels are cheaper it’s not by much and they are fully booked and also grotty. We also draw the line at staying in dorm rooms when we have all our stuff with us including the computer and some other valuable stuff. So we are stuck in the hotel until Tuesday when Lisa and Rob come back and we’ll go and stay with them.
On Saturday we paid a lot of money for Internet access and did lots of Internet chores then met up with Liz and Dave – our neighbours from Christchurch, who now live back in Bristol – for coffee. We collected our box from them that had been shipped with their stuff and it was nice to be able to go through our stuff and get a few different clothes. Lynnie drove over from Northampton in the afternoon to visit and stayed overnight then took the box with her once it was repacked. We had a lovely afternoon and evening with her, just gossiping and then went for a walk and found a nice Italian place for dinner.
Sunday morning was a little cooler again and we went on an outing to Glastonbury for the day with Lynnie. It was a lovely day out and we strolled around looking in all the weird shops in Glastonbury, then up the Tor and had pasties and muffins at the top for our lunch. We also looked at a car that I had seen advertised on the Internet and it looked pretty good and will be either a real bargain or a huge have. But the thought of having a car is lovely – it gives us so much freedom. Then we drove on to Wells and strolled around the bishop’s palace and the cathedral. It is an extremely pretty little town with some real chocolate box scenes. After Lynnie left us we relaxed for the evening again and got a few chores done with bread and cheese for dinner again.
Monday was New Years Eve and we were at work for the day – still training and it was dire, as they couldn’t get the system to work so we spent a lot of the day just sitting round chatting. It was pretty weird being at work on what felt like a regular day and suddenly seeing the New Year celebrations in Sydney and Auckland on the tele in the middle of our day. Our new years eve was really quiet and we went out for cheap pizza then sat in for the evening watching tele. New years eve tele in Scotland had always been really good but there was a lot of rubbish on until it came time for fireworks. We could see the fireworks in London and Edinburgh on the tele and all over Bristol out the window. Being on the 17th floor was cool because we could see for miles and there were lots and lots of fireworks.
We had a slow start to 2008 but it turned into a big rush when Lisa phoned to say Rob would collect us in 20 minutes. Packing was a stuff and push affair but miraculously everything fit in our bags. We spent the day settling in to their place and catching up on gossip, which was really nice. We went on an outing to the seaside at Clevedon in the afternoon and it seems everyone else had the same idea because they’d never seen it so busy even in summer! It’s a pretty, and very English, walk along the sea wall and there is a nice pier and a few nice parks along the waterfront but not a grain of sand to be seen.
Wednesday was into work properly although they still didn’t have the system working for the first hour. Getting bus connections to get into town and back out to Nailsea, in the late evening was a bit tricky but all worked out ok. It suddenly turned cold on Wednesday afternoon and they were forecasting snow on Thursday but when we woke in the morning there was none to be seen. Another couple of days of work with a bit of overtime in the mornings were just long and fairly dull. However on Thursday evening we were to get our car so that was pretty exciting and we are now the very proud owners of Lola the Daewoo Nubira. We seem to have a real bargain with the car and it will either be fantastic or a big mistake – time will tell. The guy selling it to us was given it by his brother but doesn’t have room to keep it and it’s too expensive for him to insure so he’s selling it really cheap. He’s a bit of a hippie from Glastonbury and into doing good turns and since he was done a good turn – at least so we hope. We made it home much earlier being able to drive and remarkably we found our way without issue. So we actually had a nice relaxing evening with Lisa and Rob.
Friday and Saturday morning was just work and Saturday afternoon we went out to Stanton Drew stone circles. There are three circles, two small ones and the second largest diameter circle in the UK. Even though it tipped down with rain for some of the time we had a really nice visit. We had a bit of an explore with Lisa and drove around in the Mendip hills for a while. It’s a really beautiful area with lots of very cute towns and nice views and lakes and pretty countryside. We stopped for a drink at a pub that Lisa remembered which had no sign out the front and looked like someone’s house but inside was a really cute two-room 12th century pub with a lovely open fire. Then we had take out Indian for dinner with was really nice.
Sunday started off really fine and we had a nice walk and explore of Cadbury hill, which is one of numerous Cadbury’s that claim to be the site of Camelot. We did fort defence re-enactment with James with mock bows and arrows and using the defence mounds of the fort. There was some interesting archaeology on the hill fort but I’m not sure of the history of occupation. Common agreement suggests this is not the Cadbury that is Camelot but it might be a reasonable contender as there is a significant stone circle nearby – Stanton Drew. We went back to the house for a Sunday roast, which is a fantastic tradition, and then went out for another stroll around Blagdon Lake. This time we went to another pub called the plume of feathers with Rob. It was really pretty form the outside and in a very cute town and although not as cute inside as the Crown it had a nice fire and free leftover roast potatoes on the bar. So I was a happy creature with a nice Somerset cider, a warm fire and a bowl of roast tatties. Dinner was a kind of ploughman’s lunch as we’d managed to collect a bunch of cheeses we wanted to try and there was leftover roast beef from lunch, which was all delicious.
Monday morning I had got the cold Steve had been fighting all weekend and went to work but abandoned it and went back to a house full of noisy children in preference. I stayed off Tuesday as well and had a slightly quieter day. It was lovely to be able to sit and look out at an English winter garden, with robins foraging along the hedge and crows and doves vying for position in the big bare tree which was desperately clinging to its few remaining leaves. The Christmas tree is now blown over in the garden too and you can see the pretty square church tower behind the trees – it’s very clear we’re in England!
Wednesday I went back to work but really started feeling that what we are doing is morally not very sound especially because most of the people I’m calling are very elderly and I’m becoming more and more aware of how vulnerable they are. Many are quite happy to do whatever I suggest to them even though I keep saying I’m employed to tell you that. Its really interesting because in a way I’ve spent my career trying to protect vulnerable people and set them up to be safe at home and this is quite disturbing about how vulnerable they still are. I managed Wednesday and Thursday for a short time until another elderly lady said she’d just do what I suggested because I sounded nice and at that point I quit. So I had the rest of Thursday and Friday working on one of my books and articles and entertaining the children. Steve carried on with work and said it did become better as the time frame got shorter till they could vote because only people with Internet access could vote and that eliminated most of the vulnerable elderly.
On Saturday we went on an outing to Exmoor. We stopped at a cider farm and tasted the worst cider we’ve ever had and bought some really interesting sounding dessert sauces, like roast pineapple with lime and bay leaf, and white chocolate with lemongrass and ginger. I felt these had to be copied and therefore tasted first. We tried to visit Cleeve Abbey but it was closed, which was a shame because it looked rather good from the road and the pictures on the sign. We paused in Dunster, which is a really pretty medieval market town, to take a picture of Lola since we had a picture of Sir Hubert there years ago. Then we turned inland and more into the Moor although it took a while to get out of the farmland and up onto the Moor. It’s a great wide open space, quite like many parts of the Scottish highlands but scattered with more farms. We managed to see a wee herd of free running Exmoor ponies, which was pretty cool. I think wild would not be the right term for then given how comfortable they were with us really near but they had the run of the whole moor and weren’t contained. Then we went on a wee detour to find the Tarr Steps, which were marked on the map as ‘other site of interest’ and turned out to be a medieval footbridge spanning 50m across a river and all built with stones. It was an impressive feat of dry-stone engineering and also very pretty. Unfortunately, despite surviving since medieval times part of it had been washed out in recent floods so we couldn’t go across it. We did watch some kayakers taking advantage of the hole and interesting rocks scattered in the water near it though. Then it was time for some lunch and after thinking for a while all the pubs had vanished we finally stumbled in to Bickleigh, which is a gorgeous thatched town on the riverside with two thatched pubs and one other very cute pub also. We had lunch in the Trout Inn and it was very nice food. Steve had a steak and kidney pie and I had bangers and mash then we couldn’t resist dessert. They had the best looking selection of cakes, tarts and roulades we had seen in recent memory – and that includes the cake shops in Austria! We shared a great piece of chocolate fudge cake, which came with a big dollop of Devon clotted cream and drizzled in toffee sauce – it was great. We had been planning to have a Devonshire cream tea but couldn’t resist and at least we’d had the clotted cream bit. We kept our eyes open for a teashop on the rest of the trip but, with the exception of flying past a very cute thatched one with no parking very soon after lunch, we didn’t find one so had to be satisfied with our dollop of clotted cream. We carried on wandering in the countryside, past another Cadbury hillfort, then through Exeter and over to S then Honiton and back up the M5 to Nailsea.
Sunday fortunately was a slow start and we got packed up and had a very nice Sunday lunch with Lisa and Rob and Rob’s parents. We got on the road about 3pm and got 40miles up the road before the car broke down. We pulled into a services and there happened to be an RAC van there who told us the car was unsafe to drive and towed us back to Lisa and Robs. They were a little surprised to see us again but we arrived just in time for dinner and the next day had to get the car to a garage and find out what was wrong. The one thing the RAC man told was that it was something new and not something that the guy who sold it to us could have hidden especially given we have done 500 miles in it. I worked out with Lisa that by the time we had paid buss fares for both of us to work the car has saved us £300 and it only cost us £400 so we’re not too much out of pocket even if it is dead. But it is unlikely to be cheap or quick to fix. We emptied the car out in the morning and the RAC came and towed it to the garage then Steve had a wander round in town while waiting to hear about it and I did some more sorting about how else to get to Birmingham. My job got postponed another day (not by me) so we had a bit more leeway. They decided the car was OK without having had very much done to it so we spent another night with Lisa and Rob. I had a scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream for my dessert, which was yum, and meant I had finally had my cream tea even though it was a Somerset cream tea rather than a Devonshire cream tea.