London

Last weekend we hit London. Eeish!! It hit right back and left us breathless. Its not a place than can be described easily, and best seen with ones own eyes. A "sensory overload" as Gaylene put it and if UK village life is an education, then London is a higher grade final maths exam paper... like nothing youth ever seen before.


We got in early on Saturday and were educated in the way of the tube and things such as "keep right, pass left", and "mind the gap". London is obsessed with the obscure little space between the train and the station siding. You even get "Mind the Gap" T-shirts.



We spent most of the day on a "hop-on, hop-off" bus tour which was a great way to get a first impression of the city, because in 2 hours it will whizz you past all the main touristy places, and then give you the opportunity to go back and visit them at your leisure.

I wasn't sure we would find much uses for our Buffs until the cold wind attacked, and we were one beanie down. We were all given headphones through which we were informed about the sites we were seeing.

Our trusty guides Al and Chants, without whom we would probably still be trying to navigate our way home.

Apparently Big Ben is the name of the bell inside, and the clocktower is actually called St Stephens Tower.

The houses of parliament are incredible, as must be the resilience of the few who were camping outside protesting.

We were lucky enough to pass the Changing of the Guards as it was about to start. Very impressive looking fellas. Being completely uneducated as to what all the marching back and forward actually meant, we did however find it a little drawn out.

Apparently we weren't the only ones.

Tower bridge with the HMS Belfast on the right. This is an old warship which remains on the Thames as a tourist attraction.

Being tourist is hard work so by this time of the afternoon I (Gaylene) found my batteries where running low but of course Wal was running on Duracel as you can see! This was where we boarded a cruise boat down the Thames.

No, unfortunately this is not an Afrikaans coffee shop in the middle of London, but this is just to show you how much PRET we were having!

Considered checking into this little joint for the night, but weren't quite sure how suitable it would be so decided to press on. Our first day in London was concluded with our first Starbucks coffee, apparently something of UK institution.

Its all self service here, and at R700 a tank you think there would be some help.

We returned to London on Sunday to visit Alan's (G's boet) church called Kensington Temple. A cooking church which we enjoyed thoroughly! http://www.kt.org/ . Spoke about how we can learn from Isaac and make the most of land in which the Lord has placed us. Hmm..

The church building is located just around the corner form the famous Portobello Road, so headed of there afterwards. Its an interesting, seriously cosmo little market street offering anything and everything!

The Portobello road market is where Notting Hill was filmed in. Anyone remember the 'blue door'? Well we went searching for it. Turns out there are about a hundred billion blue doors in London. Nonetheless we think we found it, we just need to go back and watch the movie again to be sure.

Harrods was quite an education! Only for the rich and famous I would say! G had a ball in the clothes and shoe floors. She was very patient with her clueless husband, who thought the "KG" sign above one corner of the shoe floor meant they were sold by the kilogram. I'm now wiser and know that KG is a designer. You can buy Jimmy Choo shoes for a cool R13,000. Converting into rands takes your breathe away. Think we now know our R13.5 times tables off by heart. Anyone for a grand piano for a cool R850k?

The Carter's introduced us to Krispy Kreme doughnuts. After analysing the prices we realised it would work out cheaper to a buy a dozen than just 2 each. We had to repent afterwards!

Queenie was next on our list to visit. Buckingham Palace was quite impressive to say the least. We were determined that the freezing cold weather was not going to put a dampen on it cos after all we are tourists, hardcore tourists and have payed big money to be here, so 9deg C was not going to stop us....no, not us!

Monday was a bank Holiday (public holiday) and our tour guides were not complaining! Off we went, still braving the cold which now felt like 7deg C, don't think i have felt the cold like that ever before! Place of destination.....Cambridge!

This is a little shop selling the most amazing chocolate that one could only dream of!

Museums are great things to visit when the weather is miz.... we visited the Fitzwilliam Museum, rated as one of the best small museums in the world.

And eventually took shelter from the cold and rain whenever and wherever we could. Chambridge is such a beautiful town. It has a very similar feel to Grahamstown - very much a student town. As you can see the main form of transport is bicycles. There were hundreds of them located everywhere, but mostly around the university campus. We will be back when the weather is better and we can do more exploring.

Bonjour Europe

We did it... we're finally here! The last few days have been a blur, an adventure and a serious education, so much so that today G and I have just chilled around the house trying to gather our thoughts. Where to start?

We flew out on Friday arvy from Port Elizabeth after a 1.5 hr delay and having to throw out a few items because we were overweight (err, no, it was the bags that were overweight). Bye bye jean pant! In OR Thambo we wondered around starry-eyed in the duty free section of OR Thambo for a few hours before catching the international flight at 8:30pm. One of our seats was a window seat (yeeehah!) and so the two of us sat peering out into the darkness trying to match up the lights we saw below with the towns mapped on the LCD screens in front of us. Highlights were seeing the end of Africa and the beginning of the Med, Saturday morning sunrise over Spain and spotting the London Eye and a parked Concord as we came cruising into London.

Heathrow was another example of the Lord opening doors (literally). We approached the immigration desk with a wad of paperwork in hand, ready for long ques, a barrage of questions about our one-way flight and bank balance, and problems with the fact that we had decided to take a chance and not get chest X-rays (and thereby try save R500). It turned out somewhat differently. We were ushered into a very short que because we were visa holders, asked "is this your first time here?" by the Immigration Officer, and told "we'll send you a letter telling you where you can go have x-rays taken" by the Health Inspector, and that was that! I was shocked... could have packed my jeans instead of this wad of paperwork. We followed the sign to "baggage collection" and arrived as our bags popped out. Then headed for customs expecting X-ray machines and cavity searches. We walked in and out through an open door without anyone even looking at us or speaking to us (not that they had any reason for concern :-). We opened the next set of swing doors to find 100 people staring at us waving little boards with peoples names on them, but as we walked out Alan (Gaylene's brother) and his wife Chantelle walked in. Perfect timing! One big lesson in "expecting the best". We were then whisked away north to their house in the town of Great Paxton.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=great+paxton&sll=53.098145,-2.443696&sspn=9.191008,20.43457&ie=UTF8&ll=52.261434,-0.230713&spn=4.680972,10.217285&z=7&iwloc=addr&om=1

After much chats we went for a little drive around to show us the village surrounds. The place is breath-taking and is surrounded with wheat farmlands, and walking and cycle trails everywhere. The local dam hosts scores of swans and ducks. Yes, the bird-watching has begun with Alan and Chantelle giving me a supper "birds of Europe" book as a birthday present. Ten lifers in the bag already without trying.

Apparently all the swans in England belong to the Queen!

After a nail biting Super 14 final (i can't beleef... arme haaie!!) we crashed. To help ease into the UK thing, Sunday saw my brothers Rich and Simon and Simon's girlfriend Dannel come round for a braai. Rich brought pseudo boerewors from a local butcher. He apparently heard about boerewors and got the recipe of the net. It tastes alright but they're all in the shape of traditional English pork bangers. Quite a hoot.

Then we explored our village of Great Paxton on foot. Its almost surreal, like a little fantasy world in a movie. No litter, perfectly manicured lawns, kids playing in the street, a local village store, one little bus stop, a little school in the middle, and farmlands all around.

Our house is the little one in the middle. The postman comes around in his little red "postman Pat" van and the ice cream van puts in a regular appearance. You can place orders with the milkman and he just leaves your bottles of milk on the stoep. The local farmer will also deliver organic vegges to your door.

There are farmlands literally 500m from the house and all have public walkways and cycle paths running through them.

Yesterday G and I decided to explore the town of St Neots (about 5km away ..... uuurrr .... whats that in miles?). This is the main town servicing our little village. We did a self guided Historical Trail which was amazing. Way too much to tell so the pix will have to speak for themselves.

John Wessley apparently preached in this building behind G.

The oldest secular building in St Neots built in the 1500s and is now a jeweler.

The town church, St Mary's, was rebuilt in this form in the 1400s. Thats just insane!

Dwarfs only.

The main river in town, the River Great Ouse (pronounced "Oooz").

Finally, a list of things the Fyvies have learnt so far:

1) The blank face you will get from the lady at the coffee shop in response to your request for "rooibos", is genuine.

2) Dragon fruit is a weird looking fruit from South Africa available only in the UK.

3) Just because its light outside doesn't mean its not 9:40pm.

4) Broadband is cheep cheep and allows you to compile heep um much long blog pages.

And the best one so far......

5) The glass opening thingy in the top floor of a double-decker bus is a mirror which the driver down stairs uses to look up to see who is upstairs. You are likely to irritate the driver if you peer down it for an extended period of time trying to figure out what on earth it is.

Adieu East London

We've been late in updating the blog so we have back tracked: The not so recent news...

Its done ‘n dusted (literally). We’ve waved goodbye to our little flat (aka “the lovehuts” aka “the Maldives” (pronounced Mouldy Dives) which served us so well for 28 months. Mixed emotions.

A second load of furniture was towed down to PE behind our little blue bomber (Ford 1300) which did brilliantly.

We then to returned to EL before zooting up to Maclear for a night where we stayed with Jack and Hayley McFarlane while I helped Jack with some environmental work for a dam he is planning. What a slice of paradise that area is. Highlights were quad biking around the grasslands, seeing how Jack harvests his soybean crop, and Hayleys gourmet food. We’ve offered our services as official food tasters for any meals proposed for the future McFarlane B&B. And a first for me was eating pomegranates… little red jewels as Jack called them.







Then back to EL, where the Cocks’ hosted us for our last night. What a blessing. The prospect of sleeping in a cold, empty shell of a flat was not attractive. After a slow morning, we packed the last of our boxes and bad EL farewell on Thursday 3 May. There was hardly room for a can of coke in either of the cars.


So the journey began. We spent the first week in PE with the Fyvies. Busy days as we juggled the last few admin issues like trying to sell G's car, with some chilling like picnic suppers at Sards. After much prayer we managed to sell the car at the last moment. Thank you Lord!




Mom and dad Fyvie are busy building a garden flat so we lent a hand there and G and I are now floor sealing experts.



The work proved just too much for some.

After a week we moved in with the Carters and spent the one morning helping Jimmy out with throwing concrete for his new workshop. Trying to get Norman's prehistoric concrete mixer to start was a hilarious experience. I've never seen such a smokey 2 stroke. It even threw a massive flame out at one stage. No injuries, just sore cheeks and stomach muscles from all the laughs.

And finally, for those that don't know him, this character below was the man in G's life before I came along. Joel is a Retriever cross Collie who has a fetish for socks and toilet rolls.