Six months?

So, it is now over six months since we left Australia and I was going to pontificate about our journey of discovery, how we were all adjusting to living without vegemite and Timtams etc (yes, I know you can get vegemite here, but why would you, eh? And rumours of Sainsbury's selling Timtams have yet to be proven) but I'm afraid I just can't be bothered.

Suffice to say that, though it has not, by any means, been all Pork Pies and Cider with Rosie, Brisbane itself often seems like a distant memory, though we still miss our friends and my pupils, more than I can say. And the Sitar. And the Ceylon Inn. And the Scheherazade. Not that you can't get a good curry here, of course, but emigrating has been an expensive business, plus I have not yet started work, so luxuries like takeaways are also a distant memory.

But who needs takeaways when living in this part of Buckinghamshire, eh? The longer I live here, the more I realise how true it is that, in England, man can live on bread, (or lentils in our case!) alone, IF one lives in the country. If we lived just twenty minutes away in certain parts of Milton Keynes, or back in Uxbridge or Ealing, where we used to live, we would NEED the takeaways and the cinema trips and the new clothes, especially in the crappy weather we have had up till now. But when it rains here, it doesn't seem to matter so much. The paint might be falling off the walls in the damp, but when there are fields and woods and rutted country lanes brimming with roses and honeysuckle to walk through, who cares?

I have had a friend staying for the last two weeks and we have explored the area even further, going for walks in Ashridge Forest – a magical landscape of green shadows and sun-mottled paths, winding 'neath the whispering trees; where herds of deer lift their heads to watch you (or run out in front of your car as the case may be) and the air is alive with the twittering of tiny birds and purple foxgloves give haven to the wiggling bottoms of bees. The air is full of the smell of green things and leaf mould and sunlight, and as you walk, your ears can't help but catch the echo of pounding hooves and jingling harness, or, from the corner of your eye, you may glimpse a silk skirt or the feathery tips of a quiver, disappearing around the spreading torso of an ancient oak.

Yesterday we took Bonnie/Snoop/Miley Cyrus for a walk through the gardens at Stowe. I had not been before, though they are a ten minute drive from our house, but I will be going there again as much as I can, I can tell you. Stowe is a massive, ridiculously ostentatious old house-now-school with 250 acres of grounds. We had intended to see the house as well as the gardens, but got so sidetracked by a tiny portion of the grounds that we never got that far. I won't bore on with details of the history, as Bill Bryson does it much better in At Home, but the gardens are a sheer delight of old follies – Greek temples set amongst cedar trees, ruined Roman bridges spanning lilied lakes, the towers and archways of crumbling Gothic churches rising atop the brow of a hill. One minute you are walking through a field of sheep and then you find yourself on the shores of a lake, communing with the swans; you walk further, into a manicured garden of irises and roses, and then suddenly you are walking down a path lit by wild orchids and clover. And with membership of National Trust, which I was given when I left Brisbane, this is all free – I think the gardens are free anyway, not sure. What price takeaways for all that eh? I could go on, but I have washing to hang, bathrooms to clean, floors to scrub, before an evening of gossip and Mendelssohn piano trios with more visitors from Brisvegas....

Escape from the Madding Cows

"I think I'm a real country girl," I announced in what turned out to be a moment of much irony. We were driving home from Aylesbury after a couple of tortuous hours in the bank. Aylesbury must once have been a beautiful town, but now there is something grey and sordid about it, not helped by the half term plethora of fat food tents that have sprung up about the market square  - selling sweets by the yard - and by sat nav deciding to take me through the worst of the roundabout tangles which are meant to make life easier but don't. Coming out of the city, driving up and into the fields, all green wheat and brilliant yellow rapeseed, laced at the edges with frothing cow parsley, we all breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes, I'm definitely a country girl at heart," I said.
On arrival at home, were met by dog who had not had her midday walk and wanted to make sure we realised this. So, it was straight out into the fields for a certain country girl.
The only trouble is, that this certain country girl obviously does not know as much about country life as she would like to think.
One of the rather more wonderful things about England, is the fact that there are public footpaths everywhere, right through farmer's fields, so you can walk for miles without having to worry about trespassing on other people's property. The fact that the fields have cows in them doesn't matter does it?
Especially not when said cows are hundreds of yards of buttercupped grass away, eh?
But when the cows look up from their grazing, evil intent in their eyes, even this country girl begins to feel anxious. "But they're only cows," she thinks, though she does call her dog and put her back on the lead. It is a mere forty yards to the next field, might as well keep going till we get there, never mind that the cows, still a couple of hundred yards away, are now walking in the same direction, huffing and blowing. Hmm, okay, maybe time to cut the walk short. 
So she turns and walks in the opposite direction. And so do the cows. She speeds up - and so do the cows, though they are now coming towards her. Note, here, that she is wearing a skirt - usually she wears jeans for her walks, but this time, couldn't be bothered to change so is in skirt and sexy brown trainers which should only be worn by divers according to her sister. Cows are now mooing and trampling towards her, dumpy fat animals turned into monsters of agility and speed. Dog has ears back and is curling around her legs in fear. She starts to run - and so do the cows, though much faster than she, over the tussocky grass. Can she make it back to her stile, back to the safety of the lane? The cows are cutting her off, the dog whimpering with fear, she is hoping that nobody can see, because she would rather die, here in this field, then have a video of her being chased by cows up on YouTube. She can feel their breath now, they are on her heels, they are coming faster and faster, their heavy, flinty hooves pounding the earth, stretching their necks out mooing and shouting, twenty or so cows - she is not going to make it to the stile, she is going to be lucky to get to the fence at all - it is getting closer and closer, but so are the cows, ten yards, eight yards, five, three two - and she is over the fence into a bed of nettles six feet high, dragging dog in after her!
Five minutes of fighting with brambles and nettles, cows screaming at her form the other side of fence, she and dog are back on the path, shaking but alive. 
When she mentions it to neighbour, wondering whether she should have just stood her ground or whether she was a complete coward to go for the nettle option, she is told that a woman in the village was trampled by same cows just a couple of years ago, ending up in hospital with broken ribs and arms, lucky to escape with her life. 
So it seems that this country girl still has a lot to learn about the country.
And she is going to have steak for dinner at the weekend.

Ps. One of my delightful sisters, on hearing of my miraculous escape: "Well, I'm gld you're alive - though it would have been a very funny way to die!"

Penny Shorts

In the last few weeks, I have been too busy to write much in the way of blog posts as I have been obsessively writing my latest Best Seller, in the optimistic conviction that I will get some paid work soon and then not have so much time to write. When I say optimistic...in the meantime I am thoroughly enjoying spending most of my time writing and walking the dog.The fields are full of buttercups now and we keep finding more and more beautiful spots to go walking.
So plan to write some interesting stuff soon, but just wanted to say that here is a site that people might want to check out, with various short stories on it:

http://www.pennyshorts.com/stories/mystery/the-thieves-of-fey-street/


It costs 50p per story, and the author gets 50% of the profits, so I'm hoping that if 5 people buy my story, I'll make one pound seventy-five! Enough to keep Juliette in salad leaves for a couple of days! But I also think it is a great idea, so do pop along and check it out if you are at all interested in that sort of thing.

Elections.....

So, we have just had our first British general election in fifteen odd years. And what fun it was...
But it was interesting to compare it to the Australian elections. 
For one thing, one topic of debate here in England was whether one should actually vote or not, which is, of course, something you don't have to think about in Australia, as voting is compulsory. Personally, I think compulsory voting is a great idea, in theory, because it should make people spend at least half a second thinking about who to vote for. However, in practise, I'm not sure it makes a difference - since Tony Abbott got in last time, I can only assume that a great deal of people didn't think about it at all.
The actual act of voting is much less stressful in England. I waltzed down to my village hall, dog in tow, to find it empty except for a couple of men - one of whom cuddled Bonnie/Snoop/haven't-decided-on-a-name-yet - and the other who gave me my voting cards and explained how to write a cross in a box. (thank heaven for gentlemen, eh, don't know where I'd have been without him) I had two sheets of paper on which I could put a total of three crosses and that was it. There was none of the fighting our way to the hall through a crowd of people with placards, all trying to shove leaflets at us or sell us cup cakes. There was no giant sheet of paper with 300 parties to be crossed off in relevant order. 
However, I was just slightly cheesed off (to put it mildly) to find that we have chosen to live in the constituency over which the Speaker of the House presides. For some bizarre reason it is "tradition" - whatever that means - that none of the other major parties stand against him, which meant that there was no Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate. Or Conservative, come to that. I am sure that if there had been, the results of the whole election would have been wildly different. So our choice was down to The Speaker himself, the United Kingdom Ignorant Pig party, or Green. No prizes for guessing who I voted for.
Most fascinating to me, is the astonishing arrogance that both the British and the Australians have in common. I am not talking about rich Tory leaders here, who have no idea, or interest, in what it is like for the rest of us who have to rely on government schools and hospitals - though I could. I am not talking about a Prime Minister who thinks that an income of $185,000 a year is "not particularly high" for Sydney families - though I could. 
I am talking about the fact that so many Australians, apparently, are convinced that Julia Gillard was personally responsible for the global financial crisis, whilst, funnily enough, the British would like to claim that it was the fault of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The rest of the world had nothing to do with it, or so it seems.
I'm not going to write any more about the election, suffice to say that for the first twenty-four hours, I was so angry I was spitting chips, but now I just feel deeply, deeply sad. 
Thank the Universe for Bluebell woods, eh?

Dog Walking Joys

So, the building blocks of our life - just to be cliched - are fitting together nicely, right now - and the latest, of course, has been the introduction of Snoop/Bonnie/Can't-Think-of-a-Name-Yet, a six year old black lab collie cross. We were given her by a family whose daughter is allergic to her and she has slipped into our family life as if she has always been here. And now to a lecture on why everybody should have a dog. I blogged about this before a few years ago, but hey ho, I'm going to do it again.
From our little cottage, we can step straight out into the country and go for long walks through the fields but in the three and a half months that we had been here, prior to getting Snoop/Bonnie/etc we'd taken the opportunity about five or six times. There always seemed to be more important things to do - cleaning, writing, shopping, emailing, practise, God forbid. But when you have a dog, you don't have the option. Since Bonnie/Snoop/etc came into my life, I have been walking her 2-3 times a day, rambling through meadows starred with bright yellow celandine and dandelion and daisies, walking through fields of glowing rape, down country lanes mottled with tree shadows and fringed with cow parsley. In the mornings - in spite of the fact that it is late April, there is still frost on the ground at 6 am, each blade of grass, each leaf, outlined with sparkling crystals of ice. Some mornings it is misty as well, the sheep and cows no more than lowing bundles as we pass, hawthorn blossom emerging, dewey from the mist, pink and white clusters of perfect flowers, whilst all around us the hedges are alive with twitterings and wings.
Having a dog is like having a little child again - everything must be investigated, the world is new and fresh and a wonder every day. Bonnie/Snoop/etc has not learned to be bored with life - as a teenager can be -  and every part of her body, from her twitching nose, to her wiggling bottom and wagging fringed tail, delights in the joys of Spring. She feeds my fragile and battered ego with frantic tail wagging every time we meet after an enforced absence (a trip to the loo, for instance) and lies sleeping by my feet as I write.
I am awaiting clearance to be allowed to teach  (DBS check - equivalent of an Australian Blue Card) and then I will not have so much time to walk and write, but for now I am loving it, though my over-active guilt gland kicks in big time, every time I think how lucky I am compared to so many others. I could go on, but I won't. I will just wallow in smugness this little while longer.

Not Working for the Oxford Tourist Board, Honest Guv...

Last week, we went to Oxford - The City of Dreaming Spires - for the first time. Sam was doing some work experience at the research labs there, where my sister works, so rather than do a four hour round trip every day, we decided to take the girls for a day out – and so very glad we did.

We had heard rumours that there is a certain, perhaps rather second rate, university there, which apparently has been running for almost as long as that great centre of learning - Cambridge. (Just in case you were wondering, Rupert and my father are both Cambridge men, and no, of course there is no competition between the Universities at all! Especially not around Boat Race time!)

Turns out the the rumours are true. One is not encouraged to park in Oxford itself, unless one wants to pay lots of money for the privilege, so we parked outside and got a bus in from the outskirts. It was a double decker, so we had a beautiful view and were able to watch the city transform from a snarl of roadworks and grumpy, morning traffic, hooting its way past Subways and Sainsbury's and charity shops, to the tranquillity of ancient city streets and parks, lined with such buildings as:

Balliol College, which dates back to 1263 and educated some of my favourite authors – Graham Greene, Nevil Shute, Hillaire Belloc – as well as some other great names – Richard Dawkins, Peter Snow etc

Then there is Brasenose College – William Golding and Michael Palin (though, interestingly enough, the latter does not appear on their list of “famous alumni”)

And: Oriel College, Trinity College, Jesus College, Blackfriars, Nuffield College, Wycliffe Hall – yes, even the names are redolent with history and mystery, calling to mind the shuffling feet of cowled monks, Knights in tarnished and bloody armour, rich Merchants and Noblemen in kid shoes, trailing cloaks encrusted with pearls and gold embroidery, young scholars in top hats, getting up to High Jinks, climbing over walls or up the guttering to their rooms in the middle of the night.

Each college seems to have its own style, Regency, Medieval, Baroque, Georgian, Modern but what I loved most about the buildings was the ornamentation – you see a pattern of heraldic shields, carved from stone, lining the walls, but then, looking closer, you see that some are held by men – each with a different face. Were these old professors? Old students? Old sponsors of the colleges? Some are so worn and crumbling the features are hard to discern, whereas, on some, the features are so clearly defined you feel you would recognise the person if you met them on the street. On one of the colleges, there are a series of large heads sculpted in Grecian style – Gods and nymphs and then, an undeniably African face. Who was this person, who, in a time, when black people were few and far between and not necessarily well respected in England, was important enough to have their face carved onto a college wall?

Walk down a tiny side street and you could easily miss the fawns, curled 'neath a door frame, pointy beards and hoofs, devilish faces screwed up in mischief – and then you remember that of course, this was where Cs. Lewis lived and taught. Were these what inspired Mr Tumnus? Of course you can probably find all the answers to these questions if you paid for a guided tour, but for one thing, we are on a very strict “food and heating” only budget at the moment and, for another, it was lovely just to wander – down winding alleyways between high stone walls, leading to more spires, past gated gardens and graveyards, past blue plaques to show which famous scientists and writers had lived behind these walls.

And then there is the Pitt Rivers museum – which one reaches by walking through the Natural History museum – a wonder in itself but am running out of time. The Pitt Rivers is basically a great basement, into which all the Victorian explorers emptied their trunks, so that there are cases of instruments from the Andes, Africa, China and India; wooden masks from Somalia, feathered headdresses from Papua New Guinea, furred boots and embroidered coats from Greenland; papyrus rolls from Egypt, canoes from the Amazon, skins from Native American tribes. If it hadn't been for the fact that Rupert had a bad back, Lydia and I were sick and Juliette was exhausted, we could have spent the whole day in there – and hopefully will, one day.

Oxford, it turns out, in spite of not being a patch on Cambridge, of course, is a beautiful city and we saw it in all its Spring Splendour, pink and white apple and hawthorn blossom tumbling over ancient stone walls, clumps of golden daffodils littering the parks, gardens bursting with hyacinth and tulips, the ghost flames of the magnolias, all against a clear blue sky. We ended the day, by walking through the park by Corpus Christi College, past Christ Church Meadow – a huge flood plain of tussocky grass by the River Thames, where geese and swans glide, where lovers lie and children fight and squeal. (At least in the Easter holidays.)

Can't wait to go back, but there is so much more to see as well...

Spring!!

Yesterday was the most perfect Spring day – warm(ish) sunshine, clear skies, no wind – and so we, along with the rest of England, decided to check out Salcey Forest, near Milton Keynes. Fortunately, Sam and Rupert were having a loud argument in the car, so rather than follow the clear but boring (and obviously too quiet) directions of the sat nav, we ended up taking the scenic route which was unbelievably scenic. So scenic, in fact, that we couldn't help wondering whether this area of Buckinghamshire has been taken over by some hobbit-loving film crew and turned into some sort of “Olde Englishe Rustic Idyll.” Village after village of old stone houses, thatched or tiled with higgeldy-piggeldy, mossy tiles, stone-walled gardens bright with the nodding heads of daffodils and be-jewelled with primroses, crumbling bridges arching over chattering brooks, crooked pubs – The White Hart, The Swan, The Kings Head (yes, without an apostrophe, all ye grammar nerds.) The fields are all full of new-born lambs, long eared and gangly legs, their mothers standing over them, glaring at anyone who comes too close.

On arrival at Salcey Forest, our hearts sank rather, as the car-park was full and the grass verges (“Please Do NOT Park on the Grass Verges”) were lined with cars. But having come all this way, we were not to be deterred, so we parked on the grass verge and joined the chattering throng; big dogs, small dogs, dogs leashed and dogs unleashed, children of every shape and size and Disney costume, swerving around on their bikes, or whining and mud-covered, adults young and old, chavs and wellingtoned booted “Country People” - all come to enjoy the wilderness on this beautiful Spring day.

And within minutes, we had found ourselves on a lonely forest path, the only people in sight, the only sound the twittering and calling of a myriad birds, the suck of our boots in the mud, the crunching of twigs and rustling leaves. The air was full of the sharp green smell of fresh growth, the still-bare trees just beginning to bud and unfold tiny sprays of young leaves. How can one walk in a forest in England and not wonder if there is some truth to stories of fairies?

Well, quite easily as it turns out, but one can certainly see how such stories came about. The forest floor, carpeted in thick green moss and sprinkled with pale yellow primroses, beams of sunshine which filter through the branches, turning leaf litter to gold and deepening the shadows to mystery. There is nothing of the brutal, grab-you-in-the-guts beauty of the Australian Bush here – here there is a delicate beauty that makes your eyes sparkle and your imagination turn to the fluttering of wings and magic.

Next week, Rupert starts work in London and the children go back to school for the summer term. There is the possibility of a dog, work for me, a whole new phase of life starting all over again. I am apprehensive, but glad that we are finally able to get to the point where we can feel like we live here. Long may the glorious spring continue!