Slowly Slowly

Hey People,

Sorry it has been such a long time since we last wrote a blog....we have been waiting for our internet to be connected, but in true slow British systems as we are becoming accustomed to, our home internet is yet to be connected, despite the installers coming on Tuesday (even then they came to the wrong house!). Also I have had a bit of flack from my Kiwi-British friends about being so blunt about the things we don't like over here, so I have been waiting to be in a better mood/mind set to continue with what we have been up to :o)
So we have been over here 8 weeks now! Wow! (Two months exactly on Friday 16th Nov).
The first four weeks went really slowly, however, these past four weeks have gone really fast, I guess we are more settled now since we have our own house and have been earning a bit of money. Funny how time goes slowly when you are sleeping on a couch!
Anyhoo, we will try and update you in a chronological fashion about what we've been up to since our last blog

I found a duvet that I quite liked the look of on the Ikea website, and I also found out that Ikea was open until midnight, so Bev and I thought it might be quite exciting to go on a mission to this infamous place called Ikea - the closest Ikea to us is about 45mins (south) by train and tram away. For those of you that have no idea what ikea is, it is a massive Swedish department store quite like freedom furniture (but way cheaper). So on a Thursday night Bev and I braved Ikea and couldn't believe the place - it is massive! We were worried we might not find the stop to hop off the tram however, we shouldn't have worried as the tram stop was actually called Ampway Ikea so there was very little doubt about where to hop off :o) They basically have one giant warehouse with display kitchens, bedrooms and lounges all set up so that you can see all their products then at the end they have this giant store room where you can collect the kitset furniture and purchase it.

We have also tried traditional British fare - Fish and Chips
Our flatties decided that we needed to try Friday night Fish and Chips, and we were very impressed! They were very tasty and the fish was very fresh! And the vinegar on the chips wasn't half bad either! Annnnnnd to top it all off the chips weren't soggy as we had heard! Yum! However, at £5 (per person) they are quite pricey! The fish and chip shops here must do a lot better than our poorer NZ counterparts.

Stonehenge/Salisbury
We found Stonehenge to be really interesting, however a lot different to the image we had been mislead it to look like. Your first glimpse of Stonehenge is really exciting, it really is a set of large rocks in a paddock, however, as you get closer, you realise there are flaws with this picture.....including, large loads of people, a main highway right beside the paddock containing the “rocks”, an underpass for you to get from the car park to the rocks, and then when you get close to the rocks, you realise that you don’t get very close at all as they are cordoned off by a rope and a few pigtail standards marking out your path(our pictures are a bit misleading - you can get a bit closer than where we took our pictures from).

But as our guide explained the history behind the rocks you really do appreciate the scale of the work that was involved to get the rocks on site and then to make such a formation – considering they didn’t have the technology of today, as well as the underlying suggested purposes of the monument.

After looking at Stonehenge, we had a quick look around Salisbury, and treated ourselves to a cream tea (Scones with Cream and Jam and tea). When we entered the tearooms, we had to wait to be seated, then once seated, we waited and nobody served us, so we ummed and urred as to whether we were supposed to go and order at the counter or whether someone would eventually serve us. We buckled after about 5 minutes, and Bev went and asked if they were to serve us, or what, (in a nice way), however I think they thought we were pointing out that they were slack at serving! Anyway they then served us, but as we were going to leave we got up to go and pay the bill, but of course this is also not how they do it over here, you are supposed to ask for the bill, mull over how much you are going to tip them for the service and then take the bill to the counter and pay(or hand over the money whilst still sitting at your table). I know at some places we do this in NZ, but either method is accepted. Here I think they are worried you are going to leave without paying your bill if you don’t put the money on the tray offered with your bill at your table! Something we are slowly getting used to!


Earlier in the blog we mentioned that we had a blocked drain outside our kitchen. A couple of days after we moved in, our flatmate dobbed them into the Environment Health council, the building’s external landlord (different from our landlord) therefore had so many working days to fix the problem before they were given a bill for the work having been done. So they acted smartly once given an ultimatium (surprise surprise), the external landlord sent round the supposed drain guys to unblock it. Now back-tracking, remember when me(jam) was given work by a temping agency, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, well the drain guys turned up looking like they came straight from a temping agency. According to our flatmate, this was quite a sight, one wearing a business attire and later on, he ended up standing in the poo hole with “wellies” on (gumboots), still wearing business attire, smoking a cigarette, speaking on his cellphone loudly in a foreign language – possibly to his agent! The other guy was wearing a nice leather jacket! However the issue is now fixed, for which we are grateful, as we can now flush the toilet, wash our clothes and dishes without flooding the drain outside!

As many of you will know Speights sent over a boat with a speights pub built on it to London via Samoa, and some other countries, and I think you could get yourself a place on the boat through ZM radio station. Well, on the day that it finally took up residence above temple station we were some of the first few people to have a Speights – I have to say that I am not usually a Speights drinker in NZ, however the fizzyness of the Speights was greatly appreciated compared to the English Beer that I have had since arriving here. The Pub also felt like home as it is quite similar in design to the Cadrona, with gorgeous Rimu floors, a shist bar and Dave Dobbyn music – that made us both feel extremely homesick! Pride of the South in the North 19100km from home! We had to laugh because there was a guy sitting next to us at the pub, an American I think, and he goes – so where is this beer from??? He obviously missed the whole point of the pub!

We went out to our first theatre to see Stomp at the Ambassador – it has been going since 1991 non-stop! It was a really great show, they made noise out of everything – and they even made noise out of kitchen sinks!(I thought that was a nice touch, and a good play on that particular figure of speech). However, there is only so much banging and clanking you can listen to, so we did find it got a little boring in parts – bring on a musical I say!

For Guy Fawkes, we went to a public display at Battersea Park – there was rumoured to have been 5000 people there (and we still managed to bump into someone from home!). We had heard that Brits don’t do things by halves, and we were not let down! The fireworks were fantastic! We also go to try Mulled wine, (we looked for roasted chestnuts but couldn’t find any) and chips and burgers (they are always marketed as Aberdeen Angus Beef over here – which I find really amusing – I haven’t quite worked out why Beef has to be Angus and from Aberdeen to be good – I guess they like to support the local farmers, but why Angus...? Is that the only type of beef cow they have over here?
As with everything over here we had to join a giant queue to buy food, but we were pleasantly surprised at the efficiency of the fastfood caravan workers – obviously far more accustomed to large crowds than our NZ equivalents! – Bev was also stoked to hear that Skyrockets are not banned over here!
Every major park around London had big expensive displays. After work on Friday night we went to Putney and watched a display from the bridge near Bev’s cousins house(it was held in the park we went for a walk in with Bev’s cousin when we first arrived with all the established trees that we drawled at), and then went home for some strawberries – Fireworks and Strawberries, just like home (well a tradition that Bev has introduced me to – he swears that the best strawberries are the first ones in early Nov coinciding with Guy Fawkes (hence the association). The ones over here were of course from Holland – but good nonetheless. One thing we have noticed over here is that all the fruit is imported from all over the world, Strawberries from Holland, Apples from South Africa – and they are all really fresh – however quite pricey as a result.

The people at the Women’s Institute(WI) like me so much they have extended my time with them. I find it extremely funny that I am working at a magazine for old ladies, but the most amusing bit is the letters that the old ladies send in and the phone calls they make! One old lady wrote a letter to the WI telling them that she thought the magazine smelt funny – however, not only was it funny that she had time to write a letter, she also had enough time to make the letter into a rhyming poem! Haha some people have way too much time on their hands!

Mum sent over our Christmas presents, and some long missed vegemite and marmite - our saviour. We tried our British flatties on the Australasian versions but they weren't taken with them - however we are pleased not to have to share!
On Thursday Bev and I had the morning off work so that we could go to a meeting to get our National Insurance(NI) numbers (similar to IRD numbers) set up. We just about wet ourselves laughing when we found out that we wouldn't receive the actual card stating our NI number until 9 months time - haha 9 months! That is a classic example of how long it takes to do anything over here.

We have started watching a TV programme over here called Spooks which is much like Alias, however it is set in London, so it is quite nice actually being over here, because all the places they go to we have been to! (I have no idea if we have it in NZ – I think we may do on Channel 1?).

This weekend we just laxed out on Friday night, then on Saturday we went to Yum Cha (Chinese Brunch) and then a matinee of Fiddler on the roof, and then a nice pub meal (all with Bev's cousin and her fiancee). It was great just to lax out and eat some really nice food :o)
On Sunday we had a lazy morning, went to a breakfast bar (not really a cafe, more like a fish n chip shop at home but with seating) for brunch, then bought a desk for our laptop to sit on and then put it together at home. We then did our usual boring house chores:groceries and washing.


I have included a few pics of our house - our's is the bottom floor house on the very left of the picture - you can see the bay window of our lounge. And the last picture is of our back door (very right of photo) and shared garden with the other people living in our building.