England

We are getting quite good at setting up houses now and have a taken a short lease on a terrace house in Norwich, about 3 hours north of London. We have been here for a couple of weeks already but house sitting and cat feeding which has been very comfortable. During that time I managed to get some casual English teaching so it seemed sensible to hang around. It seems funny that an Australian is teaching English to French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese teenagers in England. 3 hours/day for a month helps to ease the pain of the poor exchange rate ( 1 pound = $2.40 Australian!)

Max has made friends with a lot of English teenagers and is enjoying the chance to speak English and spend their summer holiday with them – visits to the beach, movies, parties etc.

So our new house is a 2 bedroom terrace – old, wooden floors, 2 bathrooms. The drawback is that it is not furnished but we have managed to beg and borrow enough to get by even though it still feels a bit like camping. It is pretty comfortable really and very nice to be in our own space for a while. The other feature is the backyard. Although it is only the width of the house – one room – it goes forever. We could easily fit several 50m single lane lap pools in if we wanted to. Most of this is wasteland or stinging nettles at the moment. The house is up for sale so someone will snap it up and see the potential in a backyard of that size or rather length. The location is good as we are directly opposite a Jasmine Palace Chinese Takeaway. Max and friends have already given it a try and gave it the thumbs up. There is also a pub on the corner.

We are newcomers and not in the garbage collection routine yet. Yesterday morning we were woken at about 7am to men talking at our backdoor. As we discovered later the garbos in this area go past each back door and collect any bags of rubbish they can identify. We happened to have some sitting there just by accident. Then we saw that there are garden gates in identical positions in each side fence so they can walk straight through each back yard. Pretty good service eh?

This old claim to fame probably still stands because there certainly seem to be a lot of pubs - one on every corner. And there is no shortage of churches especially in the old town, there are at least 6 significant, old, stone churches and cathedrals.

In the street we have just moved to (today) there are 4 pubs to choose from – The Fat Cat, The Nelson, another by the river (name unknown) and The Alexandra. We haven’t even looked down the side streets or cross streets yet. They all look like typical English pubs - low heavy wooden ceilings, lots of old pictures on the walls, jugs and pewter mugs hanging from the ceilings, dark wooden bars, dart boards, and of course a roast for Sunday lunch.

Just walking into our closest pub, The Nelson, at lunchtime on Sunday, the smell takes me back to those family dinners at my grandparents’ house, where we always had a roast. Today for 5.95 each we had a roast dinner large enough to fill even a growing and always hungry 15 year old. There was a steady flow of customers who must have also decided it was easier to go to the pub than to try to cook the same meal at home - choice of lamb or beef roast (or both), potatoes, carrots, peas, cabbage, swede (whatever that is) cauliflower, all drowned in gravy, horseradish or mint sauce. We had to reveal ourselves as inexperienced roast eaters though and ask what the strange bowl-like pastry things were and how you eat them – Yorkshire Pudding of course! A slightly amused chef said he like to put them on top of the plate of food and fill them with gravy. It was pretty good and for our first day in the neighbourhood we felt like locals. Pity about the warm ale though …

Folk music is alive and flourishing here and some pubs also provide a venue for music nights where anyone if they know the jigs and reels by heart and are brave enough, can join in. It is more entertaining for me to sit, listen and watch. Looks like we might be spending a fair bit of time at the pub down the road.

There is a real sense of history as well as old world charm when you enter the city of York. The Normans invaders reached York in 11th century but the history of York goes back to the Romans, Saxons and Vikings before that.
The city centre is surrounded by great stone gates and medieval stone walls which you can walk around for a good introduction to the city and to appreciate just how long it has been there and the battles it must have faced. There still are many old and fascinating buildings in the old town. At the centre is York Minster, an enormous medieval cathedral which dates back to 1220 but has been extended rebuilt and repaired several times since. The Shambles – the original butchers markets – with its narrow street and leaning tudor style buildings is a wonderful step back in time. The Shambles leads into the market place just where it has been for hundreds of years., and still selling locally grown fruit, veg and smoked fish. You feel like you are living in history in York. There is Cliffords Tower from the 13th century which stands on the same mound as the original Norman’s tower to guard the city.
We now rate museums on their ability to keep 15 year olds interested and the Yorvic Viking Museum gets full marks. On the actual site where a Viking street was discovered and excavated they have recreated the street.
Using s system of suspended chairs you are shown around the old street to watch people at their trade – the leather worker, the blacksmith etc. Explanation in a language of your choice comes from the headrest in the chair. It gives you a very good impression of how daily life was carried out by the Vikings in about 800 AD. After that there are artifacts found at the actual site, bones and skeletons where the injuries sustained on the skeletons are explained and possible cause of death determined…. archeological forensic science.

It feels like stepping back in time. Think pounds not dollars, miles not kilometers, inches not centimeters, pints not liters and pence not cents. The people are polite, genteel and friendly, The villages are small, the roads are narrow and the houses are ever so cute. This is what we have found in North Norfolk about three hours north of London.

It is like stepping onto a film set for a BBC production of Heartbeat or All Creatures Great and Small. The villages have narrow winding streets, sometimes not wide enough for a car. The houses open directly onto the streets. They have low doorways (one advantage to being short), low ceilings, attic windows and some still have thatched roofs. There are hand-made stonewalls and buildings from the local round flint rocks everywhere. Cottage gardens straight from the gardening books and almost impossible to achieve in Australia are in.

We are staying an 18th century cottage in a small village called Wells-next-the-Sea in a street called Knitting Needle Lane – how cute is that! The village and street names are quaint and very descriptive - Rose Lane, Oak Street Mill Road, Northfield Lane, Polka Road, Bolts Close, Chapel Yard, Mill Road, Marsh Lane and High Street.

Allotments are popular. People from the city and towns like to have their own place to plant potatoes, beans and gooseberries in a communal garden area. It is a nice way to grow your own and make up for limited garden space at home.

Some other great names we spotted in our travels in England so far include Upper Goat Lane followed by Lower Goat Lane, Great Snoring next to Little Snoring of course, Adam and Eve Lane, Unthank Road, Two Furlong Hill Road, Blackhorse Yard and Jolly Sailor Yard.