3rd Port: Venice

This was my third visit to Venice - I went with Tevye before Helen was born, and we took Helen and Marie for a day trip during a holiday in Italy when they were 8 and 5. Amazing place, and one I would love to visit many more times.

We splurged and rode on a gondola. Four out of five of us loved it. The fifth, smallest member of the party was in a mood and was determinedly not impressed.

We started off on the Grand Canal. Lots of traffic, which made it a bit bumpy (Rose took this as a personal affront).

Then we headed onto the side "streets". This was the beautiful part of the ride, gliding silently along quiet, narrow canals.

I was really pleased with this picture, which caught the reflection of the buildings in the still water of the canal.

When in Italy, eat ice cream.

Another view of the Grand Canal in the opposite direction. This time taken from a bridge (from the steps of the Rialto, I think). 

When we left the port we sailed past the city, giving us the most magnificent panoramic view. This picture of St Mark's Square and the Doge's Palace was taken from the ship (iPhone from a distance, so not the greatest quality).

7 Quick Takes: 14th September 2012

1.  A local radio station has a slot on Friday mornings where people can phone or text in a description of their weekend in three words. This would be mine:

London with kids

In slightly more words, I'm planning to take Marie and Rose to London tomorrow, at Marie's request. Not sure what we will do but possibilities are the Princess Diana memorial playground at Kensington Gardens and the National Gallery.

2.  On my way to work I drive across a hump-backed bridge over the canal. As there is only room for one car and it isn't possible to see if anything is coming the other way until nearly at the top it has to be approached very slowly and cautiously. This morning I got there slightly ahead of a car coming in the opposite direction and had virtually stopped while I made sure the other car was going to wait for me. Just as I was about to move on a muntjac deer appeared from a hedge on the other side of the bride and ran down the road across the bridge, leaving myself and the other driver doing a double-take. Apparently deer cannot read roadsigns!

3.  I am home (almost) alone. Tevye, Helen and Marie are all out, and Rose is tucked up in bed. I am enjoying peace and quiet and a glass of red wine.

4.  I think I fall on the cusp between introvert and extrovert, using the Myers-Briggs style definition of an extrovert being someone who gains energy from being with others and an introvert someone who needs alone time to energise. When life is busy and I spend a lot of time with people I need quiet time to recharge; when it is quiet and I get plenty of time alone, being with others make me buzz.

5.  Shamelessly pinching one of Tevye's Facebook updates:
"We were discussing school at bedtime and Rose said that geography was her favourite subject cos she likes countries. So I asked what her favourite country was. After much thought, and silently trying to mouth various words, she suddenly announced with great flourish and triumph ... Bosnia and Herzegovina."
That child does love words!

6.  Knitting update ... I'm currently on a rather boring pair of navy blue socks, which I need to finish in time for my mother's birthday next Friday (I've just started the second sock, so it is possible but challenging). Once they are done I will be making a Bedford sweater for Marie at her request, using Cascade 220 Superwash in brown. I ordered some from Nutty Knitting Supplies last week and it arrived within 24 hours. Excellent service!

7.  I like the look of the new iPhone 5. I'm not fussed about having 4G, but a larger screen, a faster processor, and longer battery life are tempting. Not that I can be tempted yet as I still have 9 months to run on my contract for my iPhone 4.

Visit Conversion Diary for more quick takes

2nd Port: Korcula

After two more sea days our second port was the Croatian island of Korcula and its pretty little walled city, also called Korcula.

The main gate into the old city.

Part of the fortifications from outside

Korcula claims to be the birthplace of the medieval explorer Marco Polo who is commemorated in shops, restaurants and a museum. This giant's chair outside the Marco Polo shop had a note asking for donations to charity.

One of the narrow little side streets. Very pretty!

You can see the street to the right of this church dropping down steeply as the city slopes down towards the sea.

Rose looking down on the perfect blue sea. The railings were at the top of a set of steps leading down to a small rocky area.

Korcula was the only port stop where we had to go on shore by tender. Disembarking was a major logistical exercise, with inevitable queues for the boats. Worth it, though!

And so it ends ...

... this glorious British summer. Not glorious weather, which for much of the summer has done its damp and miserable worst - though it did stop raining for most of the Olympics - but other than that, what a time we have had! The diamond jubilee celebrations, the Olympics, the Paralympics ... the whole wonderful series ended with the closing ceremony of the Paralympics on Sunday and the athletes' parade through London yesterday, and there was even the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday thrown in for good measure. 

As the summer comes to an end it feels as though the whole country has a deeper, happier, more confident sense of what it means to be British in the 21st century than it did just a few months ago. The British, and in particular the English, tend to be reluctant to indulge in displays of patriotism. We aren't great at either flying the flag or expressing what this country means to us. A combination of self-deprecation and cynicism makes it easy for us to underestimate all the good stuff that goes with living in Britain. This summer has changed that. We celebrated the Queen's sixty years as head of state, and in doing so looked at our nation a little closer and stood a bit taller. We put on a truly GREAT Olympic games. Then we topped that with undoubtedly the best Paralympics ever. Beforehand we thought of the coming Olympics with a mix of excitement and nerves, hoping for the best but half-expecting it all to go pear-shaped. But it didn't. It turned out to be a glorious sporting party, just what we needed to lift the national mood and distract us from the economic gloom. Suddenly we feel that Britain really is Great Britain again. It feels as though we have collectively won a gold medal, one that we hoped for but didn't really expect to achieve.

I didn't go to any of the Olympic or Paralympic events but even so I felt the buzz, both from the television coverage and from the second hand experiences of friends who got tickets. From what I hear everything went remarkably smoothly, with a friendly atmosphere fostered by the 70,000 volunteers who acted as games makers. The noise in the stadiums was deafening (Rose, who is sensitive to loud noise, would most definitely not have coped!). The whole thing just worked. 

As for the sport, it was extraordinary to see the medals racking up for Team GB. I am old enough to remember the days when the Olympics meant an endless series of glorious, or less than glorious, defeats for British athletes. In those days gold medals were few and far between - at Atlanta in 1996 we won just one! At Beijing we managed 19 and in London an astonishing 29, finishing 3rd in the medal table behind the US and China. Extraordinary! The last time that happened was in 1920. By the time the Olympics ended we had a whole string of new sporting heros. If I had to pick a favourite moment I think it would be Mo Farah winning his second gold of the games and celebrating with the amazing Usain Bolt. 

Then there were the Paralympics. I missed the early stages as we were still away and didn't manage to catch as much as I would have liked as last week was busy, but what I did see was wonderful. Again, friends who went said the atmosphere was simply amazing. And inspirational, watching the athletes who had to compete not just against each other but against their own disabilities. By the end of the games we had been given a whole new language of sport - blade runners, goalball, wheelchair tennis - and yet more new heros. 

And now it is all over, though with a postscript last night as Andy Murray became the first British man to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament since 1936 with his victory in New York. One of the catchwords of the Olympics was legacy. Quite how that will eventually play out I don't know, but for now I have been left with the sense that something, somehow, is better than it was before.

This Week: 10th September 2012

It is nearly a year since I last posted one of these, but they are both a great way of keeping a diary and a discipline to stop me neglecting the blog so I'm intending to start posting them weekly again.

The weather ... after a week of lovely late summer weather and a perfect (hot!) September weekend the temperature is forecast to drop from high 70s to low 60s over the next couple of days. Time to dig out autumn clothes.

I am wearing ... wide legged navy trousers, cobalt blue sweater, blue/navy ballet flats

I am reading ... after reading several books while we were away I haven't yet settled on what to read next. 

I am creating ... panic knitting socks for my mother's birthday next week. She wanted another pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks in navy, identical to a pair I knitted for her last year.  

I am listening ... to Rose watching Grandpa in my Pocket on the iPad.

I am watching ... Who Do You Think You Are (trying to catch up on episodes missed while we were away) and Dragons Den. The summer was mostly a big Olympic TV binge.

I am enjoying ... life! Most of the time, between the inevitable minor crises that arise when you have children and an elderly mother. 

Learning Notes ... everyone is back to school now and next week will be the first full week of the new school year. A quick fill-in of where everyone is now:

Helen - starting Year 13 (her final year of school - how did that happen?) and taking A2 / A level in English language, media studies and photography. She did well in her AS exams (these are taken at the end of Year 12 and count as a qualification in themselves, but also count towards the final A level result), with an A in photography and Bs in English, media and general studies (pass grades are A to E, with an A* for exceptional achievement). As she was predicted Bs or Cs everyone was happy. The day before she got her exam results she passed her driving test so is now sharing my little car and is able to drive herself to work. She is still working at the gym, but now coaches a small competition squad - low level, competing for fun, not the serious stuff - and is going to be working for her Level 1 coaching qualification this term. 

Marie - in Year 10 and working on her GCSE courses. She is taking English (language and literature), maths, science (she was originally in a science group which takes physics, chemistry and biology as separate GCSEs, but spectacularly failed a test and is now doing double science - "double" because it counts as two GCSEs), French, history, business studies and art. 

Rose - starting Year 2.  She likes her teachers and seems happy so far. She tells me she is the best reader in her class and is the only child on "light blue" readers (their take-home reading books are colour coded and they get free choice within their  designated colour). This year we are leaving a spare pair of glasses at school. Just as well, as it only took until day 2 to forget to take her normal pair! She is still learning to swim, very slowly, and will take her first ballet exam next month. 

Me - I am putting my archive course on hold for a while as trying to juggle working full time, studying and the Christmas carol playing season would be crazy. I think the next course I take will be one on reading Latin documents starting in spring 2013. 

On the menu ...

Monday: chicken stir fry

Tuesday: chicken in breadcrumbs and chip-van chips. A fish-and-chip van which does great chips (fries) visits our estate on Tuesdays, so it has become our regular chip-van chips night.

Wednesday: ??? No idea how to fit in cooking and eating as everyone is flying around to various places during dinner cooking and eating time.

Thursday: pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs

Friday: haddock cooked with courgettes and mustard

Saturday: burgers with salad

Sunday: Roast - lamb, potatoes, parsnips and other veggies

On the calendar ...

Monday: the first day of my first week working full time for more years than I can remember. From this week I will be working three days a week as an archivist and two days a week on my cataloguing job (which has 10 months left to run). 

Tuesday: orthodontist's appointment for Marie. Rose usually has a ballet class on Tuesday's but her dance term doesn't start until next week.

Wednesday: rush home from work for a talk at Marie's school for parents and students in Year 10 at 6, followed by teaching at training band and band practice. Helen working from 4.30 to 6.30. Asthma check up for Marie and dental appointment for Helen (who fortunately can now take herself to appointments!)

Thursday: swimming for Rose, work for Helen, orchestra rehearsal for me. This term we are playing Bruckner's 4th symphony (75 minutes long! Yikes!) and Haydn's sinfonia concertante. I missed the first rehearsal last week due to a retirement party for the colleague I am replacing (hence the change of hours this week). 

Friday: nothing out of the ordinary.

Saturday: work in the morning for Helen, otherwise no plans yet.

Sunday: no plans. Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) starts in the evening.

A picture from last week: 

I played with the band at our last summer fete on Saturday. The announcer was a well-known Radio 1 DJ from the 70s and 80s. Any guesses? (Clue = hairy!)

1st Port: Malaga

After two sea days cruising from Southampton past France, across the Bay of Biscay, down the coast of Portugal and into the Mediterranean, our first port of call was Malaga. 

WiFi was available on the ship but was very expensive (50 pence a minute!) so we left the older girls in McDonalds to use their free WiFi for a while and walked up to the square by the cathedral where a flamenco band was playing.

We only had the morning in port so decided to see the town by taking a horse and carriage tour. There was a kind of equine taxi rank outside the cathedral.

I have no idea what this building was, but I liked the picture ... Aha! Looking at Wikipedia I think it may be the Palacio de la Aduana, the Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum.

The 11th century Moorish fortress, the Alcazaba.

The bull ring. A very impressive structure, though I can't get my head round the concept of bullfighting as entertainment. Neither could Rose when we tried to explain it to her.

The view from our carriage down a tree shaded avenue.

Poor Neglected Blog

I think a month may be the longest I have ever gone without posting. My excuse is that a couple of posts never made it past the half-written stage, and then we were away for the second half of August on a very, very big boat.

All five of us had a wonderful time - there really was  something for everyone. It was more a floating village than a floating hotel.

We got back last Sunday and over the next few days drifted back to school and work. I started straight in on Monday, Tevye went back to work on Tuesday, Marie started school on Wednesday and Helen and Rose on Thursday.

For the fist time in many months I dug out my camera rather than relying on my iPhone for photos, so over the next week or so I'll be posting pictures from our travels - seven ports in four countries (Spain, Croatia, Italy and Greece).

Butterfly World

I promised Rose a visit to somewhere with a butterfly house this summer, so yesterday I took her to Butterfly World (via a stop off at Tevye's office in nearby St Albans so she could see where he works).

There were butterflies - which proved sadly disappointing from Rose's point of view as she really, really wanted one to land on her and none of them obliged, unreasonably ignoring her grumbles and complaints at their lack of cooperation. Quite why she thought that whinging would make them more likely to mistake her for a flower I have no idea!

There were also leaf cutter ants, stick insects and various other six legged beasties.


A nice play area let Rose work out her frustrations. Her yellow t-shirt was carefully chosen for its supposed butterfly attracting properties!


And we both enjoyed exploring a series of small quirky gardens. These giant garden tools and flower pots were impressive.



Rose loved this giant willow nest with wooden eggs


And I liked this quirky thyme garden


So, disappointing butterfly behaviour notwithstanding, we had a good afternoon. An Eden Project style biome is planned for next year, which should be well worth seeing.

Olympic Opening Ceremony

We are not a sports oriented family and rarely watch sport on TV, but I have always loved watching the Olympics. When the 2012 Olympics were first awarded to London I hoped to get tickets, but decided against due to a combination of price and the high demand for tickets here in the UK that left pretty much every event massively oversubscribed. Even without the prospect of being able to watch live, anyone living in the UK over the past few weeks would have to live under a rock - and a pretty big rock at that - not to get caught up in anticipation of the London games, and on Friday night all five of us settled down to watch the Olympic opening ceremony.

We had no idea what to expect. Britain is superb at the big royal events - think William and Kate's wedding and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - but has a decidedly patchy track record when it comes to other public celebrations. The uninspiring "River of Fire" on the Thames to mark the Millenium barely even lived up to the billing of damp squib, for example. So who knew what we might get for the Olympic opening! It was also hard to see what might work. A Beijing style ceremony was never on the cards, both because the cost would be unacceptable in the current financial climate and because the British simply don't do massed ranks of identical performers. Neither was a Hollywood style extravaganza likely - again, too expensive, and that sort of razzmatazz would be likely to leave the British public cringing at the sheer un-Britishness of the spectacle (we might enjoy watching other countries do this type of show, but just can't take it seriously in ourselves). We also tend to be uncomfortable with overt displays of patriotism ... so what was left?

What we got was an opening night romp through aspects of British history and culture which reflected our peculiar national character - quirky, eccentric, diverse and humorous. We are a nation of individuals, yet still value popular institutions (we LOVE our NHS!). We are four countries tangled together into one. All that came through in Danny Boyle's show. The ceremony zoomed from Jerusalem and Abide With Me (which I understand NBC cut from its coverage in the US) to the Beatles and the Sex Pistols, by way of Shakespeare, James Bond, the Queen, the invention of the world wide web*, Mr Bean, and the defeat of Voldemort by a fleet of flying Mary Poppinses. It was weird, crazy, moving, and entertaining, sometimes all at the same time. Tevye and I started watching with a slight feeling of pessimism (see River of Fire above), but by the time the show reached James Bond and the Queen we were shouting "genius!" at the TV set. With all the financial doom and gloom of the last years as a nation we really needed the morale boost of a party we could enjoy, and we got it. We did wonder what viewers around the world wouAkersake of the whole thing, but I did a bit of googling of reviews and they seemed to be mostly positive, if occasionally baffled.

So now we move on to two weeks of indulging in the great British sport of gallantly failing (mostly) to win medals.

Oh, I nearly forgot ... I thought the cauldron was amazing! So different to anything that had been done before, and so effective.

*Did you realise that when Sir Tim Berners-Lee typed "This is for everyone" on the computer in the stadium it was live tweeted. How cool is that!

Whitechapel

Tevye is a true Cockney - born in Whitechapel, within the sound of Bow bells. Before meeting friends for lunch last weekend we had time to take a walk around the area where he lived as a child. Very different now in some ways, most obviously in that the Jewish community that dominated Whitechapel has since moved out to the suburbs and replaced by more recent immigrants, mainly Bangladeshi. In other ways not so different - much of the area is still poor and run-down, sandwiched between the brash, glitzy City (the City is the financial centre of London, think Wall Street) and the up-market renovated areas of Docklands.

We started with Petticoat Lane market, but the road layout at the Whitechapel end had changed so much that Tevye no longer recognised it. The market gets its name from the garments once made there. The Victorians changed the road name to Middlesex Street to avoid public mention of undergarments but the original name stuck to the market.

Next we walked down Whitechapel Road.

The main claim to fame of the area is that it was the stalking ground of the infamous Jack the Ripper, a mass murderer of the 1890s who was never caught and has been the subject of interest and speculation ever since. Posters and memorabilia in this shop window advertised "Jack the Ripper" walking tours.

Running between Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road is the street where Tevye lived. The buildings are divided into units of six flats (apartments), in three storey pairs of two flanking a single entrance. In his day they were owned by the nearby London Hospital and were very basic, without bathrooms and with a single toilet shared between each pair of flats. Since then they have been renovated and bathrooms installed. This end of the road is now social housing run by a housing association. Someone living in Tevye's old block was none too tidy, with bags of rubbish scattered around the entrance. Bizarrely the other end of the street is Georgan terraced houses which sell for a fortune (I googled and found one for sale for £795,000!).

Tevye's flat was on the middle floor. The "No Ball Games" sign was written in English and (I presume) Bengali. In Tevye's day that rule either was not there or was routinely ignored, as he remembers spending a lot of time hitting a tennis ball against the wall!

Heading down to St Katherine's Dock for lunch we passed Tevye's old primary school, a fairly grim Victorian building brightened by a centenary mosaic at the entrance.

More photos from our day out to come later.

Old and New

Last Sunday Tevye and I spent the day together in London. Quite why it has taken me a week to get round to posting pictures I'm not sure! More to come, but as a taster here are two photographs taken from the Thames River path when I realised that from the same spot I had two views separated by a thousand years. I love London!

On the south bank, the Shard, 21st century

And on the north bank, the Tower of London, 11th century

Job Done!

Phew! All assignments completed and in the post (or mail, if you are in the US!). I feel as though I now have some breathing space ... to read, blog, play with Rose, maybe even begin to get the house under control. The clutter levels have risen and I need to start getting rid of stuff again.

A quick update on things that are going on round here:

• The girls are coming to the end of their school year - they finish next Friday, then have six and a half weeks break.


• Helen has her driving test booked for mid-August. She is desperately hoping she will pass, not just so that she can drive solo, but as she pointed out to me yesterday, "if I fail, I'm going to be SO broke!" The deal is that we are paying to insure our little car for her to drive, but she is paying for her driving lessons. She is coming to the end of the money she saved working as a Christmas temp in a department store last winter, so if she fails and has to pay for more lessons, not to mention the repeat test fee, she is going to be scraping the barrel financially. 


• Rose has decided to come to the beginner's sessions at the brass band and is learning to play the cornet. She can just about manage to hold it in her small hands! She tried out Helen's old trumpet but I had to hold the end up for her as it was too big and heavy. 


• Summer is a misnomer. This is what we have had for the last four months, with very little break. Today looks like continuing the soggy, miserable theme. I will be out there, playing the trombone in the rain - under some sort of tent or gazebo, but it isn't likely to be entirely dry.

7 Very Quick Takes

1. The next three weeks are going to be hairy. I have a short piece of assessed work, an essay and a report to write for my course. That is on top of working 4.5 days a week, band stuff and an orchestra concert. And trying to at least feed and pay some attention to my family.

2. Once I hand in that work my current module is done and I am taking a break until February next year, partly because there is only so much I can pack into a week and partly because of the timetabling of the courses I want to take. Then six months more of hard work and the studying will be done.

3. Once this module is finished I will get back to reading. I'm still determined to get through 52 books in 52 weeks and I have some catching up to do.

4. I will also try to get on top of the housework. For now, Tevye is managing to stop us disappearing under a layer of dirt and clutter. Really, the number of hours in a week only stretch so far.

5. I have discovered it is possible to sleep less and survive. Sometimes downtime is more important than sleep. I yawn a lot, though!

6. Menu planning is my friend.

7. I may not blog again until the assignments are done. (Yes, I know I haven't been blogging much anyway!)

Now We Are Six!

Rose celebrated her 6th birthday on Friday. And then again on Sunday with a party for her school friends. We ended up with 13 small people altogether, who were perfectly happy playing old-fashioned party games and picnicking on blankets on the floor. (The weather thinks it is November, not June, making planning anything outdoors impossible). Marie produced beautifully decorated cupcakes for the occasion, and did a great job of helping a couple of small, shy little people. Most of the photos have other people's children in them so I won't share them here, but here is a picture of the cakes:

A few snippets about our new six year old:

1) She reads! Since she got her glasses her reading has improved rapidly (she can see the letters! Duh!) and she now curls up in bed and reads to herself before settling down for the night - a mix of picture books and short chapter books.

2) She is still petite - 108cm (42.5 inches) tall, and I think weighs about 36lbs. I don't have any scales so had to extrapolate from her last weigh in. She is still light enough to pick up and carry fairly easily, which I'm sure her sisters weren't at the same age.

3) She is a bit aggrieved that she is the only child in her school peer group who hasn't yet had a visit from the tooth fairy, and doesn't even have a wobbly tooth to suggest one is imminent.

4) She likes words.Numbers not so much!

5) She is a little homebody, often preferring to stay home and play rather than go places if given the choice.

6) She is still very timid, with a list of things she doesn't do and places she won't go. Sometimes she surprises me though. She has been invited to a horse-riding party next weekend and is full of excitement at the idea of getting to ride a horse, which I thought would worry her.

7) She adores her big sisters, and is particularly close to Marie who loves to spend time with her and lavish attention on her. They often have sleepovers together, usually involving a "midnight feast" - though as experience shows that once Rose is asleep she will not wake on demand, the midnight feasts usually happen around 8.30 before she settles down for the night.

8) She loves Sylvanian Families (Calico Critters in the US , I think) and Playmobil.

9) She is learning to swim, though it is a slow process. She started swimming lessons in September and is just beginning to swim a few yards independently.

10) She hates loud noises. Loud music has her sticking her fingers in her ears, though somehow a gaggle of squealing small girls seems to be tolerable!

Books 15, 16, 17 and 18

You see, I have been reading, just not blogging, so I'm going to shove all of the four books I have read recently into one catch up post. I'm still a little behind on my 52 books in 52 weeks, but not disastrously so.

Book 15: N is for Not Fade Away: the Life and Music of Buddy Holly (John Gribbin)

A Kindle offer which I picked up because I'm a long time fan of Buddy Holly's music but didn't know anything about him beyond the version of his story shown in the stage show. I like John Gribbin too, who usually writes very readable books about science and the history of science. Buddy Holly comes across in the book as a genuinely nice, likeable young man of enormous talent. Such a tragedy that he died so young.

Book 16: Bucks, Beds and Bricks (Jean Blane Flannery)

This one was a local history Kindle find. The title refers to the counties of Buckinghamshire (Bucks), Bedfordshire (Beds) and the brick making industry which has been a feature in this area from a very early date (villages named Brickhill were mentioned in Domesday Book in the 11th century). I was hoping to find out more about the brick industry but that turned out to be essentially incidental to a straightforward childhood memoir - the author's father worked for the London Brick Company during her 1940s and 50s childhood. The book was still an interesting read as many of the places she mentions are familiar to me and it brought back many childhood memories. Life was easier by the 1960s but there was also much that hadn't changed, at least in the homes of older relatives if not our own.

Book 17: O is for Our Man in Orlando (Hugh Hunter) 

I found this searching Amazon's Kindle store rather randomly for a book with O in the title! I think I was looking under a "travel" heading and this one turned up. Hugh Hunter spent a number of years as the British Consul in Florida, dealing with the various crises suffered by Britons abroad, ranging from lost passports to imprisonment on death row for murder - apparently more British subjects get arrested in Florida than anywhere else in the world outside the UK. It was generally and interesting and entertaining read, though the author's style grated at times and I wasn't at all impressed with his casual treatment of his girlfriend!

Book 18: Cockney Girl (Gilda Moss Haber)

Like Bucks, Beds and Bricks this book turned out not to be what I expected. I downloaded it because I am interested in the Jewish East End where Tevye lived as a child and thought this biography of a Jewish Girl growing up in Bethnal Green in the 1930s and 40s would give me an insight into Jewish life at that time. In fact, for most of her childhood the author had little contact with the Jewish community, except through her religiously observant but distant maternal grandparents. Her parents were Jewish but non-practicing, and her family was acutely disfunctional with a mother whose own parents had shown her no affection and who was herself unable to show any affection for her child. Gilda was frequently sent away from home and at one time was abandoned in an orphanage for months with nothing more than occasional letters from her mother. She spent the entire war as a refugee in East Anglia, again with little contact with her family, until she finally found a measure of love and acceptance in a home for displaced Jewish children (all the others were refugees from Hitler's Europe). Overall it was a rather sad book. I read to the end but was left with a sense of unfinished business as there was no real explanation of why the relationships within her family were so cold, or whether they were ever resolved.

Wrest Park

We are having a cold, wet and miserable spring here, but it finally stopped raining at the weekend and Tevye, Rose and myself went on a trip to Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. I had been learning quite a bit about the Wrest Park archives at work which whetted my appetite for a visit. The last time I went there - maybe 15 years ago? - was to an open air classical music concert. Since then English Heritage have done a lot of work restoring the gardens. Now it is a relatively undiscovered gem - one of the most important examples of an early 18th century landscape in the UK. Photos are from my phone, and something has gone peculiar with the sky and clouds between phone, iPad and blogging app. I intended to sort this out, but as I have already been sitting on this post since the beginning of the week I am giving up and posting the pictures as they are.

The house - only a few rooms are open to the public. It has not been lived in as a stately home for several decades. During the war it was the headquarters of a life assurance company, then until quite recently it was used as an agricultural college.

The view from the pavilion to the house - the photo doesn't do it justice. After the long lake there is a huge lawn, part of which was taken up with croquet pitches. We guessed from the layout that they must hold some sort of championships there.




The pavilion. Somehow I didn't take any pictures inside. Narrow doors lead to narrow, steep spiral stairs leading up to two tiny bedrooms and down to a "two seater" bathroom below.




Woodland garden. Grassy lanes lead to statues, follies and summer houses. There is also a cemetery for the family's dogs tucked into one corner.




Chinese bridge. Complete with nesting swan and her mate.




Rose had a lot of fun doing a children's activity trail. Lots of things to draw and to look for.




The orangery.




Rose playing a "help the housekeeper get dinner on the table" version of snakes and ladders. The house has an information area which includes some nice hands on activities for kids.




A view from the edge of the gardens across the Bedfordshire countryside.