01 July 1999

Dad

Looks like I might be going down to Hamilton this weekend so it will be good to catch up with Grandma and Grandad Pond. Also looks like I will be going to Hahei with Angela at the end of the month so will definitely drop in on the Tearle Grandparents and let you know how they are all keeping. Taking this keeping in touch of the family thing on your behalf as well as mine seriously. Don’t want contact to be lost just because you guys aren’t here to keep it going.

Genevieve

I am impressed.

Firstly by your visiting both grandparents. That’s a lovely thing to do. I’m very pleased you’re taking this seriously. Mum will talk cricket and rugby and love you for it. Talk to Dad about his letters to and from England. Thelma and Clarice love his letters. There may be others.

Not a good idea to do exercise outside in freezeng conditions. You get very cold air down inside hot lungs. I’m not sure what I’m going to do once winter arrives here. They eat a lot of fatty stuff here, so that makes it hard to keep one’s weight down without lots of exercise. I was a growing boy there until I got back on the road again! The waistline is only now down to a reasonable size, although I’ve no idea how much I weigh. The belt tells the story. Now, tho, lots of muscles are beginning to show and there’s a good amount of hardness in my arms and, of course, my legs. It just feels better.

I’m going up to 6 miles. That’s nearly 10km . Wish me luck. Wish I could find a race or two; it would give all this exercise a bit an edge.

PS: Lunchtime score

Edgebaston Test
NZ 19 for 2

Ye Gods! Please don’t make it worse.

Dad

2 July 1999

Bob

I’m hanging out for contract jobs. They pay a lot more and last about 3-6 months, usually with a rollover or two. Eg they usually pay my skills between 17-20 pounds per hour, or 25-35k pounds per year. 25 pounds per hour is 51,000 pounds per year, and there’s no way I could get a 51k ppa job. But so far, I am not working. I do have lots of hope, though, and there are people I ring nearly every day and hassle to death. One day … soon, one of the cages I’m rattling will yield me a job. Fact. I have more than 60 agencies I’m signed up with and I have 6 jobs where CV’s have been sent out, and I ring about 14 agencies almost every day. Something will give …

In the meantime, it’s summer here, of course. I’m not so dumb as to come here in winter; that will arrive soon enough. In spite of how things may appear for Wimbledon, which is not far from here, it’s actually very pleasant and so far I’m enjoying it.

I’ve been to see many of the family already, but there are a few to go yet, and some new ones who I wasn’t able to meet last time I came.

St Albans is on Watling St. Isn’t that cool? There are Roman ruins and Roman roads all about. It’s like looking down a time tunnel.

By the way, I suppose you know it’s July 1999 and Nostradamus says there’s going to be a big fire from the sky that will consume us all. And here I am in the northern hemisphere ….. Look after yourself, mate. Thanks for writing, and yes, I’ll keep in touch. Lots of love to Linda, I’m very pleased for both of you. Hope things go
well.

Ewart

3 July 1999

Dear Genevieve

We got all enthusiastic and raced off to London on Saturday. Bad move. Talk about expensive. I’ll tell you what, I won’t do it again before I’m working and earning pounds.

But anyway, we went to Madame Tusauds. There’s a 50min queue. Yes, it’s about 150m long. Once you get in, the whole set is in three sections – modern (with the royal wedding, lots of prime ministers and movie starsand that sort of thing) The idea is that you pose with these statues and get your picture taken – photography is allowed – so it looks like you’ve met the real person. The statues are very lifelike. Then there’s the Chamber of Horrors with vistas of the French Revolution and the guillotine chopping people up, as well as medieval torture chambers and Newgate Prison.

I’ll tell you what – if you ever wanted to see man’s inhumanity to man, esp in the name of religion, you won’t be able to go past this. Why treat people like that? Why not just kill them, if you have to, but they went to so much trouble to torture them! Why bother? Then there’s London Story where you jump into replica of a London Taxi and get raced through little scenarios of the history of London in about 10 minutes. The time taken is about two and a half hours. We arrived at 11:00 and, after queuing for nearly an hour, left at about 2:30pm. With very sore feet.

Hey, you see the damnedest things in the most peculiar places. I found some Jane Austin writing paper there. I’m sending it to you. It is absolutely beautiful. You’ll be very reluctant actually to write on it. Mum found you two neat little tops. When summer arrives, you’ll be THE cool one.

After this we caught the underground and went to Westminster Bridge. Elaine had her photo taken on Westminster bridge because her mum says one of her ancestors commissioned its building. She doesn’t know which one – ancestor, I mean. The whole day’s train fare from St Albans to London return and anywhere around the underground is 8 pounds each and it goes until the last train leaves at about 1:00am. From Westminster Bridge we took a City Sightseeing boat cruise.

It can’t be much of a city because the boat only went from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge – about 3 miles! You see what City Cruises means now? Yeah, The City. Not London city, which one would think at first. Well, the trip cost 4.50 pounds each and then, when we got to Tower bridge, the crew passed around the Captain’s Hat so we could pay for the commentary! The crew did the commentary because the owners didn’t want to make the fares more expensive by hiring a professional guide. Yeah, right.

We took the return trip, which of course was nearly double the single trip, and they passed the Captain’s Hat around again when they got back to Westminster Bridge. Needless to say, we didn’t put money in either way. We thought the trip would go a lot further and hoped to see the millennium dome and a few other interesting sights. Most of London’s most interesting sights are hidden from the river behind ghastly modern glass structures you can see any day in Auckland and even in Hamilton. You wouldn’t want to pay to see those.

We took the underground back to Leicester Square, had a nice but cheap meal upstairs in a pub where we saw the day’s cricket test highlights on channel 4 (the Kiwis lost) then we had a wander around Leister Square itself. There was an Australian singer and a Gypsy band we listened to for a while each, then had an ice cream in the Sanyo centre, took a quick trip through Planet Hollywood, where Mum bought a T-shirt and went back via underground and train to St Albans. £100. Please. No more trips to London until I’m earning. There’s lots of other things to do, like Whipsnade Zoo, Woburn Abbey and even lots of the free local attractions and sights before we have to bust a gut going sightseeing in London again.

That reminds me – I’m off to London on Tuesday afternoon. One of the IT agencies (ITA) contacted me and has asked me to sit a test in London at 2:00pm on Tuesday. I said yes, of course, because if I do well at it then that will be a qualification all by itself. They are only offering a permanent position, but we’ll see how much they are willing to pay before I say definitely that I won’t take the job.. I suppose how much I’m paid may depend on this test. Wish me luck.

Dad

23 June 1999

Dear Genevieve

Mum will reply to this tomorrow but at the moment …

1. Don’t confuse Mum’s 90 quid a day with real money, because it’s not. It’s no different from $90 per day, and that’s a fair bit less than you’re earning. It’s only $3 to the pound when it’s sent to NZ. In England, because of the high cost of everything 1 pound is about or even less than $1 in NZ.

2. Try NOT to drive into things, Dear …. It’s cheaper that way.

3. Parkinson’s Law: “Expenditure rises to exceed income.”

4. We’re going to LB on Friday to see the bank and then Thelma.

5. Jenny Pugh rang tonight and we’re off to see her on Saturday in Luton. She doesn’t sound all that well, either. Her voice is really very shakey. It will be nice to see her because she is such a lovely lady.

6. I’m still running – about 30-40 min 3 to 4 times a week. Since I did 6 miles / 10km on last Sunday, I’m not going to do 4 runs this week, just the three. This morning I thought my legs were going to fall off, they were so tired after about 20 min, but don’t worry, I still did 40 min – about 5 miles – and I’m not injured, because I’m not going very fast, yet.

7. Another 11 job apps tonight. Makes more than 60 all told. I’ve got a list of 46 names from 45 agencies I’ve applied to. SOMETHING is going to fall over and give me a job – just you wait!!!

Lots of Love

Dad

24 June 1999

Dear Genevieve

There’s 100 pounds per WEEK for car hire, then there’s tax to come out, then it’s 80 pounds, anyway – they only paid the 90 pounds once because of Mum having to hire the car especially for them for that one day.

Then there’s 60 pounds per month for med insurance – and it won’t cover existing conditions, which are the only reasons Mum goes to the doctor …

And we’re not paying rent, yet, which will be between 350 and 700 pounds per month for some cheap flat somewhere.

But, yes, teaching certainly is the best paid job around. And from Select, that’s only 10 pounds per hour, don’t forget. It seems more of the others pay around 100 pounds per day. We have found out the schools are paying around 120 pounds per day. Don’t worry, we are talking to other agencies.
As Steve says, “All agents are LIARS.” Specially GM’d, you know, for the task – born to it. Bred for it.

I was not up late – it was about 11:30pm when I fired off the last note to you. I am not getting tired or sick – that’ll come in winter, you know, just as you have it. I am very fit and very healthy. Mum’s got lots of coughing, but there’s plenty of rubbish in the air to cause that.

I have remembered where the Waicomp CaskLink (my accounting program) files are; they are on the hard drive I carefully sent wrapped up in one of the Red Boxes. It’s here, but I need to put it into a PC and copy the files onto one of these Zip 100 disks. Maybe John might help me when we go to LB tomorrow. All I need is a spare PC for a few hours.

I sent off another 10 or 11 job apps last night, so I’ll follow them up today and see if I can rustle up a job.

I’ve sent 32 job apps since the weekend! More than 60, all told, and today is only thu morning. I’ve just had a ring from Elaine Harding who is going to put me forward for a job in Frimley – near Farnborough. I sent that job app out last night. Come on, someone ……….

Be cool

Lots of love

Dad

PS I’ve applied for a job with the All Blacks because I can do 3km in under 15 min. I’ve applied for Jonah’s job, because he can’t and because the money’s all right.

14 Sep 2000

Dear Dad

Thank you very much for the parcel today … I’m not intending giving away the beautiful bowls you made.  We’d love to use them ourselves, to put them on the table and say my dad made them when people ask us where they came from and what the unusual looking woods are.

And what a wonderful surprise the stop-watch is!  Grandad Dawson, after whom I am named.  I am thrilled, Dad, it’s such a wonderful treasure and I didn’t even know it existed. Please thank Mum very much.  When I am working on the helpdesk lots of people ask me what sort of name Ewart is and I am so pleased for Mrs Youngman’s research, and for Mum’s stories, that I can tell the asker that the name is Irish and was my mother’s father’s middle name.  I now have something tangible and very personal (it would be a safe bet that he used the watch to time his horses) that belonged to my mother’s very loved father.

Also, thank you very much for the offer to stay with you, but we are already booked into the Pauanui house.

I have signed up for the Cabbage Patch 10, which is a 10-mile race run by the Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham, that’s the weekend after next. On 15 October we are off to stay with Jack and Kate Dalgliesh in Leicester for the weekend. Remember that we stayed with them for a few days earlier in the year and went to Bosworth Field to see where Richard III met his end. This time I shall be running the Denstone ½ marathon. Denstone is in Staffordshire a little north of Uttoxeter and a little east of Stoke-on-Trent. It looks like three houses and a tent on the map and since the listing says H for hilly, I guess it will be interesting countryside, and I won’t be looking for too quick a time …

I have also signed up for next year’s London Marathon, to be run in April. However, they don’t tell me I’ve been accepted to race until December, so I can’t say until then whether or not I’ll actually be running. I am looking forward to it, though; you run across Tower Bridge and you can’t cross that on foot at any other time.  I want a time of under 3hr 30min.

The days are positively balmy, even warm, and there hasn’t been much rain; a very nice late summer going into autumn. The trees are just turning colour even though there have been no frosts around here yet and the coolness one associates with autumn hasn’t snapped in. We have a beautiful big bushy Superstar rose that has a dozen large flowers on it and Elaine’s impatiens are in full and glorious flower. One of the things that is always so surprising about England is how vigorously everything grows – like a tropical garden – and how intensely the plants cram their flowers onto every available twig.

You would have loved it here, Dad, if you’d have been able to make the trip.  St Albans is such a beautiful city and the old people here who know a thing or two, recognise the name Tearle and say that it is an old St Albans name.  The Tearles have been here since about the 1760’s.  The countryside around here is like a huge park, all closely manicured and carefully managed, the accent of the locals is light and sweet, the little children are beautifully dressed all the time, and the entire city is quiet and orderly.  The history of the place is deep and intensely interesting, filled with many of history’s greatest names.  We have felt very at home here, and we have met lots people who have treated us with kindness and genuine friendliness.  We love our little flat and Jersey Farm is like Pauanui.

No doubt you’ve heard about our strikes and blockades over the cost of fuel? It’s never dull here! A couple of stories now about the fuel crisis:

A garage in Flitwick, up the road from Luton, is selling petrol at 2.00 pounds a litre instead of the usual price of 83p

Some guy in Luton stored 70 gallons of petrol in beer barrels. They leaked into his basement and the whole street was evacuated while the petrol was flushed away.

The local councils want the secondary schools to close because if teachers can’t get to work, they can’t guarantee the safety of children and teachers who can get to school.

Believe it or not, Elaine and I have HEAPS of petrol. Almost all the garages around St Albans are advertising “Nothing except 4* (LRP.)” Well, that’s what we run on. Our little old Metros only use 4* petrol. Now that my tank is full, it will go for about 2 weeks, just to work and back.

We have lots of supplies left in our millennium cupboard, so we won’t starve for a while.

I keep thinking, oh, dear … why me?  They know I’m in England but they don’t know where, so they’ve sent this huge fuel crisis to flush me out.  Well, I won’t go.

By the way, here’s a note from our travel agent:

Thanks for your email Ewart, the petrol situation is incredible and yes it is on the news here plus the inflated costs at some petrol stations. We have had rises here to and it is now 1.15 per litre.
I have great news. JAPAN AIRLINES IS CONFIRMED NOW to depart London 14 December at 6.15pm and arrive here on Saturday 16th at 11.50am and then to depart Auckland on Saturday 13 Jan with the free night at the airport hotel in Osaka and arrive London Heathrow at 3.20pm on Sun 14th. Cost is NZ$2260 plus taxes and does not have to be paid in full until 45 days prior to departure.

Now we know our home and return dates …

By the way, our gas in England is $NZ2.48 per litre – I guess you can see why the locals aren’t too happy about that.

Love

Ewart

4 July 1999

Genevieve

Still haven’t got a job – this is driving me NUTS. My reserves are under pressure, but I’m still expected to front up. I’ve got about 8 CVs being evaluated, and 3 are quite hot, but none of them is a job, you know, with real cash. It is very frustrating and I feel under such pressure.

Never mind, today I ran 6 miles. That’s 10km. My book (Bruce Tulloch, a aery good English middle distance racer from my high school days) says that training at 8min per mile is about right, so my 6 miles at 47:06 is fine – I don’t want to be going any faster. I realised this morning that 8min/ml is about 5min/km, which is the time I’ve always used as a benchmark. What Bruce says, tho, is not to go much faster than this in training.

Ok. What counts is total miles in a week, and the length of the longest run. So I shall do 6ml one day, 10ml another and 4ml another. That’s a total of 20 miles. It’s not really long enough. It should be 30ml. Well, not yet. I’ll have to do a couple of weeks at 6/6/4 before I go to 6/8/4 and then a couple of weeks at that before 6/10/4. I’m loath to do 4 days of running, but I’ll put in an extra day if I feel good – you know, no muscles under pressure or any pains.

Now, he’s also got a thing I haven’t heard of called fartleck. Awful name. It refers to running 50m more or less at a sprint, followed by a 150m trot. Then you do the 50m again and the trot. 4-5 times in the length of one of the training runs. I’m going to do it on my 4ml night. I’ve done one turn so far, and it leaves you a bit the worse for wear, but not injured. That’s why I’ve left a 4ml night in the training sched.

So that’s how it stands at present. Pretty boring, eh? As Caroline said, “You should get a job.”

Puleese

Dad

5 July 1999

Dear Joni

I have an interview with a Kevin Fordhan at Tech-Aid, 11am on Wed 14 July. His company is Tech-Aid and they recruit fro only the top 500 companies worldwide. His address is 14-16 Lower Regent St, London City. Yeah, in the City.

I go to Picadilly Station and walk 200m from there.

You got goosebumps yet?

The company he’s recruiting for is Compaq.

You got goosebumps now?

The job will be based in Reading and pays about 32k pounds, plus benefits etc. I don’t know what the bens and etc are, but I’ll let you know.

The company I went to see yesterday said I should be applying for IT Managers jobs. This will get me in the door of one of the biggest players in the world, and an IT Manager’s job shouldn’t be too far away. Go directly to 50k, pick up your bonus on the way.

Now ….. don’t get too excited, I’m certainly not …. but it’s so nice to see something happening at last.

And don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it after the interview.

Dad

7 July 1999

Frances Rawlings, Otorohanga

I’m pleased your mum Frankie is improving. Give her a kiss from me. That will cheer her up!

I have lots of emails I do every day searching for that elusive contract, but I do have 8 CV’s at present being submitted by various IT agencies to prospective employers. One of them will say yes, soon, don’t worry.

If you’ve been watching Wimbledon, which isn’t far from us, you’ll have noticed that the weather is a little changeable and sometimes showery, but it’s quite warm and very pleasant.

Elaine finishes her first full week at school and this contract goes till the end of term (ie end of July). During the holidays we hope to find her different work, but so far at least it’s pounds and not kiwis. Have you seen the exchange rate lately – 28.8c Ahhhhhh!

Never mind …. we’ll cope.

Ewart

16 July

Dear Mum and Dad

Remember the Fernleaf girl, in the advertising soap about the family that was breaking up? She became the Anchor girl when Anchor took over the brand? She’s here on our TV now, for Volvo. She and her boyfriend are way out in the woods with a huge mountain backdrop and the boyfriend is trying to cook dinner over the fire. The result is horrible to his taste, so he sneaks around the tent and drives off in the Volvo 4X4 coming back very quickly with two big pizzas. She opens the box, is about to say something and decides better of it. Tucks into the pizza. You’re never far from civilization with a Volvo 4X4.

We had a lovely, lovely local weekend. We went to the market yesterday morning as we always do to get the veges and any other groceries. It is cultural festival time in St Albans and there was a group down by the clock tower doing a medieval mummers play. This one was a puppet play with big puppets. The one we saw was a kind of comical adaptation of the story of George and the Dragon with lots of audience participation and a huge colourful dragon held up high. Eventually, George gets to teach the dragon a lesson – in these environmentally friendly days it doesn’t do to kill the dragon, of course – and marry the beautiful princess.

This afternoon we drove up to Beachwood Green near Luton airport to the home of my cousins Donn & Sylvia Heath. Your great grandmother, Sadie Tearle had three brothers, Joe, Fred and Tom Adams. Ivor Adams is the grandson of Fred and Donn Heath is the grandson of Tom. We had a very interesting moment while Donn Heath absorbed the fact that the only difference between me and him was my accent!

Anyway, in the village today Donn and Sylvia were helping to organise a village open garden festival with local home gardens open to the public. We visited all of them, finishing with cream teas in the garden of a very large home, known locally as “the big house” or “the manor” although it is quite modern. It was lovely and sunny this afternoon so it was nice to be outside after all the cold and wet weather we have been having lately.

When we got home our neighbour Karen had her dinner with us then we went off to Ivor’s so I could work on his scanner. Iris gave us some beautifully fresh raspberries from her garden so we have just had a raspberries & ice cream supper.

I start my new job with Tescos tomorrow morning. Elaine is coming with me to Luton hospital to have my eyes checked, although they are now greatly improved. They think I caught some sort of virus thing in Belgium. I will then go off to work at Welwyn Garden City.

We’ve just come home from a really great night out. There’s a fellow who sings traditional English folk songs in French Row, just outside the Cafe Vicolo where we sit and have a cup of coffee every Saturday morning when we go to the market in St Albans. He calls himself John of French Row and he sings for the MS Society charity. He invited us to the Bull pub in Redbourne for a songs night. And we went tonight. It was just beautiful … all those lovely old songs that Butch and I used to sing in my university days at Waikato.

Also on Saturday, I updated my running shoes – that is, Elaine bought me some new ones for my birthday. On my first run on Sunday afternoon at least I did 4 miles under 30 minutes, and this afternoon I did 4 miles in just under 29 minutes. I’m looking to see if I can do the Great North Run in Newcastle, or maybe do the Garden City 10-mile again. So we’ll see how it goes. The first day at work in Tosco was a bit unusual – I didn’t know the answer to any of the questions that any of the callers rang in about! That’s a bit of a worry, but I am confident that I will pick up the patterns soon ….

Yes, well, I have just finished my first week at Tesco and it was quite interesting. I haven’t driven in England much before now, so driving to work has required a bit of education, too; although I haven’t actually got lost, I have driven home about four different ways, none of them intentionally. Progress House is in Shire Park which is on the edge of town, so I don’t get to see anything of Welwyn Garden City, but the group I am a sort of a member of has taken me to lunch at the Crown and Anchor pub in Tewin, a little country town 10min away, we’ve been to the Shire Club where you have to have a security pass to get in or it costs you 50p entry fee, and we’ve been to the cafe on the ground floor. Elaine makes my lunch, so none of that has cost me anything, but they are interesting places to go.

Tesco hasn’t yet organised too many of the tools I need to start work – my door pass arrived only yesterday, as did my AHD logon, but that’s all. I haven’t got a system logon, so Simon logged me on – illegally – as him, I haven’t got Lotus Notes so I can’t get or send messages, I haven’t got a telephone logon, so Simon let me – illegally – use his. And I haven’t got a mainframe logon, so if anyone rings me about problems with the mainframe, I can’t help them. All the servers were turned off on Tuesday, so we couldn’t help anyone at all and some of us couldn’t even log on.

There are some people from Novell working on the servers in the basement on pain of death if they don’t get things rectified, and the system administrators can’t set up any new accounts (like mine) otherwise everything is FINE. I sat at Simon’s elbow from Mon till Wed, then on Thurs I sat with Kevin, watching how the infrastructure worked and how the calls were answered and trying to see what were the most common problems. On Friday, two helpdesk guys failed to turn up and on Monday one of them is leaving, so they put me to work on Friday afternoon, fudging all the legal niceties as I said above, and I fell into the deep end. In the course of the afternoon, I took ten calls of about 15min each and I resolved ALL of them. None of them was left open, and none of them was referred on. One guy said “I can’t find the trakworks.ini file.”

I said, “That’s nice, where is Track Works?”

He said, “You haven’t been here too long, have you?” He was still most impressed when he went off with his program working properly.

So that’s it, I am now on the Helpdesk and working at the craft. The contract goes until 02 Feb 2001, but the manager says that it should go on much longer than that. We’ll see.

The only thing wrong is how COLD the place is. I know this is summer, but it looks like I’m not going to get much of it because where I sit is right under one of the cooling fans and I have to wear a jersey inside all day. When I get into the car, I find the day is roasting hot and I have just missed it. Because Elaine is now on holiday, we have six weeks to find another car. That shouldn’t be too hard. The Metro Centre wants to sell us one of theirs so we should be able to get a really nice little car for about 200 pounds.

Yesterday morning we decided we’d better chase up my new car, so we went round to the Metro Centre on the London Road and had a look at a couple of the cars he had for sale there. One of them was in our price range (300 pounds) it was quite tidy and the MOT for it was current till March next year. Also, it had seat belts for the rear seats. It’s exactly the same colour as the one we already own. Metro cheese. He said he’d make sure everything was tidy, legal and running smoothly and we’d pick up the car probably next Friday. So there you go, two cheese-coloured Metros in the parking lot.

We did get to the Gardens of the Rose yesterday. We went to the market first to have our cup of coffee and had a good chat with John of French Row, the folk singer. While we were talking to him we heard Eine Kleine Nacht Musik – played too fast, but rather well – coming from a small orchestra the other side of the clock tower, so we went to investigate. The orchestra had two violins, a viola and a cello and they had obviously played together a few times before – their tone was deep and very co-ordinated.

They went on to play the William Tell Overture and quite a few other family favourites. Apart from their excellent sound, we also loved the way they got kids up to help them and they danced and gestured as they played. It was a delightful 1/2 hour we spent listening to them. For some reason you get very good acoustics if you stand in front of the clock tower and no-one has to have any form of amplification in order to be heard perfectly well by a crowd of about 100 grouped under the robinia. It is just so romantic.

We decided to go to the Gardens of the Rose even tho we would get there at about 2:30pm. It’s a beautiful place, all right; the house is an old manor, but I don’t know anything about it other than it is now the HQ for the Royal National Rose Society – patrons, Princess Anne and Lord Runcie. They will obviously have to get a new vice patron, because Lord Runcie, retired Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of St Albans, has just died.

The gardens are in 30 acres of rolling Hertfordshire countryside and are actually in Chiswell Green (pronounced Chissel Green) but that’s only a suburb of St Albans anyway. We had a quiet and contemplative afternoon in the warm sun wandering around admiring a beautiful garden of 30,000 roses. One section of the garden was called the Peace Garden and was a collection of all the most famous roses that are descendents of the Peace rose. I didn’t know that Superstar was a “Peace Rose,” but there was a bed of Superstar and all its descendents in the Peace Garden. We got a really awful bright red plastic rose fridge magnet as our memento. A good day all told.

This morning I have been for a six-mile run and it was a respectable enough 43:54min. I haven’t done much work since the Petersfield 1/2 marathon, but it looks like the work I did in Belgium on the cross-trainers wasn’t wasted effort. I found out there that my highest heart rate is 178 and my resting pulse here at home at 42. I have bought the latest Runners World magazine and at last I have a new pair of running shoes, so I am lining up a couple of races for next month.

We’ve got the first of the leaf drop happening with the early-wintering birches, but there’s no sign yet of general colour change in the trees.  When I’m in the Tesco building, the trees around us make it look like we’re in a forest. We can see to a horizon that’s about 10 miles of rolling countryside away, and everything in view is trees, we can hardly see the rooftops because the trees are so big and they grow so densely. Every single tree was planted by hand. The fields all around us are deep yellow with ripe wheat, maize and barley and we can see combine harvesters at work on most days.

Many fields have large stacks of wheat or barley straw bales waiting for the truck. Some fields have even been re-ploughed and we can see the dusting of fertilizer sitting on the ground. The fields around Beds/Bucks/Herts are on beautiful, gently rolling countryside, they are 20 to 50 acres in size and all are ringed in magnificent oaks, elms, ashes, chestnuts and sycamores. The entire countryside looks like a gigantic park.

We went to Knebworth House yesterday. It used to be just an old Tudor manor, and home of the Lord Lyttons since about the 1450’s but in the 1840’s (around the time we signed the Treaty of Waitangi …) it was added to considerably and they put up towers and added gargoyles and laid out some lovely gardens. It was used as Wayne Manor in Batman! And I thought the entire movie was shot in America. The outside has been about one quarter renovated so it will look very impressive once the work is finished, but in this week’s paper Lord Cobbold says he may have to sell the place because the work is too expensive.

They used steel reinforcing rods in the 1840’s additions and in England’s damp and cold the rods rust, which breaks up the stone. The Victorians got very energetic with lots of these manor houses and all of them (I know of another 3 in the area) now have to have huge amounts spent on them removing the rods and fixing the damage. The Victorians thought the rods would make the building last longer. Anyway, it’s a fantastic looking building and the gardens were a very pleasant afternoon’s stroll. And, it’s not far from here, off the A1(M) near Stevenage.

One of the more recent Lord Lyttons was Viceroy to India in the 1870’s during the British Raj and it was he who organized for Victoria to become Empress of India. Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor here and his painting of the Banqueting Hall now hangs there. Queen Elizabeth the First also visited here in the 1570’s (I told you the place was a Tudor manor house) and the Lord Lyttons were all knights of the garter. One of the more unusual paintings is of a nun and a monk holding a baby and grinning widely. It’s described as “Tudor anti-Catholic propaganda.”

AND we have the fridge magnet of the house ….

We went to Southend-on-sea for the day on Sunday. It was such a fine sunny morning and I’d already been for my 12-mile training run, so we thought we’d go and look at the sea. I’ll tell you what … you wouldn’t go to Southend-on-sea twice. It seems the kids in various schools your Mum teaches at have said with great enthusiasm that “You gotta go there!”

We took the M25 at London Colney, past the Stanstead turnoff and on down to junction 29 where we took the A127 to Southend. The prettiest part of the trip is in Hertfordshire; once you get into Essex, the scenery gets much more industrial and scruffy. There are lots of untilled little fields lying fallow and full of weeds, many of the fences are in poor condition, there are unpainted warehouses dotted along the sides of the roads, that sort of scruffy.

Southend is quite big and it took a bit of navigating to find the beach. The town would have to be at least as big as Hamilton, but the beach is narrow, pebbly, with a bit of sand and heavily fortified with groins running out to sea trying to stop what little beach they have being washed away. The town is on the banks of the Thames and does not look out to sea, but across the river to tall chimneys and industrial installations on the other bank, at least 5 miles away. The view is dominated by a long jetty swinging from the far end of the beach to about a mile out to sea and we could just make out a few people walking on it and a little train running along it. Behind us, the beach carried on for another 2 miles before it turned left and the Thames met the Atlantic.

We parked our car about half way along the beach and walked west, with the sea on our left and the road on our right. We stopped at a Louisiana 30’s style eatery for lunch and although he was unkempt, the chef could cook. Elaine had a seafood platter and I had fish and chips … for the first time in England someone knew how to cook chips.

When we got to town it was the sort of place that was made for kids; we could see why the kids in school had recommended the town so enthusiastically. But actually, it’s horrible, noisy and loud. Every second place is a casino or games joint, there are three tattoo parlours, every other place is an eatery, and on the shore side of the road opposite the town there is a narrow strip of sideshow sort of attractions clambering over the rocks – flume rides, adventure rides, flying swings, pirate ships, that sort of thing – all with their music turned up and all flashing their lights and waving their flags.

Kids heaven, I should think, but sort of down-at-heel and tawdry and the people who walked about chewing their Southend rock looked sort of desperate for fun with their new tats and their hot, screaming kids. We bought the fridge magnet of a brightly multi-coloured sailing dingy and found a badge for the blanket. We ate some of the locally-made sticky peanut fudge and watched the traffic wardens sticking parking fines on the cars that hadn’t paid-n-displayed. Next stop Blackpool, I suppose …

The very best wishes

Ewart and Elaine