That's shallots

It's my birthday, and it was very kind of the village to lay on one of my very most favourite events as a special treat - though maybe it was just by chance that the 68th annual Linton and District Gardening Club show fell on this day.

It was a great chance to catch up with many old friends. The show itself was excellent, as always. Not too much participation in the vegetable section it has to be said, but a strong floral showing, and very high standards in all the children's categories, especially Class 111: a Creature made with vegetables and/or fruit.

The friendly competition is open to the whole village, though it was the usual suspects who carried home most of the cups and trophies - and I don't think anyone would want it any other way. There was a moment of controversy during the award ceremony. A particular cup was for members only, but the judge had accidentally alloted it to a non-member (without even nominating a runner-up) and then gone home! What to do? A hasty compromise had to be made: the non-member was presented with the cup in honour of her shallots, but her name won't be engraved on it for posterity. A frisson of excitement momentarily swept through the village hall...and then it was all over and time to call the raffle.

How could anyone not love this show?

This evening we've been dining with friends, laughing and laughing, feeling like we've never been away.

Eastward-ho!

Our lovely stay in Devon came to an end today. On our way out of the West Country we detoured off to Wells in Somerset. This was very good in terms of seeing my brother and his wife, but not so clever when it came to finding a convenient route to our next destination. Though it's not marked as such on the map, it turns out that Wells is actually the furthest point in the UK from Linton, Cambridgeshire. Who knew?

But after a loooong car journey, too much of it spent semi-stationary on the A303 and the M25, we finally arrived safely in Linton. A welcoming cup of tea awaited at our friends' house, plus a set of keys to another house where we're now settling in for the night.

Devon rocks!

We've had another fun-packed day in Devon, featuring (for various combinations of us) pony-care, model railways, mini-golf and rock-pooling, and ending up with fish-and-chips all together on the beach at Beer. The sun has shone and the sea air has left us happily tired out.

Beach boys

We've had an action-packed day. After a comfortable night and good breakfast in Taunton (thank you) we set off towards Exmouth this morning. On a whim, and because we weren't expected at our next destination until lunchtime, we detoured off to a National Trust property, Killerton House.

We knew nothing about it, so it was just a piece of luck for us that in the grounds of the 18th century house they have laid out a Dragon's Trail to explore. We followed a map around an area of woods and meadows discovering various wooden structures with a dragon theme - this one's allegedly a "dragon's skull". We had a good long ramble, and enjoyed coming across views of lovely Devon countryside in the sunshine.

Then we pushed on and arrived (by chance, really, as we'd forgotten their address) with our friends and a whole bunch of their relatives. We made a trip to the beach where the kids and their friends and the friends' cousins build a sandcastle then later tried to keep the waves at bay by lying down in front of them (didn't work).

That was followed up by dinner and a lot of trampoline action...and yet our children are still awake at 11pm.

On the road

We collected a car, loaded it up with luggage and kids and hit the road. First stop Reading, for lunch with the Man's parents (very nice) and a trip to the local playpark where we picked some enormous ripe blackberries.

All too soon, back into the car again for two or three hours on the way to Taunton. More food with relatives, this time the Man's brother and his wife. Again, very nice.

And now it's late, with more travel and fun ahead of us tomorrow...

Good Lord's

My cousin's daughter came to stay last night and has been here all day, so that was our kids' entertainment sorted out. So the Man and I sneaked off to London again for the afternoon.

We started out at the British Library and visited an exhibition highlighting the historical, political and cultural significance of maps. Lots to look at. I also enjoyed a much smaller exhibit featuring different artistic interpretations of one of my favourite books, Alice and Wonderland.

From there we made our way to Lord's Cricket Ground and took a tour. I'm not a huge cricket fan (though I did discover Brian Lara - that's a long story) but I still found it interesting. Our guide gave us lots of information in a lightheated way, she wasn't too slick or stuffy. The Man was impressed to stand in the Long Room of the Pavilion and imagine all the great batsmen passing through on their way out to the crease. Reaching out to American visitors (though I doubt there are so many of those) there was a big exhibit about baseball in the museum.

We managed a couple more sights, then we had to squeeze ourselves onto a series of packed trains to make our way back to Watford in time for dinner. Tomorrow we'll be picking up a car and setting out on a bit of road trip...

Balancing act

It really was an excellent party last night, with about 90 guests from around the country (and some of us from around the globe), all having a fun, relaxed time. A fair number of the same guests turned up at the house this morning for champagne and coffee, and by the time I got up after a lie-in (what with late-night parties and such, that jet-lag fast-track recovery thing hasn't exactly worked out) the kitchen and garden were crowded.

But by late morning the house was relatively quiet again. In the afternoon we insisted on dragging the kids out to the park - they'd been glued to the telly for about five hours solid. It was fine weather for being in a park, and the rest of Watford was there too, but it was good to be out and I enjoyed chatting with my nephew as we walked along the river.

We ended up having some fun in the playpark on this rolling balance beam, before making the long walk back to the house. Maybe all the exercise will help us finally to get a good night's sleep?

The Golden shot

It's fifty years and a day since my parents' wedding, and tonight they had a lovely party.

Happy Anniversary!

Call boxes stink

The Man and I got up early (7am, which is 2am "our" time) to meet an appointment at the US Embassy in London. Our original visas have expired, and though we had an "extension to stay" this became void as soon as we left the country yesterday. So if we want to get back into the States (which we do) we have to renew our visas. This stage of the process turned out to be relatively painless - it took about two hours.

And then we were free to wander London. We headed off down Oxford Street, and then along Regent Street where we came across a traditional red public telephone box. We didn't have a mobile phone with us (they are not allowed in the Embassy) so we thought we'd grab the opportunity to call my parents and see if the kids were up yet.

We opened the heavy phone box door. Ahh, that reassuringly familiar odour of urine! We fed in the minimum charge of 60p (60p!!). The machine ate the money, wouldn't let us make a call, and wouldn't return the coins.

The quintessential British experience you might say. Welcome home.

But apart from that we had a good time in the capital, considering we were half asleep. We ate lunch in the Crypt Cafe of St Martin's in the Field, and took a look at the excellent annual BP exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery. We enjoyed being in such a fine, walkable city for a few hours. Sorry there are no pictures to share - we couldn't carry a digital camera with us into the Embassy either.

Now if we can just manage to get some proper sleep tonight we may make a fast-track recovery from jet-lag. Here's hoping.

Arrived

And here we are, safe and sound after an unusually (for us) uneventful journey. But it has been a very long day - up at five - and it feels like bedtime, so goodnight and I'll catch with you soon...

In transit

We've left the house in safe hands and we're on the road again - or at any rate right now we're comfortably tucked in at a nice hotel in Boston. We'll be up again very early in the morning for a trans-Atlantic flight.

To those of you on the other side of the pond - see you soon!

Frame shame

For the last two days a painter has been working on the front of our house, specifically on our wooden window frames. Most of the exterior of the house is made of vinyl, as are many modern houses here - it looks a little bit like wooden siding, but doesn't need much maintenance. But whoever designed our house also gave the front of it a brick facing and two decorative wooden window frames, which have been in need of maintenance for quite a while.

The painter has done the work well, though I don't suppose anyone will notice it - it's one of those things: a bit of an eyesore if it's not done, but unremarkable once it is.

Meanwhile I've been busy busy all day ahead of our next adventure. More of that in the days to come, no doubt.

Freedom from fear

The other day while waiting for the car to be serviced, I was flicking through a magazine and came across an article about a group of people who'd gone on a course to help them overcome their fear of flying. By the end of it some of them were looking forward to being able to go to places they'd have visited years before if they hadn't always been too afraid to get on a plane.

The writer of the article mentioned a management book she'd read called Who Moved My Cheese? To be honest it sounds like quite an irritating book but apparently, in amongst a lot of cheese-related goings-on, author Spencer Johnson poses the question "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

That's quite a challenging question. I'm not sure how I would answer it. So I throw it out there for you:

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Cooling off

These hot, muggy days it's hard to motivate people to get up and go anywhere. But both kids were enthusiastic when friends rang to invite us to go bowling (and even happier when a trip to an ice-cream shop was added to the deal).

In the end we all went along, and though I can generally think of plenty of places I'd rather be than a bowling alley, today it was fine just to be somewhere cool.

The boys in the party played a straight, mildly competitive game. The G/girls ended up devising their own competition based on who could throw their ball in the silliest way. There was a lot of giggling and general enjoyment, and by the time we came out the temperature was beginning to moderate: tonight it even passes for comfortable.

Water feature

As I write I can hear thunder, so maybe we'll be getting one of the storms that the weather forecasters have been promising for the last couple of days. We could do with one. The humidity continues high here, some rain might freshen things up.

We've spent the day doing home stuff - lawn-mowing, tidying the house etc. Generally I try not to run the air-conditioner until the evening, but I broke that rule today as it makes a huge difference if you're trying to do anything more active than, say, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

A while ago I linked to a video about the evils of bottled water. Tonight I've been watching another short video, but this one turns the bottled water story on its head. If you haven't seen this invention before, prepare to be awed.

Cleaned out

Big tidy-up in the Boy's room this morning. Very exciting - we discovered carpet.

And a major service for the car this afternoon. That meant two and half hours sitting in a waiting room reading magazines and watching Dr Phil for me, and a houseful of kids - three of her own plus mine - for Exile #2 (thank you!).

Tonight I've been having dinner with a friend, the Girl is on a sleepover, and the Boy has beaten the Man at Othello, so that's all very satisfactory (though perhaps not so much for the Man).

Finnishing touch

Hot again today, and humid. The kids had a friend over this afternoon and they all spent a good (make that great) four hours in the pool.

The Boy is having me read him Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson at the moment. I'd forgotten what a very weird series that is. Did anyone else grow up with it, and did you have any clue what was going on? I don't think I ever did, really, though I believe I enjoyed the books at the time and all the extraordinary characters. Now I find it a bit of a struggle to get through a whole chapter without falling asleep - but that's partly the weather.

Still, the Moomins make a nice contrast with the Andrew Clements books the Boy listens to endlessly on CD. They are quite realistic school stories. I really like them, they are very original and well written. But it's good to be open to something more fanciful too, now and then.

The write stuff

This week the Girl is attending a Writers' Camp. Sounds like school in the holidays, doesn't it, but she actively chose to go on it because she loves to write. It's just three hours a day and she's having a great time. She didn't know any of the other children on the camp before she started, but today when I went to pick her up she came strolling out arm in arm with a bunch of new friends, all of them roaring with laughter, so it seems like the company is good.

Unusually, the camp is being held on the campus of SUNY Albany (for non-local readers that's the State University of New York at Albany). The kids are dropped off by their parents at a meeting place and they stroll to their room in the Education Department, past green lawns and fountains and large white buildings and students studying through their vacation - and I think the Girl is quite impressed.

We've had a sociable evening. Friends over for tea, kids in the pool. And for after dinner entertainment the guy next door donned full lumberjack gear, climbed a huge tree and started lopping off large branches with his chainsaw. It's still very warm but more bearable than last week, and we're having regular rainshowers. It feels rather tropical and the yard is growing like a jungle.

Higher and higher

Part three of our Catskill adventure on Sunday involved a hike to a waterfall - the highest in the state, higher even than Niagara (though with much less water).

The trail from the road to the base of the Kaaterskill Falls is relatively short - half a mile - but rocky enough to please the Boy. There were quite a lot of people around in spite of the humid conditions. Many had come prepared with swimwear to enjoy the water.

The official trail ends at the bottom of a cliff, though the falls are actually on three stages. We could hear people in a pool above us (the middle stage) though we couldn't see them. But the path to that pool was more dangerous than the one we'd just climbed and we decided not to chance it.

Later on, heading home after picking up the Girl and her friend from their campsite, we detoured briefly to the top stage of the falls and timidly looked down. Pretty high - for scale look hard, you can make out some people at the bottom.

Hippie hippie hooray

Next stop yesterday after Jolly's was Woodstock, of festival fame. Except that the summer-of-love festival actually took place about 50 miles from Woodstock at Bethel Woods. No matter. It's still a hippie mecca, with more tie-dye T-shirt stores and crystal sellers than you can shake a joss-stick at.

There are lots of other kinds of shops too - some very classy craft galleries, an interesting toyshop, various fairly conventional clothes and shoe stores, and plenty of great places to eat. I had a tasty burrito in one of the cafes, and the Man and I shared something cakey from the excellent Bread Alone Bakery.

The whole town was buzzing with visitors, and clearly thriving. Good for Woodstock. Some of the small towns we've passed through in this region look like they might be struggling a bit these days, but tuning in and dropping out has clearly turned out to be an astute commercial move in this corner of the Catskills.

Home comforts

We had to pick the Girl and her friend up from their Catskill campsite today, as they both have other camps (the untented sort) to go to starting first thing tomorrow. Before collecting them we decided to spend some time exploring the area.

First stop was Jolly's British Food and Good Grub Groceries, on the Woodstock-Saugerties road. Despite its cabin-like exterior, if you wandered into it in England you'd think it was a pretty typical small corner store. But to exiled Brits abroad it's a veritable Shangri-La of comfort food - McVities Digestives, Sherbert Fountains, Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers...etc. It's comfort at a price mind you, but for a once-in-a-while treat it's a bearable sacrifice to pay $1.55 for a tiny packet of Hula Hoops. We also stocked up on mango chutney, lime marmalade, Jacobs Cream Crackers and (no end to our extravagance!) two bags of Quavers and a Bounty bar.

Next we visited Woodstock and the Kaaterskill Falls - but more on those another day. When we finally got to the girls' campsite, it was just as the heavens opened -and oh, didn't camping look fun as an inch of rain fell in just ten minutes! But clearly everyone had been having a good time up to that point, and it was warm enough that things would probably dry out again for the campers we left behind. Given the chance I'm sure the Girl would have stayed longer, too.

Different strokes

We were promised overnight rain and it duly came, and continued through half the morning, too. It has brought temperatures down somewhat, but only into the 80s and it's still muggy.

The Girl has gone off to spend a night camping in the Catskills with a friend (and the friend's mother and brother, and another family). Rather them than me, to be honest, in this kind of weather.

All the more room in the pool for the rest of us, though. I managed to surprise the Man this evening by revealing that I'm not a bad swimmer. Generally I paddle about doing breastroke in a girlie don't-get-my-hair-wet kind of way, but when I do decide to put my face in the water I'm can go pretty fast, and I also do a mean backstroke.

The Boy, meanwhile, is all into underwater tricks (swimming between legs etc) and diving in various styles (including the occasional bellyflop, which he does with great good cheer). He's quite the amphibian.

Grossery list?

A friend and I met up first thing this morning to make a presentation to a group of local businesspeople, trying to sell them on the idea of the Fair Trade Town initiative. We had a mixed reception, rather as we'd expected. There are times when it all seems a bit of an uphill struggle, but I still think it's a worthwhile endeavour, even if we're not yet managing to bring everyone on board.

The rest of the day I've been chillin' with the kids - in the pool, and at JoAnn's craft supplies store where we stocked up on clearance-price jigsaws and crafty diversions. As of this afternoon the Girl is seriously into rug-hooking, and the Boy is stuck into a 500-piece orca jigsaw, in between diving practice and doing his best to read a rather gross library book that his parents refuse to read aloud to him. He sorely needs motivation when it comes to reading so whatever it takes, I suppose.

Continuing yesterday's book suggestions request, then - can you share any good titles for reluctant boy readers?

The heat goes on

There's no let-up from the heatwave, though to be honest it's easy enough to avoid the worst of it by hanging out at the library or in a store - in fact there's some danger of frostbite in most public buildings.

And I know I keep going on about the pool, but with the water at a steady 88F now it is a great place to spend long stretches of time. It's an absurd luxury, and a complete white elephant most of the year, but this week especially we've really appreciated it. A little swim just before bedtime (by the light of stars and fireflies) is the perfect way to set up a good night's sleep.

Before I go off and change into my cozzie again, can anyone recommend some good summer reading?

Some like it hot...

...though not me particularly. The heatwave continues here, with today as hot as yesterday. It's hard to get anything done, though I'm giving a Fair Trade presentation on Friday so I've had no choice but to get on with preparing that.

The pool is a great help, of course, when it comes to cooling off. The Boy has been enjoying it especially.

Tonight I've been babysitting the younger Exiles. E5N1 was reluctant to go to bed, as three year-olds often are. He kept reappearing on some pretext or another. At one point he came downstairs to let me know, very earnestly, that he had something to tell me:

Me: OK, you can tell me.

E5N1: Umm, err, hmmm... (long thoughtful pause). I like your dress!

It was good of him to notice - I'm sure it was the first time in his life that he's seen me wearing a dress.

Grape expectations

It was indeed slightly hotter today than yesterday. We managed to keep the inside of the house reasonably tolerable (mid-80sF) for most of the day by not drawing any blinds or opening any windows. We were therefore quite shocked by the wave of heat outside the library when we visited around lunchtime. It was at least 98F.

Later in the afternoon, when the Girl had gone to a friend's house, the Boy and I decided to cool off in the pool. When we first rolled back the solar cover the water was an almost bathlike 90F - a record since we've owned it. We enjoyed our swim.

The hot weather is doing no harm to our grapevine, which we planted last summer. It looks like we may even get a harvest from it this year.

Hazy, hot and humid

Our nearest local weather station tells us the temperature reached 97F this afternoon, and we know it hit 100 not far from us.

So, the pool really came into its own today and we all made good use of it, and apart from a desultory game of Scrabble we didn't achieve a whole lot else. Tonight we have caved in to the heat and switched on the air conditioner.

Tomorrow will be even hotter.

Independence Day

I write with the banging and screaming of fireworks going on round about outside - Happy 4th, everyone!

We've just come back from watching the big firework display at the Empire State Plaza - except that we didn't actually go to that plaza. We started out at East Greenbush shopping plaza, where hundreds of people were enjoying a reasonable view of the action, only with it being a couple of miles away everything was on the small side. We jumped in the car before it all ended, and got much closer to the grand finale as we travelled home.

Seeing all the cars parked at strategic points all around Albany, we were quite glad to be in transit already - there'll be thousands of people sitting bumper to bumper by now.

In the morning we took the Boy on our favourite walk in Thacher Park and then the Man and I celebrated an Independence Afternoon - the Girl, having survived last night's camp out, had gone on for a follow-up sleepover elsewhere; and the Boy was out playing mini-golf with his other family. Visiting a shopping mall isn't a very exciting way to use your freedom, but sometimes it needs to be done. We shopped successfully, and I must admit an air-conditioned mall was a quite pleasantly cool place to be today.

The lazy of the lake

We enjoyed the company of the whole Exile family at lunchtime, followed by some fun in the pool.

Then we headed out for what was billed as a 4th July party, scheduled a day early. Good food and cheerful company, lake-swimming, plus live music and fireworks to round off the evening. At least, that's the point at which three of us said our goodbyes. We've left the Girl behind, camping out with her friends. Not a recipe for lots of sleep, I suspect, but another new experience for her.

4th coming

One last day of Barn School for the Girl. She has had a wonderful week, and said goodbye to all the animals with great regret.

It's been another day of chores and errands for me, ahead of what looks set to be a very hot weekend. A long weekend, too - the one when we get the chance to tell people that, yes, we do have the 4th July in Britain...

Getting my goat(s)

We turned up at Indian Ladder Farms at noon to collect the Girl from barn school - but no-one was there. Then I remembered, they'd all gone on a field trip to a local dairy farm.

So while we waited for everyone to return, the Boy and I enjoyed cookies from the farm shop and snapped a few of the resident goats and other animals.








The Girl (not a great fan of milk products) didn't have much to say about her field trip, except that it did involve fields, which is nice to know and more than can be said for those industrial scale dairy farms where the cows never get to see so much as a blade of grass.