Catching Up

It’s been a little while since my last posting. Apologies for my absence, but sometimes real-life takes precedence over the blogosphere :) So, what’s been happening in the interim?

Well, I guess the big news was the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the subsequent fixing of the date for the Royal Wedding. It’s been a while since there has been an occasion of this size in this country, certainly not since the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and probably not since Charles and Diana’s wedding back in 1981. Back then there were street parties across the country and a real mood of national celebration. I suspect that it won’t be quite like that this time round. Questions have already been asked about how much the taxpayer should be paying out for the wedding at a time when drastic cuts are being made to public spending, taxes are on the rise and people are fearful for their jobs. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are going to want to be in London to see some of the wedding and it will obviously be a huge security operation for the police that is going to cost millions of pounds. At a time of such austerity in can sometimes be a positive thing to have an event such as this to celebrate and get people’s minds away from the daily drudgery. Whatever the rights and wrongs, I can only wish the couple every happiness in their life together.

We have also been doing some celebrating of our own over the last week. Of course, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. This year we had a quiet, though very delicious, celebration here in the Yellow House. Last year, you may remember, we flew over to Georgia to enjoy the holiday with Dori’s family. Well, plane tickets sadly aren’t getting any cheaper and so we stayed on this side of the Atlantic this time round – although thanks to Skype we were able to experience a little of the festivities over in America :)

The celebratory mood continued yesterday as we attended the christening of my nephew’s baby girl. The weather here for the last week has gotten progressively colder and icier with many areas experiencing heavy snow, so the thought of spending an afternoon in a cold and draughty church – even for such a happy occasion – was a little daunting. However, as it turned out, the church was quite small, not at all draughty and even had some very welcome heating! The service was lovely and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Ironically, after the fears of getting too cold in the church, when we all decamped to the venue for the celebration meal afterwards, we found that the heating there was not turned on and it was frrrrrrreezing!!! Everybody was sat there, still in their coats and scarves for the entire time. It is always good though to have a story to relate to an event like that though – makes it even more memorable. :-)

The forecast looks like some of that snow I mentioned may be heading our way tonight. Hopefully it won’t be too heavy, although if it is we may be able to get some even better photos than we managed at the start of the year when the country was paralyzed for a couple of weeks! Here are a couple that we took at the time as we walked around on the first day of heavy snow.

Finally, can I wish the team bidding to bring the World Cup to England in 2018 every success over the next few days. FIFA will be announcing on Thursday the host countries of both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and England have thrown their hat into the ring for the 2018 competition. Football politics may scupper their chances apparently, but you never know. Everyone assumed that the 2012 Olympics would be in Paris and look what happened there! Good luck to everyone involved!

Remember, Remember

As I mentioned a couple of weeks or so back, we are now in holiday season and they are starting to come thick and fast. After Halloween at the end of October, we celebrated Bonfire Night aka Guy Fawkes Night on Friday. Although not strictly a holiday anymore, it is a day of celebration and one of the landmark days in the calendar.

The day commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in which a group of men attempted to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on November 5th. The man tasked with setting the explosives was Guy Fawkes, and it was during the night before the State Opening that he was discovered in a cellar beneath the parliament building with over 30 barrels of gunpowder. He was arrested and later executed (in horrific fashion) along with the majority of his fellow conspirators.

Since that time, November 5th has been marked as a day of national celebration. At one time it was, apparently, a public holiday but that has long since been abandoned. Nowadays, it is marked by the lighting of bonfires on top of which are placed “Guys” (effigies) and by firework displays. As kids we were also all taught the following little rhyme...

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot

There were many firework displays around here over the weekend, both official and unofficial. Whilst they always used to take place on the day itself, most modern public displays tend to be held on the nearest weekend to November 5th. Dori and I were out visiting on Saturday night and saw and heard many fireworks as we travelled to and from our destination. It is one of those nights of the year that I very much look forward to.

Whilst talking of remembering, I would also like to mention that Norman Pritchard passed away recently. Whilst none of you are likely to have heard of him, and indeed few in his home town knew of him either, his legacy has garnered world-wide attention, for he was partially responsible for the design and implementation of Swindon’s notorious “Magic Roundabout”. This junction at the intersection of 5 roads was very revolutionary when first built and still strikes fear into the heart of many a driver today. It consists of a central roundabout with 5 mini-roundabouts around the outside. The beauty of it (if you are experienced at negotiating it) is that you may take several different routes through the road junction to reach your desired exit. Dori has previously posted a video over at her Yellow House blog to show what it is like, and here is another one to give you an idea of this wonderful creation!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Sunday, as well as being Halloween, also marked the end of British Summer Time (BST) for this year as the clocks were turned back an hour in the wee hours of the morning. We are now back on good ol’ Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for the duration of the winter.

This, of course, means lighter mornings (for a few weeks at least) but darker evenings. With the days getting ever shorter as we near the winter solstice, the hours of sunlight that we have are getting less and less. It is already darker at 5:00 pm now than it was at 10:00 pm at the height of summer! It is for this reason that a “Lighter, Later” campaign has been gaining some following over recent years. Their idea is for Britain to adopt Central European Time (CET), meaning that our clocks would be advanced to an hour ahead of GMT during the winter, and an hour ahead of BST during the summer. Their argument is that this will move an hour of sunlight from the mornings to the evenings, when more people are up and about to enjoy it.

Is this a good idea? It will certainly alleviate some of the darkness in the evenings, which can make the winter days seem so short and miserable, and it is said that it will also save on electricity as the lights won’t be turned on until an hour later. That is all good. But, the mornings will be terribly dark when a lot of people are getting up and going out in the mornings, or when children are walking to school. Whatever we do with the clocks, we will still only have the same amount of daylight as before. And it is not as though the mornings are light at a ridiculously early time of the day anyway. I, for one, am still dragging myself out of bed whilst it is dark outside now – that would only be exacerbated if this new system is adopted. But then, I like the lighter evenings too.

So, I am a little undecided on this one. There is going to be a parliamentary debate on the subject next month but it is unlikely that anything will be changed very quickly. No doubt the campaign will continue, and new times may well lie ahead at some point. If only they could make the daylight last longer, then that would definitely get my vote!!

Happy Halloween!!

It's a Jungle Out There!

We have a new pet, of sorts, here at the Yellow House. As you will see below, a new friend has decided that he or she wishes to hang out with Dori and Brit Boy!

I took these pics the other day through our back window. Spidey has taken to sitting there on his/her web during the day and soaking up what little bit of sunshine that we get. In fact, Spidey even decided to eat with us a few days back as I looked out on my way to the kitchen and saw that an unfortunate fly had been captured and was in the process of being bound up before becoming our friend’s teatime treat :-) Having done a little bit of research – ie I googled it – I believe that our new lodger is a Cross Spider, by which I mean that is the type of spider, not that he/she is particularly peeved! Apparently, despite appearances to the contrary, they are harmless creatures – unless you happen to be a fly I guess.

Spidey isn’t the only visitor we get in our back garden. During the all too brief summer, we had an army of butterflies who graced us with their presence, as well as a battalion of wasps (yellowjackets) who were somewhat less welcome! We also have a pair of blackbirds who like to visit us, again quite often at meal times, and pick at the grubs and worms outside as we feast on something a little more tasty inside. Dori was also “lucky” enough to see a snake slithering its way around our garden shed a couple of years back. Snakes aren’t exactly common here, so that was quite an unexpected find!

So, the Yellow House garden has quite a little menagerie building up, and apparently that now includes a neighbour’s cat who we have just seen in our garden for the very first time. It is starting to sound a lot like a song I remember....

A Tale of Two Cathedrals

As I mentioned in my previous post, it was my birthday last week. It was also my mum’s birthday on the same day - strange how that happens every year! :-) For her gift from us this year, we decided instead of giving her something that would probably be put away in a cupboard somewhere never to be seen again, or that would be used up in 5 minutes and forgotten about, we would take her out for a day sometime. And so, as the weather was so good at the start of this week, we went for a little day-trip.

When my mother was a young child, during World War II, she would often spend some of her holidays in Coventry, staying with some distant relatives. She loved these vacations, I guess because the city was so different to the rural life she was used to. It was on one of these visits that her “aunt” took her to see what remained of the recently bombed Coventry Cathedral. During the night of November 14, 1940 the whole city of Coventry had been decimated by a Luftwaffe bombing raid, and the cathedral did not escape from the punishment. Several bombs hit the cathedral and it burned along with a lot of the surrounding city.

My mum has very vivid memories of the sights she saw when she was taken down there sometime afterwards, and of the overpowering smell that still lingered in the air. But, she had never been back since to see either the remains of the bombed cathedral again, or the newly erected cathedral that was built alongside it. So, Coventry was our destination this week!

The new cathedral was designed by Sir Basil Spence and completed in 1962. Although there was some opposition at the time to its modern design, the cathedral is now very well loved, and was voted as Britain’s favourite 20th century building in a national poll. It certainly is an amazing place, and Dori has taken some wonderful pictures which I believe she will be sharing with you sometime soon when she returns to the bloggy world :-) In the meantime, here are a few snaps that I took with my mobile phone that will give you a little idea of what this house of worship is like.

The old....

..and the new...

The tapestry that you can see behind the altar is apparently the largest in the world, measuring 74'8" by 38' and was made in just one piece by Graham Sutherland. The stained glass windows are stunning, and my pictures don't even vaguely do them justice. As we had set off early, we were lucky enough to have the new cathedral almost to ourselves for a few minutes before a group of schoolchildren arrived, and it was an amazing experience to be so peaceful in that huge space.

It was a great day out, and a long-held ambition fulfilled for my mum.

Birthdays and So Much More

For Dori and me, this last weekend marks the start of a holiday season that goes all the way through to next spring.

It began with my birthday, which I celebrated by watching Team Europe squeak a victory in the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales. As I foretold in my last post, the weather left a lot to be desired for much of the competition, only to end with a gloriously sunny day on Monday as the contest entered an extra day for the first time in its history. To say this year’s event was close would be a massive understatement, with every single match counting towards the final outcome. If just one individual match had gone from a Europe win to being halved, or from being halved to a US win then the American team would have been flying home with the Ryder Cup yesterday.

The tie ebbed and flowed considerably over the course of the 4 days, with Europe starting well only for the US to gain the upper hand, and then Europe fighting back with a stunning third session of games to take a commanding lead into the singles matches. But all was not done and dusted, and the Americans made a tremendous effort to claw their way back into the contest and level the scores with just one match left on the course. The pressure on those two final players must have been immense and it was US Open champion Graeme McDowell who managed to hold his nerve better and secure the win for Team Europe. Yet again the Ryder Cup produced sporting excellence and drama in equal measures and I am already looking forward to the next staging of the event, which will be at Medinah Country Club, Illinois in 2012.

Aside from the golf, we also went out for a meal together with my Mum, who celebrates her birthday on the same day as me. The food was delicious and we all had a very pleasant time. It was a good weekend.

But, as I was saying, this is the start of our holiday season. Being from two different places, as I have mentioned here before, means that we get to celebrate even more holidays than most people. Starting with my birthday, we then have Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Dori’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day, Mothers Day, St George’s Day, Easter and our wedding anniversary – and no doubt I’ve forgotten one or two in there :-) And by the time we have gone through all of it will be time to start looking ahead to next summer! Time to get buying cards methinks!!