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Published: February 18th 2011
After three and a half weeks in sunny South Africa we returned back to cold rainy England to complete our final big push. It was exciting once again, we were moving home and starting new jobs! This time we headed for the lush green country side, where we stayed in a 2 bedroomed cottage on my new boss' estate. It was gorgeous, up on Box Hill with awesome views of rolling hills on their land and no neighbours! Well, maybe a few kms down the road, but I don't think we would be bumping into them soon..
Jason was still working at Harrods in London and travelling almost 3 hours a day on train and underground. My journey was slightly quicker, about a minute's walk to the main house that I would be looking after and only working from 9am-1pm, not bad! But this stunning setting had it's price, I couldn't drive, and the Bus Stop was a good walk away and the Bus only came around every hour and took about an hour to get me to town.. so I felt a little stuck on my gorgeous green Box Hill!
We joined Leatherhead congregation again where we received
much needed encouragement from all our friends with whom we still enjoy close bonds today. Thanks guys!
The couple I worked for enjoyed the hunting season- as most English folks do..their victoms were thousands of defenseless little pheasants that they would breed and feed till they were nice and fat and then have all their friends over and make a day of it,( or a few days) Poor birdies! And then the dinner parties and entertaining would begin, we had to help with the dinner parties and serving. I will never forget how we almost dropped their huge AGA roasted turkey! Lifting it out the AGA, trying to balance this huge bird- almost the size of a 5 year old child,trying to keep the juices in the pan when SWHOOSH!!! it all went lopsided but with a quick recovery we managed to save their turkey from landing on the floor!
When I wasn't busy with dinner parties my job was quite boring- systematicly working my way through their 13 bedroomed house. And when they went to their Holiday home in Portugal we had to stay in their house! Not fun when you have to check through 13 bedrooms,
12 bathrooms, 1 long room, 2 studies, gym, kitchen, laundry room, breakfast room, pool house, wine cellar and 12 garages to make sure everything is safe and locked up! It didn't make it any less scary coming from a country where every window has a burglar bar, almost every house has armed response alarm systems and obviously my overactive imagination of who and what could be hiding where! But we managed, and apart from a few false alarms...nothing ever happened!
It was an amazing experience and if I could drive then it would haver been even better, but we started to miss home and got planning...
We finally left the estate and decided to knuckle down and do the 'pub' thing again. This was the best option for saving money fast, of course it left us with hardly any time to enjoy ourselves or to meet with other obligations, but we wanted to get home and settle down.
Off we went to King William 4th Pub, down the road from Box Hill. Once again we had our accommodation and meals provided and had the 2 bedroomed apartment on top of the pub all to ourselves!
The
landlords- Chris and Jenny were really cool and made our time there most enjoyable. Soon we got to know all the regulars..John, Steve, Clive, Rodney & Carol, Steve & Nishi, (sorry I know there were more..but it's been a few years!) They all made the shifts fun and we always had something to talk about. It was a small pub with about 10 or so inside tables but we could easily cover 150 people inside and out in a 2 and a half hour lunch session, yip that means a lot of orders and running up and down! We were all hands on deck, everybody did everything, Chris and Jenny would not expect us to do something that they weren't willing to do themselves so we all took turns in the 'potwash' station, aka being a 'potpig'.
This pub had awesome views over Mole Valley and has been there since 1790 ( we could tell it was old when we had to duck to go through doorways-yip WE had to duck! we aren't tall! walls and floors were a little skew and creacky!)
A few months before heading back to South Africa Boetie (Andre), joined us at the
Didi
helping me make canapes.
Bellasis Housepub. Now I had both my brothers in England! It was so cool and we did so much together in a very short time, but our time was running out and we had a whole new adventure to look forward to back home, learning all about water purification without chlorine or salt and pool maintenance... So we squeezed in what and who we could. We were also sad to say bye to my Ouma Jean, Aunty Sharryn, many cousins and friends.
Who knows when we will be back?....
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Vanessa Burgess
non-member comment
Bellasis House
This beautiful house that you scrubbed is where as a child I used to go carol singing ! Always mince pies were served by Weeks the butler, sometimes liquour chocolates and a load of money was always placed in our charity box for the building of St Andrews Church. We sung in our muddy boots on the plush carpets ! Steeped in history, Bellasis House was owned by Brigadier Schrieber in my time. I was born on Boxhill and spent my childhood there.