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Published: August 26th 2010
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Cheltenham relatives
Barbara, Sheila, Dave & Phyllis, Alan, Maggie, Phoebe, me. Sheila and Dave are my grandma's 1st cousins, as was Barbara's husband. We left Ireland on the same ferry that we'd arrived on - eight hours from Dublin to Liverpool complete with a fried and fatty breakfast and an extra-deep-fried early dinner. We had decided that we would now head south to visit some of my relatives in Cheltenham and Surrey, while also catching up with the half of Australia and New Zealand who seem to live in London at the moment.
Over the years a couple of UK branches of my extended family tree have kept in touch, which is fantastic not least because it gives us a place to stay and someone to show us around! There has been a reciprocal arrangement for a long time - relatives have stayed with my family in Auckland some time in the last fifteen years while before that my parents visited the UK for a few months back in 1979. It's all from my mother's mother's side (no surprise that it's the women in the family who have managed to stay in touch) whose parents came from a town called Pershore, near Cheltenham. They were married there before immigrating to New Zealand 100 years ago along with five out of six of my
Phoebe and Dave + train set
One of Dave's hobbies; model train sets, which has been supplanted in recent years by big motor-driven model airplanes. grandfather's siblings. In Surrey we visited the descendents of 'the one sister who stayed behind', while the relatives we visited in Cheltenham/ Pershore are on my grandmother's side.
In Cheltenham distant relative Dave and wife Phyllis had a lovely house with a driveway which Mum and Dad camped on in 1979 when they visited. They and a few more relatives were very hospitable, feeding us an excellent meal and plying us with homemade gooseberry wine, homemade red-currant wine and Pimms. It was lovely meeting them, sketching out some of the family tree and hearing the stories about each member that make that process interesting. Everyone was retirement-aged but despite the lack of child-company Phoebe was very well behaved and had everyone charmed. Afterwards Dave showed us his very impressive brewing setup, which had Alex and I asking many questions and envisaging ourselves brewing various non-grape wines in the future.
We left the following morning for the drive to Ashtead, Surrey on the outskirts of London. My third cousin Andrew and his wife Alex had kindly offered to let us overrun their house for a few days. The actual level of 'relatedness' gets fairly tenuous - Phoebe was described
Polesden Lacey
Edwardian manor built with money from a Scottish brewing family. Complete with surprisingly yellow grass. as Andrew's step-third-cousin-once-removed, but that didn't stop her enjoying playing with the kids Niamh (aged 6, pronounced 'Neeve' in case you're confused) and Carrig (aged 4, also known as 'the Caggler' or 'Sir Cagglesworth the Third'). There we talked about Alex's upbringing in Ireland and Australia, Andrew re-lived the highlight of his brief sporting career when he was paid to play soccer in New Zealand and scored three goals on debut, Phoebe (now named 'Phoeba the Amoeba') and Niamh spread toys all over the house and garden and Carrig provided a constant background of explosions and fight noises as his toys battled each other all day long.
There are an overwhelming number of places-to-see in the UK and London especially, and while we wanted to get a feel for the place we weren't going to kill ourselves to see too many of them. Instead we ended up managing the opposite by meeting up with five or six different friends at various cafes/ restaurants/ bars in London without really feeling like we'd seen much of what London is known for. Catching up with all of these friends was great, though it probably wouldn't make for very interesting reading here. It
Niamh, Phoebe, Andrew and Lord Caggelot.
At Polesden Lacey. We had a 'Surrey moment' when a posh 4-year old girl started telling Andrew and Alex off for taking a picture "That's not your seat! That's MY seat!" was also very expensive! One attempt at sightseeing was to visit a magnificent manor called Polesden Lacey. It was of course completely opulent and full of people you'd see on Antiques Roadshow, but the highlight were the grounds and gardens which the kids spent plenty of time running around in. Incredibly, the lawns were all yellowed and half-dead looking through lack of rain. Who knew the UK has droughts too?? The lack of sightseeing is not a problem as we'll be back in the area again on the way over to France at the end of August.
Not surprisingly, there's no atmosphere of strangeness or alien-ness to us when wandering around the UK and a good portion of the time we could easily forget that we're overseas. We find we notice the odd difference to NZ/Aus instead of the odd similarity in other countries. Examples... In nearly every UK kitchen sink sits a container almost the same size and shape as the sink and which is used for washing up rather than the sink. Why? I don't know. But apparently this is just the way things are done. All showers have complicated space age fittings to get the water
London taxi
Alex and I caught the Friday night last train to not-quite where we were staying and so caught a taxi. The train was an 'experience' with some people very worse for wear after their nights out. temperature
just so yet the plumbing in many houses doesn't seem the best and it's a perpetual struggle for us to flush the damn toilet properly. Bike riders in the UK are not legally required to wear helmets - your average bike rider seems to be an older man or woman, often wearing their Sunday best and riding a fifteen year old bicycle the wrong way up the street of their village - rather than the lycra-clad accessorising Lance Armstrong imitator so common in Adelaide (though this group certainly exists in the UK too).
After spending the best part of a week in Surrey it was time to jump in Lentil and head back north to north Wales, where we would pick up Alex's Mum and drive around Scotland for a couple of weeks.
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alabi
alabi ibrahim
soo nice pictuers
hi guys how are you doing up there i can see you guys are very happy enjoying your self