As mentioned previously, my
niece, Leah, her husband, Martin, with Katya (6), Oliver (4), and Ella (14 mos)
arrived in town yesterday around dusk and happily unraveled themselves out of their grey Vauxhall
van. It was mighty fine to see them! Sandra said goodbye and went off to her
friend’s for the remainder of the week, giving the Wards full reign of the
house. I will go with them when they leave after church on Sunday, headed for a
couple weeks visit to their home in Birmingham.
As this is school break
time, the Ward family is on what the Brits call "holiday," otherwise known to us Americans as
vacation. Yeah! And being as how they are in this part of the country with pretty
much the sole purpose of hitting the water, we were quick to “make hay while
the sun shone”! We started off the day at the section of beach in Cleethorpes nearest
the marsh lands. We built sand castles and Katya decorated them daintily with
sea shells she had meticulously collected. After that it was time for a wraps
and fruit picnic on a blanket on the sand. When it began to rain we piled under
the multi-purpose picnic blanket that we had previously been sitting on top of and
waited for it to pass. That’s how it’s done in England, you know. Can’t let the
weather get in the way and spoil your plans, because if you let it, it will be
sure to do it! You just go on with whatever you’re doing, make the best you can,
and hope for quick relief.
(Leah set me straight that we don’t call it going
to the “beach”, but rather the seaside. I can tell already it’s going to be downright
delightful to spend time with people who “speak my language!” i.e., happy to share
whatever information they have, as well as entertain questions. Not so much
with Sandra.)
A little later we drove further
on down the coast to an area referred to as the sand pits, where there is a
pirate ship with all kinds of hands-on things for kids to do. Got out the buckets
and spades, whilst Ollie proceeded to dig a very large hole looking for
treasure, so he could be rich, he said -- the object of which was so he could
buy himself even MORE toys.
Baby Ella was mostly
content with munching the odd fistful of sand and spending one-on-one time with mummy and daddy.
At still a third area we
discovered another fun kid attraction with a large, shallow man-made paddling pool that
had a park with a miniature railway. Man, can this be the same Cleethorpes I
have frequented with the dotters?! As if that weren’t about as much fun as a
body could stand in a single day (My, those Wards, they really know how to
enjoy themselves!), we topped off our sun-drenched day with frozen ice cream
treats.
For dinner Leah led out on
making French bread pizza (while I worked on the tossed salad), but, in this
case, it was on ciabatta, with fresh mozzarella and basil -- not any old ordinary
open-faced pizza loaf, I tell you!
* *
*
As some have asked to know
more about the layout of the house where I live I thought I might oblige: You start
the tour by unlocking the three bolts of the heavy front door found directly
off the sidewalk (Security is a BIG deal in the British mindset, and I mean, in
my humble opinion – which, of course, is what it ALWAYS is -- paranoid
fanatically so.) to enter the house into a tiny entry room, past another door
into the living room where the TV is kept. From there you move into the dining/sitting
room, (the single bathroom is off of this), and from there into the long,
narrow kitchen. Leah terms this a “one butt kitchen,” meaning you have to
carefully maneuver yourself around another person to navigate from one end to
the other. (She assures me she has the two-butt variety.) The dining room and
kitchen both have lovely large windows that look out onto the garden area -- all
rooms very small, by our privileged terms. You access the patio and garden from
French windows in the dining room or through a door in the kitchen.
From the living room, you
go up the narrow stairway to two bedrooms joined by a small hallway. In England
this is known as two up-two down (two bedrooms upstairs, two main rooms on the
ground floor). My bedroom is the first of the two, the one that looks out onto
the street. (There I am, way up there, the highest window you can see straight up from the street. No, not that one - that's where the ghosts live! That's me in the window in the middle white cottage. Do
you see me waving?!)
First Ollieism (pithy
declarations made to me by Oliver, age 4), quote: I’m not allowed to pick my
nose. (When Leah heard him reveal this profound statement , she interjected,
“and when, Ollie, is it that you CAN pick your nose?!” When I’m a hundred, he replied
quite soberly.)
Photos_
1- Olympic Google doodle
2- Wardy van
3- sisters
4- brotherly kindness (Ollie!! Leave her alone!)
5- castle
building
6- daddy
long legs
7- racing boy
8- ice
cream yum
9- living room
10- dining/sitting room
11- loo
12- one butter
13- clothesline across the garden (aka backyard) looking
back towards the house – the small window open to the left of the shot is a
high window in the kitchen, kitchen door next, following along to the viewer’s
right; open door is French window into dining room (where I fell out
accidentally bright and early one Sunday morning)
14- my cage
15- Bargate cottages w/ me in the middle
15- Bargate cottages w/ me in the middle
