B29 7EG
DT4 7NP
See any pattern here?!
(These are my consecutive postal codes.)
1 – 4 – 2: one month in Grimsby, four in Birmingham, AND today makes the two-month anniversary of my arrival in Weymouth.
(These are my consecutive postal codes.)
1 – 4 – 2: one month in Grimsby, four in Birmingham, AND today makes the two-month anniversary of my arrival in Weymouth.
The Groupon Guide to Healthy Alternatives
You can make improvements to your diet with
easy substitutions that taste just as great as the originals:
• Instead
of butter: use Greek yogurt
• Instead of mayonnaise: use whole-grain bread
• Instead of cigarettes: smoke Tootsie Rolls
• Instead of committing crimes: commit charities
• Instead of eating poison: eat not poison
• Instead of having your ribs bruised by a donkey's kick: teach him to read
• Instead of Greek yogurt: use wine
• Instead of mayonnaise: use whole-grain bread
• Instead of cigarettes: smoke Tootsie Rolls
• Instead of committing crimes: commit charities
• Instead of eating poison: eat not poison
• Instead of having your ribs bruised by a donkey's kick: teach him to read
• Instead of Greek yogurt: use wine
(I think the guys at Groupon are kinda crazy. How DO they come up with this stuff?! What d'ya think?)
A couple of pronunciation things that delight me
so: one is that I have noticed the ‘g’ at the end of ‘ng’ words, for instance
‘long,’ is emphasized with a hard ‘g’ like I've never heard it done before. I
had always wondered why we had a ‘g’ there and yet it wasn’t sounded. Now I
know: with evolution, over time, in America it got ‘shown the door.’ Another
thing I really love is the way some British dialects (from close to London, I
understand) put a ‘k’ at the end of ‘ing’ words – ‘somethingk,’ ‘beginningk,’ or
‘movingk,’ for instance. First heard it from my bishop in Birmingham, a
Frenchman, who to me had the most delicious of accent combinations.
Similarly I was asking a brother to confirm the name of a hiking location he had described to me that I'd been trying to remember. To my ears it sounds like Loworth - turned out to be Lulworth.
Also I was talking to Malcolm about places to stay in London and he said Ellscourts would be a good place to check - a little further out, a little cheaper. Could NOT find it on Goodle maps anywhere! Turns out he was saying Earls Court. Hah!
Similarly I was asking a brother to confirm the name of a hiking location he had described to me that I'd been trying to remember. To my ears it sounds like Loworth - turned out to be Lulworth.
Also I was talking to Malcolm about places to stay in London and he said Ellscourts would be a good place to check - a little further out, a little cheaper. Could NOT find it on Goodle maps anywhere! Turns out he was saying Earls Court. Hah!
Jennifer (aka Sister Venables, my esteemed Relief
Society president) rang me this morning and asked if I would be available to go
birding this very afternoon. Was I! She is quite an amazingly spry 72 year old!
She said, great, she’d come and collect me at the hotel around 2. (I worked
until a few minutes prior to that time.) It was a very blustery day – she thought
that might be fortuitous and blow in some unexpected specimens – I hoped so, to
make it worth it, as it was down right chilly outside. We took a brisk walk to
the Radipole Lake Nature Reserve - Wonderful wildlife in the middle of town. (So
well hidden, I never even knew it was there!) (Interesting – they say ‘reserve
for what we’d call ‘preserve.’) Can you believe it is right across the dual
carriageway (as opposed to ‘single track’) from the shopping center that has
Matalan and Aldi, where I often go and have been a million times – and I never
even knew it was there!)
Entering the wetlands area, you come first to a lovely
central building, all glass against the lake side, staffed by several helpful guides.
(There were a number of families with children – the beginning of the school half
term!) We stood and looked from this vantage point for a while. Here we heard
wind of a merganser who frequents the lake (see below) – sighting him became my
primary goal for the excursion.( He is a fairly rare breed in these parts – in
fact, not from these parts at all.) From there we went out back out into the ‘mild
winter weather’ (coolish, yes, but mild to what you’d usually expect for winter)
to walk the trails that surround the lake and soggy reedbeds.
Besides ducks, swans, several different breeds of
gull, along with many other water fowl, signage reports that there are also otters.
Didn’t encounter any of those in our hiking around today – but we didn’t stay
in any one place for long. Always leave something to come back for the next
time! (Where we did spend some time was in the blinds – structures built to
protect unsuspecting birds from binoculared spies. The teals were especially
beautiful – the pattern of their feathers on their face, back and tail is truly
amazing.) It was wonderful getting back in the out-of-doors, after not having had
the chance for such a long time. Jennifer told me about another even better place
closer to church; hopefully we can find some time to do it again soon. I KNEW
there was a reason I thought I needed to lug along my new birding binoculars on
this British journey!
A few of the birds we did see (that weren’t crows,
magpies or pigeons, that I’ve mostly been ‘lucky’ enough to come across since I’ve
been in various areas of England!): black headed gull, mute swan, aquatic
warbler (wow, what a song and just a little sparrow look-a-like!), grebes and
coots, Canada geese (naturally – only two, though) cormorants, blue herons, and
in the duck category: gadwall, goldeneye, pochard, shelduck, teal, and tufted
ducks – to name only a few of the ones we COULD recognize. And then, just as we
were leaving, rounding the final bend, as we walked across the bridge that led
back to the information center or else to the parking lot we spotted the
merganser we’d been searching for, and ended up watching him for a good while.
He skimmed speedily this way and that, among all the other water fowl, as if he
was saying, ‘hey, guys, here I am - look at me!’ But it was a lost cause – it
was as if he was invisible. He didn’t ‘smell right’ and he didn’t ‘look right;’
and no one would pay him any mind, NOBODY wanted to play!’ Poor guy, so far
from home – nobody to love, cherish, and/or mate with him!
It was while the two of us were out traipsing around that I
suddenly noticed that I had missed a call – the voicemail said it was the
sister missionaries inviting me to come to Mandy’s for Family Home Evening.
(Mandy is the sister in our branch with the older mom who is not a member, who
has macular degeneration and, as Mandy is away at work all day, really enjoys
people coming by to visit. (In fact, Malcolm and I have an appointment to go
and see her in two days’ time.) Betty, Mandy’s mom, is the very person I’ve
been meaning, and wanting, to take the time to go by and visit for the last month
or so. How perfect is that? It’s not every day you have an invitation such as
that dropped in your lap. And not only that, Malcolm would pick me up - even
more perfect! After playing a little phone tag, we girls finally got all the
details worked out. (For one thing, it wasn’t until I learned we were meeting
at 5pm that I realized ‘coming over for FHE’, also entailed coming for dinner!)
The missionaries have a standing appointment to go
over to Mandy’s and Betty’s almost every week for an afternoon. What better way
to make good use of their ‘P’ Day could there be than that?! (They told me that
they really love being there with Betty – she is a dear, reminds me of my own
grandma, Olive – that they feel so at home and comfortable.) On this particular
day the elders from an adjoining town had been going to join them for dinner,
but ended up having to cancel at the last minute. So with all that food, the
four of them were looking around for somebody to help them eat it up – and that’s
where Malcolm and I – AND Sonya, it turned out (Weymouth Branch’s most
recent convert; it is fulfilling to see how everyone is doing their best to help
her feel a part of the clan.) – came into the picture. (The Sisters and I have
a special bond – we always gravitate towards each other at church and they have
eaten here at the Richmoor Hotel on a couple different occasions, where I’ve
had the chance to sit with them. When Sister Boman returns to BYU towards the
end of July, one of the very first things she’s going to do is look me up!)
Mandy knows us both – also that Malcolm and I were coming to visit Betty two
days from this date – but I believe it was at the suggestion of the sisters
that room was made for us at the table.
It was a potpourri of dishes for dinner – all very
English – even had some mushy peas. (I had forgotten all about them - we don’t
serve them at the hotel. I had always figured peas were peas and assumed this
dish was made from mashed garden-variety peas – even though it looks, NOR tastes,
nothing like smashed bright green peas, the more common type. Turns out mushy
peas is made from marrowfat peas, and constitutes a traditional side dish for a
proper English evening meal. I see that on occasion they
have been referred to as ‘Yorkshire caviar,’ as they are grown and served
predominantly in the north of England. By the way did you know that regular
green peas are actually a fruit botanically, since
they contain seeds developed from the ovary of a flower.) Besides Sisters Boman
and Woods, Mandy and Betty, and Malcolm and I, there was Lester. When I first came
upon him, I had no idea where he fit into the picture. A gentle giant – a HAIRY gentile giant – he is a definite Hippie throw back and, I am
told, has been Mandy’s very close friend for years.
After dinner we settled in the lounge (what we
call the ‘living room’) to watch 17 Miracles,
Malcolm’s purchase from the other day at the temple distribution center. I
pretty much HATE watching that video because it is the story of my very ancestors,
and watching the anguish of that journey is almost more than I can bear. (I
might have mentioned that it seems like EVERYONE over here has one of those ‘ginormous’
(to me anyway) flat-screened televisions. Regardless of a family’s economic
state, they seem to have one! I jokingly said to someone I’d been making this
comment to that they must have arrived here first before coming to the States,
and they remarked, taking me quite literally at my word, that indeed that was true!)
Betty, who has minimal eyesight – just like my dad – pulled her chair up within
15 inches of the screen – just like my dad.
Her comment, a couple days later,
after watching the program, was very interesting. (Betty, who is 93, after a lifetime
of observing pain and suffering has determined she only wants to hear and see
joyful things – for the remainder of her days. Her revelation was entirely
serious – really can’t blame her. She shared the incidence of how as a young
woman, when a nurse, she had accompanied others to Heathrow Airport (where I’ll
be going VERY soon to meet up with Becky) to collect European refugees as they
disembarked from transport, having fled their war-torn countries. She said that
their only possession was the clothing they wore on their backs. This and other
experiences she’s had in her life made watching the ordeals of the Martin and
Willie journey especially disparaging for her to endure. As interesting an
account as it was, she was very happy when it was over and she was able to make
her way back to her bed. She has a worn-out body and sitting in that position
for that length of time is difficult at best.
Photos_
1- Radipole Lake Nature Reserve
2- family birding
3- Jennifer with telescope at the viewpoint from inside the visitor’s center
4- at first glance you may think, 'oh, great, a bunch of birds. Nice!' However, you are gazing at four different species: mute swans with a black coot just above the shoulder of the one to the left, tufted
ducks with striking black and white patterns, as well as juvenile black headed gulls, with
the pattern of their adult plumage just starting to develop
5- dual message swans – hissing at me to get
back, at the same time hoping we’d brought them something to eat (which we hadn’t!)
6- Mr. Merganser – with his top notch feathers
drawn out like this gives him the oddest hydrocephalic look. I thought this
was his usual appearance, until, suddenly, he let it down and I could see he
looked like any other ordinary duck. Interestingly the guide told us was that he
is a native of the Americas, making him an immigrant to these shores – they
have no idea how he came to be here on the southern coast of England. He’s
rested up now and was whipping all about, among the other coots, ducks, and
grebes, hoping somebody would think he was fine enough to take a little trip into
the bushes with ‘im, but all he got was his comrades racing away in the
opposite direction, as he approached or – even worse – was totally ignored!
7- at Mandy’s – Sonya (of the ‘light blue hair’ – wasn’t
kidding when I said brilliant hair shades are all the rage here!), Sister
Boman, Lester, Sister Woods from Preston, and Mandy – Malcolm’s arm
8- for love of Betty
