Category Archives: England

A surprise in our back yard

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This morning Jean was doing her hair in our bedroom when she let out a loud cry. Those of you who know Jean know that “doing her hair” is no simple exercise and a cry in the middle can signal a dreaded bad hair day.

I rushed into the room expecting the worse to find her pointing out the window at a small deer grazing peacefully in the garden. I grabbed my camera but, as is often the case, only captured the deer about to leave the garden and head for the neighbours.

Apparently the deer is a Muntjac, a breed imported into the UK in the early part of last century and originally domiciled at the Woburn Estate deer park (just up the road from our place). But as with the best laid plans, the deer escaped into the wild and since then have spread throughout lower England – including our back yard.

The beauty of Milton Keynes

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The nearest major town to our village of Aspley Guise is Milton Keynes. A product of 1960’s town planning, Milton Keynes takes a fair bit of stick for its roundabouts and concrete cows. “What’s the difference between yoghurt and Milton Keynes? The yoghurt has culture” or so the joke goes.

The town has facilities to meet all the needs of it’s citizens, all easily accessible and convenient – shopping, leisure, transport, it’s all there. Everything is so well planned and dispersed, and people’s needs so well catered for that, even standing in the dead centre of the city, it feels a little like an industrial estate – faceless building, wide roads, lots of cars, lots of trees and a distinct lack of people. It feels, well, a little soulless.

But then, when you least expect it, Milton Keynes surprises you.

I was in the city this afternoon running some errands and, as the sun set behind the Church of Christ the Cornerstone located in the centre of the city, beauty appeared.

Happy New Year to you all

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The family leaving Tuscany in October

It’s New Years Eve in Aspley Guise and the team are getting ready for a night out. Gill has booked a table at the Wavendon Arms in Woburn Sands for dinner and whatever follows so it should a lot of fun.

The only concession to the collective ages of those attending is a 12:30 am taxi pick up to come home. Sadly no partying to dawn for this lot.

Before we depart for the evening Jean, Daisy, Poppie and myself want to wish all our dear friends and readers a great New Year and hope your 2012 will be happy, fruitful and prosperous.

The Minster at night

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York Minster at night taken with my cool new iPhone 4S - handheld

Tonight was our last night in York. We walked downtown to have dinner and on the way we passed the Minster. What is a Minster? According to the publicity material provided, Minster Churches are basically churches that were established in the Anglo Saxon period as missionary teaching churches. York Minster is also the Church of the Archbishop of York. He is the most senior bishop in the North of England. It is where he has his seat, called a Cathedra, which makes York Minster a Cathedral as well.

Not all Minsters are Cathedrals, and not all Cathedrals are Minsters, but York Minster is both. The York Minster is the largest Gothic Cathedral in northern Europe and was built over a period of 250 years.

So there you go. It seemed worth a photo.

So that was Christmas

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I’m writing this at 10:30pm on Christmas night sitting in the living room at Aspley Guise trying not to nod off to sleep. The day has been a blur of presents, food and drink.

The day started early as the kids woke up and discovered a trail of reindeer hoof prints leading from the chimney to their bedrooms. Santa’s beer and snacks were gone and in exchange there were presents stretching from one side of the lounge to the other.

For 30 minutes it was a present opening frenzy. The kids found that Santa had answered every wish they had on their list. I found that Santa had managed to organise, among other things, a new iPhone and Jean found that a D&G watch she had spotted in Italy had been delivered by the jolly red guy.

Lunch was for 12 and included a turkey the size of a small horse, ham on the bone and potatoes roasted in goose fat. This was followed by the traditional pavlova (made by Gill) and ice cream (home made by Jean to an old Italian recipe). By 3pm all 12 of us were struggling to move.

From there it was all downhill. A round of party games saw us through to a light tea and suddenly it’s – now.

After events like today it’s traditional to thank the ladies for the spread and the blokes for bringing the booze. So thank you ladies and gents, our first UK Christmas.

Buon Natale

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It’s Christmas time already and with only a few days to go we are in the UK, waiting for the snow to start falling and frantically checking our Christmas lists – twice. Jean, the girls and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our loyal and lovely friends and readers a Buon Natale (as the Italians say) and a full, fruitful and enjoyable new year.

We have really enjoyed sharing our Italian adventures with everyone over the last 9 months and appreciated all the feedback we have received. And even though we are no longer in Italy we will continue to write about our adventures over the next few months wherever they happen to take us.

Once again Buon Natale and best wishes to you all.

Jean, Graeme and the girls.

The book of the blog

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As a WordPress blogger I receive a stream of emails about changes and improvements to the way WordPress works. The vast majority receive a cursory glance and are consigned to the trash.

One that arrived recently caught my attention. A company based in Germany called Feedfabrik could take any WordPress blog and make it into a book – both as a hard copy printed book and a soft copy PDF.

Given we had just reached 100 posts it seemed only sensible to make use of this offer. To that end, for those of you interested, below is a PDF booklet of the first 100 Toscanakiwi posts. The file size is 7.3Mb.

It is best viewed with the page setting “2 Up” in Acrobat.

Toscanakiwi – The First 100

More photographs

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Gentle readers, I have just updated our photo album with all the latest shots used on the blog and a bunch more.  Click here to see them.