Category Archives: food

around home, city, Europe, food, friends, travel, UK

Reading to Istanbul – quite the contrast

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A dash home straight after work Friday & a mad pack for nine nights away was all to try & beat the holiday traffic (4 day Diamond Jubilee weekend). I’m not sure I did, but it only took ninety minutes until Reading’s awful road system had me going around in circles.

A delightful evening was spent with Anna & Luke and their NZ visitors – Penny, Kathryn & Megan. That is over half of one of my “second families” from my childhood in Te Puke. As always when visiting Anna & Luke, we ate well – Luke cooked up a storm, before we went out for dessert. A great evening of that easy conversation & banter you get with old friends was topped off with sublime lemon curd tart at Jamie’s (Oliver) Italian. So far away from home, a lot of talk was of travels past, present & future. I did actually remember to snap a photo of visitors from afar – it’s rather unflattering as people seem too interested in their phones. Leaving everyone after breakfast Saturday, I boarded a train to Gatwick to start my week’s holiday. Arriving in Istanbul and walking from the metro, I suddenly realised that this is the first Islamic country I’ve been too – the mosques & evening prayer call gave it away.

As usual, it’s a lot hotter here than home & I’ve spent most of the day walking all around the Old City. The public buildings, mostly mosques, are incredible, things seem cheap, it’s busy and away from the main touristy area the place is filthy – litter, feral cats & dogs everywhere. The food is varied and well good. That’s enough of a brief introduction to Turkey for now, I’m sick of typing on my phone. Here’s all the relevant photos on my phone at once – as Blogger for Android is not particularly useful.

city, family, food, friends, London, UK

On the Thames

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After two rather strange events at the end of last week – I joined a gym & bought runners (need to burn energy somehow while I’m off the bike) – I headed up to London for the weekend. Mostly it was to catch up with people I haven’t seen for some time. Since I last saw them two months ago just after my operation, Levi & Marki and Jeff have been to NYC, Czech & Turkey in different permutations. So with my Rome trip as well, there was a fair amount to discuss. Time was a bit limited as they were heading off to the O2 to see Kayne & Jay-Z (maybe I’m just boring, but I didn’t see the attraction). However, someone had decided that a good way to get to the O2 (which is well away from the centre of London) was to get a ThamesClipper (a pretty fast catamaran passenger ferry) down the river.

I jumped at the chance as while I’ve walked over, under & beside; driven over, under & beside; cycled over, under & beside; and ridden trains over, under & beside the Thames many times over the last four years I’ve previously never found reason to get on a boat on the river. It was good fun watching so many landmarks slide by from a different vantage point – I particularly liked going under Tower Bridge.

Meeting up with more concert-going friends in the O2 (I’d never been in before – it really is an incredibly large tent with all sorts of shops, restaurants, a squash competition & of course the arena), I joined them for a very late lunch before riding buses back to Sidcup. Trish picked me up & went out to watch the Bexley Village world go by as we savoured our Moroccan meal. I’m not sure acoustic Lily Allen & Lady Gaga is traditional Moroccan music, but whatever.

Sunday was spent driving north into Essex & visiting various family – the main point of the weekend away. A very pleasant cup of tea with my great-uncle (Grandad’s brother) as he regaled me with stories of his travels in WWII as a wireless operator. Still can’t picture Blackpool as a place to go & learn Morse code or why exactly Alan was shipped to Brazil, Durban, Bombay, Iraq, Cairo & Libya. But then war doesn’t make a lot of sense on much higher levels than that, so I’m really not too fussed. Always a delight to spend time with a very switched older generation (with a surprisingly good grasp on current news) – there’s some small hope that I won’t completely lose my marbles in fifty-odd years. Plus Alan was interested in my USA roadtrip (particularly Yellowstone) photos, so I got to show some of those.

A little bit back towards London, I spent the afternoon with Carly & her family. One of only two second-cousins on my maternal grandmother’s side (compared to the plenty on grandad’s side), it’s been sometime since I’ve seen them – the kids & house are now much bigger. As Carly & David honeymooned in Banff, there’s always plenty of Canada talk which is good fun; family also is a hot topic, as Carly’s brother, father & grandfather are all quite funny (/crazy) there is generally much amusement.

around home, food, friends, UK

Lazy weekends with sun

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After a really dry & mild winter, some bright spark decided that most of the lower half of England was in drought. Naturally, it has pretty much rained since then. I haven’t been too perturbed as I’m still unable to get outside riding, or even running, & the rain makes a nice change & things are growing. Strangely, the last couple of weekend have had most of the week’s sunshine allotment so I’ve had a spot of walking in various different places.

The May Bank Holiday weekend was mostly a recovery from the Rome trip & delayed-flight consequences – but I did pop over to Poole (a couple of towns west) to visit Mum’s cousin Pamela. After a good lunch, many cups of tea & much catching up of recent travels & family gossip I popped down to Sandbanks for a stroll along the beach. There’s some pretty big homes down there, but I wasn’t surprised as I keep hearing how Harry Redknapp lives there. Apparently, by area it has the fourth highest property value in the world. But I just wanted to walk along the beach in the sun catching up on podcasts, not buy a house – so that is what I did.

Looking across towards Swanage

This must be a popular place in summer – those curious English things, beach-huts, were two-storied

This weekend just ending has mostly been spent eating & walking. Friday night I was around at (workmate) Henry’s place – I was trying to see if The Castle was funny outside of Australia & NZ circles. I didn’t hold out much hope as Henry has never seen the Holy Grail or The Princess Bride & therefore doesn’t understand a large percentage of my babbling. The film is looking really dated now (it’s been sometime since I’ve watched it), but I’m pleased to report that it was apparently funny from an Englishman’s point of view. We then set about making a pavlova while Nicole diligently wrote reports – there are many reasons I’m not a teacher, & taking work home is one of them.

A Full English (breakfast) Saturday morning necessitated a big walk along the Barton-on-Sea cliffs to Milford & then finding a route back home inland on the footpaths that dot the countryside, but don’t necessarily go in a straight line.

Across the Solent to the Isle of Wight

First barbecue of the summer at another workmate’s house back over on the side of the Forest where I live & we all work. It was just warm enough to spend most of the evening outside in a T-shirt (although I drew the line at shorts) eating much meat (the NZ lamb steaks were pretty good, it must be said). We retreated inside to devour the pavlova (the pavlova is only getting so much mention as it was the first I’ve ever had to make) & play boardgames.

Nicole destroyed the symmetry by not liking kiwifruit

family, food, UK, vehicles

Christmas-like Easter

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A four day weekend was once again too much to stay at home & read & watch Spooks with my arm in a sling, so a good excuse to get away. Tedious buses & trains took me to Somerset for Easter weekend – which was strangely much more similar to Christmas than I am used to. It’s not Easter Sunday as it is in NZ, rather Easter Day. I’m not completely sure what is a normal Easter at home – but I wasn’t familiar with sitting around eating copious amounts of food, drinking well, fruit cakes, masses of cheese & biscuits and receiving cards & presents. I approve of little-Christmas – especially as all the exercise I could manage was walking to town & down the beach.

Gary was Stationmaster for the afternoon at the local miniature railway, so I escaped into the sun to watch for a few hours. There were plenty of little steam engines chugging around the 3.5″/5″ double-gauge track carrying a surprising number of children and parents/grandparents around. That smell of steam and partially combusted coal is still good on such a small scale. I managed to get a couple of loops of the recently extended track – but of course all I wanted to do was tinker with the little levers, fill coal boxes & water tenders. Alas. Anyway, that was different experience & I got to hear some proper West-Country accents (most of the people I know in the area are imports) – where you don’t have to have a eye-patch & a wooden leg for it to be acceptable to say yarrrr.