The home of little Winnie

Sunday was a momentous day for Michael as he returned to his ancestral roots.  We hired a car and took a drive to Goudhurst in Kent where Michael’s mother, Anne, was born and grew up.  Goudhurst is a tiny village set in picturesque countryside with hop fields.  We ventured into St Mary’s Church where Anne was christened.  The church was built in 1119 and is absolutely beautiful with colourful, intricate stained glass windows.  We met the reverend and he was quite impressed that Michael had come all the way from Australia to see where his mother was christened.  Both Michael and I agreed that the reverend looked like he had just finished high school.  I guess that means we are getting old. We wandered around the churchyard for a bit, which was full of gravestones, many of which were so old that the writing was illegible.  We would have liked to walked around some more except a freezing wind was blowing us about so we retreated to the car and drove around the area a little more.  We then returned to Goudhurst to have a lovely lunch at the Goudhurst Inn (they are famous for their scotch eggs).

We returned to London via Orpington to visit Michael’s godmother, Margaret and her husband Peter.  Michael checked to make sure that the hedgehog planter that he gave to Margaret 30 years ago was still in the kitchen – it was!  We had a cup of tea together happily chatting about family matters.  It is always good to see Margaret and hopefully we can see them again before we leave. 

Photos of Goudhurst and surrounding area

London Calling

We have returned to my most favourite city in the world (to live anyway).  The weather won’t be as perfect as it was when we were here in summer however it is a lot warmer than Canada when we left.  The last month of our stay in Toronto saw it hit by the polar vortex, which plummeted temperatures to minus 23 degrees.  That is so cold that it actually hurts.

 

We have been staying in Chelsea since we arrived, first at the Millennium Copthorne Hotel at the Chelsea Football Club and then at an apartment in Sloane Avenue.  There was a football match held at the club whilst we were staying there and I was a little worried about football hooligans.  The crowd was actually made up largely of overweight, middle-aged men who were surprisingly well behaved.  We knew when the game was over as we could hear the victors singing.  There wasn’t a hooligan in sight and I think I was a little disappointed.

The apartment where we are staying at present is a 12 minute walk from Harrods.  I could not ask for a better location, as we are close to the tube, buses and within easy walking distance of many attractions.  There is an absolutely beautiful building at the end of our street called Michelin House.  It was built in 1911 and has the most amazing stained glass windows and intricate tile work.  It is just lovely.

Michael is working now however we have managed to cram quite a lot into his free time.  The first weekend we spent walking around and just re-acquainting ourselves with London.  It was Chinese New Year so we headed into Trafalgar Square where there were displays on and then we headed into China Town where the celebrations continued.

We managed to get to the Borough Market on Saturday.  It is lucky that we aren’t staying close by, as I would be heading there everyday.  Everything looks so delicious and inviting – even the fish which I don’t eat!

The Clink Prison Museum was next on our list.  This was a fascinating but truly horrific prison, which was completed in 1144.  The prisoners were kept in appalling conditions with the Thames regularly flooding in which left them floating in sewerage.  Piece of trivia – it is from here that other prisons took the nickname “clink”.

The Wallace Collection is a museum with a range of fine and decorative arts from the 15^th to the 19^th centuries.  It is a lovely place to wander around with a number of famous artworks including the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals. The museum is housed in Hertford House, itself a beautiful building to gaze at.

The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the art collection of the City of London.  Not only does it have many outstanding works on display but there is also the remains of a Roman Amphitheatre underneath, which was discovered in 1988 when the gallery was being built.  You can access under the building to see the remains.

We haven’t just been culture vultures since arriving here as we have also managed a couple of frivolous outings.  We visited Madame Tussauds, which I enjoyed every bit as much as I did 30 years ago.  The celebrities may have changed and the royals may be a little older but they remain as life-like as ever.  They have updated one part of the museum to an interactive walk through exhibit, which is dark and live actors jump out at you and yell and scream in your face.  By the time we had made our way through that area, every single hair on my head was standing on end and it took ages for my heart to stop thumping.  No wonder they don’t recommend this part for people with heart problems!

 

Around the corner from Madame Tussauds is the very famous address of 221B Baker Street – the official home address of Sherlock Holmes.  An enterprising person has set up museum there dedicated to the famous detective, complete with the mounted head of the Hound of the Baskervilles! Great fun and it has inspired me to read some more Sherlock Holmes stories.

 

Toronto – Home of the Crack Smoking Mayor

Michael and I quickly re-established our Canadian routine with Michael working Monday to Friday, mostly in Toronto with the occasional trip to Kitchener.  Weekends usually started with our trip early Saturday morning to the St Lawrence Market where we would breakfast and stock up on all our fresh food for the coming week. Sundays were usually lazily spent wandering the city and catching whatever event was currently in town.  A few of the highlights were:

Thanksgiving – Canada celebrates this holiday a month ahead of the US as harvesting takes place earlier due to the rapidly falling temperatures.  We didn’t celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving however we did celebrate the American one partaking of Turducken, which is a turkey stuffed with a duck, which is stuffed with a chicken.  This actually tastes better than it sounds and Michael was thrilled to finally taste one as he had heard about it America a number of years ago.

Nuit Blanche – A free all night contemporary art event.  This was a lot of fun with many of the streets closed so that the crowds could view the many different displays of artwork.  There was a large installation called Forever Bicycles by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, which consisted of 3,144 bicycles forming a sculpture that you could walk under and through.  There were many other sculptures and audio-visual displays of varying levels of artistic merit.  There was also a person feeding sheets of paper through a paper shredder – I really don’t know what that was about!

Exhibitions – Ai Weiwei According to What? – A moving exhibition by an extraordinary artist.

David Bowie – An exhibition showcasing items from his personal archive including fashion, theatre, art and film.  It is incredible how far his influence spread from the 60’s onwards.

The Great Upheaval – This was an exhibition of masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection covering the period 1910-1918.  There were many interesting pieces of work showcased in this exhibition.

Halloween – this celebration is taken very seriously in Canada with many homes decorated with carved pumpkins, scary monsters, bats etc.  Toronto hosts a zombie walk and it was amazing the effort people went to in order to look as realistic as possible.  Many people had professionally applied makeup to look like scars, open wounds and bruises.  There was much blood and gore and children were also dressed as monsters and there were even blood soaked dogs.  It certainly made a scary sight as they all lurched down the streets.

view from our apartment window during snow storm

Montreal

Christmas – I was very lucky as Michael surprised me with a wonderful trip to Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa.  We timed our exit from Toronto perfectly as we left the day a massive ice storm hit Toronto knocking out power to more than 400,000 homes.  I had never heard of an ice storm before but soon I was using terms such as ice storm and ice quake like a local. When we returned to Toronto 9 days later there were still homes without power.  There was also the danger of falling ice, which is a large problem when you have huge skyscrapers with five-foot icicles shaped like daggers hanging from them.  One woman was badly injured when she was struck by ice, which fell from forty storeys up.  Walking actually becomes very hazardous when you have to look up for the falling ice and down to make sure that you don’t slip on any ice on the pavements.

Montreal was beautiful, as they had just received a large dump of snow prior to our arrival.  It continued to snow for the three days that we were there so by the time we left the snow was thigh deep.  This made walking around very arduous but it was worth the effort to see how enchanting everything looked.

Quebec city outside the hotel

Quebec City was just as magical as our previous visit.  Snow was everywhere here as well and the old city looked like something out of a fairytale.  Michael had yet another surprise in store for me as he had booked a dog sledding adventure.  We arrived at the dog sled park and changed into very thick, padded overalls, jackets and gloves and were allocated our dog team.  I chose to sit in the sled while Michael was the driver (musher).  All was going perfectly with our dogs racing us through the snow, until we came to a snow bank. I climbed out as the dogs could not climb over the bank with my weight in the sled.  I scrambled over the snow bank on my hands and knees and looked up as the dogs leapt over the bank with Michael airborne on the sled.  I just had time to think “whoa, that is impressive” when the dogs landed, the sled landed and Michael was flung sideways from the sled.  The dogs, freed from the heavy load of their passengers, took off like rockets through the snow with the sled bouncing wildly behind them. Michael and I had to trudge through the snow to a hut where we had to wait until another team of dogs could come and get us.  I don’t think we were very popular that day.  When we returned to the base camp our first team of dogs were waiting and I swear they were grinning.

I was very impressed with Ottawa.  It is the capital of Canada and has many imposing public buildings.  Unfortunately the river hadn’t quite frozen so people weren’t ice-skating.  Apparently it is an amazing sight in late January/February seeing all the skaters on the river.

 


Well, a report on Toronto would not be complete without an update on the illustrious mayor.  What can I say?  Every revelation is more shocking than the last and with each expose his popularity continues to rise.  A chalk protest was held outside City Hall (such a Canadian thing – writing messages in chalk on the pavement so that they can be washed away without causing permanent damage).  I walked downtown to have a look at the messages and was approached by a French film crew to give an outsider’s view on the Rob Ford fiasco.  I happily obliged and told them that it was time for the mayor to go.  Unfortunately, the mayor is not listening to me.