This is "Onbekommerd"!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Still Stratford

Just a short update: We had a nice weekend with Sean here. We went to 3 of the 4 'Shakespeare Houses' that are open in winter. Sean went back to woork in London last night, and Lyn and I walked to the 4th one this morning. There is a 5th one, but it is closed out of season. By now, we have pretty much seen what is to be seen in Stratford upon Avon. As a comment on the blog said, it is a shame to do it in 2 hours, 2 days would be good. If we stay any longer, we could become tourist guides ourselves! We are going back to London on Thursday; if the weather is agreeable we will take a bus to Moreton in Marsh tomorrow. That is in the Cotswolds and there is a market on a Tuesday. We did a 7 day walk in the Cotswolds 4 years ago, which started in Moreton in Marsh, so it will be nice to go back there.



Anne Hathaway's cottage, where we walked this morning. It is about half an hour's walk from Stratford town centre. Ann Hathaway was Shakespeare's wife and this is where she grew up.




The first signs that we are moving towards spring: These are called 'crocussen' in Dutch (don't know what they are in English, I'll find out). They are usually some of he first flowers out, sometimes piercing through the snow.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Walking around Stratford

The last few days we walked around Stratford a bit. First we took a guided town walk; we generally like these guided walks as they teach you such a lot about the background and history which you miss out on when you walk around by yourself. This guided walk was especially nice as we were the only guests, it became a private tour; that is the advantage of being here out of season!

Then this morning, in bright sunshine, we walked, by ourselves this time, along the Stratford Canal (which runs right behind our little 'house') and the River Avon.
The canal has lots of locks in it, and as 'boaters' we are obviously immediately interested in them. They are very different from the locks we are used to, as they are 'narrowboat' locks, you could quite easily jump over them. The lock doors (only one on each side) are hand operated. Now, outside the season, they are closed: the handles for the sluice gates have been removed. Whilst the canal is now only used by pleasurecraft, it was dug in the early 19th century to transport (mainly) coal to the inland industries. With the arrival of the railways in the early 20th century the canal was not used anymore and deteriorated severely and only in the 1960's was it restored for recreational purposes. There is an enormous network of these canals and, as you can see from one of the photographs below,  one can get all the way to London or to York from here. Of course the locks are way to narrow for 'Onbekommerd'! Any way, even though it would be quite possible to cross from France to England, that is not part of our plan!
The Avon of course is a proper river. The Holy Trinity church, where Shakespeare lies buried (see previous post) is built right on the bank of the river.


The King James bible, dating from 1611, in the Holy Trinity Church (see previous post).


Lots of locks, one behind the other, in the Stratford Canal.



The locks are very different from the ones we are used to!



The canal network can take you lots of places (in a narrowboat).




Holy Trinity Church from across the Avon.



Tomorrow, Sean is coming up for the weekend, we'll do a bit more exploring with him!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Shakespeare country

As mentioned in the previous post, we are currently staying in Stratford upon Avon, the place where Shakespeare ws born and died (he lived and worked in London for some time as well).
We have rented an appartment for 2 weeks here. It is very comfortable and within walking distance not only from the station (we came by train of course) but also from almost all there is to see in this little town (and from the shops and pubs).
As we have a lot of time, we will pace ourselves a bit in looking at the 'Sharespeare things'. We have already walked several times past his birthplace (it is 200m from where we are, so it is hard not to pass it on the way to the shops!).


Sharespeares birthplace


Today we visited the Holy Trinity Church where he is buried. There has been a church on this site since at least 713, but the present building dates 'only' from 1210. Shakespeare was baptised here in 1564 and buried in 1616. The register entries for both baptism and burial are displayed in the church. Next to his grave are the graves of his wife and other familiy members. He was a 'lay rector' which gave him the privilege to be buried inside here. There is an original first edition of the King James bible here, which dates from 1611, Shakespeare would have read from this very same book. It is very much a 'working church' and we found that they have succceeded extremely well in preserving the identity of the working church and not having alowed it to become secondary to the grave of the Bard. Elsewhere in Stratford, that has not been so successful: It is a very attractive town on its own accord but the Shakespeare connection has taken over quite a bit too heavily (at least, that is what we think!).



The Shakespeare grave (second from left). The leftmost one is where his wife lies, the other three are his daughter, his daughters husband and her father in law.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Leonardo, Sean and Dickens

What do these three have to do with each other? Nothing really, except that we 'interacted' with each of them yesterday.
In the morning we went to the 'Leonardo da Vinci, painter at the court of Milan' exhibition in the National Gallery. This exhibition shows 9 of the (only) 15 paintings which Leonardo produced in his lifetime, together with the drawings, sketches and studies he made in preparation for these paintings. It is a unique and hugely successful exhibition. We booked our tickets on 1November and they were sold out a few days later. They sell a certain number of tickets for a half hour 'slot', during which you can enter (you can then stay as long as you like). Unfortunately the number of tickets sold per slot is too large and thus there are still too many people there. For the paintings themselves that is not much of a problem, but as the drawings and sketches are mostly quite small, it is all but impossible to get close enough to see them properly. Still, it was very worthwhile to go, as the paintings are superb! The effects of the fall of the light (for instance) set Leonardo apart from many other artists.

After that, we met Sean at his office and went out for a pub lunch with him. We had not seen him for a month and we were pleased to see he is very well and nicely settled into his new life, with work, his house(share) and all.

In the afternoon we went on to the 'Museum of London' where they have an exhibition on the 'London of Dickens'. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth so there is a lot of Dickens around. Both Lyn and I are currently reading Dickens on the Kindle and the iPad and are enjoying it a lot.

Not a lot by way of pictures today, maybe I'll add one tomorrow.

As promised, here are 2 pictures:


Charles Dickens' writing desk (with part of a slideshow behind it)


Although the City of London corporation has won its High Court bid to have the 'Occupy' protestors removed, they have not disappeared from the courtyard outside St Paul's Cathedral yet (awaiting an appeal to the Human Rights Court). Actually by now it has degraded to a 'hippie camp'.

 
We are now in Stratford upon Avon for a fortnight, so expect some Shakespeare in the next post!



Tuesday, January 17, 2012

From the heat to the cold: Back in London

We are back at our current official address in London.

On leaving Cape Town yesterday, it was 34 degrees and when we landed at Heathrow this morning at 6.30 it was zero! So it is back to overcoats, scarves and gloves. Today it was not uncomfortable though, as it was dry and still. We walked into Richmond to do some errands (like getting a local sim card for the iPad).

I am now trying to update the blog from the iPad (which will be very helpful once we get back to Onbekommerd in April) but have not worked out yet how to upload images. More later!

Ahh, here we are, here is a picture of the local 'high street', called George Street.





Finally, in this picture you can see it really is winter, not a leaf on the trees!





Saturday, January 14, 2012

Getting ready to go back to London

We have been very busy the last week: Lyn has been training the teachers of the "Amathemba" school in her new educational system. Amathemba is a school for children with FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) and other children with global development delays similar to those with FAS. During our London time in 2011 Lyn has developed a learning 'system' for this school. (maybe I have already reported this in an earlier post: now that I write it, it sounds awfully familiar!).

On Tuesday, I had lunch with some ex-collegues. We used to share a table in the SANS canteen at lunchtime and  as we were all fairly senior employees, this was known (by others, not by us) as the 'money table'. We discovered this just before the company closed down and since then we have been organising a nice lunch (often at a wine estate) once every 6 weeks or so. We discuss the old times and what we are up to now, speculate about what has happened to everyone else and talk the same nonsense we did 'back then'. Of course I have been missing out on the 'money table lunch' for 8 months and the other 5 were kind enough to let me pick the venue for a lunch on 10 January (we take turns in choosing the venue). Here is a picture of the other 5:



At the same time, I have been sorting out all sorts of things that needed sorting out which in the increasingly inefficient South Africa has been a bit frustrating. Then yesterday morning the geyser ('hot water cylinder') decided to pack up and it needed 4 hours of electricians and plumbers work to get it fixed. I really did not need that! Anyway, all is fine now (except for the delivery of a book for Lyn, which is way overdue). So we are getting ready to move back to London on Monday. From there we will go to Onbekommerd just before Easter, until early October, we are back here in Cape Town on 4 October (how's that for long term planning...). So today we had my parents and my sister and husband for a 'braai' on the Dolphin Beach balcony (for a change it was not blowing too hard).
The next post will probably be from London, we are too busy to do updates in the next few days.



Braai at Dolphin Beach

Monday, January 2, 2012

Johannesburg and New Year

After Christmas, Lyn, Greg and I flew up to Johannesburg to spend some time with the family there. Of course we had not seen them for at least 8 months so it was good to catch up. Greg had taken a number of honey samples, which were tasted with interest.




Whilst we were there, we did see more rain in an hour than we saw in London in 8 months. Who was talking about the British rain? Maybe in Wales and Scotland, but this year certainly not in the South East of England! It was good to see the Gibbons family again and also hard to say goodbye: it will be another 8 months before we are back.

We were also fortunate to have dinner with Janet and Kevin Heydenrych and with James. Greg had already spent a night with his cousin earlier on .

Back in Cape Town, Lyn got back to her passion of photographing sunsets. Here is a nice one as seen from our balcony at Dolphin Beach (although maybe a bit dark):


Greg has now gone to join some friends in Langebaan, so Lyn and I spent New Year's eve by ourselves. We watched the fireworks in the Cape Town waterfront from our balcony, it is a bit far, but still quite nice to see. Not on a scale like we see on video clips from Sydney, Dubai or London, but still...
Sean celebrated New Year in London and reports that he enjoyed it (but no details are available..).

We wish the readers of our blog a very Happy and most of all Healthy New Year!