Christmas

We have been having a busy week in Cape Town, Lyn has been testing children non-stop. On Saturday it was Ineke's (my sister) birthday and my parents took us out for lunch at Alphen which was very nice. On Christmas day, we had the 'traditional' Christmas dinner at Ineke and Franco's house. This year only 7 of us: Ineke and Franco's children and grandchildren are away for Christmas and of course Sean is in London. He reports to having had a nice Chistmas lunch at his house there.
Tomorrow we are off to Johannesburg to spend a few days with Lyn's parents and siblings.
Here are some rather dark pictures: one of sunset over Lions Head and one of dinner at Ineke's place.

Back in Cape Town

We are back in Cape Town. On Saturday night  we still had the very special Christmas dinner, which Janine and Gwilym oranised for the 4 of us plus those of our children who are in the UK. So Gwlym and Janine's daughter Severine and her partner Hamish plus Sean made up the crowd (Gwilym and Janine have a married daughter, Sophie, in Cape Town and we of course have Greg there). It was a wonderful occasion with many "Christmassy' highlights of which I would like to share a picture of the 'flaming' pudding.  Christmas in the UK is certainly very much different from that in South Africa, the 'atmosphere' is really there!

Flaming pudding!

You will have noticed that the last few blog entries are rather food-dominated, which I think is resulting in the earlier reported weight loss (thanks to the extra walking) having been nullified. We'll have to work on that in the new year.

On Saturday evening we left London and after a rather long journey via Dubai we are now back in Cape Town. It was of course especially nice to see Greg, I had not seen him in 8 months (Lyn saw him in August). We'll be here until 16 January when we return to London. In the meantime, Lyn has a lot of work to do and I'll catch up on some admin.

Pre Christmas celebrations

With one week to go before Christmas (and one day before we leave for our month long stay in Cape Town), we have been busy with some pre-christmas stuff: the dinners here at The Avenue have been quite festive, we went to Central London for some shopping and last night we had dinner at a real English "Private Members Club"! The first two are adequately described by way of the pictures below:

Dinner at The Avenue. See the Christmas lights in the background. Also be aware that it gets dark at 4pm now! 

Typical London Tourist picture: The horse guards in Whitehall.

The windows of especially the more upmarket shops are beautrifully decorated!

Lyn's cousin David invited us (including Sean) for diner at his club last night. Dave's daughter Kelly was also there. The club is the RAC (Royal Automobile Club), in Pall Mall. It is quite an amazing place, with several bars, three restaurants and a multitude of function rooms plus a TV lounge, an indoor swimming pool, a gym and a very nice library. There are even over 100 rooms where members can spend the night. The dinner was very nice too! Quite an experience in the centre of London.

Sean and Kelly at the Christmas tree in the central hall of the RAC

The RAC library

Pre-Christmas fever!

It is now 2 weeks to go and Christmas fever is beginning to hit London.
Both on Friday and on Saturday this week,we spent some time in Central London and began to experience this.
On Friday, our good friend Cynthia (who is paying an unexpected but welcome visit to London) planned to do one of the guided tours that are organised by 'London Walks'. She suggested we come as well and we happily joined the 'Dickens Walk', which takes one along the border between the City of Westminster (also called the "West End", where most of the theatres, the Government buildings, the shopping areas and the major parks are) and the City of London (also called "the City", which is the financial centre). More or less on this border are the Royal Courts of Justice and all the (old and new) buildings which have and had something to do with the legal system over the centuries. This is the area around which Dickens moved for part of his life and where he got the inspiration for many of the characters in his books. The tour was very well guided by Jean (in period costume), who must have been an actress in earlier days.
After the tour we warmed up with a cup of coffee and then walked past Somerset House where there is a very festive ice rink.
Here are some pictures:

Guide Jean

Lyn and Cynhia in front of  "The Old Curiosity Shop"

The Old Curiosity Shop itself

The Ice rink at Somerset House

On Saturday, Rachel (Lyn's niece) and Mathew (Rachel's husband) came down from Cambridge and we spent the day together. The plan had been for Lyn and Rachel to go skating at Somerset house, but all tickets for the day had been sold. As they had ever been to the National Gallery, we went there for a short while. Sean joined in after we came out of the Gallery. This is on Trafalgar Square, where they were just having a 'Santa Takes Over Trafalgar' event (maybe with a reference to the Occupy movement at St Paul's?). The square was teeming with cheerful and festive red clad Santa's; here they can be seen sitting on the base of Nelson's column:

After lunch on the South Bank, we slowly moved to Hyde Park where they have 'Winter Wonder Land', a massive affair with a nice Christmas market, an ice rink and many rides. Unfortunately (and probably at least partly due to the nice weather), it was heaving with people, it was impossible to move around at all, so after a cup of mulled wine we left and walked to Oxford street and Regent street to see the Cristmas lights (which, especially in Regent street, are nice although not on the scale we saw in Vienna two years ago).

Mulled wine at Santa's pub.

The Winter Wonder land rides from a distance.

Sean moving into new premises

On Friday night, Lyn came back from a succesful course in Glasgow (which lived up to the 'cold and wet' reputation). And yesterday (Saturday), we assisted Sean with the move to his new address. First Sean and I took the bus to Hounslow to collect the bedding which he had ordered on-line. It should have been delivered to us, but because of the Christmas workload, the company did not deliver in time (first time I have experienced that here), but they allowed us to collect it from the nearest store. Then the three of us went (with all of Sean's worldly belongings in 2 suitcases and a few random packages) by underground to Wimbledon Park station, which is a 5 minute walk from the house which he now shares with 3 others (see the previous post for more on this arrangement). Although it was dark by the time we got there (around 5.30), the area has a nice 'villagey' feel and the house seems fine. Here are pictures, first of us at Kew Gardens station (showing the luggage) and then of Sean in front of the house.

On the weather front: it is now getting quite a bit colder. We heard on TV that it has been the dryest and warmest autumn in I don't know how many years, which explains why we have not really had any problems with the weather at all. But for next week, we could get a bit of frost (and snow in Scotland and on the high grounds in the North of England but so far not here). In two weeks time, we'll be going to South Africa for a few weeks to celebrate Christmas with the family over there (Greg and our parents and siblings). We look forward to that, altough we'll of course miss Sean a lot.

Quiet time

We don't really have a lot to report this week. We joined the library in Richmond (took 2 minutes vs 2 weeks in Table View). And we finished Lyn's educational programme for children with (all sorts of) learning disabilities. Lyn wrote it principally for the Amathemba school for children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in Table View, and that is where it will be piloted next year, but it has much wider application and we hope to 'spread it' after it has been fine tuned during the pilot. It consists of 5 modules, the total is about 1000 pages of manuals and workbooks plus 'kits' with items to support the actions in the programme. It has been a massive job and has really only been possible because Lyn has not got a daily practise with a client load to look after now.
She left this afternoon to go to a course in Glasgow on the principle of Feuerstein, a subject which she has been interested for many years and for which a course had now finally come up in a (reasonably) accessible place. So I will be by myself in Richmond for the week, although Sean will keep me company, at least after work. His news is that he has found a place to stay, a 'half house' in Wimbledon which he shares with three others. That arrangement ('flatshare') is the norm here for single young people. To rent a full flat for yourself is simply unaffordable in London (unless in a 'not too savoury' neigbourhood). Wimbledon is to London what Perth is to Australia: It is full of South Africans. Apart from Charing Cross (in Central London), there are a number of South African shops in Wimbledon (where you can buy Castle beer, Ouma rusks, NikNaks and ProNutro if you are so inclined). No wonder that his three housemates (a couple and a single girl) are also South African. He is moving in on Saturday (after the company's Christmas party at Hever Castle as reported earlier).
More news next week!

Remembrance day and the Tchaikovsky concert

To start off: in the last post on the British Museum I forgot to mention and show the Rosetta stone. This is a stone 'tablet' which, as it has an identical text in three 'languages', provided the key to deciphering hyroglyphes. The picture below shows the original Rosetta stone, you can quite clearly see the three different texts. There is also a copy of the stone, whch you can lean over (and touch) to enable you to see the characters more clearly. Click on the link for more information.

The Rosetta stone

Last week, on 11 November, it was Remembrance day. That is the day on which the British nation commemorates the people who lost their lives in all wars since WW1. As these people gave their lives to preserve the freedom we all enjoy in Britain today, it is justifyably observed in a big way. On the day itself there is a 2 minute silence, but the main events are during the weekend after 11 November, culminating in the wreath laying ceremony (including the Queen and the 'major' Royals), a short service and a march past in which many military and civil service units also lay wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. In the garden outside Westminster Abbey, which is close to the Cenotaph, there is a field of remembrance, where individuals are remembered by way of small wooden crosses. These are put down there by the regiments etc in which the individuals served, but members of the public can get a cross (a donation for the 'poppy factory', which is an organisation which raises funds to support the families of the war dead and also those wounded in the wars, is expected). As an uncle of Aubrey (Aubrey is Lyn's dad), died as results of injuries sustained in WW1, Lyn put a cross down. As a matter of fact, this uncle, Private P. Pitman, was buried in Richmond. We found the grave in the South Africa section of the Richmond cemetary. The pictures below show some of the above.

Wreaths at the Cenotaph

The South Africa (l) and the M.O.T.H.(r) section at the field of remembrance

An overview of a section of the field of remembrance 

Lyn plants a cross for P. Pitman in the South Africa section of the field of remembrance

P. Pitman's grave in Richmond cemetary

After our visit to Whitehall, we went to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank with Sean to see and hear Janine Jansen with the London Phylharmonic Orchestra play Tchaikovsky's violin concerto which was outstanding. The other work on the programme was the 4th Symphony by Bruckner, which - although performed very well - is not that much our taste of music.

The Royal Festival hall, seen from the balcony seats

In the meantime, back in Cape Town, Greg is very busy with the honey business. Recently, 'Brother Bees' had an order for 500 Kg so he filled 500 1Kg bottles by himself. Here is a picture of the 'stock':