Life's Cruising Along

We haven't sent a blog for a while because we've been doing slightly less exciting but restful travel. Yesterday we did a very Southampton thing and watched a cruise ship coming in to Docks. In fact this wasn't just any cruiser but the new biggest passenger cruiser in the world. It is called "Liberty of the sea". It's docked in Southampton this week before heading to the Carribean for the rich British tourists to see the sights from aboard. The fog horn was like an earthquake!! On board there is a rock climbing wall and ice skating rink (greg was very impressed by that!- but not impressed enough to buy a ticket).


Check out the people standing at the prow for the scale. We counted 14 floors. there may be more beneath the deck. On the left of this picture you can see a passenger standing on his private balcony!
Working backwards in time, we went to a proper football match. We were blown away by the supporters cheering! This was a division two Coca-cola championship match between Leeds and the Southampton Saints. we felt obliged to barrack for Southampton (especially after they won 1 - 0). We saw our first goal after some embarassing cheering by us when two previous "goals" went through, only to be disallowed due to the off-side rule. Can anybody explain that to Jane? Greg's tried several times now!



Leeds in yellow. Saints in red and white. No goal came of this penalty shot. 1 red card and 3 yellow kept the Leeds fans in their box. The St. Mary's stadium holds 30,000 and was built reasonably recently.



















Last weekend we drove down to Dorset to see Jane's mum's cousins, Jane and Hew and their daughter, Anna. Their house has just been built recently and they're the second owners. Its huge inside. There is a herd of 40 wild deer that wander around their property eating their roses!! The weather was amazing (clear blue skies, sunshine and 25 degrees) and still is which is fantastic but also slightly scary since its only April. Global Warming is the whispered phrase on the street here as in Australia.
Jane has been working hard on a talk for the radiographers and it was received very well last Thursday. Now, as planned, she's been moved to work in CT where there's supposedly more sitting around and scanning and obviously no more operating theatres!!! Yay!!!!
We'd love to hear from you. News of home and Australia is always greatly welcomed. We'll try to respond promtly. Our email addresses are:
greg_altmann33@hotmail.com
jane_m@go.com

Easter in Little Hadham

We anticipated Easter to be a lovely peaceful resting time. And that's almost what we got... plus a 2yr and a 3yr old. Here we are wandering the public footpaths in East Anglia between rolling hills filled with tiny black lambs and trees in full blossom.
We arrived in Little Hadham on Friday morning. Little Hadham is just near Stansted Airport, North of London. We'd been warned by everyone about spending Good Friday in the Linear Carpark (otherwise known as the M25 - the major motoway circling London). To avoid this we drove from Southampton to Stansted via Oxford for breakfast. The family in Little Hadham thought we were crazy! Jane's Grandpy's cousin owns 600 acres in Little Hadham. His three grown sons now run different aspects of the farm. More about them later.On Easter Saturday we caught up with good mates from Jane's St Hildas days, Fi and Davo. Fi is working at a school just 8 miles from Little Hadham. They'd booked Jamie Oliver's parent's pub for lunch. The food was spectacular and the atmosphere nicely relaxed for long hours of catching up. No famous faces were spotted but we did pick up a signed recipe book.

Whilst on the farm Dorothy and Robert put us up. They have apparently been planning a trip to Oz for many years but us Aussie relies are never there they say! On Sunday we met the youngest and middle son and his wife and two children. Pictured above are Wendy and Ruby (2) and Jemima, the biting puppy.

Robert (Right) and Albert(3) (Left).
David (middle Collins boy), Albert, Dorothy and Blossom the Shetland pony, bought especially for Albert to learn the ways of the farmyard.

Jane and Albert on a stroll through the fields. We'd had enough of piggy back rides for now (Well jane had but Albert could go on riding forever).

Dorothy and Robert in there kitchen. The house was built in 1503 and they've done a lot of work on this section. The cupboards were made from the old horse stable.

Mark the eldest son and his wife Jane have recently had a beautiful baby girl called Florence. We had dinner with them on Friday night but Florence was sleeping and we were so busy talking we forgot the camera. We'll go back soon we hope.

On Monday we drove via the country road to Cambridge just 40 mins north. Firstly we had to visit the fudge shop (which Jane thinks makes the best fudge in the world). then we took a punt boat ride along the Cam River. We passed by the back of many of the major colleges and learnt a lot of history. And we saw the place were Harry Potter learnt to fly in the first movie! There were plently of people trying to punt themselves along but we thought the weather was a tad cold for a swim in early April.

This is the Mathematical bridge. It is an amazing piece of physics because it is not attached to the bank at either end, as in it just rests there with no screws to hold it. Each plank distributes the weight equally. Its perfectly safe to walk over.

This is one of the colleges. A little more grand than St Hildas! The photo doesn't do it justice but hte only thing not in perfect symitry is the eagle sitting above the main entrance. His head is turned to the left. Everything else lines up in straight lines. In fact the residents were asked not to leave their windows open so as not to disturb the picture and in the past they were fined if they did.

This library on the left was designed by Christopher Wren. It holds the original drawing of Pooh Bear along with many other famous books. The library is part of Trinity College where the famous race around the quadrangle (featured in " Chariot's of Fire") is held every year.

This is the Round Church, the second oldest church in Cambridge, built in the 1100's. We started a walking tour from here that took us through several major college chapels and taught us a lot about the amazing history of this university town. We learnt about the Christian Reformation and Isaac Newton and many others.

On the right is a building with special significance to the phrase "daylight robbery". At the time of building the government taxed builders for the number and size of windows in a building. After completion the owners found they couldn't afford the tax and had some of their windows boarded up or bricked in. Hence the expression " daylight robbery"!!

And sadly we did have to come home and go back to work to save up for the next trip! Here's Jane in her usual Theatre scrubs with fellow wise radiographer, Patricia.

Lindfield with Joyce Chalcraft

Here we are with another semi-grandmother of Jane's, Joyce. Her sister, Iris, lives in Australia and has been a family friend throughout the generations. We spent a night in her house in the village of Lindfield, near Haywards Heath. It's a beautiful little place with a famous village pond.

On Sunday she took us to Wakehurst Place, a National Trust home built around 1560. The house is actually not all that special inside but the surrounding gardens are owned by Kew Gardens (in London) and they're spectacular. The garden's beds are arranged by continent and they have plants from all over the world, including plenty from the Himalayas. We did a fascinating walking tour of a small section of the garden which took an hour to give to a sense of its size!

The Millenium Seed Bank is also on the property. This is also an amazing place where the seeds of all the plants in England are collected and stored at minus 20 degrees. They project that the seeds will keep for 1000 years and therefore they'll be able to stop any plants from becoming extinct. They also hold 10% of the world's plant and its moving up to 20% by 2020. Pretty encouraging to know just incase something nasty happens.
This tree was thought to be extinct. It's called a Wollemi Pine. It was discovered by David Noble, a parks offficer working West of Sydney. The seeds have been germinated and now botanists are trying to work out which conditions it prefers. Britain has this tree, one in London and another in Edinburough. A fossil of the trees foliage is dated back 90 million years. Its one old tree! They have to keep it in a cage in case someone decides to pinch it. And it has a thermometer on the cage to monitor the tempurature.

No Score In Brighton!

Our first English soccer game. We watched Brighton and Hove Albion (The Seagulls) play Huddersfield. We were so thrilled to be there even if it was only third grade footy.

Even the freezing cold weather couldn't get us down. But as the game wore on...and on... with the only action being provided by the away team's acting capabilities (pretending injuries 5 times) we began to miss Aussie Rules. We watched 90 minutes with no scoring. Being used to watching the bombers kick away a few 100 points each game, it was a disapointing result. But the crowd didn't seem to mind.

We were able to spend a weekend in Brighton thanks to Jane's grandparents. We stayed in a great B & B and toured the Brighton Pier (where extremely cheesy music and expensive rides were discovered) the Lanes and the Pavilion.

On the end of the pier we almost quit radiography for life in the pokies (well its fun equivalent).

We kept putting in 10p coins, thinking ours would be the one to send 1000 of them toppling into our palms. Greg's strong will was enough to stop us becoming full time gamblers.

The place that impressed us the most was the Pavilion. Built by King George the Forth as a pleasure palace, it resemble the Taj Mahal on the outside and the inside is covered in Chinese paintings all over the walls and Chinese antiques. The chandeliers were absolutely amazing. But photos didn't do them justice. George used to have huge parties here.

We've never seen such a huge kitchen. A menu was on display showing the types of meals that were served up at the Pavilion. It included 100 different dishes for entre alone!! Mum had mentioned the copper pots so although we weren't supposed to take pictures (hence the blurry results) we snapped a few just to revive her memories.

We found this sign on our way back to the hotel. Here was a garden dedicated to the soldiers who died to make the land free to live in. We found it hard to believe that the space was fenced and greg commented that all the Aussie Diggers he knew would have told you to take a load off and enjoy the peace and the wonderful green grass.