Crone in the UK

 Hogsmill River is a small little river, some might call it a stream or a creek, that runs through Kingston-upon-Thames. This is next to the Kingston School of Art Knights Park campus where Owen works. This is where we ate our lunch today and watched all the little water birds milling about doing their thing. You can watch ducks, herons, moor hens, Canada geese and much more. There are even some good size fish in there as well. Enjoy this little video of the duck munching away on something. She is at the bottom in the middle. Eventually you see her swim/float away.

 Alas dear reader, I am sorry. This is another post about Richmond Park. It is just such a bloody brilliant place to spend one's time.  Today I was there for a follow up visit for Holly Lodge. After my meeting, I wandered around again. There was another section of the park I wanted to explore. This time I came across a BUNCH  of deer.  There are two species of deer that live in the park: fallow deer and red deer. Today I saw both! I was walking along a path and across on the other side there was a small group of about six to eight fallow deer. I didn't stop to take photo as I was on a task. A little later in my walk I stopped at a kiosk to buy a sandwich and a drink. I sat down on a nearby bench to enjoy my lunch and I looked up and low and behold, there was another group of fallow deer munching away on something in the bracken. As I watched them, a small family of red deer walked up. They crossed the roadway and joined the group of fallow deer. They all seemed to ge...

 One thing we have noticed, at least in Richmond/Kingston, is the dearth of advertising in public places. There are no billboards. There are very few large poster-type ads in public spaces such as beside roads and motorways. There is no advertising on buses. There is no advertising in buses -- except ads for TFL (Transport for London) services or NHS (National Health Service) PSAs. Bus stops have no adverts. Even small posters advertising local bands playing at the local pub are few and far between. I have seen very few people smoking. So few that when I do see someone smoking it surprises me. Vaping however, is everywhere. So much vaping. You are allowed to smoke in the outdoor seating areas of restaurants here. Very weird.  I have yet to figure out how to walk down the sidewalk here. In Canada, we roughly walk down the sidewalk the same way we drive. Not here. There seems to be no consistent way to give way to a person walking toward you. Some people will veer to the right, ...

Before we left, many of my friends who have travelled here or lived here for any length of time told me that the stories of rain in London are greatly exaggerated. That certainly has been our experience so far. Yes it has rained and a couple of times a good hearty rain, but overall it has been very pleasant. Rains are often just a bit of a drizzle and they don't last long and it doesn't rain every day.  Temperatures have been in the high teens, low twenties every day. We often have beautiful blue sky. This is the perfect temperature for me having been born in northern Alberta and spending a large part of my life in the mountains. Like everywhere, they do get heat waves from time to time. In fact, one had just ended prior to our landing. Temps were in the high twenties and edged into the low thirties.  The view from my window today What is difficult for me here is the humidity. Twenty-three degrees feels much much hotter. I am always soaked through to the skin with sweat. Elect...

 Before I left Canada, I was trying to soak up as many sensory experiences as I could so I could lock them away in a vault in my heart to be enjoyed when I was feeling homesick. My beautiful daughters' faces, their hugs, their smell. I went on long walks in the ravine near my house and soaked in the smell of the forest. I wondered if England would smell different. How does an English forest smell? Today I wandered over to Richmond Park. I have an interview there tomorrow about a volunteer position at a nature centre. I wanted to get a sense of the place.  My original plan was just to wander along the bottom bit that is near my house, but once I was there I decided I would walk the length of the park and then catch the bus home from the other side.  I was greeted by this character. That is one of the fern thickets to get a sense of how big they are. The English forest does smell very different from a Canadian forest, but it still has that deep earthy smell of life. As Robe...

 Today I walked over to Teddington Lock to see what the river looks like a low tide. To be honest, it didn't seem very different to my untrained eye. What I did find though, was very cool. The locks were in full operation moving boats up and down the river.  While I know what a lock is and roughly how they work, I've never actually seen one in operation. It was very cool.  For those of you who don't know, let me give you a brief overview. A lock is to move boats from one section of a canal to another where the water level is appreciably different. Boats don't do so well going uphill or downhill (ie: waterfalls) so humans have employed locks to help boat traffic move along. Basically, you block off a section of a canal with gates. The boats drive into this section. Then they drain the water using some sort of magic until the water level of the closed section is the same as the next section. They then open the next section of the gate to let the boats go free. The gate cl...

 Today I got my first British Library card. Signing up for my library card was one of the first things I did when I arrived, but unfortunately, I couldn't complete my sign up as I was lacking a proof of address that they would accept. I had to wait until my local bank card came through. Today I was finally able to go pick it up and learn about all the library services available to me! Having a library card makes me feel like I really live here. I have worked for the public library system in both Edmonton and Calgary. When I worked for EPL, customers would regularly tell me how great our service was. They couldn't believe all the things that were accessible to them through the library for free. So many people think only of books when they think of the library, but the modern library is so much more. Through EPL, you can take out books, DVDs, CDs, and video games. Electronically, you have e-books, music services, online courses, online reference databases, online newspapers from ...

We hear a lot about how the social media giants are spying on us constantly and know our every move. It's often quite creepy how things show up in your feed.  However, since I have moved to the UK, Meta doesn't seem to know I am here. I am using WIFI from an ISP located in the UK, I have updated all my settings with my new location and I am not seeing content and advertisements for my local area yet. It's bizarre. The "suggested for you" are all still from Canada, and some strange ones from the US are even starting to show up now. But nothing much from the UK.   Maybe the laws here don't allow the same creeping as they do in North America? Dunno. It's weird. 

I have been in this country for exactly 14 days. It is completely different and yet not so different at all.  I really haven't been able to get out and about very much. We have frequented restaurants and grocery shops, met the owner of the local bookshop and wandered up and down the walking paths around us. But we, or rather I, haven't really interacted with people very much other than our landlords. I have been limited by how far I could comfortably walk. The public transport system here no longer accepts cash and so I have been unable to go very far while I waited for my bank card to arrive so I could set up my Oyster card and be able to get around. What on earth is an Oyster card? It's the payment system they use here for public transport. If you are in Edmonton, it's like an ARC card.  For the first few days, I just slept as my body adjusted to the time change. I started looking for ESOL jobs of which there are precious few especially in the limited area I am lookin...

 I have wanted to try scotch eggs for as long as I have known about them. I have had a recipe to make them for almost as long as I have know of their existence, but I never made them. Partly this was because it is a bit of a complicated process and not really ever having seen one or eaten one, I wasn't confident enough to try. Experienced makers and consumers of scotch eggs will likely me mock me for that.  We have been frequenting the various grocery shops to figure out who has what we like and good prices. Whilst wandering through an Aldi Local recently, we happened upon pre-packaged scotch eggs! What fun! We must try these.  Now we are cognisant that these are pre-packaged and not freshly made, so that does factor into our thoughts on them. A scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg encased in pork sausage with breading on the outside. They can be eaten warm or cold.    So the egg itself was like any packaged hard boiled egg. The sausage we found a bit bland for our ...

 Many years ago, in North America, McDonald's restaurants taught us all how to clean up after ourselves. Really it was a way for them to minimise staff time thus saving them labour costs, but it was so effective, we all just transferred the practice to other fast food restaurants and food courts. One NEVER leaves their tray and packaging on the table. That is the height of rude.  This practice does not seem to extend to the UK, however. Or at least not at the McDonald's where we had dinner tonight. We thought it would be funny to try McDonald's and see if it was the same or different than back home. More on that later. Owen waited for our food whist I went to find us a table. There were lots of free tables, but they were all dirty and covered in the previous diner's trash. I found one that wasn't too bad and was able to clear it off to make it vaguely acceptable to sit at. I did notice one young lass tasked with cleaning up the dirty tables, but she was running arou...

 One of the things that excited me about moving here is learning about the flora and fauna of my new home.  As I walk along the Thames, there are birds everywhere. Some new to me, some old friends. There are so many ducks. I look forward to learning all of them! I was surprised to find lots of fellow expat Canadians  Swans are a common sight Grey Heron

As I am applying for jobs, I am learning the differences in formatting letters, addresses and phone numbers between North American style and British style.  Phone numbers here have 10 digits, same as back home, but wait! No, they actually have 11 digits for you see, one must add a leading zero to the beginning of one's phone number whilst using it in the UK so the phone system knows you are here.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In North America, there is only one way to write phone numbers -- a three digit area code, hyphen, three digit region code, hyphen, four digit personal code. You write it thusly: XXX-XXX-XXXX. If you are calling long distance, you just add a 1 to the beginning of the number. It doesn't matter what the area codes are, it is always written the same way. Simple and the same everywhere. In the UK, how you format it depends on so much more.  In the UK, the area code (known as the STD code) depends on geography, service (landline or mobile) and service provider. Including th...

Occasionally they offer you helpful advice.   So when I was younger I was a professional dancer. Part of your training is to learn to do things both left and right. When you learned a combination, you had to learn it predominantly right and then again predominantly left. It was hard!  We all learn to cross the street safely as a young child. You internalise this in a way that you don't realise until it changes.  In the UK, traffic is opposite. Cars travel on the left, not the right. So this means you need to re-learn not just driving skills but pedestrian skills. When you cross the street, you must look right first, not left as you are accustomed to. After a few close calls, we have learned that we must cross the street much more mindfully. We approach the kerb, pause, think "look right",  pause, think "look left",  pause,  think "look right again", THEN cross.  I wonder how long it will take me to internalise this to the point where I do it without th...

This crone has been in the UK for 4 days. Today is the first day it has rained. The temps are quite comfortable. I prefer cooler weather, but the humidity was unexpected. Why was it unexpected? You live on an island in the middle of the sea. Foolish woman.  The area we are living in is quite lovely. We have ventured out and about in the immediate vicinity, but have not yet braved heading into central London. Perhaps on the weekend. We did venture down the biking/walking path near our home. It wends its way along the shore of the Thames and is quite lovely.  I must find a field guide for birds. There are so many interesting little birds all around and I don't recognise any of them. I must begin learning soon. One big surprise was finding a flock of Canada Geese floating along the Thames. I looked it up and sure enough, they have expanded into this area, but they do not migrate as the climate is likely quite pleasant for them year round. Many Canadian Geese in Calgary did not mi...