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 ...