The Country

I have a very good friend that lives up in Norwich in UK. We had been threatening to go visit them up there since we first came to England but getting to a new country, finding work, accommodation and just buying your bare essentials we never really had enough money. So finally after 5 months living in London we bought some tickets in advance, gotta love ticketline, and off we went. 

Now as per my previous posts you would know we are not early risers so getting up at 5 in the morning to catch a 7:30 train from Liverpool Street was mission impossible. It was a team effort, I left the alarm well away from the bed and my fiancé kept me from getting back in after I had to get up and turn it off. Then I got her up with some coffee. See team effort!

We arrived at Liverpool with 10 minutes to spare and even had time to buy a quick coffee before boarding. The trip was lovely through the country, we had managed to pick a nice sunny day despite all odds. We arrived in Norwich just after 10am and my friends picked us up and had a drive through what seemed like a very normal suburb to their house. The place reminds you more of Kimberly in South Africa, small'ish town very clean (Haven't been in Kimberly for a while so don't know if that true about Kimberly anymore). There a far fewer busses roaring down the streets people seem less rushed but yet very busy and buzzing. Maybe its just that they seem less stressed, I always wonder if we don't sub consciously pick up on the stress of the city and that just add to our own.

Their house was a lovely cottage, nothing like our dark damp basement flat in Twickenham. It was open airy, had loads of character and space and a HUGE garden. Even had bunnies jumping around it the next morning! The best part, the part that had me green with envy, was that it cost them about half of what I was paying for our place in Twickenham. 

We had some breakfast and then Headed down to Holkam, was a lovely drive through the country. We stopped for a drink at the pub, which eventually turned into lunch at the pub and then walked down to the beach. The beach was actually more of a marsh than a beach. And it was big, it took us the better part of an hour to walk down to the see once we were on the beach. But it was quite an adventure with the guys having to piggy pack the girls over little streams flowing down to the sea and across huge puddles in the marshes.

We finally made it to the sea and I had to go stand barefoot in the surf just so I could say I had been in the North sea. Since the day was clear we could actually even see the fields of wind powered fans on the horizon. 

We took a more direct route back to the edge of the beach and drove back to Norwich. Most of us passing out for a nap on the way.

The night live consisted of us first going to one of their work colleagues surprise birthday party and then to the local art theatre for to listen to a french band. 

All in all, it was great fun. 

We got back at around midnight, sat around their big table in the big dining area, had some coffee and them all passed out for the night. All in all a busy yet very relaxing weekend. I'd recommend it to anyone.

It seems that the people in the country are allot more likely to befriend their work colleagues. Possibly cause they have a little time to do it, and everybody was generally in good moods as opposed to London... anyway.

We are obviously now talking about living in the country, what can I say, we are restless spirits maybe that will be our next stop before Australia becomes a reality maybe not. Only time will tell.

The weekend factor

Monday mornings are always blue, some are more blue than others but only a lucky few people actually enjoys getting up early on a Monday morning after a lazy weekend to go sit in an office again.  But what makes a good weekend? Is it the spending a day in the sun, admittedly I love spending a day outside over the weekend which is made difficult when you have miserable weather all weekend. However it may also just be that you should be happily busy with non essential things. You need to be able to have a story at the end of your weekend, and it needs to involve something you did because you wanted to do it, not because you felt you needed to and it needs to be with someone you enjoy spending your time with. You also need to spend a fair amount of time doing this. Decent stories stretch over more than a couple of hours after all.

So all in all the sun does seem to have little to do with it, but you have to admit its a little harder having a great weekend if you don't feel like going past your front door. So there is your challenge for living in the UK. Find the courage to brave the weather to go somewhere where the weather doesn't matter and make something of your weekend!

After all, we all like a challenge, don't we?

Twickenham Green Breakfast

A sunny Saturday was forecast on Monday and we crossed out figures and prayed that the forecast would not change. Some of the forecast for the rest of the week became slighty grayer and we had some gray days that should have been sunny but we kept hoping. All out wishing was rewarded by gloriously sunny day!

We are not the prone to hurrying on the weekend, and we seldom got out of the house before 12, even if we where going for breakfast. In fact most of our Saturday breakfasts happened between 11 and 12 but we managed an impressive 11 and decided to go for breakfast at the little coffee shop that stretched out over Twickenham green. You are able to sit on comfortable garden furniture and look out over the park. Some days they play cricket on the pitch located on the park but we only had a lawnmower moving lazily up and down the pitch preparing it possibly for an afternoon game. It was far enough away not to bother and the kids ran around and picked up acorns that were continuously falling out of the trees. We had a very close encounter with some acorns that landed on our table from the 10m drop off the tree before we decided to rather move our table a bit way from the tree. Much to the amazement of many of the regulars sitting around us. We had to move twice since in the first move we were rewarded with a loud clank as an acorn fell right on the chair where my fiance was about go sit down.
The food came quickly we enjoyed it and then out of sympathy for a family with 3 kids running around and standing in the queue we got up paid our waitress and walked accross the park to go sit on a bench overlooking the park.
We were however compelled to move shortly after when accorns rained down on the bench and hit my fiance square on the leg. I bet she has a nice little souvenour of our morning out. But all in all it was a nice and relaxing "morning" out.

Climate in a nut shell

London England has about 1500 hours of sunshine a year which add up to about 62.5 days a year (Not all the same day usually) and thats about as good as it gets in the UK, you could possibly get a couple more sunny days in Kent if you're lucky. The average tempratures in winter is about 6'C and in summer 22'C.
Sydney Australia has about 103 days of sunshine with summer 25'C and winter around 12'C. However you could always live in Brisbane which has a Summer of around 25'C and winter around 16'C but it has about 243 days of sunshine a year!

Weather Issues

We had 2 weeks of absolutely miserable weather for the last 2 weeks. However with the sunshine over the weekend and the sun just about shining today the mood suddenly lifts again and all seems well in the world. The problem is that no amount of "pep talks" you have with yourself while the weather is miserable really helps you to not get a bit sour. I've never been in Australia but we looked at some charts about the amount of Sunny days per month they have. Even in Sydney that has more annual rain fall that London, does seem to have more sunny days in any given month than gray ones. The questions are as always the obvious, should you use the weather as a drive for you to leave a country? Problem at the moment I think is that Africa sun is still flowing pretty strongly in our veins and got now at least in our heart I think we will lean towards the sunnier option. Its going to be a long road to the end of this decision so we'll see how we feel in a couple of weeks/months hopefully not years.

Here we go

We where sitting here chatting about our decision to come to the UK from South Africa. We are both missing the sun something fierce and we're not sure about the lifestyle that London offers. But we could be wrong.
So we are going to use this blog to track our decision about possibly leaving the UK and jumping to Australia before we get too settled in.
So lets see where we go...