Essex

We've been away again - do these people never stay at home? - this time down to Daughter 2's in London. We visited Forty House, a Jacobean (early 1600s) house in Enfield. The grounds haven't been built on, so there's a 273 acre estate with a pond, parklands, a big walled garden and so on. Amazingly, it's now owned by Enfield Borough Council and is open free to the public. The house itself is large by most people's standards but not uncomfortably huge - a lovely family home. Its most recent owners were the Parker Bowles family - Queen Camilla's former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, grew up here. Lucky chap!

It's partly furnished, not with the original furniture, and this room has clothes for dressing up.

A very realistic elephant. 

The queen surveys her policies. (I've just looked up "policies", meaning the managed estate round a house, and discovered that this is a Scottish rather than a standard English use of the word. So I suppose it's wrong here, since the house is in England. But I like the grandeur that the word implies.)

The gardens are stunning, even at this time of year. 

Later, I drew a picture of Smallest Granddaughter and she drew one of me drawing her. I look encouragingly young and much smarter than in reality - though somewhat naked. (I was not.)

The next day we visited the little medieval town of Waltham Abbey. You can easily imagine what it was like 500, 600 years ago or more.

Small Granddaughter helpfully holds up this somewhat crooked house. She was dressed as a rabbit only temporarily; she became rather hot.

The town has a very pretty setting on a river

and a beautiful church, the remains of the abbey which was (inevitably) demolished by Henry VIII. I wish he hadn't.

Then we went to a children's farm, with lovely views over the Essex countryside. (Why do we live in a town?)

There were rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, meerkats etc. 

And many many pumpkins, and really good playparks. 

It was a lovely weekend. But now we're home again. 

Chuff chuff

We've just come back from London, where we went with Big Grandson with the express purpose of riding around on various modes of London transport. We took the train down there on Tuesday (bus, long-distance train, underground, overground, bus - to get to Daughter 2's house) and then spent two days on trains, buses and tubes. This is not normally my idea of very heaven; indeed, it's more like very hell for someone who doesn't like London or travelling in vehicles, has no interest in trains or buses and is rather motion sick. However, it was very nice being with Big Grandson and seeing his pleasure. He really loves, and is very knowledgeable about, transport. 

Luckily Mr L is more interested than I am. 

Not a beautiful sight, though improved by the back of our little chap's head. 

Also not postcard-worthy. 

London is unfeasibly enormous. We went to lots of places that I'd never heard of: Northwick Park, Stonebridge Park, Abbey Wood, Eastcote... 

I imagine I'll never be there again! 

The one place I did find interesting in was Uxbridge, where we walked down a little street and found a small park on land that had been given as a graveyard by Henry, Earl of Darby, Lord of Stanly and Strange Lord of Man and the Isles in 1576; and decommissioned, if that's the word, in 1855. Even at that later date, I imagine that it was an idyllic village spot for the dead to lie in peace. Now it's surrounded on three sides by roaring traffic, though there are daffodils and the odd bench. Grandson enjoyed bus spotting through the fence. 

Look at all the gravestones piled against the wall,

like this one for little Elizabeth Powell, who died in 1757 aged (I think) 30 months, doubtless breaking her parents' hearts. 

And then we came home again on the bus, train, tube, train and bus with Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter. Four straight days travelling. It was worth it but we won't be doing that again in a hurry! However, Grandson had a lovely time, and that was the point. 

More comings and goings

I've just come back from visiting Daughter 2, her husband and Littlest Granddaughter in London and, as usual, feel sad no longer to be with them. However, we had a good time. Daughter 2 and Littlest G made gingerbread men and Littlest G pulled faces in the shiny mixer. 

We went out to a nature reserve. Littlest G took her fishing rod. There were notices forbidding fishing but I don't think anything fishy was in danger. It was cold!

Someone had built a stick house, where Littlest G enjoyed playing. We added a few sticks.

Another day we went to the Epping Forest Visitor's Centre, which was lovely. Both her previous flat and her current house are near Epping Forest, which is very large. Here, Littlest G draws an owl. 

On Monday, everyone was at work or school so I took myself out for a walk round Chingford. I wandered round the graveyard of the local church and thought about those who came and have gone, such as these - friends? sisters? I've never seen such a gravestone before. 

I rather like this wall, made up, presumably, of lots of bits of stone and brick that happened to catch the builder's eye. It looks as if he had fun. 

This sounds like a good concert but... not sure of that spelling. One could convince oneself that it's a justifiable transliteration of the Russian, but it's spelt differently at the bottom of the poster. (Check three times, print once, sort of thing.) I suppose that with an English accent, the "ch" is pronounced as "ck". A Scot wouldn't make that mistake. You'd think that most English accents must make other spellings difficult - for example, they mainly don't pronounce "r"s, with floor and flaw pronounced the same (I think). We say "flohrr" and - well - "flaw" as in "aww". But they mainly seem to manage. 

On the way back in the train there was snow in Northumberland!

No snow here, only sunshine and blue skies, but it's rather chilly. We went to the Botanics today to raise my spirits and this was fairly successful. It was such a beautiful day.

The garden at home is looking springy. I'm not a fan of purple but have to make an exception for purple flowers, especially these crocuses, blooming away undaunted by the morning's frost. 

 

Bugs

Littlest Granddaughter has been visiting us with Daughter 2, and Son and family came down at the weekend. I have lots of cute photos, but none really bloggable. So here are our portraits, drawn by Littlest Granddaughter. She's really caught Mr L's beard and my elegant hair. 

Daughter 1's family have all had terrible colds, and sadly, Littlest Granddaughter also had a nasty bug, so we didn't see the Edinburgh cousins, in case of a germ exchange, and didn't really do anything exciting with Littlest, who really wasn't her usual self. 

So there's not a lot of news, other than that our lawn has had its first cut of the year - and I've done quite a bit of cutting down and leaf-raking in the garden - so there's a real feeling of spring in the air, with bulbs sprouting and in some cases flowering. 

As always when Daughter 2 goes away, I feel very down. But things will improve, though possibly not this weekend, when we have to clear a bedroom so that the floor can be treated against woodworm. We have - had - a cane flower pyramid which for years we've put outside the front door with lights on at Christmas. For the rest of the year, it lived in a cupboard in the eaves. And this year, when we took it out, it had definite woodworm holes. So we threw it out and got a chap to check for woodworm in the eaves, which he duly found - or at least he found a few holes. So we need to clear the bedroom and lift the carpet - such jolly fun - and spend a lot of money on dewoodworming. Ah well, such is life. 
 

Bookworms and the like

Another week has whooshed past. The Edinburgh grandchildren have been on holiday, so one day Son-In-Law 1 took Big Grandson on a bus adventure while we went with Biggest Granddaughter to Saughton Park. We had a snack and she read her book outside the cafe, but inside the footprint of this house, which was built in 16-something and demolished in 1954 (well done, Edinburgh). 

Red letter day for Mr L - he eventually got the bigger tv for our smaller living room that he's been wanting for some time and I've been resisting. He says that he finds it difficult to read text messages on the phones of the characters in the detective things he watches.  I do not find it ornamental, but eventually took pity on him. The lamp that stood to the side no longer fits on the table. Since I consider the main point of this piece of furniture to be a display area for about seven pieces of coloured glass and probably a little vase of flowers, all illuminated nicely by the lamplight, this causes a problem, but we'll probably acquire a more elegant standard lamp than this one, to alleviate the situation. 

Daughter 2 brought Littlest Granddaughter up by train, after work/school on Friday. Littlest wore her unicorn onesie so that she could go to sleep on the train. You can see how well that worked. 

The next morning she peopled Big Grandson's Brio layout with dollies. 

At the weekend, Son and family came down and we all went to the Botanics. Some of us splashed in puddles, 

while others of us admired the autumn colours, 

which are very pretty. 

Further Brioing took place. 

Today, Littlest and I went to the museum. 

We had a lot of fun. 

Another bookworm.