my uk life

next june

those of you who are not formula one fans will probably be scratching your heads, wondering why one would spend a fortune to watch cars go around and around on a track, but ten years with richard has made me a bona fide f1 fan. so i'm thrilled to say we will be watching the final british grand prix at silverstone from our very own reserved seats next season.

her majesty

i have seen the queen! i was driving home this afternoon to take the rest of my conference calls from my home office, and, as always when i come the windsor route, i approached the long mile that runs down from windsor castle. i noticed people standing on either side of the mile first, then literally ten seconds later, her cars came through. as drivers, we were stopped to let her convoy pass over the road en route to ascot for the races. i had a brilliant view and could clearly see the queen through her window. five minutes later and i would have missed her entirely but as it was, i had a front row seat.

i am so excited!

celebrity (near) collision

a couple of months ago we were driving along not far from our house, headed somewhere mundane like toys-r-us. when we came to a roundabout, a car to our left--that should have been yielding-- came to a quick stop narrowly missing the side of our prius. it caught our attention, and when we looked over in annoyance, we saw a high-end black audi with a driver that was the spitting image of hugh grant.

i was suddenly less annoyed and almost wished for the first time in my life the car had gone ahead and plowed into us. at low speed of course.

running without lions

six maasai warriors left tanzania for the first time last week to run in the london marathon and raise money to build a well in their village. one of them, the village's 24-year-old chief, kept a diary of his observations.

"heathrow was very busy and it was difficult to walk on the floor because some of it moved. you're walking along and the next moment it's whooosh! it's difficult to get on and off but very good when you're on."

finalist

madeline's school, rainbow nursery, is a top four finalist for nursery of the year across all of the uk. the awards ceremony was on friday night, so i'm sure we'll hear tomorrow how that went.

english accents

i'll never forget the train trip i took during my first week in birmingham, england. i had just arrived for my year-long master's program, and had gone into town with my new greek flatmate, maria, who had also only been in the uk for five days.

a ticket collector came around the train, and as he was inspecting our tickets, he asked us something. knowing i was the native english speaker, maria turned to me to explain his question to her, but i couldn't. it was my first exposure to a true birmingham accent and i couldn't understand a word.

richard forwarded me this link to a bbc program, where the commentator (who's an accent trainer for actors and actresses!) spends the first portion of the show explaining and illustrating the differences between the various english accents. it's fascinating, and well worth listening to for five or ten minutes.

indian summer

after quite a few weeks of gray skies, the sun broke through this afternoon, and it warmed up enough that i didn't need a jacket when we went next door to the park. after a wet, cool summer, it's nice to have a few gorgeous autumn days.

[written 4 october; published 5 october]

huge statues in london

this sculpture campaign in london is pretty cool. when i was a kid, we used to make snow sculptures that attempted to achieve this same effect. i made a loch ness monster one year and even used food colouring to dye the snow green. it was a good effort for an 11-year-old but didn't work out quite this well.

rose petals and champagne

richard treated us to a wonderful anniversary weekend at the pennyhill park hotel & spa, one of the best places this side of heaven. with its beautifully landscaped rural setting, the exquisite food at latymer restaurant, large rooms full of personality and--last but not least--the amazing spa, this is a great place to celebrate.

road closed

when we drove out of our driveway for date night tonight, we were stopped by police as they closed our road to traffic. the foot and mouth outbreak, which until tonight was in our town, has now struck the farm across from our house.