My life as a newt

The most common reaction of our new friends, upon learning that we have moved FROM Australia to live in England is...."WHY?!!" Expensive and generous television airtime is devoted to programs outlining ways to move TO Australia; images of sunny beaches, hot weather, sun-kissed complexions on minimally dressed persons enjoying beer and bbqs, fascinating wildlife designed to withstand hot dry conditions, and oh, did I mention the sun?...You'd think that every Brit was somehow deprived of essential sunlight, somehow long-term subterranean creatures in a land of grey and damp...

Well, I, Alex Grey, LOVE it.

As each day passes I realise more and more that I am attracted to the gloom, the bitter, the melancholy. My ardour for the bleak is reflected in my attraction to gustavian grey colour schemes of the paint charts, the choice of holidaying in the Outer Hebrides and Scottish Highlands in WINTER, my bookshelves which capture the lives, fictional and real, of heroes wuthering on the heights and tramping the moors. The explorers of the warm Pacific hold no interest for me-it's the lives of Oates, Scott, Shackleton, Franklin and Parry who grab my attention. Not only valiant were they in venturing across the ant/arctic in desperation to win either an unwinnable race or fleeting honour, but my goodness they were English gentlemen! When the corpses of Franklin's officers and crew were discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns (necessary for food) but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a clothes brush and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield (presumably to be read as they polished their uniform buttons with the tin of polish also accompanying them). Incompetant? Yes. Bungling? Yes. British? Definitely!

So my love affair with Bleak is well-founded. I hibernate not in the winter but am...(wait for it) "aestivate", like a salamander, a newt*. I slow down and conserve energy when the sun is out, but wait for the temperature to drop and all humanity to run grumbling and moaning inside to their safe centrally-heated homes and I
e-m-e-r-g-e.

* How convenient that we live beside the North Hampshire protected reserve of the Great Crested Newt...

What we are reading

How satisfying it is to be able to find a comfy spot, howling wind outside, and read an interesting book-or four! This is what we are reading. (I wonder if you can guess who is tackling what?) However, we are soon to finish and need some new titles to get stuck into. Suggestions VERY welcome!


Small Island by Andrea Levy
"I was christened Victoria Buxton. My mother had wanted me to be christened Queenie but the vicar had said, "No, Mrs Buxton, I'm afraid Queenie is a common name."
"Common!" my mother had replied. "How can it be common? It's a queen's name." The vicar had then given an impromptu sermon which my mother, father and their gathered guests had to listen to as they stood round the stone font in our bleak local church. The vicar went on at length about monarchs having proper names like Edward, George, Elizabeth while everyone, dressed in their pinching church-best shoes began to shift from foot to foot and stifle yawns behind their scrubbed hands. "Take our late queen," the vicar finally explained, "her name, Mrs Buxton, was not queen but Victoria."
So that was how - one thundery August day in a church near Mansfield, dressed in a handed down white-starched christening gown that wouldn't do up at the neck - I, the first born child of Wilfred and Lillie Buxton, came to be christened Victoria yet called forever Queenie."

Watching the English by Kate Fox
"I don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to remote corners of the world and get dysentery in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when the weirdest, most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep."

Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"The application of biblical theology to expository preaching-The aim of this book is to provide a handbook for preachers that will help them apply a consistently Christ-centered approach to their sermons."

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, de Botton examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends), before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness.

Ice, Ice baby

It's cold!

We're told (constantly) that we're nuts, but we are loving it! We have been waking up to hard ground frosts and freezing fogs caused by subzero temperatures all this week. Sasunnach dances around on the ice when he goes outside to pee and the gum tree in our back garden (how good of our landlord to anticipate our coming years ago when he planted it) is FROZEN.
(Note to self—must invest in a dressing gown...early morning bathroom trips may be chilly)

Daily temperatures are reaching a dizzy 7-8 celcius whilst overnight it has been minus 4. Thankfully, the days are clear and bright with some sun so we are being introduced to wintry Hampshire with gentlenesss. And as any meterologist worth his or her salt knows, winter doesn't actually start until the solstice, 22nd December—another month away.

This does not appear to coincide with the untimely release onto the unsuspecting public (i.e. me) of Christmas Carols which have been playing in naffly decorated shops for some time now. Let the reader understand that I am not happy! Plastic holly has no place in a country where it grows as a weed naturally...and as for inflatable elves—that's another moan.

The price is paid

I've been struggling these past few days as to what to write. What would be interesting to read? Surely not the prices of supermarket items that I was thinking would have to do (4xLamb Chump Chops £4.89, 7x loose bananas £1.48 etc.)
Do you want to know that there is a village duck pond? Or that it is now dark at 4.40pm? See my dilemma——only a month in England and I have already run out of interesting things to write. So it is with great relief that I can recall an illustration told to us by this morning's speaker at St. Andrew's church (thanks Ian).



Today is Remembrance Sunday when the nation remembers those men and women, service and civilian, who have fallen during the Great War, WW2 and all conflicts since (http://www.poppy.org).
In the Great War—the supposed "war to end all wars"— it is estimated that there were more than 8,500,000 MILITARY deaths alone. The number of service personnel who have died in all twentieth century conflicts must be almost breathtakingly inestimable.

So what then, if we could hear the voices of the fallen soldiers, who went to war prepared to defend their country and paid the ultimate sacrifice and died to protect OUR freedoms, and they said to us now:
"We fought for you, endured pain and hardship for you and then died, so that you can enjoy peace and freedom from fear and oppression. Take our gift, it's yours to have!"
And we replied...
"No thanks. Not interested. We'd rather stay in conflict."

How foolish we would be! To reject a free gift that is priceless and at no cost to us...we would be the ridicule of all!
And yet, this is what we do when we reject God's greatest gift to us—Jesus' death in our place; the blameless in place of the guilty. To reject the loving offer of a reconciliation with God is foolish—for we are choosing to stay in conflict with God—a certain punishment & death—instead of the eternal life which is promised if we accept God as the rightful ruler of the world and our lives.

Precious words.

"Oh, to see my name, Written in the wounds, For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death, Life is mine to live, Won through Your selfless love.
This, the power of the cross: Son of God - slain for us.
What a love! What a cost! We stand forgiven at the cross."

(Townend/Getty copyright 2005)

General observations

Today we were playing social anthropologists. These are today's top 5 feeble observations of North Hampshire folk (chapter 1)

1. The common use of the word "feeble"...

2. Lunch is referred to as "dinner"; dinner is referred to as "tea" or sometimes "supper" and/or something hot that you drink (always white and sugared). We think. We are a bit confused as to what we are being invited to...

3. 'Desert' ( dĭ-zûrt '... noun... usually sweet course or dish, as of fruit, ice cream, or pastry, served at the end of a meal) is, in England, called "pudding". A pudding ( pʊd ' ĭng n. a sweet dessert, usually containing flour or a cereal
product, that has been boiled, steamed, or baked) may be part of the 'pudding' that follows the main course. Unless it is a Yorkshire pudding, when it the main course. We are confused about this also...

4. The English LOVE to queue. They queue when they should, they queue when they are not required to. Even a single person, apparently alone in the world, is still forming an orderly queue...

5. We have only seen the very young or the very elderly ride bicycles. No person anywhere near the age category 6-86 has been seen cycling along. We have just been given a bike—we feel like we are revolutionaries...

6. Risking cementing a wholly untrue but commonly held belief that Aussies are a bit s-l-o-w, we write this observation with a great deal of trepidation, but it has to be said that Hampshire folk speak extremely quickly.Infact,theyspeakatsuchadisturbinglyfastspeedthatwearehavingimmensetroubletryingtoconversewiththem...

Remember, remember the 5th of November

The sky is ablaze with fireworks, and pyromaniacal Brits are stoking bonfires with anything vaguely flammable—it's Bonfire weekend!
The 5th of November 2005 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the Gunpowder plot. For reasons not entirely clear to us, the anniversary of a failed 17th century coup, lead by Guido (Guy) Fawkes, has now become a national holiday celebrated with bonfires, fireworks and food. We have just celebrated this with our new neighbours by contributing our own little bit to global warming...building a bonfire (complete with TWO 'Guys') and setting off fireworks in the fields just behind our street. What a great night...thanks for the invitation Speckled Wood road!