Thanksgiving!

A busy week with guests spent visiting castles, being attacked by a flock of aggro-swans, shopping, baking, prep-cooking, and cooking followed by feasting and libation, followed by recovery and a return to routines.

Most of this fun week with our friends from Philly somehow passed undocumented by my camera.

Chris & Jen's little son was the top highlight--such a cute little pea! He was cheerful, fun, and eager to participate in various activities, such as baking:

























and dress up (including his brilliant Bowie meets Lawrence of Arabia look):























We prepared a lavish meal followed by an even more lavish array of desserts. Given that my oven is basically an oversized toaster-oven, we ordered a cooked turkey from a little butcher's shop in East Horsley recommended to me by a local women's club. I was surprised to discover the proprieter is a BBQ specialist from Texas (!) and so our turkey was roasted overnight in a slow cooker. Scott was crestfallen when he learned that I'd turned down the jambalaya stuffing, but we survived.

Speaking of Scott, we finally found a name for what has become an important Thanksgiving tradition: "Scott's 11th Hour Carrots." After days of prep work during which Scott hangs on the periphery, and most of the actual day of cooking during which he creates an illusion of busyness (opening wine, arranging cheeses and crackers, tasting and offering advice on flavor adjustment), Scott realizes (usually about an hour before dinner) that the meal WILL NOT be complete without some sort of honey glazed carrot dish. And so he takes up valuable real estate on the chopping block, pulls other cooks away from their projects for consultation, and finally injects his carrots into the cooking queue, bumping back other more critically timed dishes. When finished, the carrots are greeted with tremendous fanfare, paraded around and marveled over as THE critical element that was almost forgotten. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Thanksgiving has been saved.

A busy week

Spent this week/weekend touring Scott's mom around--lots of fun! Here are some highlights:

Not to sound jaded, but Stonehenge was underwhelming. It sits on a tiny patch of grass pinched between busy motorways. Even in October, in nippy weather, there were loads of tourists. I read that the site's caretakers are working to revamp it. The roads will eventually tunnel under grassy, pedestrian friendly areas, and an interpretive center will be built to better explain the history and engineering. But for now, you walk around the structure listening to a lackluster audio tour while stupid German teenagers photograph each other gesticulating obscenely and Donatella Versace look-a-likes, wearing tight jeans, fur trimmed jackets and knee high boots, mill about with bored expressions, occasionally saying something mean in Italian to their husbands. We gave up trying to get a photo without strangers:
We also took a lovely walk at Polesden Lacey, with lots of beautiful vistas, hills to climb and descend, and cute farm animals to try to lure closer to the camera. (Nadine almost succeeded in getting a herd of cattle to come to us by repeatedly calling "Here, Bessie" but in the end they thought better of it).

We spent time at Lacock Abbey and Lacock Village as well. A beautiful 16th century estate built around a 13th century abbey once inhabited by a small community of nuns. The village was founded in the 1200s and still features many limewashed medieval type buildings.

Also visited a record 5 pubs, Nadine liked them so much. Here's our new Claygate favorite, the Foley Arms:

Brighton, Chipping Camden & Oxford

Our friends Yves & Nathalie from D.C. spent the week with us (just dropped them off to Heathrow this morning). Saturday we went to Brighton to visit an old friend of theirs from when they lived in Nepal and then on Sunday we drove up to Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds and then spent a few hours in Oxford before heading back home. (Click on photos to see them in larger format)

POST SCRIPT: It has been brought to my attention that in the photo below it looks like I am smoking a joint. Not true! It is a piece of bone I found on the beach, which I found interesting because of the way it had been smoothed over time by the tides.

Brighton:












































































Chipping Camden:



























































Christ Church, Oxford:




































This was my favorite thing at Christ Church--the Becket window. It dates to the early 1300s and depicts the 1170 murder of Thomas Becket by Henry II's knights (Becket kneeling in center).

Lazy Weekend

Spent the weekend continuing to unpack. Our house is almost, almost in working order. Yipee!

Bryan and Pam came over this weekend with the kids and the rain held up just long enough to allow the girls to twirl around on the lawn (the boys eschewed babyish lawn games and instead retired upstairs for a Woody Allen fesitval). The rest of us sat outside sipping champagne and enjoying our little repast of fruit, nuts and cheeses (including strawberries we picked ourselves on Saturday).

There was a tremendous amount of horse traffic past the house as well, but unfortunately I was not quick enough to capture any of it on film. I did, however, manage to photograph one of the many rose-ringed parakeets that congregate in the pear and plum trees in our yard.

Polesden Lacey

My friend Donnell was in town this week and we took a drive out to Polesden Lacey, a National Trust Estate. A beautiful mansion with "opulent Edwardian interiors" on 1400 acres with rolling hills, grazing sheep, and beautiful formal gardens. It's got a very interesting history as well--Margaret Greenville, who last owned the estate, bequeathed it to the Trust after her death in 1942. She was a renowned hostess, as the dinner party log on display attests--guests included royalty from England and beyond, and Queen Elizabeth even spent part of her honeymoon at Polesden Lacey. She was also wild about her many dogs--there is a pet cemetary on premises and she had formal photo portraits taken of the dogs through the years, also on display at the house.