Calm before the Storm
It feels like these are our final days in Ipswich. We're completing our last week of work before we go to Prague, and then move to London. Although the move isn't for a while yet, we're almost missing this town already. It hasn't taken us long to feel comfortable here, and despite living in temporary accomodation, leaving is going to feel like we're uprooting again.
So we've taken it easy recently. Nothing too strenuous. Like, last weekend we went to London to vote. We'd hoped that the Aussie High Commission would put on a sausage sizzle, but no luck. We did encounter a security guard with a sense of humour, which has got to be a novelty these days (he asked if we had any hand-grenades in our bag, of course we said "yes" - he would've known we weren't Australian otherwise). There was the usual gauntlet of political spruikers, but it was the first time we'd done our voting in a room decorated with marble pillars and chandeliers.
Before we caught the train back that night, we had a fabulous dinner at Tara's (days before she left the country). It was a nice surprise to catch up with Erin there too (hours after she arrived in the country). And certainly the wine consumed made the long journey back to Ipswich bearable. We barely caught the last train out of Liverpool St station.
Yesterday, we had a look at the local Ipswich museum. There can't be many local museums with 3,000-year old Egyptian relics. One fascinating room was an exhibit of.. a Victorian museum. It was deliberately presented like a museum from the 19th century would have been: stuffed critters in glass-fronted display cases. A representative sample of each important species was presented. But Australian animals were an obvious exception, as there were three short-beaked echidnas, three budgies, two koalas, and three platypus.
Today we caught the bus to nearby Framlingham castle which is really not much more than the wall and parts of twelve towers. This was the first castle we've been to since we joined English Heritage (hopefully it's the first of many more). It appears to have been a bit of a bad-luck charm, as any noble family that owned it seems to have fallen out of favour with the King of the time. Must remember that in case we're ever offered it.
Finally, we can't go without mentioning that we have found Bitters! Our previous attempts to order a lemon-lime-and-bitters have been met with complete confusion (no.. bitters is not the same as bitter). We'd given up hope. But we bought a bottle from our local supermarket. Yay!
- 10th October 2004
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Yes, it's getting cold over here! |
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