My extraordinarily ordinary life!
My iPhone is permanently attached to my hand and I am addicted to taking snapshots.
There is something infinitely comforting in walking in nature. I took this photo on a walk with Alan on Saturday. It makes me smile to look at this photo. Sometimes, when you need to slow down, when you need to centre yourself, a quiet walk, surrounded by nature, is the best solution.
When I flounder around in deep waters,
When the stresses of life take their toll,
A sudden deep hush steals upon me,
Your gentleness calms the soul.
At work, on Fridays, we have an unspoken rule that when we leave the office at the end of the day, we leave our desk as bare as possible so that the cleaners can dust our desks. I try to make sure most of my desk is clear so that they can spray Pledge and dust when they do our area. Not that they actually dust. But I live in hope. One day, I shall come to work and my desk will have the lingering smell Pledge and I will plonk myself on my office chair and smile.
So this weekend will be my birthday…my 40th birthday. Looking at my desk today, I think making sure I adhere to the Clean Desk Friday policy will be a bit of a challenge and will require an extra 15 minutes of clearing up!
I find that this happens to me all the time whilst on a London jaunt. You walk around this amazingly modern city, with all the sky scrapers built with metal and glass and then you turn a corner and find something that takes you back in time.
Verde & Company Ltd is a fine foods store just a hop, skip and jump (aka just across the street) from Spitalfields market. It’s Georgian front is indicative of the Aladdin’s cave of food to be had inside!
I am guilty of complaining about the little seaside town that I live in. I find myself complaining about how quiet it is, how dead it can be during the weekend and how annoying the dog owners are. Don’t get me wrong. I love dogs and think they make the most amazing pets BUT there seem to be a lot of irresponsible dog owners. If you intend to walk your dog and you allow your dog to relieve themselves, PICK UP AFTER YOUR DOG! Right. That’s me off my soapbox. This is, after all, a post about the unappreciated good things about Harwich, Essex, England.
Harwich is at the very northern end of the Mayflower Line. It boasts a lot of historical snippets dating back to Roman Times. There are a lot of notable names connected to Harwich: Captain Christopher Jones, the captain of the Mayflower, lives in Harwich; Samuel Pepys, the famous English diarist, was a member of Parliament for Harwich, Captain Charles Fryatt, who is a First World War lived and was buried in Harwich; and my personal fun fact favourite, apparently, Clive Owen lives near Harwich (haha!).
There are a suprising number of little historical corners in Harwich: Captain Christopher Jones’s house (apart from being captain of the Mayflower, he was a quarter owner of the Mayflower as well); several notable lighthouses dating back to the early 1800s, as Harwich was a notable port and it was where the Royal Navy Dockyard was established; the Harwich Redoubt Fort, which was a circular stronghold built to defend England against the Napoleonic invasion; it also has the old Electric Palace, one of England’s oldest purpose-built cinemas still surviving and functional.
I’ve always loved my little seaside town, my home away from home. I like to say it’s where I properly grew up, because I learned to live and depend on myself and not my parents. I love the little interesting nooks and crannies of this little town and it breaks my heart that some of the people who live here don’t seem to care enough about their town to keep it pretty and clean. We all have to have pride of place, to be proud of our quaint little town because it is significant and important historically.
I love owls and I couldn’t not post this and share this with y’all!
Thank you to Emergency Cute Stuff for providing all this visual cuteness!
Sometimes you take a picture and you give yourself a pat on the back because you took a really good picture. Alan told me that this would be a great place to take a snapshot of St Paul’s Cathedral.
And he was right!
In 1666 a great fire ravaged London for 3 days, devouring 13,200 houses, 87 parishes, St Paul’s Cathedral and most of the buildings of the city’s government. At the time, there were about 80,000 people living in London and it is estimated that 70,000 of that total number lost their homes. The fire, which apparently started on Pudding Lane, in the bakery of Thomas Farriner, very nearly reached Whitehall Palace where the current monarch of the day, Charles II, was in residence. Surprisingly, only 6 deaths were verified.
On the corner of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill stands a monument to the Great Fire commissioned by Charles II. Identified simply as “The Monument,” it is described as a fluted Doric column and stands 202 feet from where the Great Fire started. Until very recently, I didn’t know that you could go up the Monument.
On a bright, breezy and sunny Saturday morning, Alan and I went up the Monument. I approached this challenge with trepidation. I am not the fittest of people and have been known to huff and puff on some days when brisk walking from my flat into town to get groceries. I’d much rather read than walk these days. So this activity worried me a lot. I was afraid I’d embarrass Alan by wanting to stop in the middle of the trek up to the top of the Monument.
So we paid our £4 for the privilege (it’s £4 for each adult to go up but we had a 2 for 1 voucher, so it was only £4 for the 2 of us) and up we went. There are 311 steps. Yes. Three. HUNDRED. Eleven. Steps. At first, I wondered why there were hooky bits along the banister. Then I figured, about a third of the way up that you could use those hooky bits to pull yourself up the steps! There were these lovely little alcoves as you went up and boy, was I ever grateful they were there! You could sit down, catch your breath while not get in the way of the other people, more fit than you who trudged up that blessed spiral staircase!
But somehow, despite the huffing and puffing, screaming leg and thigh muscles, thinking in my head that I was going to die soon, I made it up the top! I had to catch my breath first. But after that, after I recovered from the jelly legs and shortness of breath and pounding heart, I looked around and marveled at the view. It was glorious!
The mesh cage at the top was added mid-19th century to prevent any other persons from leaping off the the platform. I think it was a good decision!
You get to see the Tower Bridge.
An unobstructed view of the Shard.
The BT Tower.
The The Cheese Grater (the Leaden Hall building), the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) and the Walkie-Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) and the Lloyds Building.
So, if you want a challenge, a work out with a reward of a brilliant view of London, go up the Monument. Despite the palpitations, the hyperventilation, the jelly legs, the view is spectacular and very definitely worth it!
I am brown. Very brown. Brown as a coconut!
Alan and I traipsed around Old Harwich yesterday in the sunshine, peeking into people’s gardens. Now, before you sound the alarm and think any improper thoughts, we were paid for the privilege! Harwich gardeners come together every year and open their lovely gardens to the public so they can raise money for chosen charities and this year, because we’re learning to use our cameras (properly), Alan suggested going on the tour to see the gardens and take photos.
I took over 200 photos and deleted over half of them, choosing my favourites and best shots.
I’ve never seen so many passion fruit vines! Most of the gardens that we visited on the tour had passion fruit vines that seemed to be well-established and seemed to thrive! It made me smile seeing the vines because once, a long time ago, when our house in Manila was a small two-bedroom bungalow, our garage wall was covered by a huge passion fruit vine. Who knew passion fruit would take to Harwich that well?
I think this was one of my favourites. Mostly because it was such an interesting garden. You had to go down several steps. They called it the Sunken Garden. The name of the garden made me smile because it reminded me of my days at uni when I was at the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines. There was an oval area behind the main library in the campus called the Sunken Garden (I learned during my first week at uni that the “garden” actually sank a few millimeters a year!).
This garden made me giggle. This was the garden hiding behind the Swan Gallery. The lady who owns the gallery runs arts and crafts classes and apparently, her knitting group were busy knitting the various flowers and creatures found around the garden. There were poppies, bees, flowers, and bunting. There was even a knitted owl hiding in one of the perches!
One of the gardens had this lovely cherry tree in a huge pot and the branches were heavily laden with red jewel-like fruit! Who knew you could do that? Well, I did, at least in theory. But this cherry tree was thriving. It must have looked amazing when the blossoms were in bloom!
I think we’re doing the tour again next year (with me armed with SPF2000 sunblock). There are so many things to discover in Old Harwich. If you’re in this neck of the woods, next year, watch out for the Harwich Secret Gardens tour. Everyone is lovely and flowers and the plants are interesting!
This is, by far, my favourite place in Harwich, the Ha’penny Pier.
It’s the perfect place to sit, watch ships go by, enjoy the sea breeze and smell the sea. It’s a calming place where I can just sit and be.
Yellywelly 