Living Conditions Update

No doubt many of you will be concerned about our ongoing struggle to settle here in the UK. Well the last week has provided some good news. We moved into a full furnished house with a 6 month lease about 20 minutes drive from Hailey Hall last Saturday. Even this was not without some drama, but we are there and we are enjoying it immensely. Today a bed arrived for Brock to sleep in and last night we obtained a set top box to enable us to view the television. All we need now is to organise our bills for electricity, gas, water, a telephone, and probably the internet.

Last week also saw us obtain a car. We were perturbed about how this could possibly take place given our limited funds but made use of a website called Gumtree. This site is used by lots of Australians to pick up and offload all sorts of things when living in the UK for short periods. We looked at a number of cars in the £500 range most of which looked like they would struggle to make it from Heathrow (near where we were living at the time) to Hoddesdon where Hailey Hall is situated. However, we came across a Mazda 323 which was being sold by a New Zealand couple who had been here for 4 years and were finally returning home. They had picked up the car relatively cheaply themselves and wanted to return the favour. When I went out to look at the car I was amazed by how great it was (they could easily have sold it for 3 times that price had they had the time). Needless to say, we snapped it up and give great thanks for people like Lydia and Murray. Our little white sports car, (that is what our insurance tells us it is) which is now christened 'Kylie', has enabled us to start looking around a little bit more.

On Monday this week we drove to Nottingham to visit Wayne's cousin Ross and his family. The drive took about 2 hours, but we had a great time getting to know one another (and catching up with some family news). It also gave Wayne the opportunity to visit the town of his favourite football team, Nottingham Forest. Some of you might know that he has been following them for 30 years. The drive was long but well worth it as we saw a lot of the English countryside. As this is just a quick note (really, it is!!!) I will finish by giving you something which I would like to start adding to all my updates, a little piece of information about where we are living and the history of the area (you can take the boy out of history teaching but you can't take etc).

Broxbourne comes from two words, Brock = Badger and Bourne = stream.
When the main road through the area was built (the A10) a tunnel was provided for badgers.
In 1198 the Manor was owned by the Knights Hospitallers.Following his closure of religious houses, Henry VIII granted the manor to their bailiff, John Cock of Tewin [there is a street here named after him, Cock's Lane, which amuses the boys no end]
He became Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1548 and Keeper of the Wardrobe to Elizabeth I and James I.His son Henry entertained James here to introduce him to English aristocracy while on his way to London to claim the throne in 1603.
The local church has a monument to John McAdam who invented a process for sealing roads (his name forms part of the word Tarmac, and the process of applying it used to be called Mcadamising). It also has a monument to Edward Christian, the brother of Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny against William Bligh on the 'Bounty'

Hope you are all well. Look forward from hearing from those of you who wish to comment.