As every tourist knows, there are only two places in England, London and Stratford upon Avon. Also, Shakespeare is boring, so we decided to go to London. Truth be told, we were supposed to go a couple of weeks ago, but we were deleayed due to issues with water supply turning our house into the Sahara Desert.
We went in style though, we took the fast train down to London, only 1 hour and 17 minutes to get there and we raced across to Hyde Park for the Winter Wonderland festival, exhibition, thing. It’s kind of a load of wooden boards stuck down in Hyde park and then a number of fairground rides built on top of it, together witan ice rink and a traditional German Market. So traditional in fact, that the ice skating rink was sponsored by Lidl. They were in fact selling ‘pigs in blankets (sausage in bacon)’, so we munched some of that. Weirder still they made Mrs Rad sign up for an app, and then that gave us access to the lidl VIP area, which was a small space on the top of the pigs in blanket stall where we got an exclusive view of the ice skating. Really, we should have gone home at this point as nothing was going to top that.
These Christmas ‘things’ have sprung up all over the UK – yes, there’s one in Stratford too. They can be a bit hit and miss – a number of them have closed down, due to ‘meet santa in lapland’ being ‘grandpa in his shed’, this sort of thing. The one in London seemed really coo. Far too expensive obviously, but there were loads of really cool rides, and interesting foods to eat and it was massive loads to look around. I even went on my annual helter skelter.
We stayed for a couple of hours and then we walked through Hyde Park and took in some views of the Albert Memorial and the Royal Albert Hall. I have memories of going here as a child to see concerts with my parents. They’ve improved the area around it a lot and it looks even nicer now.
Then we went to the science museum, free to get in if you can avoid all the marketing, and we spent the money we saved by going to the top floor to the milkshake bar. Nothing helps me learn science more than and ice cream with sprinkles for £7. I do recommend a visit though, we didn’t have ages, but we looked at the aviation exhibits (Radling 2 wanted to know how big a 747 was) and then downstairs to look at the exhibits on computing – Mrs Rad delighted in taking pictures of her first mobile phones, which are now exhibits on a museum wall!
We then travelled on the tube back to London to get home, and our authentic UK experience was completed by our train being cancelled and the next one being late. We arrived exactly 29 minutes late, 1 minutes less than the time allowed to claim a refund on our train fare.
Month: December 2023 Page 1 of 3
Well today was supposed to be a trip to my mom’s house which is on the border between Wales and England. The contrast between where we live, in the centre of a big city, and her house, basically in the countryside in the middle of nowhere, could not be more stark. However, as I came to check up the train times last night, I discovered that they had all been cancelled due to flooding. So we spent a frantci hour last night trying to come up with a new plan. We eventually settled on going to Hereford, a place that is still quite low lying,but on a train route that goes in a different direction.
Hereford is 55 miles from here on the train, which takes about 90 minutes – it’s not the quickest of trains, but it was quite comfortable. We also got a nice view of the Malvern Hills from the train, despite the inclement weather.
When we met up with my mom, we decided to go to a cafe for a quick drink. This was already the second of my 3 hot chocolates today. The cafe was also ‘dog friendly’ as was the rest of the town, I’ve enver seen so many dogs in shops!
We then went to visit the cathedral, it was a lot more interesting than it sounds. Firstly because of Edward Elgar on a Bicycle – not him precisely, but a statue of him, it looked great, even in the rain. The cathedral itself is beautiful and well maintained. The architecture inside is stunning as there were also lots of secret rooms there to be discovered. What was interesting is that many video games have been clearly inspired by this sort of architecture.
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That’s not the main reason for visiting the cathedral though. It has the mappa mundi. Now this isn’t a map of a Monday, which is the obvious joke we all made, but it refers to being a map of the world. It was created in the 1300’s – its not geographically accurate, but shows that we already knew about a lot of places at this point, there’s much detail about engl;and and france, as well as the middle easy, russia and africa. We particularly enjoyed a 3d model they had made of it (the real one being behind glass) so we could enjoy the tactile experience. There was also the chained library, which is as it sounds, the ancient books were all attached to chains to the scholars couldn’t take them. This area looked like a scene from Harry Potter.
Lunch wasn’t super exciting, it was pouring with rain, so we just ran to the nearest place. However, we did manage to go down to the river which was flowing super fast and the river level was very high, having covered over some of the paths.
We left early, but not before having the final hot chocolate of the day in Costa Coffee.
As we said our goodbyes, my mom gave us the Yule log she had made for us, which we will enjoy tonight.
In the UK, storms, even small ones, get given names these days. The current one is called Storm Gerritt. Well whoever Gerritt is, he is annoying because he’s meant that we have to change our plans for tomorrow. However, Gerrit has not dared come this far towards us, but we have had a bit of rain. So it was in this context that I went on my 1 hour long run this morning.
It’s the first time I’ve tried a longer run (10km, 6 miles) since I finished the 100 days of 5k. It was partly because I want to get fit for some longer runs, but also because i wont get to run tomorrow, so it was kind of a ‘kill 2 runs with one stone’ type of day.
The roads were still quite quiet at 10am this morning. It’s theoretically a normal working day, but it’s still a bit christmassy here. Also, the rain is keeping the casual visitors away. I had waited for the best gap in the weather, and it kind of paid off, but also kind of didn’t.
To keep me at least a little bit dry, I ran in my raincoat. This is not an ideal situation, it only kind of works and makes me very hot. It’ also covers my watch meaning that the GPS doesn’t really work properly. So I kind of wanted to take off the coat, but I had no way of holding it, so I had to run with the hood down and my sleaves rolled up for the most part, which wasn’t ideal.
And then there the fact that my shoes are getting old and there’s actually a small hole in the bottom of one of them, so the water from the puddles just comes straight in, which makes the running very heavy.
Last but not least, there are the big puddles in the road. I’ve never driven a car, so I don’t really know how it works, but the cars, and particularly the lorries, seem to drift towards me when they seem me, making sure I get a huge rain shower when I run past them.
So, I did it, I completed my run, but I’m back to moaning the whole way around, and this took 1 hour and 15 minutes today, so it was a lot of moaning.
Anyway, we’ve redone our plans for tomorrow, a trip to Hereford to meet my mom is the current plan, let’s see if the floods bring any more changes overnight.
So we went to Mrs Rad’s parents house today, for lunch and to play some games. It’s boxing day in the UK, no we don’t have fights in the streets, well no more than usual, but it does mean that its the second public holiday in a row. Compared to Christmas day though, it’s not aw quiet, some shops are open and many of the ‘January Sales’ start at the big retailers. There are massive queues outside some of the shops that start early in the morning, with people hoping for a bargains. We did not take part in any of that shenanigans. We proudly buy all our products at RRP, making sure to keep those mega firms in profit.
In recent years there is generally quite a good bus service running on boxing day in our city, so we took advantage of that to visit the relatives. It takes 2 buses and about an hour and 15 minutes to get to Mrs Rads parents house, and it’s a bit of a trip through time. The smart double decker arrives at the bus stop just a couple of minutes walk from our house (we nearly missed it). We start the journey in the modern city centre, by the big arena (where Rad stood in the car park for Ariana Grande, another story) and it weaves through the gentrified canals, the bars and restaurants and past the modern tramway system.
We continue through the suburbs on wide dual carriageway roads but at some point, we cross the city boundary and take a right turn into an area know as the black country, because of all the coal mining that used to take place here. It feels distinctly different here. All the mining has pretty much ceased here, so the area appears frozen in time around 40-50 years ago. We first go under the motorway, where there has spring up a huge traffic roundabout (known as an island around here) and a number of big box stores with massive car parks. These areas are grey and a bit soulless, but there is a fair amount of activity. The same cannot be said for the town of Dudley, which was one of the most important towns during the industrial revolution. The life has long since passed from this place, and of course, its here that we change buses, a short wait in a desolate bus station, save for one guy that is smoking and another that is shouting at his phone. A ray of hope does exist for this place, the bus station is to be closed in a couple of weeks and rebuilt to accommodate the new trams which that will come from the city.
The next bus is quieter, except for the PA which announces each and every stop. It runs along the quieter, narrower roads and meanders through miles of housing estates built in the early 1900’s. The area is known for it’s humour thought, and I can’t help but chuckle as we pass by the takeaway on Kent Street – ‘Kents Tuck-in Fried Chicken’.
We get off by the church at the top of the hill. There are lots of churches in this area – these have a sense of humour too – one proudly displaying the slogan ‘Tomorrows Forecast: God reigns and the Sun Shines’.
Mrs Rad’s family live at the top of a steep hill and we walk by a large field with horses. This allows for a great panorama of where we have been on our little bus ride. In the distance we can see the tower blocks of the city, which is only 8 miles away as the crow flies but seems a lifetime away from where we are now.
This is my review of Christmas day in the Rad household. I’m writing it late, because I Was so full of food, and I just fell asleep.
It’s always nice to spend the day with just the four of us, even though the kids don’t particularly appreciate that. We did stockings from Santa at 8am, opening up some high quality items from Poundland – including the first of the truckload of chocolate we received.
Then we went through to the front room for the big presents. Mrs Rad got lots of nice lego and we had a few Switch games including Sonic and Mario Wonder. We tried to play Mario Wonder together, but unfortunately, the quality of gameplay thatI can produce spoiled it for everyone.
Then I went on the make the Christmas Dinner. I hadn’t planned a stream but I saw the go-pro and went live. IT was nice to be able to say hi to everyone on Christmas Day. Something went wrong with the turkey, IDK, it wasn’t cooked when it was supposed to be, so I had to microwave a couple of pieces so we could eat it together – then we had the rest in sandwiches later in the day.
Radling 2 had been given a wooden Concorde, which we built together – that was a cute very ‘dad’ thing to do. Mrs rad did the gluing though, because who can be trusted?
Living in the city centre, our tradition has been to go to the only shop open – Starbucks – for a Christmas drink. It’s nice to walk through the city on a quiet day.
In the evening we did a Whatsapp with my dad, who lives about 70 miles away, that was nice, and it’s important to remember family at this time of year.
My big present from Mrs Rad was a chocolate fountain, which I built and we plied with chocolate. That was great fun, but also filled me up and I think that’s what sent me to sleep.
Merry Christmas everybody. And what a lead up it has been to Christmas it has been this year. The the issues we’ve had with the water supply leading up to Christmas has made it feel like a real old fashioned Christmas, 2 days of frantic present buying, one day of fun then back down the pit.
Hopefully though, now is the time to relax. I say that as I’m bashing out this message at a quarter past midnight on Christmas morning after frantically wrapping, tidying the house and squeezing in the Sky dailies. With luck my kids are too old to get us up excitedly at 4am!
In previous years, I’ve done a short stream on Christmas morning while I cook the Christmas lunch. I’m not planning to do that this year, although it’s possible that I may squeeze in a few minutes if there is some time. However, I decided that it is here that I wanted to say how much I appreciate you all. Streaming has bought me a whole new life, and a whole new circle of friend that I never thought I would have. It’s been so great to meet you all and have the chance to chat, and to share the good, and sometimes the bad, things. I don’t know what I expected when I started streaming, but I knew I needed to do it, and I’m so glad with the way it has turned up.
And remember, Christmas is not an easy time for everyone, but if you have the opportunity, make sure to take some time to connect with your family and friends. It’s the one day a year where there is nothing else to do, so you have some time for that. On the other hand, if you need somewhere to vent, there’s always my discord.
Also, if you do have a small drink, make sure to raise a glass to the mods! We always appreciate you.
I like to tell this story every year, partly because I think it’s fairly personal to me, but it also has some interesting bits of british culture and history that I can talk about too.
So, what is Christmas pudding? – well it’s something quite specific. It’s a steamed pudding, made of dried fruit and nuts AND quite a lot of alcohol. Steamed puddings used to be fairly common in the uk. Basically you put the ingredients together and then you cook it in boiling water for hours and the flavours merge together and the mixture solidifies. The puddings are very stodgy and high in calories, but would have been perfect in the days when we used to work in the fields at manual jobs. Christmas pudding is interesting because it is particularly rich, and so in the old days it would have been something very indulgent for poor families at Christmas. Ok, so I’ve no idea if any of this is true, but I haven’t wikipedia’d any of this, because this is my personal understanding that I love.
Why is it special to me? Well the recipe I use has been passed down a couple of generations. My mother got it from her mother, so it does feel like to make a Christmas pudding each year is keeping up some kind of tradition of the olden days. The recipe gets edited a bit each year – for example it calls for suet, which is some kind of horrific meat fat, so I used butter instead. But by and large the recipe remains the same.
It’s not super difficult to make, it’s just a lot of ingredients. The dry ingredients go in first, and it’s really important for flavour that they are fully mixed, so tradition has it that each member of the family gives the mixture a little stir and makes a wish. And this is not the only thing, just before it’s served, it’s traditional to put small coins in the christmas pudding so that people eating it get a lucky Christmas gift.
To make the pudding particularly flvourful, it is made weeks in advance of christmas to allow the alchol to fully mix with the fruit. In fact the church seems to have a designated ‘Stir Up Sunday’, at the end of November, when you are supposed to make the christmas pudding.
And the final strange thing is the way it is served. A spoonful of hot brandy is cooked of a candle, so that it starts to flame, and then this flame is poured on top of the pudding (and we take a photo on our iphones). This adds extra alcohol to an already alcoholic pudding. It is eaten with cream, or brandy butter or even custard. Nom nom nom.
Ours is not a usual office. There was no crazy drunkenness, no inappropriate canoodling, but we did have colouring!
We generally work remote from each other today, so although we know our close team members really well, some of the wider team members we don’t meet and we hardly know them. The Christmas party is a great opportunity to meet with them and show them who we are.
This years was today, and went quite well. There were a few games and quizzes for the team to play, but I love that they had thought of the introverts and provided colouring sheets and origami for us to do if we were feeling overwhelmed or shy. I coloured in a bus and I made a origami Christmas tree.
Actually tho, most of the stuff was really good. We had to submit 3 words for use in a game, and the words were a hilarious mix, people like me had submitted ‘cat’, dog’, ‘tree’ etc, but others had submitted jargon words from the work we do like ‘bicycle hanger’, ‘west midlands combined authority’ and names of our various chief executives. It was kind of like charades, we had to describe the words so people could guess them, the first time there were no rules, the second time only one word and the third time with no words. Fortunately Rad’s sign language skills came in clutch!
We also had a quiz where all the answers were related to Christmas – I scored big buy knowing that Alan Shepard was the first American in space.
Sadly I had to reject the food, because a ton of pizza was not good for my IBS, so they bought me a random box of potato wedges, which I ate, but it was a lot of potato in one go.
I had a nice but unexpected day. Oh also, the prizes for winning were ducks.
Online grocery shopping is a weird thing. Not everyone likes it, and I also understand it’s hardly profitable. However, it makes me feel like I live in the 1800’s and I’m an important count or gentryman. In that scenario the little van that turns up to my door is like a grand horse and carriage. So I can be glad to be keeping up the traditions of my elders, and that I receive my chicken nuggets the same way they did.
So, of course, our water is still not fixed. It comes on a couple of times a day for a few minutes, so we are not entirely without, but it does mean that we need to have simpler food and eat off paper plates – like it’s a childrens birthday party.
Which of course brings me to the topic of ready meals. Now, ready meals are usually something I quickly grab if I’m too tired or lazy to cook. Which means I never really look at them and compare them. But now I have to consider them properly as it is all we can eat. So, I’ve lined them up in order and done the reserach and this is what I have learned:
They are overwhelmingly meals for one. In spite of the 1980’s stereotype that microwave meals are for lonely people, my number one research result is that in 2023 is that ready meals are, in fact, still for lonely people.
If you want a healthy meal – it has to be mixed beans in a plastic pot. They can be from anywhere in the world, theres mexican mixed bean, morrocan mixed bean and indian mixed bean – all in the same plastic pot. But that’s it, that’s the healthy options, there no variety, except in the country name. All of the other ready meals are unhealthy, a 50:50 mix of salt and fat, with some element of flavour thrown at them. With one exception, there are some ‘diet’ready meals. These are much smaller and taste the same as theit cardboard packaging. On the one I’m looking at, the box proudly states ‘Contains salt substitute potassium choride’ – which I’m not sure how to react to.
Soups come up as ready meals in a search. That’s wrong, they are only half a meal. You have to eat something else with soup.
My microwave has taken pride of place in my kitchen. No longer sitting in the corner unloved, only getting used when the coffee has gone cold, it is now the star of the show. It’s happy, but it’s feeling the strain. Once I’ve cooked a family’s worth of meals for 1, it starts going ‘baaaaahhhhh’ instead of ‘hmmmmmmmm’. It still seems to be working, but I think it’s days are numbered.
We are nervous the water won’t be fixed for christmas, to the point where I’m looking on Amazon for a christmas gift for Mrs Rad, I’m tempted by the christmas themed paper plates for the 25th.
Do you ever feel like you don’t get much done in a day? Well today wasn’t one of those – it was three days in a day.
I got up at 7:30am to do parkrun, in fact maybe earlier. I got myself ready and went out. However, It’s always complicated getting ready for the parkrun stream because so much equipment is require and I usually forget something. This morning it was my watch. But I didn’t realise until too late that I would need it. Anyway I went out on the bike, fortunately it was not too cold this morning, so I was able to ride my bnike in shorts and sit outside McDonalds and talk to chat. The reason for getting up so earli, of course, is so that we can get to parkrun by 9am. It was good conditions for running and I felt I did really well, I took an nice pace and I didn’t feel like I overstretched myself. With over 100 5k runs now under my belt I was hoping for a good time. Unfortunately that didn’t come, and I think that was probably because I forgot my watch and couldn’t pace myself. Anyway I trundled back home again via mcdonalds so that I could bring back some food for the family.
Day 2 started at home at 10am. I wanted to laze about the house for a while, and maybe get some sleep, but they turned our water on for a couple of hours this morning (remember this whole saga?) so I had to set to with the jobs. Firstly a quick shower and then to get all the washing into the machine on the super short 15-minute cycle so I can get the stuff out before the water goes off. In theory I also do a Dishwasher load, again on the short cycle, but there wasn’t time before the water broke again. Hopefully this will all be fixed soon. It was supposed to be fixed ‘by the end of the week’ but that has happened, so fingers crossed.
And then finally the third ‘day’ of my day. We went some friend house, that we have known since university – so nearly 30 years. The live in Alvechurch with is about 30 minutes from here on the train. We played some fun board games – one about a pickle and another one about moving magnets about. We also had delicious pizza and some white chocolate that was made to look like it was Camembert. A bizarre experience.
So all in all a nice long day. This is just a record of it.