Category Archives: In England

…and it has been truly beautiful outside. Sorry for not updating in a while FOREVER; initially, Eli’s class wanted to check out the Blog (per request of one of his teachers), and so we had him record an intro video and left that post as the top post for a while. The school term ended on the 8th of April… I became a little lazy… and then, suddenly, our trip to Wales interfered. Now, somehow, nine days have passed (almost a month if you discount the “Sawyer Has A Lot To Say” post), and we need pass on some of the huge backlog of post-able times.

I am starting a new category for this post; “Leaving for America.” This, sadly, marks something out (a line in the English clay, as it were) & has been filling me with pre-emptive nostalgia. Perhaps that is why I have found it so easy to put off the writing of this post. I began telling friends several weeks ago that there is something fundamentally messed up about going on a four month trip, and spending the last month– ONE FOURTH OF THE TRIP– anticipating the end with a false sensation of immediacy. Stupid it may be, but I definitely did it. You don’t have to be a bearded, crunchy hippie, sitting on the roof of the world in Nepal, to believe that we would be better suited to “live in the now,” and not choose to experience the pain of tomorrow before it gets here. (I DO have the beard, if not the “crunchy-ness,” however.) The kids felt it, off and on, which sucks, as undoubtedly the better part of what they felt were echoes of OUR anticipatory anxious-nesses… If left without our influence, I think they would probably have puttered along right to the end, and THEN had a short and profound bout of “feeling sad,” were we not starting to get a little mopey and wistful.

However, in an attempt to adopt a more positive attitude… It has been gorgeous outside. Highbury Fields has taken on the aspect of a upstate New York farm field during the Summer Of Love on several occasions. Allow me to show you a recent image:

"Hey, if you think really hard, maybe we can stop this rain..."

That shot shows the park somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00 am! Mid-afternoon, the Fields put some of the beaches in SoCal to shame.

In order to make good use of this beautiful weather (and because we thought the niceness would be shorter lived than it has been), we had a very early going away party two weekends ago. To use an Eli-ism, “It was SUPER good! I really liked it!” Among the pleasant aspects– our friends Amol and Charlie brought Pimm’s to share. For our American readers, Pimm’s is the very buisness. The description may throw you off, but it is wonderful stuff: most people make it in a jug, mixing one part Pimm’s mix, and three parts lemonade (by which the British mean 7-Up or Sprite), in which you float ice, slices of citrus, strawberries… and SLICES OF CUCUMBER AND MINT. That’s right, I said cucumber and mint. It is a fantastic summer drink– you can see the similarities in construction to Sangria— don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. Lana made some incredible food, and we had a great time in the “back garden.”

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Somehow, it has grown late– I am going to go ahead and post this, rather than write it to a more typical length. (Are those muffled sighs of relief?) I figure that may help to motivate me to write several nights in a row, while providing the world with at LEAST a little snippet of information. I hope you all enjoy your Easter holiday tomorrow.