The Childfree Life

I always said I'd never cook on vacation, but oddly, I'm finding it very relaxing, especially the cleaning up afterwards. Either I'm just completely domesticated, or I find comfort in routine.

Of course, by "cooking," I mean toast with jam, cereal, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, and bacon, so I'm not really taxing myself.

It helps that the kitchen here is so cozy. Here's the view, and that's taking in a good full half of the space.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Today was a lot of driving. A lot. We drove two hours each way to Sandringham Estate and toured the house, the grounds, and the museum (primarily various royal cars).

First weird thing - we checked the route on the phone the night before, and it was pretty much a straight shot right up an A road - 94 minutes.

This morning, when we put in the destination, it took all the turniest B roads it could find, and it took 125 minutes. At one point, I looked at the GPS and asked my wife, "How can we have driven for an hour, but we're only 30 minutes closer?"

The estate itself is the first royal residence we've been to that felt like a home, and the workers there were telling us that when the royal family are there between Christmas and February, they indeed do use the rooms we were seeing.

The museum was mostly old Daimlers, and I'm not a car geek anyway, except for quirky little cars, so the only one that really got my attention was a 1969 MGT that was Prince Charles'.

Interesting car-related side note: there's a guy in town with a '70's Reliant Scimitar. I'd only ever seen pictures, so it was nice to see one up close, and later, I looked them up on Wikipedia. The wiki page used a car term I'd never heard, referring to the car as a modern "shooting brake." I looked *that* up and found out that it refers to a style of car that can accommodate a shooting party and all their gear, and that it's a forerunner of the estate car/station wagon.

So today, looking at all these old royal Daimlers, and half of them were referred to in the literature as shooting brakes. Twice in two days, I run across a new term. Cool!

Earlier, there was a topic on interesting British place names. Here's a completely-not-made-up list of places we either went through or near today:

Clockley Cley
Fakenham Magna
Shimpling
Chadacre
Weet
Diss
Little Cressingham
Elveden
Drinkstone
Rattlesden
Woolpit
Gooderstone
Foulden
Sicklesmere
Crimplesham
Shouldham Thorpe
Bradfield Combust

And two slightly rude ones:

Burnt Dick Hill
Assington

Burnt Dick Hill sounds especially funny, until you realize there was probably a guy named Dick back in 1179 who was involved in some kind of disfiguring exploding plough accident, and he lived on that hill, so forevermore, when some traveling peasants would come along and say, "Kind shopkeep, please can you direct me to the almshouse," the shopkeeper would reply, "Yeah, you see that hill there, it's just the other side of that. That's burnt Dick's hill, poor fellow..."

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

I'm going to be double (and probably triple (and possibly quadruple) posting), but I have too much to put in one post, and I'll forget it if I don't.

@LaT - I think you were right about my neighbors - when we got back Sunday afternoon, the BMW was gone and hasn't been seen since.

A few funny things that struck me as very Pythonesque:

1. From Wikipedia page about a local murder: "Maria Marten (born 24 July 1801) was the daughter of Thomas Marten, a molecatcher from Polstead, Suffolk."

I'm imagining a 19th century game show (You Bet Your Wheat Sheaf), and the host comes around to the first contestant: "And you are..."

"Thomas Marten, good sir."

"And where do you live, Thomas?"

"Polstead, in Suffolk, kind sir."

"And what do you do there in Polstead, Thomas?"

"I'm the molecatcher."

"Of course you are."

2. From the Wikipedia page about a nearby hamlet: "...there is an unusually long hedge in Shelley..."

"What do you want to do on your day off, Henry?"

"I don't know, Martha. I was thinking of taking the train into London to see that new show at the Lyceum. That, or driving up to Shelley. I hear they have an unusually long hedge there."

"That's nice, dear."

3. This is on a grave marker at the local church:

Beloved Husand And Dearest Of Friends
Reginald Bolton
Blessed Birth
10 June 1929
Fell Asleep And Awoke In Heaven
Where The Angels Rejoiced
29 November 1992

Also his wife Jane
1933-2006

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Today, we had fish and chips for supper, in Sudbury. Sudbury isn't the most beautiful of towns, but I'll love it always, because they had free public toilets and a free car park where, when I got my display ticket (purely so they could track how long I was there), I was allowed to stay from 5:20PM until 11AM the next day.

That's welcoming.

I think there may be a Turkish neighborhood in Sudbury, because the owners of the restaurant (Codfather's) were Turkish and there was a Turkish barbershop and a Turkish grocer's nearby.

Anyway, I liked our host, very direct:

"Your cod...there's no skin on that, right?"

"For you, no skin! You want medium or large?"

"Can we get an order each of the small?"

"No! Small is too small for you. Medium or large?"

Very tasty.

I've now had my ploughman's, my Sunday lunch, and my fish and chips. Tomorrow is my full English breakfast and my afternoon tea. Wednesday, I have a meat pie penciled in. Thursday is shaping up to be gammon-egg-chips, and I did have a scone with clotted cream and jam today. There's also an Austrian meal coming up sometime.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Ok, I've said before that every time we visit, there are always little quirky things wherever we stay. This trip is no different.

Apart from the floors that should have a topographical survey map included is my shower. It's a modern shower kit, no problem there, but the door is like a phone booth door, the kind that folds inward at the middle.

Well, that's fine, except as soon as I push the door in, it blocks the controls. Completely. The only way to turn on the shower is to get fully in the shower and shut the door. That means, no matter what, you're getting that first full blast of ice cold water. Get used to it.

Second one is more annoying, and my apologies up front, this will include some graphic descriptions of a bodily function.

Now, for those not in possession of a penis, let me give you a quick primer on biological male urination. When the biological male urinates, they first unfasten their trousers and open each side of the fly, revealing (if they've chosen to wear them) underpants.

Then they will usually use the thumb of one hand to pull down the elastic waistband of the underpants, revealing the penis. This allows the use of the other hand for grasping the penis, aiming it, and thereby controlling the stream of voided water. When completed, they simply reverse the process (after the required member shaking, of course), placing the penis back inside the underpants, raising the underpants up to their original position, the refastening the fly, button, and belt. Easy.

Not in two of the three bathrooms in Will Shakespeare's hideaway.

Modern toilets both, with lovely, heavy wooden seats and lids. However, the toilet designer deigned to get fancy and nonstandard and moved the flush handle from the edge of the front of the toilet tank to dead center. Trendy!

What's this mean in practical terms? It means that while the lid is able to lean back far enough to stay upright, the seat is not. No way. Physics is not on the side of the pee'r in this case.

Now, something that I assume is universal. You have to pee. Really badly. Like, you've had a beer and champagne and two mugs of tea and a bottle of water and decided you could make it to the house but you were wrong badly.

In those cases, when you get to the house, your bladder knows it. It knows sweet relief is coming. That pee is right there. Right. There. At the end of your peehole. It knows it.

You run to the door. Fumble with the key. That pee is now so happy, it's hanging out of your peehole, but not flowing just yet.

You get in the house, run like OJ through the airport (if you're old enough for that reference) to the bathroom, undo your pants, and that water is already making the journey outside your body while you're still in motion, flopping out your wiener or slapping your rear on the seat, whatever your situation may be.

So, imagine my surprise when I push the lid and the seat up, member out and already doing it's business, and the seat comes CRASHING back down, startling me to the point that I pretty much paint the toilet, the floor, the wall, the mirror, and myself with the latest shade of translucent pale yellow.

Imagine a firefighter with a full blast hose suddenly being electrocuted. That was my first pee in the house.

The only way for me to use two of the three toilets for urination is if I either stand sideways, lean forward at an odd angle, and put one foot up on the toilet bowl so I can then hold the lid up with my leg, and then still probably manage a 50-50 shot at getting my product in the bowl.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

You could always just sit down.....

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Too bright to breed

Oh and Turkish (also Greek) chippies aren't uncommon and usually do a better job than the natives, my local chippy at the last gaff was run by Aki, a greek, he was a lovely guy, did fab fish and certainly knew his chipping spuds. It may be something to do with them having invented fried fish, I read that recently.

There's a chippy in Loughborough (I used to live in the area) called the 300 Spartans!

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Too bright to breed

Thanks for that description of your attempt to pee, CO. I badly needed a laugh today.

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The admin formerly known as Force10

Seeing as I've been peeing (there's a song in there somewhere) standing up for 51 years, I can honestly say...that thought never even remotely entered my mind.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

Pic from yesterday at Sandringham, the church on the grounds.

It took quite a while of standing there to get the .073 seconds of no visible people. I felt truly blessed.

I have to say, and yes I know it's a common complaint, but I'm always flummoxed at the inconsideration of some people, with regards to photos. I was standing at the back edge of the church, outside, and if I was to turn left, it would take me back out of the church grounds.

It's a nice spot for a photo coming in, because there's a little archway and the church is visible beyond.

I stepped out into the path and immediately saw a man down at the entrance framing that shot with his phone, so I quickly stepped back out of his shot.

Didn't make any difference, because a woman came out of the side entrance to the church, looked at me, looked st the man with his phone, then *walked between the man and his wife* further blocking his shot. Geez, lady, 10 seconds out of your day and that guy would be done.

As it was, he did finally get his shot and he did wave thanks to me for trying to keep his shot clear.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown