Food – nastybrilliantblighty.com

A letter to England

My version of a living in the UK trip adviser review, in letter format to the country herself.

Year one in the UK.

My dearest Blighty:

I’ll be honest – I’ve landed here in your lovely country under duress. I lived with you years ago, and I know full well the thatched rooves and shortbreads lose their charm quickly. Since I saw you last, I have been raising children with modern North American conveniences. I’ve also just given up a real career break in the US, in favour of someone else’s big career break in the UK, so I’m bitter and resentful before we even land at Heathrow.

But my darling, it seems you’ve just not kept up with the times. In month one, my trainers have gone moldy in the leaky sieve you call a garage (or as you prefer, ‘ga-rage‘), my washing machine holds two hand towels and a pair of my (large) knickers. The dryer is here just to taunt me.

Your roads, while charming, seem more equipped for horse and carriage than the 38M vehicles registered on your small island. When I drive the kids to school, I spend half my time trying to avoid the curb and the other half keeping an eye out for Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men popping out of the woods to rob me. I feel like I have stepped back in time.

I know you love your traditions and your people keep telling me “there is a way of doing things”, but the daily grind is a wee bit inconvenient for this Westerner and each annoying thing builds on the one previous.

For example, finding a parking space, wondering if my train will arrive on time, waiting three weeks for internet set-up, bagging my own groceries (while the cashier sits on a chair?!!), timing my hunger with a restaurant’s peculiar hours of actually serving food (which also requires a booking, when it looks mostly empty inside). A breakfast taco or a Starbucks drive-through would really make my day, and would it be so blasphemous for the shops to carry a few wines from new world (a California Cab Sav to be precise).

Just another day catching a train to London

Winchester station, glad I didn’t have a large coffee just now

And I hear your loyal subjects want to leave the EU?

You must have a word.

Year two in the UK.

Dear friend:

I do apologize I was a little hard on you last year. I know you love your traditions and while I find some of them tedious, I’ve come to find some comforting. Take your love of hot drinks. In the world of work, I spend half my day having coffee (or tea), scheduling coffee (or tea) and fetching coffee (or tea) for customer meetings. It is perfectly acceptable not to commence any work until this has ritual been done, a few times over. And since none of us arrived on time due to the motorway traffic, nobody seems too fussed about getting in those eight hours.

Ah. Your old country pubs. Put the inconvenient hours and strange numbered wooden spoons aside and there is nothing lovelier than a roast dinner, next to a roaring fire, with a couple of wet dogs resting on your feet. No washing up! Just a suggestion though, a little salt goes a long way.

I also appreciate your love of alcohol. Not only is alcoholism not frowned upon, it’s encouraged! Having a drink midday is perfectly acceptable, even at my children’s sports day where they set up a Pimm’s tent. If my train is two hours late getting home, it’s quite all right because I can buy a mini bottle of fizz at M&S whilst waiting. Now that our subdivision (aka: housing estate) has curb side glass recycling, we all feel a little less ashamed about the state of our bin because everybody’s looks the same. No judgement here.

And you have the best neighbours. I can put aside my shower’s complete reluctance to drain when I know that old world charm with modern infrastructure is only a quick flight away. With the generous holiday time you provide, I’ve been to France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy and Sweden. All wonderful.

Year 3 in the UK.

Dear old chap:

We are mates now, aren’t we? Believe or not I told a newcomer the other day “to have a stiff upper lip” and explained it’s best to just get on with things versus pointing more efficient alternatives. A G&T in the evening also helps to localize.

I have more than one true English friend now and although they were standoffish at first, two years of my foolishness and I think I’ve grown on them. The school is actually considering trousers for the girl’s uniform – modern times await my friend! Next thing you now the girls might actually play sports with the boys.

There are some things I am going to miss about you – like your fabulous curry, a take away fish and chips; enjoying a lengthy afternoon tea with those adorable little sandwiches. Watercress and egg salad. Coronation chicken. Oh, and Victoria Sponge. The clotted cream here alone makes many of your misgivings forgivable. I also love a savoury pie; scotch eggs make a perfect snack and those pork pies with that delightful layer of congealed pork jelly. Heavenly.

A beautiful raspberry ripple sponge from Hillier’s Garden Centre

These days, I can back my car into a shoe box sized parking spot whilst enthralled in a Radio 4 drama. Will Lexy be coming back for Ian and Adam’s new baby in Ambridge? And thank you for calling menopause, The Menopause, because it deserves it’s grammatical article. Canada, take note here I am bringing that back with me.

There is just this one thing I don’t think you and I will ever come to terms on.

Your weather.

Why do you love the rain so much? There are so many types of rain – – light rain, moderate rain, heavy rain, drizzle, buckets and buckets, deluges of rain, downpours, tipling down, pelting down, raining cats and dogs, chucking it down. And when it rains, why must we all talk as if it has never rained before! I’ve put fashion aside and bought a head to toe waterproof, and whenever I wear it, my husband asks if I off for a ride. We don’t own a horse.

There was a week this past September where it rained every single day. I took a few videos to demonstrate your relentlessness and to ask if you could consider letting up a little next month.

http://nastybrilliantblighty.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Save-Me-Final-.mp4

Until then, all the best, your friend,

Jamie

Note: Italicized words represent English lingo.

Summer Hiatus

Nastybrilliantblighty has been on long summer hiatus! It’s been ages since I had anything clever to write about. Even as I read this for the 25th time, I am thinking of binning the whole lot as it is incredibly boring!! Bare with me as I try to get back into writing something worth reading.

The past few months have been without any drama, generally speaking. In August, we had our one year UK anniversary without filing for divorce or booking flights home (wherever home is!). I hear the husband saying he’s ‘comfortable’ here now, and I agree it even feels like ‘home’, but I dare not say it too loud for fear the moving gods might overhear.

The children had six weeks of summer holiday and we tackled our first official UK road trips (queue National Lampoon’s European Vacation Holiday Road theme here): a weekend at Warwick Castle Knight’s Village (pronounced War-ick, not war-Wick), visiting Shakespeare’s home town Stratford-Upon-Avon, and across the Solent to the Isle of Wight (also known locally, but not in the tourist brochures, as Pile of Shite). Our neighbours Posh & Becks say we see more of the country then most English do.

Becks (Matt) swam across the Solent for charity the weekend we were on the island, so we were there to greet his James Bond moment crawling out of the ocean and ripping of his wet suit (alas, we were a bit confused as exactly where this was happening and were a bit lat, but I got this great photo of the lovely couple reuniting). We had a get together at our airB&B enjoying the seaside; we are getting quite close with this family and Posh (Emily) is already dreading us moving away even though it’s far off. Our kids went back and forth between homes all summer and we’ve taken to to drinking in the driveway on Friday night and letting the children run wild, generally bringing down the estate (aka: neighborhood).

My highlight of the summer was our week in Torquay, Devon with our extended family The Clyburn Wadden’s: Billy, Jenn, Nora & Sadie, Sadie who met for the first time. Back in Edmonton, we had a thriving supper club with Billy and Jenn and Ian & Meg, before we all starting breeding and messing up our social lives.

One time our Supper Club went on vacation to Maui with then two year old Aiden, who woke up at before sunrise our first night there. Billy said it sounded like we were “trying to kill a chicken” as husband and I hissed about who was getting up with him while trying not to wake up our childless friends (we failed!).

The tables have now turned and Billy and Jenn are up killing chickens in the night and our precious moppets can turn on their own iPads in the morning while we snore away.

We did not help our tired selves by staying up every night until the early hours of the morning – drinking, talking, laughing, crying, and contemplating the meaning of life. I loved every single minute. Billy and I even got in the kitchen and did some cooking just like old times.

We arranged a date night swap in Torquay (not the swinging variety) where we took turns going out for dinner / watching the children. Both nights we ate at The Elephant, https://www.elephantrestaurant.co.uk. I’m not sure it was the food or that we were not panicked searching the menu for chicken nuggets and cheese pizza, while watching the clock, but the meal was one of the best we had in the UK. The Elephant has had a Michelen star for over 10 years and source the produce from their own 30 acre farm – they have earned that star.

Scotch egg, black pudding, on relish aioli

I got a bit cocky on my child watch night and was taking selfies with various hashtags – #igotthis, #pieceofcake – when I found this little angel Sadie with wet clothes, from crawling through a puddle of pee on the floor. Allie struck a fever shortly after this and things went quickly downhill from there. But we all lived to tell.

The kids went back to school a few weeks ago and so far, so good. Aiden has this sweet, soft and funny teacher who reminds me a little of Gene Wilder. Aiden loves his school and his friends. He is playing Quidditch as an after school club, and is now rocking a retainer to sort out a pretty severe over/under bite. He is still a sweet, silly boy and we are very proud of him – he has done so well with this move.

Allie was less enthusiastic about her return to school but is slowly coming around. She is coming home with all sorts of stories. Last week she told me she likes to do things independently. Her favorite part so far is “Forest School”, one afternoon a week where they basically tromp around the forest to learn – picking apples, finding fairies, and get really dirty. All the kids love it.

I found the end of summer, back to school routine and the complicated scheduling a real mental struggle and was feeling a bit glum at the end of September. I put that all aside for an amazing visit from my birthday twin Danielle and I feel totally on the mend now. What a week we had! I could blog about it, but it’s not for public consumption. We had so much fun, I gained about 8 lbs!!

Looking forward this fall – we have trips planned for Sweden, Edinburgh, a week in Italy with my BFF Naomi, and maybe someplace warmer in April. We have Aunt Peggy coming for the first half of December & Gramma Susan for Christmas. Stay tuned for some (hopefully) more interesting reads this fall.

Italics: English lingo; moppets –moppet (plural moppets) – (colloquial) A child. Often used lovingly or in an affectionate way

Some other pictures from summer 2018 -the weather was unseasonably warm and dry, thanks to global warming.

Spa Day with Jennifer, The Carey Arms & Spa, Babbacombe Beach, Devon

The best thing about Devon – Cream Tea, The Guardhouse Cafe

Milkshake appetizer, The Guardhouse Cafe

My thoughts on English school sports

My mother has this expression – Bozo’s on the Bus– something she says when you just follow along with the what the majority do. “They are just Bozo’s on the bus getting Hormone Replacement Therapy because some doctor prescribed it”. Eating margarine. Circumcision. Statins. Flu jabs. Taking your son to a rugby fixture in the pissing January rain in England.

Yes, we did this. And yes, she called us Bozo’s.

Prologue.

This past January, wishing to go along with the school sports curriculum, to be a team player and for our child NOT to be warped by watching Youtube videos on his iPad, we took Aiden to the school Rugby fixture. The temperature was about 10°C and it was pouring rain. English parents were sporting their Hunter wellies, umbrellas the size of small cars and various other waterproof gear. The North Americans hid out under a sparse patch of trees for shelters and shivered. We were the bozo’s on the bus.

When I commented on the ridiculousness of this situation to the crowd I got a common, “Ahhh…..It’s the English way!” and a laughed off “Welcome to Rugby in January – a tradition!”. Well I’m sorry, but I am giving the middle finger to the English way this time. The kids were soaked. We were cold. It was not fun. The siblings were pissy and (some of) the parents could think of a much better way to spend their Saturday.

(Admittedly, the English might think the same of getting up at 0600 to drive to a cold hockey rink, and they might be right).

The game was played. Some fun was had dancing on the sidelines with his mates (he was not in the starting line up…). But take a look at Aiden’s picture. It makes me cringe. It’s pitiful. It’s a snapshot of a parenting fail. He doesn’t love Rugby. He especially doesn’t like it in the rain. He is a sweet and silly boy without an aggressive bone in his body. He likes fart jokes and all things poo.

IMG_0017

Aiden and I made a deal after this game. He will do his best at games whilst at school, but we can skip the weekend fixtures if we so choose. So this Saturday a few months later, I am being spared the 2.5 hour cricket match (still only 12°C) and the kids are being warped by their iPads. I hope this doesn’t mean they will live in our basement forever lacking life goals and drive, but I’m taking the risk.

Sports are akin to religion in this country, probably more popular. Everybody has a team they follow – football, rugby, cricket. BBC Radio 4 gives equal airtime to Brexit negotiations as they do to which football coach was just sacked. There is a petition in parliament right now to allow Premier League and Championship football clubs to introduce safe standing (rail seating), so fans can have the choice between sitting and standing at football matches. For real.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/207040

It is not all bad though. Some things are done very well like the tradition of tea after the game with the opposing team. I am not talking about a Bear Paws some poor mother had to drag to soccer pitch. I am talking about tea as in a full hot lunch for the kids, and sometimes for the parents. Sandwiches, cakes, sausage rolls, biscuits, coffee and tea. Look at us mums dig in.

…who let this hobo in for tea? (My good friend! We have a habit of taking pictures in which we look like hobos).

Cheese & grated cucumber; egg salad on baguette.

Allie was not a fan of the game in the rain one bit. Post game waterlogged selfie.

Fam jam update: The blog has been dead this long, cold, wet winter. It has taken us a full six months to acclimatize and settle in here. And it is still a process. Some good days, some shit ones. I started a few blogs that were all negative so I binned them, and I am finally getting back to it.

The dew is off the roses at my job and the best thing about it these days is the car. Some of the people I care for and were learning from have left the business, some not by choice. It sucks.

We did a very English thing and went to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands for a week during the kids (long) three week Spring break and it was fantastic. We finally felt up for a bigger trip. Kids had a great time. Only one episode of vomiting and no emergency department visits, which I am calling a win for us. Some other trips are in the works.

Note: Italics for my new English lingo.

Coming soon: 101 definitions of what tea entails here.

Sandwhiched

“This country is obsessed with bread, I swear to God”, said my new colleague, a stylish, 20 something, petite Indian man, as we perused the lunch buffet of sandwiches, “and I don’t do carbs.”

He’s right. The country is obsessed with bread, the gluten frees would shrivel up and die over here. But more specifically, they are obsessed with the sandwich. The sandwich – bread, meat, sauce, bread. Humble in origin, or so I thought. “Sandwich” originated from a story about John Montagu, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, who ordered some meat between two slices of bread for convenience during a long gambling game in 1762. Google it, you’ll see all good things come from Britain.

The peanut butter and jam sandwich has saved many a mother’s ass from actually cooking, but it doesn’t exist here. Sandwiches are at a whole different level here. To start, they are everywhere. Beautifully packaged in every off-license, grocery shop, and made to order in every café, lunch counter and pub. They are not the triangular sandwich boxes of stale white bread, processed cheese and meat you have had the (displeasure) of picking up at the 7/11 in North America. They are not just quick lunches long for haul truck drivers and summer road crews; sandwiches are universal language here in the UK.

And well, carbs are my friends and I love these sandwiches. They are (usually) deliciously fresh, cheap, with modern flavourings and foodie pairings – egg, mayonnaise and watercress, cheese and pickle, tuna salad and sweetcorn, prawn and cucumber, bacon, egg and avocado. Marks and Spencer’s makes a Hoisin Duck Wrap with julienned carrots, cucumber and fresh cilantro. Christmas themed sammies are popping up now too, e.g. turkey, cranberry and shredded brussel sprouts.

There is warm sandwich called the “cheese toastie” (pictured below) which is sort of like a grilled cheese but somehow, they have managed to get the cheese on the inside and outside of the bread and in posher places they are stuffed with caramelized onions, fancy mushrooms and gruyere. Yum.

The bacon bap or bacon roll (English bacon on a roll) and the Chip Butty (chips on a bun!) are other cultural favourites so strange they deserve a blog post of their own blog post. A great article here about the latter: http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/article/11-reasons-why-chip-butty-deserves-your-love-and-respect.html

So we have been stuffing ourselves with these gems whilst here. Emotional eating has been a theme since we moved. It has been very hard to get our healthy eating regimes on solid ground – the stress of moving, want to try to the local foods, new treats at the grocery store.

Our emotional eating went to a whole new level a few weeks ago as I started my job, orientating the nanny and children, starting a new routine and we got the worst call you can get when you are far away from home – “Mom’s in the hospital”. My mother in law had a heart attack and had bypass surgery within six days of that first call.

My mother in law, god love her, does have a general sense of urgency to her. She operates at a ten out of ten in terms of stress sometimes. I now remember speaking to her and knowing she did not feel well and I never said, “You better get to the doctor”. I feel bad about that. I never thought she would get really sick is the thing. Her own doctor brushed off some classic heart attack symptoms and begrudgingly ordered an EKG. Thankfully she is fine now and on the road to recovery. She is a trooper and taking much of this ordeal in her stride.

(Note to my American friends – two-week hospital stay, transfer to a tertiary centre, by-pass surgery within a week and the only out of pocket fee paid was for private hospital room fees).

Husband made the trip across the pond and stayed for nine days. He was torn between wanting to stay longer, wanting to back to us, thinking about his work. Even though Halifax is only a six hour flight form London, his travel karma dealt a few cards and made it a 24 hour journey door to door, both ways. He spent less than 12 hours in Cape Breton and even managed an Acadian lines bus trip to Halifax (which is longer than going by dogsled by the way). I felt terrible for him, I felt worse for his mom. So I ate some more sandwiches. And wine. And Hob Nobs.

Shortly after we arrived here I got a text from my Aunt Peg a few days after some Emergency Department visits. A serious enough issue to make my heart sink and think what if. Aunt Peg reassured me, “If I die while you’re over there, you don’t have to come home, you know I don’t want to add more stress to you both.” I told her she would not be much of an inconvenience if she were dead and that I might want to attend her funeral and get some of her antiques. She called me a smart ass, and she is thankfully back to normal.

So, overnight shit got real over here. We are now officially part of the “sandwich generation” – young kids, old parents. It makes us think more about living so far away from home, the pros and cons of ex-pat life, selling it all and buying a cottage on the beach. There are no easy answers. For now, we try to live in the moment, count our blessings and call our recovering loved ones a bit more often.

Next we try to survive Christmas, which is throwing up all over the place here. I’ve three weeks to fit into a cocktail dress that fit two sandwiches ago.