Barwells

Let me redress an apparent injustice in my previous Mothers Day post on shopping in Bury St. Edmunds. Whilst there may be a limited presence of some well-known chains at present, there are some excellent independent retailers. One of my favourites is Barwells in Abbeygate St.

If you are lucky, you may find the hot-dog stall outside the shop - I'm told they are restricted on how often they can have it there. But if you do find it, I can recommend the St. Edmundsbury Gold sausage hot-dogs. Yummy!

As well as fantastic food, you can also find a selection of regional bottled beers, such as those from Iceni and the very local Bartrams. In fact the Missus (romantic that she is) did her Valentine Day's shopping there and, along with the Chilli Tea got me these bottle of Bartrams beer...

She knows how to spoil a man! The Rougham Ready beer pictured has an interesting (and, methinks, collectible) label showing the Rougham Airfield Tower just up the road from us. Actually there was a bottle of Cherry stout too, but that has been drunk now (and most delicious it was too). Most interesting beers from a most interesting microbewery - read all about the story of how it came to be here.

No Clothes Please - We're Scottish

Found in my photo collection whilst belatedly completing my post of our fabulous Clan Gathering last week - this notice is displayed in the gents changing room at the golf course at Crieff Hydro...

I hasten to add we were away from the golf course well before closing time. Who knows what scary sights we may have seen otherwise?

Nowton Park - How Many Daffodils?

The Green Flag award winning Nowton Park is a wonderful place to go for a couple of hours to get some fresh air and let the kids let off some steam. In the school holidays they often have trails to follow (like this Fairy one). In the summer the maze is open and there's the annual Country Fair. Then, in the autumn it's a great place for a Fungus Foray.

But now is the time of year to get one of the most spectacular sights around Bury St Edmunds - the spring daffodils in Nowton Park.

We went there on Sunday and they are just coming to their peak. (So do go soon). There is something uplifting about the sight of a vast swathe, even on a cloudy afternoon.

There are a lot of them, but how many? I asked Little W how many he could count up to. "I can count up to 100", he said proudly, and proceeded to demonstrate. "I can count up to a million", said Little Miss, not to be outdone. "Yeh. Right...", muttered Big Miss, doubtingly. "Yes. That should be enough", I said. "Who wants to count the daffodils, then?". I got no volunteers...

I have heard it said there are 250,000 of them, but the council website says "over 100,000", whereas the Tiscover tourist guide says 130,000. So here's the view from the far end of the avenue of limes. You count them.

Oh, BTW, don't forget to carry on along the path from the end of the avenue of limes towards the maze. There are some lovely drifts of little narcissi there.

21st Century Mummy's Rubbish Diet

A local blogger who's having an exciting time at the moment is 21st Century Mummy. 6 weeks ago she started a new blog called The Rubbish Diet.

In January 2008, St Edmundsbury Borough Council challenged local residents to come forward to take part in Zero Waste Week, which will take place during 10th - 17th March.

This blog will track one family's attempts at discovering which nasties can be saved from the Black Bin as they prepare for Zero Waste Week. Is it really achievable? All that remains to be seen.

Read her blog to see how she has taken up the zero-waste challenge and discovered how to reduce the waste produced by her family considerably. One week more of training to go!

Mothers Day

As usual I had to do the kids' Mothers Day shopping. Now there are not many things that Telford has to commend it over Bury St Edmunds, but one of them is the town shops - and they are just across the road from my office. Much to my colleagues amazement, Big Miss and the Missus love the shopping centre - the locals don't rate it much, but then Birmingham is not far away. The girls always like a shopping trip there when they come and stay at The Barn. Maybe it's more a reflection on the paucity of the shopping experience in Bury St Edmunds. I wonder what a difference the new development will make?

Anyway, what Telford has that Bury St Edmunds doesn't currently have includes, among others, House of Fraser and Debenhams department stores, and two places that are great for Mothers Day shopping - Hotel Chocolat and Lush. The Missus was suitably impressed with what she got this morning. Lovely job done!

John Meets Ruby!

Ever since I started this blog, I've exchanged emails with the famous Ruby, author of Living in Bury St Edmunds. We had agreed in one exchange that we ought to meet for a coffee one day. That was in January...

...2007. Well I'm not terribly good at organising anything social, so it has taken me a while. But I decided I had to meet up and hear all about About Bury. And so we met in So! Bar.

I took her along some of my frozen chillis and she gave me a copy of the magazine. Fantastic. It is so obvious, if you know her blog, that it is such the right business for her, and she is such the right person to do it. It was great to hear how it came about. I hope it does well. The second issue was due from the printers yesterday, so look out for it. I know I will.

Update: Download the March edition here!.

Crunch time

Although this blog is not really about work, I can't not mention what has been happening, as there is some sense of deja vu from the early days of this blog - when I went and took voluntary redundancy.

Not long after I started on Aspire, it became aparent that The Customer had a problem with their budget. Quite a big one, actually. With the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review there is a requirement to reduce administration costs of the department by 5% a year. And that means they need to reduce spending on IT.

Well, after months of negotiations, an agreement was made for Aspire to commit to a reduction in costs in return for a 3-year extension of the contract. This was closely followed by news that Capgemini would reduce headcount on the account by 20%.

So a formal redundancy programme was announced. Under pressure from the unions, the company agreed to include a voluntary element in the programme....

I did think about it. But I couldn't quite bring myself to volunteer for a second time in less than two years!

But today was the day. Those who have been selected as beeing 'at-risk' of redundancy all got a phonecall today. I was glad I was in London for the day - it can't have been much fun in the offices.

And, in case you're wondering, I didn't get a phone call. So my second life in Shropshire continues.

Victoria Sponge

Big Miss has started showing an interest in cooking. Last week she helped me cook a Goa Lamb Vindaloo curry (from 50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi) for myself and the Missus. But this week it is my turn to help her. I was given my orders for ingredients on the weekly shopping list - strawberry jam and 500ml of double cream, and yesterday afternoon we made a Victoria Sponge. Now I do quite a lot of cooking (a lot of it just for myself at "The Barn"), but I have never made a cake before.

"But that's not caster sugar" I said as she was mixing the first layer. She was using ordinary granulated sugar. "We haven't got any, but Mum said it was just the same". Hmm. The mixture looked a bit thick to me. So we tried some fine soft brown sugar for the second half, while the first half was cooking (we only have 1 cake tin). Then I looked at the use-by date on the self-raising flour - December 2006! (The Missus doesn't cook many cakes either). Hmm.

Well it turned out OK-ish, but had to be cooked for a bit longer than the recipe said. Here it is...

Just then, there was a knock on the door - a couple of her mates had come calling. So they got invited to taste it.

It went down pretty well, although it did have a slightly unusual crunchy texture!

Cygnets String Orchestra

As well as Swimming Lessons (current menagerie 1 "newt", 1 "sealion" and 1 retired "dolphin"), we have had a new activity on Saturday mornings since September. Little Miss was offered the chance of violin lessons with the Suffolk County Music Service so we went along to try it out and signed up.

You get instruments provided, and the first session everybody got measured up. Here she is with her 1/4 size violin showing off her pizzicato.


The sessions are held at KEGS and there is quite a variety of activities on between 9 and 12 on a Saturday morning - several orchestras (string, wind, jazz), choir and lessons.

She has her lesson in a group of 4. This is brilliant - they learn from watching each other as well as from the teacher, and Mrs Pakenham keeps them (and the watching Mums and Dads!) on their toes. I was instructed to take this photo...

... to demonstrate the correct bow hold. Lessons use the excellent Fiddle Time Joggers book, which has a CD you can play along to. As we also have a 3/4 and full size violn at home Big Miss and I can join in the practice too.

Before her lesson, though, she gets to play in the Cygnets String Orchestra. A great name for it. It has been fantastic seeing and hearing a bunch of kids, many of whom had not touched a string instrument before and couldn't read music, become an orchestra. They do all sorts of fun things, like improvising and rhythm games as well as learning to play together properly. Sometimes they even get turns at conducting.

Cygnets starts at 9 (ish!) and finishes about 9:50, so people can visit 'Ed's Place' for a snack before the 10 o'clock activities. There's an open morning on Saturday 8th March if you want to see for yourself.

For more details and directions see here.

The Tea-Party Oak

A favourite place for a winter walk for us is the park at Ickworth House. Yesterday was a lovely frosty, but sunny, morning so we wrapped up warm and set out. Turning left out the car park we followed the road away from the house towards Ickworth Lodge. In the field off to the left is this oak tree surrounded by fencing.

It is called the "Tea-Party Oak". There is a plaque that tells the story...

700 years old. Wow. That means it was growing before the Black Death and the Little Ice Age.

We carried on round the walk down to the Rive Linnet and along it, iced over in places, to the Canal. Ahh, snowdrops, this Missus' favourite...

The lake itself was nearly completely frozen over. The ducks did look funny walking on the ice...

"Well cool", as Big Miss would (and did) say.

Chilli Tea?

Regular readers will know we have a bit of a cottage industry in growing chillis, though I'm not sure we'll grow any this year - our cupboards and freezer are still rather well stocked with jars and bags. Now I've had chilli chocolate before (that's a classic), and even chilli ice cream, but can you believe this? Look what the missus found for me as a Valentine's Day present!

I can report that it is pretty mild, really. But it does sort of creep up on you with a cumulative effect by the time you get to the bottom of the cup. Yum!

Gender-Bender Bicycle

Here is Little Miss on her bike last July. As you can see, it was getting a bit small for her even then, and she has now graduated onto Big Miss' next bike. But it is a good girlie bike with its lovely pink colour, Barbie bell and hooter and cheerleader tassles at each end of the handlebars.

I said is, but actually I should say was...

Little W has outgrown the little bike (at least that is purple, not pink) and has tried out Little Miss'. It's just the right size for him. But it was too girlie for him to be seen riding on by any of his mates. So we decided to respray it. After some discussion (black was a close second favourite), he decided on British Racing Green (on the basis that it would help him go faster). So off we went to Halfords and got some spray paint. I had to do the spraying with the garage door open to let the fumes out. Brrr it was cold!

After 4 coats and an overnight wait for the paint to dry, I was able to put the bike back together again. He looks like he likes it, doesn't he?

Of course it still has pink stabiliser wheels, but that's an incentive for him to learn to ride without them. And I put it back together properly, because it works...

Cheeky monkey that he is, though... "Dad, you must have screwed it back wrong", he complained when he ground to a halt riding up the hill into a headwind. Hmm. Maybe that British Racing Green paint is no good after all.

Banham Zoo

Leaving The Missus to get on with her teacher training programme assignment, we had a special half-term day out to Banham Zoo yesterday. Checking my photo archives it nearly 4 years since we had last been, when Big Miss was Little Miss's current age and Little W was still in his pushchair. The zoo is 40 years old this year and now has almost 1000 animals.

We arrived in time to see the otters and meerkats being fed and then the penguins - you could tell their food was coming when a bunch of seagulls came squawking! In between we saw the rather cute colobus monkeys. The youngest one was particularly playful.

But the highlight for me is the big cats. The tigers are especially impressive.

Little Miss had quite a close encounter (through the glass).

Something new since we were last there is the giraffes. The giraffe house is still being completed - there is an upstairs viewing area and elevated walkway that are not open yet, so we had to content ourselves with a knee-level rather than eye-level view.

Here is Rachel giving the feeding time talk with the cheetah twins. She had a little trouble throwing the meat over the fence, which as to be quite high to keep the cats in.

We had a great day out. You can see more of our photos here on Flickr.

Anglesey Abbey again

Yes it's that time of year again. Just over a year since our last visit to Anglesey Abbey, we went again on Sunday. The winter walk seems to get better and better every year. And the snowdrops are in excellent form...


I took loads of pictures as usual (see here on Flickr). We got there for it opening at 10:30am. If you are going at the weekend during the snowdrop season I recommend you do the same - they had run out of car parking by the time we left. It would make a good half-term holiday trip out too - the gardens are open every day but Monday - see here for details.

Long Time No Blog

It has been a while. And there are quite a few draft posts that somehow never got finished. But I feel the urge to start blogging again. Some more things we do around Bury St Edmunds, but also from my other life - the things we get up to when the kids visit "The Barn". Yes there's a lot to catch up on! And if you keep visiting you may find some new historical posts mysteriously appearing over the next couple of weeks.