UK Letter Home March 2004

Welcome to the March Edition of UKBound.

Seth is still his great, happy self. Whenever we take him out to the shops, everyone always says what a happy baby he is, and he's always laughing. No, really, he laughs at total strangers... He is almost crawling. He'll lie on his chest and rotate and point to what he wants, but still no forward movement yet. I'm guessing that's a good thing.

Kim is still enjoying her job. They are in their slow period, but still enough work to keep her busy.
I have just found out that my manager is moving into my old group, so this will be manager #14 for me (in less than 4 years). Still loving it.... Happy happy joy joy.

We managed a little trip south. Did anyone get the clues? A little man dressed in green, is of course -- Robin Hood. He of course lived in Nottingham and the Sherwood Forest. I was talking to one of my neighbors and told him that we took a trip south, and he said they are not sure if: he was a real person, or if he was, they aren't sure that he lived in Nottingham. There is a real suspicion that he either lived in Scotland, or northern England, around Carlisle. I think it's whomever writes the latest book that we all remember. He who controls the past controls the future... I think that we can all be certain is that Bryan Adams did write the hit single, and that the song made more money than the actual film. We stayed all around the East Midlands - and stopping off at Nottingham, Middlesbourgh, Cambridge, Deesbourgh, Sherwood Forest and a bunch of places in-between. Nottingham was a wee city - interesting but not as big as one might think. Cambridge is a small Oxford. There is a big rivalry between the two cities. This may be mostly to do with that they are the two oldest university towns, and the annual boat race. As for Sherwood Forest -- close your eyes and think of what it may look like (come on, close them...) Well, it's not like that. I'd always thought there would be hundreds of oak trees, dense forest, and deer and horsemen scattered around the area. A while ago, a lot of the prime oak trees were cut down for wood, and only a few were left, either because they were not large enough, or were all bent and wiggly. As well, oak trees only live to about 300-500 years, so a lot of them have just died out of old age. We did see the tree that Robin Hood and his merry men hid, as the caretakers think that the reason this tree is still alive is that it is actually several trees joined together. This allows it to support itself. Check out the webpage in a couple of weeks/months for more on the above.

The website hasn't moved much since the last letter, other than the addition of the monthly updates. I promise to have at least one more page completed by the end of April.

The car hopefully is feeling a little better. We might have found the short (boot light staying on) so hopefully our starting woes will be over. It ran great on our trip, so here's hoping. For the trip, I also bought a radar detector. It should find the camera's 75m, however, occasionally, it would find them, often it would find them when you were beside them, and often it would just totally ignore them. I know you shouldn't drive over the speed limit, but in England, you can have 8 cameras per mile. That's just not on. How does that make you feel DJ? BC isn't really that bad, now is it?

I guess that's about it for this issue.

Brian, Kim, wee Seth and the moggies.