The blog is back

Hiya... so we haven't posted for a while as we didn't think there was anything exciting to report - but things have been happening...
Kent's brother got married on the 11th and we missed it - am gutted. The photos are great, and it's wonderful that with digital etc we could see them a couple of days afterwards - not the same a s the real thing though. It's the second wedding we've missed... this whole OE thing is great, but missing out on days like that isn't so much.
I had to make my third call to the emergency services last weekend, after a car swerved in front of me on the motorway and hit the hard shoulder, flipping over twice in the air, then disappearing into some trees... it was pretty scary, especially picking my way through the bushes trying to find the vehicle whilst on the phone to the nice police chap, convinced I was going to find dead people - surprisingly, the two (late teens) boys were up and about, chatting like nothing had even happened. Hopefully that was just the shock and the whole thing gave them a bloody big fright... I had to give a statement to the police and agree to testify incase they go to court for dangerous driving. I'm hoping they see sense and just plead guilty so I don't have to.
As if the drama factor wasn't high enough after that little incident, we noticed a couple of bizarre transactions while checking our bank account online a couple of days later, and discovered that somehow we've been the victims of credit card fraud - to the tune of about £900. Thankfully, the bank, who have been a bit crap in the past, were really good and blocked my card, which they made me chop up (the first time I've had to do that!) and they've refunded our money, so no harm done long term -but a bit worrying. Kent has convinced himself it's because I bought perfume online - although when I emailed to let that site know they might like to check their security, they assured us it wasn't them and agreed to help the bank out in their investigations, so who knows?
We've also had the delightful incident of Kent forgetting to pick me up from work... because he also forgot he had the car and got a ride home from work himself...oops, his bad! They lock the college at night, so he had to cycle to work the next morning - and it's pretty hilly, for Suffolk.
Not too many photos this time round, although we've just bought a sexy new DSLR (that's flash like a fancy film camera, only digital), under the guise that we can get someone to use it at our wedding... but mostly for Kent to play with.
Our big trip next year is coming together nicely, we both finish work on the 19th of December and then it's off in to the big wide world for 4 1/2 months of no work...bliss!

Strap yourself in... it's a catchup!

Ok... In a complete turnaround, I'm going to attempt to fill you in as quickly as I can... a novel may still follow...

I managed to snare tickets to see Stevie Wonder at the O2 a couple of weeks back, much to the chagrin of a couple of my workmates, and he was awesome! It was his first tour of the UK in ten years or something, and initially I was a little un-engaged as he played a LOT of album tracks - slow ones, at that! - but he rolled out about an hour of hits at the end, which was just fantastic... and free, so it doesn't get much better than that.
The next week it was back to the O2 for Nickelback (another blag - I'm getting rather better at this now!), which I'd jacked up for Kent months ago, after he insisted on watching the 'Rock Star' video on YouTube over and over and over again... They were just amazing live - a notch above anyone I've seen live in the last few years - and there were a couple of families there with younger kids who were really getting into their airguitars - it was supercute!


We met our friends Jordan & Jax at the tube station afterwards and brought them back to Ipswich with us.
The next day was beautiful, so we drove to Hickling Broad and hired a boat for half a day for a bit of a cruise around... we've done this before, and probably will again - it's great - so be warned, if you're planning a visit anytime soon!


Some of my workmates had a flatwarming that night, so it was, ahem, a fairly late night/early morning for all bar Kent, who is far more restrained. This proved to be quite handy as he got up early to cook us all a wicked breakky before we wandered into the park and then drove to Flatford, just down the motorway from us in Constable Country for a picnic... people have been urging us for months to pop down, as it's rather pretty, and quite peaceful. We had a lovely wander in the sun before dropping J & J back at the train station.
In other news, we had to call the police (thank goodness we had to call them while I was at work, as the emergency number here is different than at home!) after our neighbours decided to have a rather loud fist fight outside... in the middle of the afternoon. Luckily no one was seriously injured, after my hero Kent intervened and pulled one off the other... and was promptly accused of being racist as one of them happens to be dark-skinned. Ah, you just can't win, can you?

Oh yes and Kent's been to two football games this week... Ipswich Town lost both of them... perhaps he's a jinx for them?!

It's been lovely again today, so we went to Sutton Hoo, which is an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, where archaeologists unearthed a massive burial ship just before WWII. There's quite a lot of evidence to suggest it's the one holding Raedwald, who was King of East Anglia in the 600s - it was pretty cool, and there's a great story that the old woman who lived on the farm there kept having dreams about a huge burial procession for a King and so funded the digging... personally, I'd have thought the unusual mounds in the field on her otherwise flat farm might have been a giveaway, but it's nice to have a story.
Incidentally, it's between Sutton Hoo and Orford Castle, where we went next, that I found apples that actually taste like apples... let's face it, they've been a bit rubbish for ages, but we drove up a narrow dirt path and found a farm that sold them...mmmmmm... they tasted exactly like the ones we had as kids.
Orford Castle was also pretty cool. I have to confess that I do get a little 'castled out' at times, thankfully this one is almost a 'castlette' - it's still standing, but only one really big tower and a couple of small ones attached to the main one. It's good and tall, so there are amazing views of the north of Suffolk from the top; especially good views from the bit of the top Kent climbed over the fence to take a video of... I think he thinks he's Indiana Jones... or Lara Croft?
Not mega-quick, but not too bad to sum up the last few weeks... we'll spend the next few planning Christmas (sorry, but someone has to be the first to use that word) and my trip to Disneyland Paris with Susie News - YAY!
Take care,
Eryn x

Last weekend of Summer

The camping ground was in Mablethorpe, one of those delightful old English seaside resorts. You know the type, five permanent residents and 20,000 caravans. It was about as interesting as American Football (sorry Jayse). The camping ground was nice but we did nothing else there.
The first day we visited Louth, which is supposedly a “foodie” kind of place. - there was a little food market in the centre. We had soup for lunch from one of those old cafes - the type of café that doesn’t have a grave accent. Had a bunch of gossiping old ladies in it and white bread.
The first of the weekend's castles was Bolingbroke. It's another of the castles that pillock Oliver Cromwell trashed in his one man culture purge. It was a squat but impressive moated castle. It was wesieged and taken by an army, then including the lowly ranked MP Oliver Cromwell. The battles around this particular castle would be the start of his meteoric rise.
We had a quick look along the waterfront/pier at Skegness. There were lots of rides and chavs. Let's just say Skegness has only marginally managed to leave Great Yarmouth with the title of England’s biggest dive.

On Sunday we headed toward home via Sibsey Mill, an old mid 19^th C wind mill. You could climb right to the top and see all the working gear and the twisty roof.
Then we invaded Tattershall Castle, but the defence of one old man on the battlements shouting scared off the attacker...but not before he had a few photos and videos and decided he wanted to bring back a larger army.
Last thing, and probably Eryn's favourite thing so far in England: we found a PYO raspberry place on the way home and picked about 2kg of raspberries. Mmmmmm!
And that's us all caught up... we've got the next couple of weekends at home mostly, so it'll be nice to wake up with a roof over our heads.

K & E x

Madonna in Cardiff!

So, the Queen of Pop: a week after her 50th, prancing around stage in high boots and clothes normally donned by 20 year old strippers? Yes, please!
We took the bank holiday weekend off down to Cardiff as we had paid rather a lot for tickets to the opening night of her tour, and to cruise around South Wales.
Friday night we got no sleep, because all the little boys and their boyfriends were so excited about seeing Madonna the next day, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut all night.
On Saturday we had a quick look around the city of Cardiff and then had much of the afternoon in Cardiff Castle. It was lived in until about 1947. We had a tour round the inside of the Manor house. Typically enough it was amazing, much of the internal architecture and design was done by an eccentric Frenchman, so you can imagine it was full and bright. The castle dated from just after the Norman conquest 1080ish but was built on the site of an old Roman ruin from when they were there beating up on the Welsh between 75 and 400 AD.
We then headed to the concert about 8:30 to see Madonna.
On Sunday we went to the Blaenavon Iron Works (Eryn wasn't excited by this, but enjoyed it) which turned the rich iron ore, coal and limestone of South Wales into Iron. It was in production from about 1780 until 1860. The life of the workers was pretty fascinating - young boys started working from about the age of 7, working 12 hour shifts seven days a week and one 24hr shift every fortnight... it's making me tired just thinking about it.
Across the valley we had a look around the Big Pit coal mine. With much of the machinery still there and some of it still functioning it was also quite interesting. We should have gone down the mine but as the English prefer queuing to doing, we would have had to wait in a line for over an hour and a half.
We used an actual map (rather than our SatNav) to find Harold’s Stones. They are three stones in the ground, from about 1500BC. Apparently they got there because the Devil was playing his little games (you know, like the song, Devil Went Down To Georgia) with a dude from Kent - not to be confused with this Kent. He got beaten and threw his toys (and three big rocks) out of the cot.
We also did one better than that on the way home - we called past an old burial chamber from 2000 BC. A bit like an A-frame bivy with a 80 tonne rock on top rather than canvas.

After a quiet Sunday night (thank goodness), Monday took us to Caerphilly Castle and their middle age siege engines. It's another great moated castle that took so long to build that once it was finished it wasn't really needed. Unfortunately the genius that was Oliver Cromwell (we are starting to rather dislike him) decided to blow it up in the 17^th century. Thankfully the aforementioned coal and iron made some people ridiculously rich and the 3rd Marquess of Bute (the richest man in the world in his day) rebuilt much of it.
we snuck in a quick visit to the 1800year old Roman baths in Caerleon (they needed a few repairs so we couldn’t use them) to see how clever the Romans were.

By the way, the powers that be couldn’t be arsed giving us our tickets as they didn’t want to open the ticket office they sent us to earlier in the day. Basically we paid £65.00 each and then wouldn’t let us in... so no Madge, then.
K & E x