As the father of two little girls, I’m no stranger to a good tea party. However, at the end of August, we got to experience the a first: a tea party with actual tea. Well, I guess it wasn’t a “party”, but we went to a Proper British Tea. We chose the Red Lion Inn as they were open on Sunday afternoons and looked fairly fancy. We booked ahead of time, so they were expecting us, and when we arrived we were ushered to a properly set table. The amount of food that was then presented to us was crazy. Assorted sandwiches, cakes, scones, desserts, way too much even for our sweets-obsessed family to finish.

 

Another week, another church to preach at. This time was in Woking, on the outskirts of London. This was the biggest church I’ve preached at in the UK, although it’s still a bit modest by American church standards. I think the attendance that day was 125 or so. It was also the most American-style church we’ve been to so far. Afterwards, we hit the local pub, The Sovereigns.

 

That following Saturday, we went on a tour of London churches, visiting the two most famous: Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Westminster is…interesting. It honestly doesn’t feel like a church so much as a museum. You wind through it in a set path and it very much feels like a big room that’s been partitioned rather than one large church. Not to say that it’s not beautiful, but it wasn’t as grand or majestic as I’d anticipated.

Kyla and I have been to St. Paul’s before, but this was the first time for the girls. For Kyla and I, it was still just as gorgeous the second time around. One “new” thing that the girls and I did was climb all the way up to the Golden Gallery. The Golden Gallery is at the very top of the dome: 280 feet from the ground, 528 steps to climb to get up there.

Needless, to say, the view of London is stunning:

Lizzy and I were….well, nervous, to be that far up with only a waist-high railing. Molly, on the other hand, was loving it. She was dancing and spinning nearly 300 feet above the ground without any fear. I wish I were as brave.

The beginning of August was a busy week. First of all, on Sunday morning, we went east a bit to preach at a church in a little village called Wonersh. The town was small, the church even smaller, but it was one of the prettiest churches we’ve seen so far.

After service, we had lunch at the Grantley Arms, which has been in business for nearly 500 years. I had, and I quote, “Conisbees sausages, Colcannon mash, onion gravy & crispy shallots”. Basically a fancy way of saying “bangers and mash”, but it was fantastic. 

Then, we stopped by Guilford Castle on the way back. No one is exactly sure how old it was, but it was shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066. It was a true castle: kinda ugly, very plain, and VERY easily defended. We climbed all the way to the top, where soldiers would have paced keeping an eye on the landscape for miles around.

On Monday, I started a new job….well, a new position with the same company. Not really sure it’s a promotion, but it was a raise, so I’ll take it. I’m now working as a Dispatcher for Hemmersbach. I send engineers to repair computers and printers from Oxford up to Birmingham and then west into northern Wales. What’s surprising is how much I’m enjoying it. I avoided the position for 6 months, but finally my Irish friend/boss talked me into trying it. I don’t know why she thought I would like it, but surprisingly, she was right. I’ve only had one bad day out of the past 21. That’s a pretty good record.

Finally, to wrap up a very busy week, we went to the beach on Saturday. Now, ever since Mom and Donna arrived in the country, the weather has been against us. Go to Paris: 110 F (42 C). Go to the beach: 65 F with 30 mph winds. But the kids had a blast. It was their first trip to a beach, so they didn’t care what the weather was like.

All in all, August has been a pretty good month so far. Just a few more blog posts and I’ll be caught up.

Back at the end of July, we took our first trip to a strange and wondrous land: France. Specifically, Paris. And I do have to say that Paris is everything they say it is. The food is great. The people are rude. The architecture is gorgeous. The city smells in the summer. It literally hits every stereotype that you might have of Paris.

Unfortunately, with typical Payne Family Luck, we managed to plan our trip for the worst heat wave the continent has ever seen. It was a record 108.5 F (42.5 C) that week. And we had booked an AirBNB without air conditioning (almost no apartments/houses have air conditioning in France or the UK). But, wow, was the view from the apartment amazing.

I’ll admit that the first night and day were nearly the end of our journey. We were all so hot, tired, and cranky by the end of the first 24 hours that we nearly killed each other. We saw the Eiffel Tower, which was beautiful, but even the height didn’t provide much wind or relief from the heat.

Fortunately, late afternoon, we found a public fountain that people were using to cool off and that allowed us cool our tempers as well. And again, you couldn’t beat the view from the fountain.

After cooling off, we decided that, despite the cost, we’d move to a hotel with air conditioning, and after that, things went much better. We couldn’t get two nights in a row at a single hotel, but that ended up ok. The second hotel we stayed in was especially cool, being an inn since the 1400’s.

We ate in great restaurants, took a bus tour of the city, and even found a crepes place that had a cat mascot. There’s a huge amount of photos below to look at. I’ll try to catch up on my blogging this week (but don’t count on it).

A couple of weeks ago, toil and trouble came to Basingstoke. Mom arrived from the States. The girls were still in school when they arrived, so Kyla and I drove into Heathrow to pick up her and my Aunt Donna. This was the farthest into London that I’d driven, but it was a surprisingly easy drive.

That night, and the next, Lizzy starred in a production of “Shakespeare Rocks” with the rest of Year 6. She played the part of “girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl”. She rocked it and got one of the biggest laughs of the night with one line.

It was honestly a very well done production. The kids had their lines down, the delivery was spot on, everyone had a good time.

Back in January we visited Windsor Castle for Molly’s birthday. At the beginning of July, we got to go back to the Royal Borough of Windsor (that’s the official name), this time to preach at the United Reformed Church.

This congregation was particularly small, less than 20, but just as in the States, when the weather warms up, church attendance goes down. It was a pretty little building, but they rent out most of it now to various commercial enterprises, which is kind of a shame, but a lot of churches over here depend on facility rentals in order to make ends meet.

After lunch, we’d hoped to go back to the Castle, but the line was huge, probably a couple of hours long. Instead we went through a local museum (which was kind of disappointing) and then walking the high street for a bit.

 

Later that week, we had a Parent’s Night at the school Lizzy will be attending this fall. I was hot and grumpy at the beginning of it, so I went in fully expecting to hate everything about it, but by the time they were done, I was grudgingly impressed with the school. It’s called a secondary school, which includes ages 11-16. I’m looking forward to seeing how she does starting in September.

So, most of you know that I’m not exactly the most patriotic person in the world. There’s a lot of crap in America that needs to be fixed and I think a lot of other countries do some things far better than the U.S.A. (*cough…healthcare….cough*). Consequently, the 4th of July has never been the biggest holiday for me. Add that to the fact that I’m not that into drunkenness and explosives, and it’s obvious why this is really just not a holiday designed for me. But this year, I played it up a bit by having a party at work. Here’s the invitation:

My mom graciously sent over a ton of candy and goodies from the U.S. and I set them up in our office for everyone to try. I don’t want to brag, but I like to think I brought a little bit of freedom to our corner of the U.K. that day.

As you might remember, at least once a month I get to go preach at a different church somewhere in southwest England. June 30th, it was a little community called Chandler’s Ford, near a slightly bigger community near Eastleigh, which is right outside a place you might have heard of: Southampton.

Southampton has been a major port in southwest England for a thousand years. Part of the D-Day invasions launched from there. The Mayflower left from Southampton with the Pilgrims in 1620 and the RMS Titanic left here for it’s famous half a trip across the Atlantic.

First, the church. It was one of the biggest congregations I’ve preached to over here, about 50-60 people (church attendance is much lower here than in the States). The building itself is a few hundred years old.

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After service, we journeyed down to Southampton. For lunch, I had one goal in mind: Taco Bell. You see, Mexican food is extremely hard to come by over here. Genuine restaurants are completely non-existent, and while a few places claim they have authentic Mexican, the fact that they put coleslaw on a burrito means that claim is a lie.

So, Taco Bell, as Taco Bell-ish as it is, is still a major step toward Mexican food. Unfortunately, they’re not even many of them in the U.K., only a few dozen in the whole country, the closest to us being Southampton, a good 45 minutes away. It wasn’t quite the same as Taco Bell in the states, but it still really hit the spot.

After the “Mexican”, we wandered back up town to the Sea City Museum, which focuses on Southampton’s maritime history, particularly involving the city’s involvement with the Titanic. It was fascinating. Along with the normal tragic stories of the ship, it also brought home how many people from one city were affected by the sinking. It was estimated that nearly every family in town knew someone who died when the Titanic hit the iceberg.

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It was a sobering, yet fascinating, day. Cruise ships still dock in Southampton daily, and if a cruise ever takes you there, I highly recommend stopping at the museum.

It’s been incredibly busy the past month, so I haven’t had time to blog. I’m going to post a few today and tomorrow to help catch up. Be prepared.

Back at the end of June, Lizzy’s primary school had a graduation ceremony for all the “leavers” that are moving up to Secondary school this autumn. The cool thing about it is that the graduation took place at Winchester University. The kids got to go down for the day and see what University is like. Kyla and I went down that afternoon for the ceremony. It was a lot of fun.

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Today we go to travel back in time. No TARDIS involved, but there were a bunch of British people in weird clothes, so it was kind of like Doctor Who.

When we first moved to Basingstoke, one of the first people to start a conversation with us was a couple that sat right behind us at church. Derrick and Elspeth (which is Scottish for Elizabeth) welcomed us, asked where we were from, etc. Derrick was especially interested when he heard we were from Indiana as he had worked many years for Eli Lily, which just so happens to have it’s European headquarters in Basingstoke. So, he’s been to Indianapolis, even knew about Greenfield, although he’d never been out to the old Lily headquarters there. “In fact, he said, my son-in-law is from Indiana, someplace down along the river, but I don’t remember the town’s name.” Told us that his daughter and her husband lived in Georgia, but she would be in Basingstoke around Christmas. We met her and my first question, of course, is “Where is your husband from?” The answer about knocked me over.

Straight line distance, there are 4,083 miles between here and Warrick County, Indiana. Her husband was from 30 miles from there: Tell City. What are the odds of that? Square mileage of the United States…..sheer number of people in between there and here…..and yet we run into someone who’s husband is from a town close enough that our high schools played each other in basketball. Unreal.

Anyway, he, his wife, and young daughter are in town visiting so we took our kids to a little village called New Alresford. It’s called “New” because it didn’t exist until just after 1200 A.D., as opposed to Old Alresford next door, which dates back to before 1000 A.D…..so kind of a young town. We went for the park and walk along the river, which was beautiful, and got to feed the ducks, which the kids loved.

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After the river, though, we walked up to the rail station for a snack….and accidentally stumbled back 75 years. It turns out that back at the end of World War II, New Alresford served as a station for a number of American and British troops preparing for the D-Day invasion, which left England at Portsmouth just a few more miles south. Every year this town has a remembrance for those soldiers and the how they affected the town. People dress in period costumes, there was swing bands and live singers, people walking around in old military uniforms, the works. The soldiers 75 years ago shipped out by rail, and the old rail station is largely unchanged since that day (since it’s no longer in use by any actual rail lines). I took just a few pictures, but in some of them, there are very little clues to tell you it was took in 2019 as opposed to 1945.

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It was incredibly cool. Our only regret was it started raining soon after we arrived, forcing us to retreat back home. Overall, though, an amazing day seeing a glimpse of both British and American history.