Jet setting...

I had a fantastic week-and-a-bit off! I took at trip up to Sweden/Norway where Patrik, Gustav, Jonathan and I stayed at the most lovely cabin in the Norwegian mountains!

Among the highlights were:
Being trapped in a car with a bunch of farm yard animals for 8 hours
Eating elk (in both sausage and regular-meat form; and then seeing pictures of it just-post-death and then looking beside me on the sofa and realising I was sitting next to the rifle that shot it!)
Doing nooooooothing in the mountains (except read and pee for a whole day!)
Being the partial consumer of three of the four pans of blueberry crumble that Gustav and Jonathan made with the ridiculous numbers of wild blueberries that grew everywhere!
Mucking our way through the swam
Learning a Swedish song with profound and deeply challenging lyrics (Bagar Begntsson ar dod, han har brant sig pa brod, han har sjalv bakat in sig i en limpa. Han har kampat somen man med en flaskkorv i hand, och en gonmalad potta pa skaln.)
And the loads of reflection and prayer that went on as well.

Then I flew back to London and like the jet-setter I am, the next morning drove to Cologne Germany with my friend Matt for our friend Lisa's wedding. He and I had many adventures on our European tour...most of which were probably funny if you were there, but would bore you all to read about. We discovered that we are quite good at navigating ourselves home from random villages at 2:00 in the morning and that the policy of "just drive until we find a sign for any main road" generally works quite well. The people of Cologne were very lovely and there wasn't a time when we were pulled to the side of the road with our maps out that people didn't offer to help! We stopped at the Pachendale War Museum, at the Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Cemetary and at Ypres on the way home (thought we might as well end up happy weekend away on a positive note!) Actually, the war bits were very interesting and very humbling too. It's hard to imagine...but maybe not so hard...



The yard of our cabin in the woods


The boys...


Patrik and his guitar...


The double rainbow connection...

Leaving your gate open in the mountains...


In Belgium, it would seem it is law to wash your hands...


Friends Reunited!


Candian graves at Tyne Cot Cemetary


The successful European explorers on the (very windy) ferry back to the UK

Biggleswade, Cambridge and Wonderbread

Dantastic and I took a bit of a road trip on the weekend. We realised that it's hard to find a road out of Biggleswade (but came up with an awesome idea reality spoof show called something like "You can't leave Bigglewade) but eventually made it to Cambridge and found the best pub - or at least it made the best Steak and Ale pie I've ever had (and he reported that his...whatever he had was good too). It was called the Pickeral Inn and it's on Magdalene St. Good prices, good food. Highly recommended. I then proceeded to pick up a CD called Strange Country Music...it was a compilation of strange country music. Very good - very amusing...

I also realised yesterday that England doesn't seem to have a Wonderbread equivalent, and I think that's a bit sad. I miss wonderbread (although I don't know if I ever ate it..). Bonus points if you can finish the song..."great green globs of greasy, grimey gopher guts..."

Wlidlife Sightings!

Lisa and I took a great trip to Bath (via almost every village in Wiltshire) on the weekend (more photos to follow later). On the way to Bath I saw my first wild hedgehog and badger! Unfortunately they were dead on the road, but one must start somewhere, right?

In the spirit of Hedgehog sightings, Lisa sent me this link today...

http://www.loosetooth.com/Numo/numo.php3

I think hedgehogs should maybe stay in the wild...clearly, captivity has driven this one mad...