A walk in Wales

After a warm weekend in Bracknell at the house of Dave's parents, cozy with food and conversation, I drove the rental Corsa (with quite a bit more confidence now that several British road trips are under my belt) to a small unimposing castle at the Welsh-England border:

Probably fewer draughts than my flat in Cardiff.

My friend Alex joined me for a ramble in the Wye Valley, trekking 6.5 miles from Chepstow Castle to Tintern Abbey.  The Wye marks the border between Wales and England, and also forms a natural divide between flatlands and hills.  The trail was gently rolling through luxuriously saturated forest, with occasional glimpses of broad horizons towards the Severn bridges.

An adorable feature (read: quadricep killing) hiccup in this comfortable walk was the "Eagle's Nest," also known as simply "365 steps."  The exercise could act as penance, one step for every day of a naughty year.  Also cute was the idiotic trailmarker placement.  What do you have when the trail branches into two equally worn paths?  No marker at all.  After you've guessed a direction, walked for five minutes, and are in a stretch where your options are to go straight on or be tossed down a cliff face....?  Obviously we need a marker to indicate the correct option.  Fortunately, the combined gut-instincts of Alex and me kept us, literally, on the right path. 

Eventually we emerged from the forest, and had the pleasure of traipsing across pastures.  Here is Alex, deftly avoiding a fresh cow pat.  (Grumpy cows in traditional black and white splotches remain safely off camera.)

And finally, when my toes were finally starting to complain (oh alright, my vocal chords joined it as well).... Tintern Abbey.

This skeleton of a cistercian abbey is gorgeous.  It wasn't as mystical as I was hoping for, perhaps due to the carpark of tourist vehicles just out of the frame, but the lush colors and surprising perspectives are nonetheless quite special.

So that was my first walk in Wales.  I expect there to be many more to come! 

Trees grow on money

I have just thrown £150+ into creating a kitchen jungle:

Not visible in this picture: almost 300 Liters of soil and a raised bed structure that needs assembly, plus a few hand tools and such.  Soon all these little guys will be placed in their respective corners of the flat, getting to know the lovely mini-tree that Lara bequeathed to me during the mass exodus from Oxford that occurred this week (more to come on that).  The potting soil will be placed in an outdoor bed and vegetable seedlings will be transplanted there.  I definitely feel a sudden shift in the place, adding plants really makes it feel like a home :)  I hope they like it here as much as I like having them.

Sprouts!

Update on my foray into vegetable gardening:


I have bought some little peat pellet thingies that expand almost 4x when you first add water but are surrounded on the sides by thin mesh to keep their shape.  Seeds get dropped into the center of each pellet, and you just poke around with a finger until it's covered and pretty looking.  I found all vegetable seeds at Homebase that suggested you could still sow them in August: Carrots, Beets, Spinach, and Rocket (Arugula).  The little peat babies get coddled under plastic and brought indoors at night.

Et voila, 2/4 of my seeds have already popped up with sprouts in just a couple of days!  The carrots and spinach are just late bloomers, I have faith they will emerge when they are good and ready.  The beet sprouts are a beautiful red color, and the rocket is quite leafy.

So I am very energized and enthusiastic for more planting and eventually transplanting into a proper outdoor autumn vegetable patch, albeit in raised containers.  For now, the seedlings will stay cozy in their peat pellets, basking in Cardiff sunshine.

You should visit my kitchen.

It is a warm and inviting place, full of happy things and enticing smells.

Note all the essential ingredients to a happy kitchen:

1. Pot with stuff simmering.  Who cares what, anything that simmers along is likely to end up lovely.
2. Fancy stirring devices in cheerful colors
3. A large bowl that makes even massive portions look reasonable
4. Random paper towel ready to absorb all of my many little accidents (I am no graceful Nigella)
5. Wine.  Oops, the glass is empty.  That means the dinner will definitely have that extra je ne sais quoi
6. Big knives looking impressive in a knife block.
7. Little knife I actually used.
8. Fresh herbs in pots, actually looking perky now that I interpreted their depressing wilting as a desperate cry for attention/water
9. A nice view with sunshine (er, it's Wales... indirect sun tempered by lots of, um, clouds)
10. Good tunes.  You can't see this, but I'm rocking out to the radio recorded Cambridge folk festival played far too loudly on my trusty speakers.

So in this environment dinner was guaranteed to be a success.  When I stopped dancing around the kitchen long enough to pour, chop, or stir, I managed to concoct:

Spicy turkish couscous with tomatoes, beans, capers, lemon, and fresh cilantro and parsley.  Possibly the best thing ever, I promise, although I was a little heavy handed with the cayenne and needed water rather than more of that wine :)

So you see, if you visit me you get fed.  Better yet, you will be invited to join me in cooking in this ever-so-inviting kitchen!

Let me know when flights are booked...

My new home at last

Yes, I did* just get back from an exceptional trip to Portugal, but those posts will take more work and this is a pressing matter... I have just gotten the keys and "moved in" to my new flat in Cardiff. A previous post showed the construction site that won me over with it's promise and potential. In the end, it is an absolutely lovely flat that has lost none of the original charm. The wood floors were kept and polished up, the tiles were cleaned, the new kitchen was installed, and the new furniture was actually being unloaded as I dropped my suitcases. Yes, the place needs some love (well, elbow grease, a mop, paper towels, chemical sprays, and a good vacuum), but it is everything I was hoping for! Enjoy the new pictures below (and have fun comparing with those of the previous post!)

My living room, with my intact bike boxes that were delivered while I was traveling.

View from living room into hallway/foyer area towards kitchen.

Enormous bathroom! To the right are the toilet, bidet, and shower.  After a dispute over whether to paint the sink black or white, the builders chose lavender and it matched the fixed up tile floors beautifully.

View from my flat into the building foyer area.  An Australian couple is apparently moving in upstairs in September, and we will share this entranceway.  The stained glass is only barely visible here, but it is really quite special.

View from my bed (door to garden!), just before the mattress was delivered.

The new kitchen.  Eeeep, I have so much counter/cabinet space! All for me!

Can you tell I'm excited!!??

Savoury pies

Do we have savory pies in America?  Google has informed me that chicken pot pie is a common US recipe, but I don't think I've ever had it.  And then I moved to the UK, where I was introduced to the glory that is a homemade savoury pie.  It is a crisp golden and flaky crust surrounding a hearty stew of tender earthy goodness.  Amazing.  I had my first piece in Bracknell, served fresh from the oven of Dave's mum.  It was heaven.  And then this weekend, after having her culinary wisdom transmitted via mobile phone, Dave and I attempted our first pie.

Bacon and butter and onion and leek and shredded chicken and stock and shortcrust pastry.  And I was the happiest (most gluttonous) person on the planet for a few exquisite mouthfuls.  Eye candy follows.

Yum!  Already dreaming up little individual pies with obscure flavor combinations... moroccan? turkish?  Still, there is something particularly lovely about an English classic!

Shwmae!

Lots of Welsh words look desperately in need of more vowels, or at least a rearrangement of letters.  Shwmae, meaning Hello in Welsh, is pronounced "shoe my" or "shu mai" (which I'm pretty sure are dumplings from trader joe's).  I have recently participated in a short "taster" course to learn Welsh, and I'm very much enjoying all the new consonants and the rather bouncy melody of the language.

Wales is officially bilingual, and all the signs around Cardiff have both Welsh and English.  It isn't quite like Montreal, where everyone first addressed me in both English and French and then determined what I preferred.  Especially in Cardiff, where very few people are fluent in Welsh, the default language is still English.  But I do get the sense that the Welsh government, and many Welsh people, would like to change that.  Learning Welsh is frequently subsidized by businesses and other organizations, and I got a questionnaire in my New Staff induction pack and an enthusiastic email about Welsh courses the day I began my new job at Cardiff University.  As staff, I can attend courses for free, like the taster one that I have just finished, but also including the 2+ year courses.

Welsh is an early Celtic language, and more removed from English than French and German.  Still, there are echos of some francais in certain Welsh words... I won't try to give examples because the spelling and the sounding are quite dauntingly different at first glance.  My class consisted of six (then five, then four) pupils, sitting in a semi circle in front of a rather adorable native Welsh speaker who was just filling in and wasn't quite sure what was supposed to going on.  The four people remaining for the third/last class were a nice blend... Sonya, my compatriot from lab, Adam, who had taken high school Welsh but since forgot a lot (but not enough to really be in a beginner class... still he was very patient and classy about knowing more than the rest of us!), and Anna, an Italian teacher who approached new sentences with gusto.  It was the right mix of people to really get me to stop being self-conscious and just start making silly sounds.  Nothing makes me giggle like trying to say "six" ("chwech") or anything with a double ll in it.  Spit flies.

But it is a beautiful language, and it never hurts a brain or an empty social calendar in a new city to take more courses.  So while Welsh is one of the least useful languages to learn on the planet, I might just do exactly that.  Come September, I might take a free one-year entry level course.

Have a look here, at a translation of the Welsh anthem: http://www.know-britain.com/songs/welsh_national_anthem_english_version.html

A country that has muses and poets and minstrels and language and harps featured proudly in its national anthem... I think Wales and I (and maybe Welsh and I) will get along quite nicely.

The Norweigian church on Cardiff Bay, where my class was held.  Norway produced all the timber that formed the support posts in the epic swathes of coal mines that covered Wales in its industrial age.

A flat at last!

After having places vanish an hour before viewing, after having the perfect place be dirty and broken, after finding toilets in separate rooms without sinks to wash your hands, after being asked for massive rent prices for the tiniest of apartments, I have finally found my future home in Cardiff... I left the bond fee at the agency today, next week I sign a contract and give the full deposit, and July 18th or so I move in!

What is this magical property that rescued me from weeks of trolling Craigslist and agency websites?  It is large, it is full of light, it is ticking all the boxes and in a rather posh location... it is also, however, currently a pile of rubble.  After being vacant for two years, the flat is being entirely refurbished.  It takes a lot of vision, and optimism, to see the result through the debris.  But I kinda fell in love with the idea of the place, with it's windows and gardens and original tile floors... I have faith that a brand new kitchen can't be that bad, and the lovely ceiling of the mostly finished living room helps me visualize the loveliness that could potentially emerge.

The lovely preserved/repaired bay window facing the street, with stained glass in the upper pains.  Not double glazed, but pretty enough for me not to begrudge them my increased heating bill.  The floor could almost be salvaged, but some gaps in the wood means they're putting in carpet (alas).  TV is going.  Blinds and curtain rod installed.

The bedroom with it's door direct to the walled back garden.

The inside of the bedroom (needs imagination to see past the debris!).  It will get a new bed, new wardrobe, and more carpet.

A rather quirky feature, this little annex/pantry room is attached to the kitchen, connected the rear and side gardens, and is meant to hold the washing machine.  It will eventually provide perfect secure bike storage with easy access through my gardens to the street!

The kitchen.  Well, none of this is staying.  It will get a new sink and new stove along the window wall facing the rear garden.  The opposite wall will have a long counter with cabinets.  Cabinets are wood, counters black, everything brand new.  I have a tough time picturing the final product, but fingers crossed!  They are saving the lovely tiled floor rather than covering it up like the previous owners.

The bathroom is large, albeit a little odd.  A sink (the agents want it black, the builders want it white...) a tub a toilet a bidet and a shower.  Oh my.

So there we have it.  Or there we can almost see it.  I love that it has personality.  It has charm.  It has all the things I need in a place.  I hope hope hope that the final result is lovely, having met the builders I think they really take pride in doing a nice job and I am very optimistic.  And come July, you are all invited to come see my new home in Cardiff!

Cosi fan tutte by the sea

On a whim, I picked up tickets for the Welsh National Opera's production of Mozart's Cosi, performed in the rather impressive Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay... my Oxford student ID has another two months on it, so I managed an orchestra ticket for only 10 quid.  The hall is lovely, with rich earthy walls and rather good acoustics.  The music was also delightful.  But the unusual English sea-side setting for Mozart's rather silly opera plot resulted in man-sized dragon people, bearded ladies, actual dogs, fake dogs, long sausage links, fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, tap dancing tutu-wielding aging street performers, and a small woman in a big bikini-ed fatsuit to appear upstage from the glorious quartets.  The director also made the ending, normally a roll-your-eyes-isn't-it-nice-it-all-sorta-worked-out finale, a brutally self-deprecating and bitter grimace.  But, they sell little cups of ice cream in the interval, and the music was top-quality Mozart, so a brilliant night out regardless!

"In these stones horizons sing"

Cardiff wanderings

I'm one week into my new job, and overdue for an update.  This one will be mostly visual, since I'm feeling a little sleepy!

Sonya,  my North American ambassador to Cardiff, spent a lot of time wandering the streets of Pen-y-lan and Roath with me... the general idea was to look at streets and houses in my quest for rental real estate, but the ultimate aim was the Waterloo Tea Garden for coffee and cake :)

Cardiff has a castle.  It totally trumps the one in Oxford.  As soon as I can prove I live here, I will go about getting my free pass.  Until then, I can walk around its walls in the park.  Think there are any flats to let in the castle?

Bute park is gorgeous.  The river would be glorious for punting, except that people don't punt here and the bridges would decapitate gnomes.  Still, there are near endless swaths of lush green wonderfulness just adjacent to the university.

Bute park apparently has a little mascot.  I don't know any more than you do.

See, there CAN be epically gorgeous weather in Wales!

A New Beginning

With much more sadness and uncertainty than expected, I said goodbye to the United States... again... and headed to a new job and a new life in Cardiff. For those of you who are a little iffy on British history and geography, google maps is extremely helpful: Cardiff is the capital of Wales (independent from England but not quite, like England's high school age child that asks for stupid tattoos but got a full-ride scholarship to university), and it is dusting off a long history as a busy or not-busy-enough coal exporting port and emerging as a shiny cultural epicentre.

Most of  my life was packed up into lots of small boxes and plastic tubs and delivered to a freight forwarding service in Newark.  What remained  was snugly stuffed into two suitcases, one carry-on, and one personal item, and was delivered back to Newark two days later for a direct Continental flight to London Heathrow.  What would come after landing was fuzzy... maybe a painfully long and expensive bus.  maybe an equally painful bus plus train.  a first night in a hotel, hopefully followed by the extra bedroom of a nice person I found online.  maybe.

Then, everything righted itself.  Dave, being his classy understatedly exceptional self, showed up at Heathrow unannounced.  Well, he showed up at the wrong terminal, so we met near a bus depot instead of at the arrivals gate.  But nothing looked better than to see him on the sidewalk, ready to help with the obese luggage and the half-awake me.  He donated four hours of his life to take the bus to Cardiff with me, which didn't feel long at all :)  He headed back to Oxford the next day, but at that point I had my feet slightly more firmly planted and a new place to stay lined up.  My new hostess even picked me up in her car, so I was spared solo suitcase-battling.  Things are definitely going more smoothly than I could have expected!

My temporary flat is close to the Cardiff Bay area, which has been transformed from a decaying working harbor to a bubbling hub for chain restaurants with water views, the Millenium Centre (above, left) that houses opera, musicals, orchestras, etc., their Assembly/Senate building, and swanky new apartments.

One of the few remaining original buildings from the bustling Cardiff port.  It is actually quite small in person, but very attractive.  In the foreground is the skeleton of a weekend continental market (that I am about to visit after posting this), full of food vendors hawking paella, breads, french cookies, kangaroo burgers, bratwursts, curries, garlicky potatoes and skewers of jumbo shrimp.  I'm hungry.

View from Mermaid Quay (pronounced 'Key', which always gets me) at Cardiff Bay.  I didn't realize how nice it would be for me to live near water again... I even adore the sound of seagulls, until they divebomb people in the busy shopping high street.

A month for family

The last month or so has been a surprising mix of the terrible, the hard, the wonderful, and the relaxed.  I finally left my job at the NIH... I have had "going away parties" on numerous occasions for each extended trip I took over to Oxford, but this was the big last goodbye.  Dr. Bright packed up all her earthly belongings, put them in the brave little minivan, and headed precariously home to New York.  In the end, I think that I will sincerely miss my lab at the NIH; despite some tough times, I came to really appreciate the people and the place more than I expected, and I left Bethesda on very good terms, with an NIH sweatshirt, a card signed by all my colleagues, and a rather large gift certificate for John Lewis (a UK department store).

At the same time, my family was coping with a tragedy.  My grandmother suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, spent a few challenging days in the hospital, and was eventually brought home to Lake George for home hospice care.  About the time I arrived in Indiana, she was coming home.  My mom was amazing.  My whole family was amazing.  Somehow, a tragic event was almost beautiful, and my grandma passed away in her own bedroom with all her children holding hands around her.

After the funeral, I drove the little mini cooper up to my brother's house in Ann Arbor, where I proceeded to do very little.  I initially intended to stay for the weekend.  Then I stayed for a week.  Then 10 days.  Whoops!  But I had much needed downtime, and puttered about the garden between walks into town for posh coffee.  Pansies, espresso drinks, cooking with Andy... no surprise I stayed so long :)

Andy completely remade the front porch of his house, and I was fortunate enough to watch it all come together.  With no  help from me (but at least without my clumsiness ruining too much), Andy put up the finished railings.  As a finishing touch, he created a trellis for the north side, in the same style as the trellis on our grandparent's porch that we found in old black and white photographs.

The handyman himself, relaxing on the porch swing he refurbished.

I had been worried about the pansies, since when I left they looked like this.

Andy recently emailed me this updated photo of our pansy project... "resplendent" indeed :)

When I finally started to be bored with my life of leisure, I took the little mini home to Long Island.  For kicks, I opted to drive via Canada instead of Ohio (although they are equally boring stretches of North America), and spend the night in the very, erm, bizarre town of Niagara Falls.  Although the falls are rather impressive, the budget hotel I picked out of my data-roaming-charged-smartphone was in the middle of an off-season theme-park/freak-show/fun-house/wax-museum neighborhood that was rather Norman-Bates creepy without the throngs of whiny eight-year-olds that I assume flood the streets in the summertime.  But, I survived the night, passed through customs, and took fun two-lane twisty roads most of the way back to the NY metropolitan area.  Like the commercial says, "Mini cooper... handles like a go-cart."

The falls.  At night, they are lit up by big spotlights that change colors.

After getting some wanderlust out of my system, I settled into a cozy routine back at Casa Gallogly-Bright.  The newest addition to the family fleet, two banana yellow pedal kayaks, were a highly enjoyable addition to the weeks at home.  Good work mom and dad!  After a little foray up to Montreal (for another post), I hunkered down to pack up my entire life into boxes to be shipped in a container ship over to Cardiff.  I will only post about that process when/if I get all those boxes delivered in 4-6 weeks time!  And, simply because it wouldn't be a blog entry without entirely random pictures, here is one from a trip to the North Fork with Mom and Barbara to see alpacas.  Yes, alpacas. 

Yup, Mom and Barbara and alpacas.  They were both doing their best to convince the other to buy them.  "Never need to cut grass again!"

Equally random pic of my dad, preemptively celebrating our stuffed bell peppers :)