At the Vicarage

This is where my younger brother, Dave lives, with Jill, Hannah and Beth and my niece, Grace.  My brother is now semi-retired and is building a conservatory on the left hand corner of the picture.  The house is surrounded by farm land and I have enjoyed discovering some of the right-of-way walks that are unique to Britain.  Some farmers maintain these paths through their crops whilst others try to discourage people from accessing them.  I have discovered a lovely small lake that was apparently improved using government funds for wildlife.  Yesterday, I was sad to find a dead badger.

On Saturday Dave and Grace and I went into Gloucester for the day.  We had planned to take Grace for her swimming lesson at 11.00am but the roadworks on the A40 were so horrendous that the journey took us an hour rather than 15 minutes so we missed the class.  Discussion of the roadworks has taken over from the weather as the main topic of conversation in Gloucester.  Unfortunately, many people resent the proposed new busway because the busses are expensive and inconvenient and the roadwork will take 6 months to complete.  

Instead of going swimming, we walked through the docks to the cathedral and two of Gloucester's excellent museums.  The Folk Museum has a wonderful collection of children's toys and Grace was able to make her own puppet show using museum puppets.  In the museum shop we bought a piece of string with instructions for what was called Fumble Fingers.  I remember it as Cat's Cradle.  Then at the Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery we saw a wonderful exhibition called the Sharmanka Travelling Circus with kinetic sculptures by the Russian, Eduard Bersudsky.  Every hour the pieces burst into life accompanied by music and lights.  Grace was fascinated and loved working through the activity sheet.  I realised that I had seen one of his pieces a few years ago at the Edinburgh Festival.  It was a stunning clock tower with intricate figures that moved with the passage of time.

On Sunday, we drove over to Cheltenham for the dress rehearsal of my niece's dance show.  My niece is nearly seven and is a butterfly in the show that has a storyline about Sherwood Forest and goes on for 3 nights and a matinee this coming weekend.  A professional standard theatre is located in the school grounds with several international performances on the programme.  We were not encouraged to be in the audience for the dress rehearsal, but when I explained that I was Grace's aunt from Australia, they made an exception.  I was astonished at the number of children who were involved in the show.

This week, with Grace at School, my sister-in-law Jill at work and Dave working on the conservatory, I have been preparing for my flight to Alexandria in Egypt where I will be staying for four weeks to undertake a Teaching English as a Second Language Course.  In my next blog I'll write some more about that.