Run this video clip and you’ll hear the essential soundtrack to our lives here in Great Britain:

Today the temperature hit 50 degrees and the sun was out. Ooh, what a little tease for spring that was! Especially because here in southern England the grass stays green and many of the hedges and plantings have green leaves. If you ignore the leafless trees it almost looks like it isn’t winter.

A day like this one demands an excursion, so I loaded up the Boyz and set out on what I have named the “get lost” game. Critical to this game is the SATNAV, a Garmin GPS navigator. As soon as Paul got here he noticed that many of his coworkers had one of these and swore by them. And he quickly learned that a SatNav is something you practically can’t live without over here. Because the roads are so narrow, so busy, so overcrowded with parked cars and delivery vehicles, tons of excessive “road furniture” and street signage and markings, and last but not least the roundabouts. It is difficult to impossible to find a place to pull over if you get lost, because there is almost never any shoulder on the roads, and in the country you can drive a long way before you even come to a side street or a driveway to turn around in. Also people drive excessively fast on these too-small roads. For all these reasons, following a map when you are the driver is really perilous. You need every bit of your concentration just to watch the road.

Enter the SatNav. I never thought about owning one of these in Boulder, but I LOVE having it here. It literally talks to you and tells you what turns to make, and which exit out of the roundabout to take. And you can check the map on the little screen for verification. The UK is a small country, and because of that you can pinpoint an address pretty accurately if you just know the postcode (zip code). Just type in that postcode and the SatNav will take you there. It is fantastic! It has enabled us to travel all over the country really easily. It’s pretty funny when you make a wrong turn but it will help you get back on the route. Plus there are plenty of stories of SatNav’s leading people to the wrong place, but so far that hasn’t happened to us.

Back to the “get lost” game. It is simply heading out for a drive on whatever roads and turnings look interesting. Stopping in villages or other places I happen upon. Then, when I’ve gone far enough, I just tell the SatNav to “Go Home”, and it will direct me home from where ever I am. Totally fun! Now that I’ve pretty much discovered most of the Big Sights within about an hour or so of our house, it is a fun way to maybe get lucky and stumble on some small place under the tourist radar.

Today I headed into the next county north (Buckinghamshire) to a ridge of hills called the Chilterns. There are supposedly some good long walking trails along the Chiltern ridge, that we will get around to hiking this spring when it gets warmer.

A pretty long view in the Chilterns

I stopped in the town of Beaconsfield and walked the Boyz around, which was another market town with a pretty church and this very cool-looking row of buildings:

I love wandering towns here especially when I see little old bits of crumbly architecture like the gate in this wall, above. Everything is tinted green with lichen and many structures have vines or other growing stuff on them too, which just adds to the aged charm. This is the sort of thing that I will not find in Colorado, and I am trying to soak up as much of it as I can while I’m here. (Though I will absolutely not miss the perpetual damp, which is responsible for that green tinge on everything!)

Above is an example of a very very typical town center I drove through today. I don’t recall the name of the town but it was built up a hill with the train station at the top. (A good example of all the “road furniture” to navigate, too.) The look of this little main shopping street is so very common in my area of Berkshire/Buckinghamshire. It is surprisingly hard to find distinctive or unusual architecture; it seems like every parish has used the exact same planning requirements for housing and retail. The really older buildings end up being what you watch out for.

Next sunny day I’ll be out on another Get Lost adventure!

I know many of you already got this news over on Facebook, but for those of you who are not FB fans… 

My big news this week, is that we’re leaving England early. Paul decided to retire since he was eligible to do so in May after 30 years with the same company. He’s been contemplating it for many years, and knew it was going to come up as an option during our stay here. Perhaps if his work life here had been better, he might have chosen to stay on. We also have some family issues (not the least being Paul’s dad now being on his own) so we’re feeling the need to be back there. 

I’m totally grateful to even have had a full year here; must maximize what time we have left, for sure! We don’t yet know how long the house lease over here will go past Paul’s official last day of May 21, but I think the Boyz and I will be flying back around May 15th. I want to fly home first with the dogs, in case something happens and they don’t get on the flight or something. Then at least someone will still be here in the UK to collect them back! 

It’s a little crazy to start back into move-mode again since I feel like I just recovered from the last one. And I have such mixed feelings about going back after just a year, that I feel torn in two!! I found it surprisingly hard to leave Colorado last May and I miss so many things about it (and life in the USA) very much. Being over here has deepened my appreciation and love of my country more than I every would have thought possible! But living in the UK has been simply a dream come true, too, and fascinating in so many ways. I’m going to be streaming my favorite UK radio station on the computer when I get back! It will feel strange not to know the daily news of the UK, after getting so up to speed with it. (At least I’ll be here through their elections this spring. If I could vote, I’d be a Tory!) But then again, I don’t know what’s going on in the US much now. I think this experience will leave me seeking out more international news on the web, since you sure don’t get it in the regular USA media.

I am really anxious to get back to my studio and kiln of course. Having all my sculpture’s ceramic molds now will be opening a lot of possibilities for me. Knowing I can cast my own work will affect how I produce new work in future. And being able to glaze again, yessss! I was burned out from it after last spring but I’ll be ready again by summer. I’m hoping I can finish at least the “Roundabout” sculpture before I go, but it is amazing how distracting it is being here, work-wise. So many other interesting things to do in a day! Especially once winter is over…

Anyway, that’s the latest!

Tuesday I experienced what it is like to be a commuter to London. It was my day at the London Toy Fair trade show. Paul dropped me off at the Maidenhead train station on his way to work, and I got the 8:34 into Paddington Station. It was packed with people as this is rush hour for the workday. I was on an express train which should only have taken 22 minutes, but instead it took about 45 minutes. For some reason it stood around awhile about halfway there. Train and Tube delays are pretty normal, based on the traffic reports I hear on the radio in the morning. Just like any big city in the world, I guess!! In Paddington it was simple to walk right down to the Tube. I was heading to West Kensington, which was only about 2 1/2 miles from Paddington. In the summer I would have walked it just for the sights I’d pass. But now I only had 45 minutes to get to the show and it was a cold winter morning, so the Tube is the thing. It took me about a half hour with one train change.

The Toy Fair is held in a large Victorian exhibit hall called the Olympia. The Tube stop is right in front of the main entrance, which was very handy! The Olympia has two beautiful arched glass roofs, and inside you can see the vintage ironwork holding it up.

But today the floor was all 2010: big trade show booths from all kinds of toy brands and distributors. If you want to know what will be on the toy shop shelves next Christmas, this is the place. Everyone I talked to does the circuit this time of year. They just came from Hong Kong, and after London were headed to Nuremburg, Germany for the Europe version. The Toy Fair in New York is the granddaddy of them all, and it is coming up in February. Whew! You’d think it would be really cool to be here, and it was, but it was also incredibly frustrating because you can’t BUY anything. It is all there for display only to industry buyers. So you can look but you can not have!

A few days earlier they picked up my “Roundabout” sculpture from my house and it was waiting for me there. (Way too difficult to bring that on the trains!) It was placed on a shelf in the middle of their Breyer wall, and I “worked” on it all day.

This day was specifically called Press Day, for the local press or anyone with journalist credentials to get in, to publicize the event. At Treasure Trove, they had invited several inventors of their other toy lines to attend. I was the “inventor stand-in” for Breyer.

Having a clay sculpture there and actively working on it really drew people in. It was the perfect conversation starter to simply say that all the horses in their line started out as a sculpture like this one. I think it was a great way to illustrate the importance the folks at Breyer place on realism in their horse models. I got photographed by The Guardian, a London newspaper, but I doubt we’ll make it in the paper as I don’t think I’m very representative of the Toy Fair experience as a whole. The press were probably mainly off shooting things like the “Avatar” licensed toys booth. 🙂

Roundabout didn’t have a mane or tail before the day started, but that was the simplest thing to “tweak” at an event like this, where I wasn’t going to do any serious sculpting work (especially since it was too low and fairly hard to get at). So he grew a mane and tail and it changed all day long. Plus he got a roughed-in eye, bit of nostril, and mouth, which he didn’t have before.

I don’t usually do the mane and tail until the very last thing, so it is all coming off when they deliver him back to me today. Though I kind of like the way it looks and now I’m wondering whether I ought to finish it with a mane instead of none (which is how a Show Cob would be properly shown). Food for thought…

I was thrilled to see my Cleveland Bay model in its new 2010 issue, as the grey Irish Draught model. It looked fantastic in the dappled grey color, plus this one is sporting the alternate loose mane and forelock I sculpted for it.

The folks at Treasure Trove wouldn’t let me take this one home but they said they’d get me one later. I do have four of them waiting for me back in Boulder anyway.

I left at about 5pm and did the trains in reverse. It was a pretty day in London (no rain!) and I was yearning to just walk around the city but at 5pm it is already dark and I’d rather not do that by myself. I did get a lunch break and walked about a mile up to Kensington High Street to, where else, the McDonald’s! Paul met my train back in Maidenhead at about 6pm, like so many other people who live in the area. I expect we’ll be going into London a lot in these next couple months, because doing all the indoor museums makes perfect sense this time of year!

It has been a quiet couple of weeks since the start of the new year. The I’m happy to report that the snow finally melted and I could take the car out again. The grass was still green under all that snow! I don’t have any pretty photos this time, but here is one from last week when it was snowing. It is taken from a pedestrian bridge near our house, looking out over the main rail line to London. It’s a nice place to walk the Boyz, as there are farm fields on either side.

I decided it would be fun to write about English vs. English today. Even in the US we know that the Brits often say “telly” instead of TV, “lorry” instead of “truck”, “boot” instead of “trunk” (of the car), motorway (or the more unwieldy “dual carriageway”) instead of highway or freeway. Car park instead of parking lot. But I’ve learned that there are even more differences in the names for things over here than I expected. Here is a random list!

The car we are leasing is a station wagon. In the Queen’s English (henceforth to be called “QE”) you call it an “estate”. If you had a 4-door sedan-type car, they call that a “saloon”.

If you want your hair cut with bangs, in QE you’d ask for “fringe”.

We line up for things, the Brits queue up.

We put our trash in trash cans or garbage cans; they put out their rubbish in wheelie bins. (You don’t throw something away, you bin it.)

Instead of thanking you, or if you say something like “excuse me”, they will say “cheers”. Sort of a replacement for “no problem” or “don’t mention it”.

In the London Tube (subway), instead of getting off the train, you “alight”.

We walk on the sidewalk, they walk on the “pavement”.

We yield, they “give way”. We exit, they often are directed to the “way out”.

We buy ground beef, they buy “mince”. But mince pies at Christmas are not generally made of meat, they are sweet fruit-filled desserts. And of course dessert here is usually called “pudding”. I don’t know what they call the dessert WE call pudding!

We go into the hospital, in QE you go IN hospital. Or TO hospital. (No “the”.) I can’t figure that one out. Because they don’t also say, “I’m going in library, to store, in park…”

We go to the movie theater, they go to the cinema. Theatres in the UK are for live stage performances. And they have more theatres per capita than any westernized country, or some statistic like that. They have a network of theatres all over the country—in most medium sized towns or larger—so they keep a lot of stage actors in work. That’s a fine thing I think!

There is a whole vocabulary of slang words all their own, mostly derogatory words used to describe people. Including: oik, chav, yob, asbo, toff… there seem to be lot of slang names for people depending on what part of the country they’re from or even what social class.

“Punter” is a word I hear used a lot, but I haven’t quite nailed down the literal meaning, it’s a bit fluid. It seems to refer to fans of something, or something attended or queued up for by many people, or something very popular, or maybe used to describe an “everyman”.

“Faffing about.” My current favorite expression. Used in context: “She stood at the shop’s till faffing about in her purse, holding up the queue.” (They say “till” instead of cash register or checkout stand.)

In the US we have a resumé when looking for a job, over here they have a “CV”. And when you are fired, you are “redundant”.

Pronunciation can be tricky. You’d think being all English speakers, we’d pronounce things the same, but not always. Especially when it comes to place-names. For example, we live in the county of Berkshire. They pronounce it BARKsher. (Or Baaaaahhksha, depending on your accent.) Southwark is an area of London on the south side of the Thames River, and it is pronounced SUTH-ick. I love the way some people pronounce the Tube (London subway). They say: Tschewwb. Paul says that at work he’s had to get used to answering to his name pronounced as “Pole” or “Pool”. But he’s not started saying it that way himself. I think I’d sound foolish trying to fully adopt any sort of British accent here, but honestly it makes things simpler if I pronounce the place-names like they do. And use their words for things. Otherwise they often don’t know what I’m talking about!

News in General
I’m happy to report that Paul is coming back to the UK this week, after 8 weeks in upstate NY. His father is doing really well and he finally got to the point where it was time to see how he does on his own. At 95 years old, he’s an amazing man.

Next Tuesday I’m going to be attending the London Toy Fair, as the guest of the company who is the UK distributor for Breyer Animal Creations, Treasure Trove Toys. I’m going to be at their trade show booth, helping promote the Breyer line to toy buyers in the UK. I’ll be participating specifically in “Meet the Inventors Day” on their Press Day. They carry quite a few other toy lines like Brio. I sort of qualify as an “inventor” because I sculpted one Breyer model (so far..!). Fortunately my model is out in a new color for 2010, so I will have something current to talk about. (I’ll get to see one of those for the first time at the show.) Plus I am bringing along the in-progress “Roundabout” cob sculpture as a demo. Should be a very interesting day, I’ll bring the camera!

I forgot to mention in the last post, that I’ve removed commenting from my blog. I decided I’d rather not risk any spam or unpleasant stuff showing up there. I also had to take down the list of followers after a porn site joined, which showed up right on my page. Blech. Why is there so much ugliness in the world? I want to remind you that if you are receiving my blog posts as an email, you can reply to that email and it will be sent directly to me privately, not as any sort of public comment or anything. I like hearing from people who follow the blog, so please do write.

Oh, and I am posting news “bites” fairly regularly on my Facebook page. You’ll see them if you are a FB user and become a “fan” of my page. I’ve been sharing in-progress photos of two customized china horses I’m working on this winter, and the two sculptures (Clarity and Roundabout).

Welcome to the 2010 edition of the Westerly Design Blog That’s Temporarily A Travel Blog Instead Of Horse Art News! Thanks so much for sticking around during the horsey-art hiatus.

What an interesting first week of the new year. Paul still remains in New York looking after his dad’s affairs. We now know why tax attorneys and estate planners get the big bucks. Plowing through all the finances and getting his dad set up so he can live without having to deal with financial details is a slow and sometimes frustrating process for Paul. His mom handled all their money and investments over the years, and sadly we didn’t realize how much she was slipping in the last three, so the books were kind of a mess. Still hard to tell when Paul will rejoin me here in the UK, but I’m doing just fine on my own.

On the new year’s weekend, I piled the Boyz in the car and drove north to attend a little friendly get-together of UK people who collect model horses. It was all for fun instead of the more usual competitive judged show. In fact almost all the horses there were the UK-based Julip brand, pretty much totally unfamiliar to those of us in the USA. They are cute little rubbery, Gumby-like horse models with wire in the legs and hair manes and tails. Breyer has had a tough time getting their products into the UK, and I’m guessing Julips might be why. The horses are rather unrealistic examples of horses but they are cute, can be posed, probably cost less, and come in clever sets with all kinds of accessories.

I really enjoyed the day, and competed in the highlight of the day, Show Jumping, and even won 3rd prize!

That night I drove over to spend two nights in the Cotswolds area of central England, home of the most perfect countryside and villages to be found, I think. I had found a dog-friendly, wi-fi enabled old hotel in Stow-on-the-Wold’s main market square, called The Old Stocks. The town was still dressed in their holiday decorations and had a pretty dusting of snow when I got there about 6pm. I was given a cosy room that opened out to a little outdoor courtyard so the dogs could go right out. The place was almost completely empty two days after New Year’s Eve. I sat in front of a roaring fireplace in their homey lounge in order to use my laptop.

On Monday we did a big “ramble” on part of a Cotswolds-area walking route, The Gloucestershire Way, which took us by fields with deer, a converted mill-house, and some impressive country estates. To follow the route we had to walk right through the barn-yard of this one incredible estate, which really felt like trespassing but is perfectly legal/expected! Here it is seen from across the fields; we walked right up through the cluster of buildings at the right to the top of that hill above the mansion house:

They had a dusting of snow Saturday night and it’s been so cold it never melted, so most fields and paths still had a little covering of it. Plus they’ve been having hard frosts every night. The trees and grasses were coated with it in the morning, very pretty.

After that walk we got in the car and drove to two other classic Cotswolds towns (or tour-bus-magnets, if you are here in the summer). Upper and Lower Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water. The Slaughters look right out of a movie set; you can’t believe it is a real place. I realized later I could have walked to Lower Slaughter from Stow on the same path I was walking—it was only about 3.5 miles one way—but that would have been just a little too long on that cold morning.

Bourton’s town center is on the pretty river Windrush and again just too perfect to be quite real, with their little stone bridges:

The cool thing about this area is that the main through road, the A429, is the ancient Fosse Way, an important Roman road running from the West Country to Lincolnshire in as straight a line as the terrain would allow. I think there is a place further south where you can actually walk the old road as a footpath, but most of it now is a regular car-road. It was still great to be on the same route the Romans built originally and everyone else used since.

I drove home really early on Tuesday morning, because the forecast was for significant snow that night and I didn’t want to get caught in it in case it came early! I’m glad I did because we ended up getting about 7 inches in Maidenhead. Which is a big deal for the UK, who don’t usually get big snows and long periods of below-freezing cold. They were pretty much paralyzed all last week because of that! Consequently I have become among the shut-ins when I discovered that my fancy company-issued BMW station wagon is utterly useless in snow. Not only is it rear wheel drive, but the tires had no tread worth a darn. I pulled out of my teensy driveway and instantly got stuck halfway into my street, wheels just spinning. So much for the vaunted German Engineering, how I miss my trusty Subaru Outback right now!

Happily after a few minutes of chipping away at the compacted snow with a pitch fork and push-broom (the only tools in the house), my lovely neighbors came to my rescue. Before long I had a team of about 10 people looking on and pushing/advising. The savior came in the form of neighbor Joe’s bag of SAND! Did the trick for traction in an instant. A bag of sand or even cat litter is like gold here right now. I have been without wheels since Tuesday but I can walk to two shops for basics. (Though not surprisingly, they were sold out of a lot of goods because a lot of people were staying home from work.) I can also take the bus into Maidenhead’s high street if needed.

The Home Counties don’t seem to have snowplows (I suspect the concept doesn’t exist in the UK because they haven’t had enough snowy winters historically to need them) and all they do to keep roads open is to spread “grit”; a sand and salt mix. Which they don’t spare for teensy side-roads like mine. The good news is that the temp has stayed up in the last 24 hours and things are melting. I might be able to drive by about Tuesday!!

Aside from playing and taking big walks in the snow with the Boyz, I did do a little work on a china horse. Here’s that Streetwise Quarter Horse I cast a few weeks ago. The sculpture as-is stands on two legs attached to a base. My goal is a custom version in the earthenware clay where it will stand on 3 legs. This means I have to attach the legs at new angles, including breaking the pasterns, plus I’ll have to resculpt the shoulders and give it a new mane and tail. I’m also taking the opportunity to rework the head a bit. This is all good learning for me on casting ceramics and creating one of a kinds from the existing sculpture’s molds. Here’s what it looks like now, kind of a franken-horse with all the uncorrected seams still showing:

Once I regain my wheels and the weather gets back to more normal, I should be able to get out and about again on some more day trips.

Cheeeeeers (and burrrrrrrr!) from England!