Vanessa’s Dining Room, Histon, Cambridgeshire: Sunday 4:14 pm GMT
I finished reading a Garth Nix book this morning (I’ve finished 4 books so far on the trip) and had some tea and cereal while everyone else slept. I like mornings alone best. :-)
Then we got ready and headed off to church. Vanessa attends the Anglican church in the village. The building was put up some time in the 1600’s and was made from bits and pieces of two previous churches. There’s a cemetery surrounding the building but the oldest plots I saw were from the late 1800’s. There were several stones that were so worn down or so lichen covered that you couldn’t read the text.
After church we walked over to the Tesco express (a mini version of a larger grocery store chain) and Vanessa picked up some groceries while Rob and I snagged some tea that was on sale. We’re going to have to pick up another suitcase at the rate we’re going. But the tea that Rob bought today was twice the size and 1/4 the cost of what he buys online (and buying it online is cheaper than buying it in Fort Collins).
We walked home and had sandwiches (I had a brie and apple sandwich) and cheese and olives. Yum!
Then I tried to help Vanessa finish up a movie she’s made (with the help of her kids) on Windows Movie Maker. I found it rather frustrating after having worked with iMovie. I didn’t find it intuitive, but then again, part of the reason iMovie is easy for me is because it’s what I’m used to. So it’s hard to compare at this point.
Then we tried to upload it to her new multiply account, but with dial-up that’s easier said than done.
Vanessa’s Kitchen, Histon, Chambridgeshire: Sunday 8:30 pm GMT
Our first attempt at uploading the movie ended in an 8 second short. :-P
So we uploaded it again only to realize afterwards that some sections repeated. So we’re going to redo it and reupload later.
After doing all that we were a bit worn out so we stopped for tea and biscuits. Then Vanessa and I went for a walk while Rob played American football with Nathaniel and the girls worked on homework. Ness and I walked over to Impington, which is the village across the way.
(Impington may have derived its name from a sixth century tribe (yes, a tribe in England... well, it wasn’t really England then, was it?) called the Empings. Emp sounds like the Anglo-Saxon word for honey. It’s possible that the site was a Roman homestead before that.)
When we got back Vanessa started on dinner (marinated chicken over rice -- I’m hoping to post the recipe soon.) and I worked on a killer sudoku. I think I got one number entered in a half hour.
Dinner was fantastic, as usual. Dessert was also scrumptious. We had chocolate and apple crepes. I’m going to have to try to recreate them when I get home. Nessa bought them from some German place so I can’t just follow a recipe.
Then the kids were shuffled off to bed and I read through a history book on Histon and Impington. (In 1279, Histon’s population was about 1000 people. After the famines and black plague the city was down to 53 families and didn’t reach 1000 people again until 1800.)
