This week has been much the same as last week really. Cooking, walking climbing, rehearsing and pottering with Smokey.
The Chinese extravaganza worked well, pork and prawn dumplings, which I cooked two ways, steamed and as potstickers, bottoms browned in a frying pan before adding water to steam the rest of them, till the water is gone and the base is crispy again. Sounds much harder than it actually was. It also worked with the second batch, the following day, from frozen. Raw the dumplings will just disintegrate if left, so open freeze them is the recommendation. I couldn’t believe raw pork would steam from frozen in only a minute longer than fresh, but they seemed to be cooked, and we haven’t died! These were followed by yuk Sung. Pork and water chestnuts fried up with some crispy rice noodles and eaten wrapped in iceberg lettuce leaves. Yum
Home cooked Yuk Sung - delicious!
Today is roast pork, a bit extreme in this heat, but the joint was reduced to £1.50, so it had to be done. We also got some piri piri ribs and some breaded cod for £1.45. These are the bargains we like and we only went in for bread rolls!
Another group photo of us all at Commonwealth Games Rehearsals at Longbridge. We were at the back again so assumed we wouldn't be visible, but actually we are - just! So I've put a zoomed in bit below
Rehearsals are still going well, good fun and a great atmosphere. Sunday will be different, firstly it’s in the afternoon so no hideous early start, and secondly it’s at Alexander Stadium, where our marks on the ground will be tiny compared to what we are used to, but at least a ramp will be a ramp!
So you can see Jackie on the left and a bit of Brian on the right
With Caroline at the climbing wall
We’ve been climbing with Caroline again which is lovely, we get to see a whole different person when it’s just the three of us. Today just Brian and I went though, took the rope and did some leading, first time in a very long time. Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and lasted a lot longer than expected. Somewhere inside us must be some good technique!
Caroline looking quite impressive on the wall
One of the Winnie the Poo statues in Browns Wood
We’ve walked more of the parks. Sunday was 30 years of the parks in MK so Campbell Park had a little event, brass band, cream tea, free guided walk with chat about the trust and how MK was built around all the green spaces. Browns wood has all the Winnie the Pooh characters which were lovely, though it was a bit underwhelming. The tree cathedral was beautiful and calming with trees in the shape of Norwich cathedral. Caldecott Lake with some very friendly geese, Brian got slightly pecked taking pictures, and a pub to park in. Great Linford Manor Park has some interesting sculptures including wooden sheep to compete with the concrete cows!
The Peace Pagoda at Willen Lake
This is a modern sculpture, the Medicine Wheel
Talking of the concrete cows, we discovered, talking to people on Sunday, that we thought we’d seen the concrete cows, but we’d only seen the surrogate concrete cows. The real ones are cared for at the MK museum, where they were originally made, so that was where we went yesterday. We had a very full day there, a great museum, so much stuff, and so many people actively waiting to tell you about things, be it transport, the lace they were making, the music players through the ages, the telephone exhibition, or the poor blacksmith working in the Forge.
Getting pecked by geese at Caldecott Lake
We had a robot delivery, well it had to be done. So milk and hummus arrived 25 minutes after order placed. We tracked it on the app before going down to the end of the road to watch it turn up. On arrival you tap the app and it unlocks the robot so you can remove your purchases. It announces your delivery and all is good. We think if we’d wanted it to sing to us (which obviously we did) we should have ‘ordered it’ as a purchase! Next time then!
A short Youtube video of our robot delivery
We are also still having a lovely time with Smokey, though, unsurprisingly, he is spending a lot of time outside. He does like fuss though you only have to talk to him and he rolls over for you to tickle his tummy . I’m also on a mission to get into the garden without him knowing. It doesn’t matter how asleep he looks or how quietly you put the key into the lock of the patio door, it’s impossible to unlock the door without him waking up and coming over.
The wooden sheep sculpture at Great Linford Manor Park
They have very cute faces!
There are interesting sculptures all over the parks of Milton Keynes, here's another in Great Linford Manor Park
These are the old Alms Houses on the Linford Estate. Currently the grounds in front are undergoing a £30M refurbishment
Linford Manor. The manor is in private hands but all the grounds are now owned by the Parks Trust. The manor owners have the best of all worlds, they still have access to all their grounds but now the Parks Trust looks after them. The only downside for the owners is the constant stream of visitors. A small price to pay?
We had lunch in this lovely old pub in Linford village. Linford is one of five villages that were incorporated into the new town of Milton Keynes in the early 1970's and, if anything this is one slight criticism of the city: we love the spacious layout, the fast roads that interconnect, yet don't impede pedestrians and cyclists as they are all crossed by underpasses or bridges. The habitable areas are separate yet near to these roads behind woods and parks, there are so many parks and lakes, shops, restaurants and takeaways are readily available, but the thing they lack are traditional pubs. There are pubs, but they are modern eating type places, this type of pub is rare (obviously as its a new town) and not on a nearby street corner. You can drink in the pubs that are around but really they'd prefer people who are eating.
Milton Keynes museum and the 170 year old cedar tree
Its a lovely old museum with something for everyone. The many volunteers really know their stuff and very keen to chat
Now here's an interesting thing: look at this sign in the transport part of the museum. They claim a British chap called Herbert Akroyd Stuart was the first to invent the diesel engine (which he called the oil engine) in 1830, 3 years before Rudolph Diesel. There you go, British not German!
And here are the original concrete cows of Milton Keynes, in a museum! The one's we saw in the park are copies
And since we haven't put a single photo of Smokey on, here's one. He's been really struggling in the heat, poor love, so sleeping has been high on his priority until after dark when it's cooler
And finally, this youtube video has absolutely no connection with us at all, but it's the video from the handover ceremony of the Commonwealth Games filmed in Birmingham City Centre in 2018 at the end of the Gold Coast games in Australia. We're hoping the opening ceremony we're involved in will be similarly entertaining. We're putting a lot of effort into it and it's enthusing us tremendously. It makes us proud to be a part of it. One of our fellow performers did take part in this video. Have a look:
We certainly did have a busy time back at mums. She, Joan and I went to the Withybed open gardens, discovering bits of Alvechurch I didn’t even know existed. Lovely gardens, not too fussy much more cottagey than I expected, but all on many levels with lots of steps, so by the time we finished up at Jan and Paul’s (from Jordan) for tea and cake we felt we’d earned our cake. Fortunately Jan had lots of volunteers so mothers washing up services weren’t required. Monday was clothes shopping and Tuesday was food shopping (for mum before we went away, after keep fit, and Clair the cleaner) followed by a trip to the cinema to see Elvis and out for a Mexican meal. We were really pleased than Joan could join us, as was she - she’d managed to get Keith to the cinema to see Top Gun, but didn’t think she’d manage it again!
Smokey cat. The cutie we're looking after for just over three weeks
Wednesday we came to our current Housesit in Milton Keynes for the lovely Smokey cat. He’s very handsome and very chatty, though he is getting on in years which sometimes shows as he walks up the stairs. He is such a sweetheart, rolling over to give you his tummy whenever you talk to him, but he is having the odd naughty moment, he came in the other evening to wee on the kitchen floor!
Here's the quite cute little robots who wander around Milton Keynes, negotiating themselves past obstacles to deliver groceries, coffee and take-away food. It's very amusing watching them trundle along
Here's one waiting to pick up a coffee
Milton Keynes is much like Redditch, a new town with lots of green spaces all connected via bridges and underpasses so no ‘big road’ crossing is required. What they have done here to take full advantage of this is to introduce delivery robots (have a look at this youtube video: click here). They will bring stuff from Costa coffee, the co-op, Tesco and various other small places, like our local chip shop, this would be really tempting except it gets such shocking reviews on Google! We will have to order something at some point! They are fully autonomous, finding their own routes, and their own way round obstructions. They will even sing to you when they arrive! They are also very cute, and there is something joyful about seeing this little thing trundling along the pavement or passing overhead on a bridge, all on its own.
On our Howe Wood nature walk. One of the sculptures was missing so Jackie filled in
A feisty bluetit after being 'ringed'
We’ve walked (here's a couple of Relive videos with photos: click here; and here; and here), and Brian has run, round Shenley Wood our local (plus a Saturday 5km Park Run at the local Linwood Woods: click here), and we visited Howe Park Wood on Saturday for their ‘Love nature’ day. I know these things are aimed at kids but we had very interesting chats with a student studying moth behaviour, and a woman from the bat society who had a baby bat at home that needed feeding 5 times a day. Various other people were concentrating on talking to the kids, so we thought we’d walk in the woods where we came across the bird ringing people. They had a net stretched across an opening in the woods to see what they could catch. The same woodpecker, for the second time, just after we arrived , so he didn’t get re logged, but then a little young blue tit, so new ring, wingspan measured and weighed. Most undignified, an old film canister gently placed over its head, all the way down so only its tail feathers were showing, when it was all turned upside down and put on the scales! Didn’t seem to bother him! After a photo call he flew off as if nothing had happened.
Here's the young woodpecker that flew into the net twice on the same day
Having it's wing measured
Sunday back to Birmingham for rehearsal for the Commonwealth Games opening and closing ceremonies, with Corina, a local student. Of approximately 400 people at the rehearsal the previous week what were the odds that the person that sat next to Brian was going to be a nondriver from Milton Keynes? As Marshall’s we are now getting a good idea of what we are doing, and how we are manipulating the athletes, though we still have no idea of what the actual dancers, floats, cars and other people are doing. We ran through the whole parade with bits of string the correct length to represent the number of athletes for each country. It all want very well. Nathan directing from the watchtower, rather than the middle of the field of play, got quite emotional. What we don’t know yet is how we all get off the field. Hopefully that will be this week!
He's just had a ring put on his leg. Doesn't he look cute!
Monday we had a lovely day out with Caroline. Her last exam was Monday morning so we were allowed to kidnap her afterwards and take her to lunch and the climbing wall. No photos as we were all busy, but a really good afternoon.
And here he is being weighed. 10.5g. It's a bit undignified isn't it!
As we dropped her off we did ‘steal’ some flour for our dinner last night, yummy chicken leek and ham pie, a joint effort, my filling and Brian’s pastry, it might not win a beauty prize, but it just melted in the mouth. Tonight will probably be another joint effort, the plan is Chinese pork and prawn steamed dumplings, yuk sung and crispy seaweed! Wish us luck!
On our walk through Loughton Valley Park on the way to see the Concrete Cows (see first photo). This is the remains of a Bancroft Roman villa. I didn't know there were Roman remains here. And the people who built Milton Keynes thinking it was a new town were wrong weren't they - the Romans got there first!
At the back of Milton Keynes central shopping area is Campbell Park an extensive open space with an interesting layout and a number of sculptures to view. It's very well kept and has a high point with fabulous views all around. We're walking along Midsummer Boulevard here, created when the town was first laid out in its grid fashion. It's apparently just off true compass points as they wanted to align this street (and the grid pattern of the town) so that the sun will rise along this boulevard on the summer solstice (eat your heart out Stonehenge!). The circle in front is a sculpture called The Rose and, in the distance is a cone called the Light Pyramid
The posts in The Rose represent significant events in history. This is a silly one, the date the Concrete Cows were first installed in Milton Keynes
The Light Pyramid on a suitable high point. There used to be a basket beacon here until is was removed in 1995 after being struck by lightning
Smokey making his way upstairs. He doesn't like to do it all in one go!
But he does manage to scale the fence to go off on his wanderings. Here he is just returning
Carefully climbing down the fence
Its very tiring!
Here's some photos from rehearsals last Sunday. I didn't take so many as they are all pretty similar. Number 118 is Marcia who joined in between Jackie (117) and me (119). Not sure who 116 is
You might have noticed in the previous photo bits of kit around the edge. We're assuming they will have parts in the opening and closing ceremonies but no idea what. The structure under the arched cover (supported by four containers) is intriguing. The white drum has a lot of words relating to Birmingham and seems to be winding round the smaller reel in front. Not sure if these will be projected onto a screen somewhere for people to sing along to. I'm just guessing, I have no idea
Here's a few more of them. Nice coach and a giant car with a load of cogs on top. Further left are a load of old British cars that we think will be used to tow all these. There are a few Land Rover Discoveries and some old style minis (not the newer BMW minis)
That's it for now, so it's bye-bye from us and Smokey cat
.jpeg)
%20-%20Copy.jpeg)
