Crashed in Cambridge

Main floor of the "Air Space"
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Crashed in Cambridge.

Saturday: I just found Cambridge on a road map. It has the Cam River running through it. How practical to call a town by the name of the bridge over the river at that point. Duh!! You all knew that but I is just a poor colonial wot ‘as ‘ad a limited edacashun.

Crashed in Cambridge.

(I’ll have to have a closer look at English maps now. If I was in my classroom I’d have a session with kids to see how many places they could put pins in the names where the town was named such. I wonder if there is a river Ux? I’ve heard of Uxbridge.)

B17 in flight
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I have started the weekend after a very QUIET night’s sleep. Kathy and Stuart Rochester have a lovely house in a village just near Cambridge. Marg and I have been made very welcome and have a room that is great. It is upstairs and has its own bathroom down a short hall, is comfortable and QUIET. There are no traffic sounds of tyres over cobblestones just outside the window. There are no diners rattling aluminium chairs and tables over flagstones until 2am just under the balcony. Trucks or boats have not disturbed us as the pilots collect garbage, deliver equipment, pick up laundry or generally scoot about in the early morning commerce of a big city. We ain’t in a big city. We hit the pillows and crashed.

Concorde
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Our title to this blog does not refer to boating or driving (we have a car) but to relaxation.

But all that quiet will be lost soon for me because I am going to an air show down the road a bit. Maybe not an F111 doing a “dump & burn” but we saw some tiger moths doing practice flights as we arrived yesterday. There is more air history available here than in Hobart so I am looking forward, as I have been all trip, to new things.

Marg and Kathy are going on more sedate activities. They ended up in some villages near here, St Ives was one. There they saw thatched roofed houses, markets, shops and walked around gardens and all that girly stuff. Stuart has some teaching to do for a few hours in the local village. For those who know them, Stuart and Kathy are both well. They have recovered from operations, have whopping great smiles on their dials and most welcoming arms extended. They send their love.

the splash
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It is beaut catching up with old friends as we are far from home. They have a secondary science teacher (Liz) who lives with them. She is so like our Trish when she started out. Loves teaching, puts up with rubbish as she gets through past the bravado and bluster of teen years, gets on with low pay and poor public support because she loves what she is doing, plays sport (football in Liz’s case) and has a wicked sense of humour.

The air show was great. The biggest hanger-based exhibition in the country is there. It only opened in July this year and houses a Concorde, a B17 bomber, a Viscount passenger plane and about 17 others as well as models that are interactive, displays that you can work and learn from, pilot training modules that you can work and more.

The round church
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The Red Arrows were very skilled as a demo team and from 2 to 4-30pm it was constant flying of about 20 different aircraft from sabre jets of the Korean War, the last of the B17 liberators still flying, WW1 fighters and passenger aircraft from around the world. Most were fighters and war-based planes because it is part of the Imperial War Museum. There were many stalls selling memorabilia, models, clothing and very expensive food.

Don’t let anyone tell you the prices in the UK are OK. A beginning teacher earns about 20 000 pounds. A 2 bedroom house could cost a 1000 pounds a month to rent. The food prices are comparable with home if you substitute a pound for a $. That doesn’t sound too bad does it? But remember that a pound is nearly $3. So 2 pounds for a punnet of strawberries is OK. (But $6?) But people do manage and we are trying to remember that we should be grateful for the opportunity and not try to convert our prices but pay what is asked if we want the service or goods. It IS possible to say that you don’t want an ice cream or coffee when you are out. It certainly wasn’t in Spain where it was 30+ and prices were much cheaper. It was certainly our least expensive place so far.

Cam River bridges
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Sunday was spent very busily; at Church; going on a walking tour of Cambridge; punting on the river in a hired punt. On one occasion a young fella was thrown into the river as it is tradition to do so when it is his last day at college in Cambridge. We managed to record the splash. He was followed by a girl who was also dumped by her girlfriends.

Coming home Marg cooked lasagne and fruit sponge and we finishing by watching Kathy and Stuart’s “The Witness” video from the production they directed in their last posting in the North of England.

How do you work this?
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Tomorrow we make our way to Wales to Thelma and John Parry. We aim to be there Tuesday.