2000 Letters Home

8 Oct 2000

Dear Mum and Dad

Thanks very much for your letter and the cutout from the magazine. John L Tearle, who wrote the book “Tearle, a Bedfordshire Surame,” is adamant that Tearle is not from Tyrell, although he is not certain exactly where it came from. He thinks it is a corruption of a French word, but he doesn't know which one. Alec Tearle, though, said when he was living in Germany that the Germans always knew how to pronounce his name (the English and the French certainly don’t) so he thinks it may have been German. In other words we may have Saxon roots that predate the Normans who came here in 1066. Our ancestors could have been in England from as early as 500AD.

That reminds me – a couple of days ago I saw a programme about the Salisbury Plains that said that England had been heavily cultivated since 5000BC and that in 2500BC there was as much land under cultivation as there was in 1914.

When I went to put away the wrapping from your previous parcel we saw the photos you had sent. By that time our last fax had gone to you, so I didn't say thank you. Well, let me say it now! The photos are really good. Mum looks a lot better than she sounded earlier this year, but she still looks a bit wan. I thought you'd have a RED scooter, but grey is cool and the mode of transport, with its tall flag certainly looks ... shall we say ... suitable. And you look very happy. Getting out and about is good for the spirit.

It is not a pleasant thought that neither of my parents will be in their beautiful little Hahei house after Christmas. I guess that you will be going to Matapa, too? When you are selecting things please remember that all I want is the painting that Ella du Cane gave Sadie and any photos and family documents. They will be very well looked after. I am taking Grandad Dawson's watch into the jeweler this weekend for a shower and shampoo. The English make a most attractive, hooped stand/hanger thing for fob watches, so this watch will be nicely presented and out of harm's way. I've been thinking about the date on it - 1926 - Mum would have been about 5yrs old when her father bought it! She would have seen him with it all her life, since she was often with him when he went to train the horses. Wonderful.

I ran the Cabbage Patch 10-mile last weekend in 71 min 45 sec, so I am pleased with my time, but I am working on getting it closer to 70 min. However, there were a LOT of people who finished after me. About 1/2 an hour after I'd finished and we were getting into the car, there were still people on the other bank of the Thames about 1/2 a mile from the finish. At that stage it rained like crazy, so we decided not to go exploring around Twickenham, but the track I ran went through Kingston, where earlier this year Elaine and I had caught a ferry to go to Hampton Court. I recognised the island the boat had passed. The organizers presented me with the Cabbage Patch 10 t-shirt and I gave it to Elaine as a supporter's shirt. She loves it. On the day, she actually wore the Garden City 10 sweatshirt she bought the day I ran that race and she looked really good ... lots of people talked to her and she had a really good time. It's quite a nice course through the streets of Twickenham, Richmond and Kingston-upon-Thames. To get there we drove right past Chubb house, a tall, rounded, very heavy-looking concrete building close to the road where Shayne had been just the day before in Sunbury. Everything around there looks the same, just roads and houses wall-to-wall with nothing to distinguish one town from the other, so the Cabbage Patch pub was a bit tricky to find and wasn't particularly unique anyway, although it looked like an old pub and must have had a bit of history to tell. It was the biggest race field I've been in so far and the track itself through the streets was fast and picturesque. My time of 71:45 made me about 30sec quicker than I was in the Garden City 10 three weeks previous.

I had three guys who passed me whom I couldn't catch, but on the other hand, I did pass a lot of runners in the last mile, including many who had passed me earlier, and those three guys finished just a few seconds in front of me. For the first time, 2 women in my age group finished in front of me, one at 70min 56 sec and the other one a whopping 67:44. It will be a while before I can beat her!

I have also received the official results and I am quite pleased. I was 251st out of a total field of 751 finishers. I was 27th out of 140 runners my age or older, but 25th out of 112 finishers of my actual class, M50. For the first time, too, I have an official age ranking. I am age graded at 70.73%. If a representative sample of all the M50 racers in Britain were gathered into a field of 100, I would finish a 10 mile race in 30th place. Now that my 8-mile time is 55 min, it won’t be too long before my 10-mile time dips below 70 min.

About now, Genevieve starts her new job as Assistant Production Manager, Cultured at the NZ Dairy Group Plant at Takanini. She has been going really well this year with her promotion and has passed two uni papers in Spanish with A+ results. Not bad when working full time, playing netball mid week and commuting to the skiifields each weekend. She has now done a bungy and skydived from 12,000 feet in the last few months as well as skiing the west ridge. She set herself some stiff targets for the year with us being away and has been ticking them off one at a time. Some things she gets into are scarey!!!

As you will have heard, we had a fuel crisis on here. Fortunately neither Elaine nor I ran out of fuel because the sort of fuel our little cars use was the last kind to run out at the petrol stations. That meant that we earned right through. However some of our friends were not so lucky and had a week or more out of work and not paid. When the fuel arrived again all through Luton the garages were cordoned off by police and only those working in essential services were allowed petrol. In St Albans when the fuel arrived it was available on the open market so we were able to fill up and carry on as usual. There was some stockpiling but not by us. It is all over now and we are back to normal.

We were really delighted when we were finally able to send off the money for our airfares and hold the price. We now have confirmation from the bank that the money has been taken from our account so all is well. All we have to do now is to wait for the tickets to arrive. Below is our airlines itinerary:

Thursday 14 December 2000

3.45pm Check in at Japan Airlines Terminal 3, Heathrow

6:15 pm Depart on Japan Air Lines Flight JL 422

Flying Time: 12 hours 5 minutes

Friday 15 December 2000

3:20 pm Arrive Osaka - Kansai International Airport :

9:00 pm Depart on Japan Air Lines Flight JL 98 (An Air New Zealand Boeing 767 )

Flying Time: 10 hours 50 minutes

Saturday 16 December 2000

11:50 am Arrive Auckland Airport

Saturday 13 January 2001

8.00am Check in at Japan Airlines counter at Auckland Airport

10:00 am Depart on Japan Air Lines Flight JL 97 (Air New Zealand Boeing 767 )

Flying Time: 11 hours 25 minutes

5.25pm Arrive Osaka - Kansai International Airport. - accommodation at

HOTEL NIKKO KANSAI AIRPORT Tel: (0724) 551 111

Osaka Fax: (0724) 551 155

Accommodation has been confirmed in a twin room - breakfast is included

Sunday 14 January 2001

9.45am Check in at Japan Airlines at Osaka International Airport.

11:45 am Depart on Japan Air Lines Flight JL 421 (Boeing 747-400)

Flying Time: 12 hours 35 minutes

3:20 pm Arrive London - Heathrow Airport : Terminal 3

We have been having great fun watching the Olympics but have seen virtually nothing of NZ. I really wanted to watch Rob Waddell having been his mother’s HOD in Piopio and was delighted with the coverage we got of his races. Elaine was equally interested because she had taught Rob for three years in Piopio Primary. We got to watch his wife Sonia race too. There was a lot of screaming coming out of our flat that night and at the end of the race Genevieve rang - she was watching too – and we were all so excited that Rob had made GOLD!!!! We know now it was the only gold medal NZ won. We have bought a nice card to send home to him and his family this week. Fortunately we know his parents' address. We saw his Mum Sue on TV here too. They gave lovely coverage of Rob after the race - much more than for other athletes even from Britain so we were very lucky. Elaine heard the following day that the staff and students from her school were watching at their homes and cheering for Rob too.

We've had Shayne Bates here this week, doing some business for his company, Securenet. He didn't like it here ... thought the place was backward and said he hated London. I suppose that's logical because I lent him my car and he found the London traffic and road conditions very trying. I never drive in London, but on Friday, he had to go to Chubb House in Sunbury-on-Thames and took the road through Central London to get home. He rang me to say he had been to Harrods! He had even found parking for 7GBP per hour. It took him 3 hours to get home from there, in Friday traffic, so I don't wonder that he hates London.

However, the high point of his trip was on Thursday when he went to London by train to see someone in the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. Since that's near NZ House we advised him to drop in there, too and see if there were ways that he could get some high-level assistance. From there he could also get to see some of the most famous sights of London so we also advised him to leave home early to give himself plenty of time to enjoy himself after the business was done. He rang me about 4:00 to see if Elaine and I would like to catch the train to London and meet him in Trafalgar Square. You never have to ask us twice to go to London. We met Shayne in Trafalgar Square and he wanted a sushi meal. There was the most beautiful Japanese restaurant called the Tokyo Bar on the edge of Chinatown where we had a 4-course meal in little boxes for 10GBP each. Wasabi, sushi, yummy salmon, the lot.

By the way, NZ House was no use to Shayne at all. We've been there, too and it was no use to us, either, but I thought that was because we were just little fish of no interest to a giant trade organisation like NZ House. It seems it isn't their job to help NZ businesses to expand, either, so they shunted him out unceremoniously. It would be nice to know just what it is they do in there.

It's the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Iris was telling us this afternoon that she was 10yrs at the time and used to stand outside on the lawn and watch the planes fighting each other overhead. Some childhood.

We are just back from Nick Trout’s 40th birthday bash at the Time Out Bar in Horsham. We went to West Sussex yesterday morning to meet Nick and Sally again, had a very loud night’s dancing then drove the 1.5 hours back home. We arrived here about 2:00am. It meant that we didn’t have to spend our Christmas money on accommodation in Horsham. Nick and Sally Trout are the two hitch-hikers we befriended in about 1989 on their world tour and we have been good friends ever since. The highlight of the night was when Sally came out into the disco as Marilyn Monroe in that white dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and sang Happy Birthday in the breathy way Marilyn did for President Kennedy. Sally is an angel and a blonde bombshell at any time, but as Marilyn Monroe she was sensational.

Christmas – we went to Frost’s Garden Centre in Woburn Sands, just up the road from Woburn village, to have a wander around and get a few ideas for our garden when we go home. The English do garden centres like magical palaces. Everything is themed and there are the most complex and beautiful displays of plants and gardening things you have ever seen. But Christmas is a wonder that takes your breath away. They had two very large rooms decorated for Christmas with trees, ornaments, lights, grottos, music and all sorts of displays. We were stopped dead. Why Christmas so early? It is because most people in England get paid monthly, so there’s only this month and next month’s pay and then it’s Christmas, so I guess it’s best to get people inspired early. Woburn Sands is just a tiny village, but Frost’s there is very big, about 5 acres all told and about 2 acres in buildings, so it’s all nice and warm in the cool weather. With the beautiful displays and its own very good restaurant, it’s actually a very good afternoon’s activity to go there and just have some fun wandering around. And we did – it was great. It reminded us that the last thing we will do in England this year is the Carols by Candlelight evening in St Brelades Place, just up the road from us behind Blackberry Jack, on the night before we fly out. It will be freezing cold and we shall love it.

Well, thinking of Christmas reminds me that it won’t be long before we shall be seeing you and Mum again, and we are very much looking forward to that. Our NZ itinerary looks like this so far:

13 Dec Last day at work

14 Dec Fly to NZ

16, 17 Dec With Joni in Auckland

18-21 Dec In Otorohanga with Elizabeth and Ross Marshall – check the farm

22-28 Dec In Pauanui

29 Dec Go to Hamilton

6-12 Jan With Joni

13 Jan Catch plane to England

15 Jan Back at work.

We hope you keep in good health until then and we look forward to seeing you again.

Lots of love

Ewart and Elaine.

16 July

Dear Mum and Dad

Remember the Fernleaf girl, in the advertising soap about the family that was breaking up? She became the Anchor girl when Anchor took over the brand? She's here on our TV now, for Volvo. She and her boyfriend are way out in the woods with a huge mountain backdrop and the boyfriend is trying to cook dinner over the fire. The result is horrible to his taste, so he sneaks around the tent and drives off in the Volvo 4X4 coming back very quickly with two big pizzas. She opens the box, is about to say something and decides better of it. Tucks into the pizza. You're never far from civilization with a Volvo 4X4.

We had a lovely, lovely local weekend. We went to the market yesterday morning as we always do to get the veges and any other groceries. It is cultural festival time in St Albans and there was a group down by the clock tower doing a medieval mummers play. This one was a puppet play with big puppets. The one we saw was a kind of comical adaptation of the story of George and the Dragon with lots of audience participation and a huge colourful dragon held up high. Eventually, George gets to teach the dragon a lesson – in these environmentally friendly days it doesn’t do to kill the dragon, of course – and marry the beautiful princess.

This afternoon we drove up to Beachwood Green near Luton airport to the home of my cousins Donn & Sylvia Heath. Your great grandmother, Sadie Tearle had three brothers, Joe, Fred and Tom Adams. Ivor Adams is the grandson of Fred and Donn Heath is the grandson of Tom. We had a very interesting moment while Donn Heath absorbed the fact that the only difference between me and him was my accent! Anyway, in the village today Donn and Sylvia were helping to organise a village open garden festival with local home gardens open to the public. We visited all of them, finishing with cream teas in the garden of a very large home, known locally as “the big house" or "the manor" although it is quite modern. It was lovely and sunny this afternoon so it was nice to be outside after all the cold and wet weather we have been having lately.

When we got home our neighbour Karen had her dinner with us then we went off to Ivor's so I could work on his scanner. Iris gave us some beautifully fresh raspberries from her garden so we have just had a raspberries & ice cream supper.

I start my new job with Tescos tomorrow morning. Elaine is coming with me to Luton hospital to have my eyes checked, although they are now greatly improved. They think I caught some sort of virus thing in Belgium. I will then go off to work at Welwyn Garden City.

We've just come home from a really great night out. There's a fellow who sings traditional English folk songs in French Row, just outside the Cafe Vicolo where we sit and have a cup of coffee every Saturday morning when we go to the market in St Albans. He calls himself John of French Row and he sings for the MS Society charity. He invited us to the Bull pub in Redbourne for a songs night. And we went tonight. It was just beautiful ... all those lovely old songs that Butch and I used to sing in my university days at Waikato.

Also on Saturday, I updated my running shoes - that is, Elaine bought me some new ones for my birthday. On my first run on Sunday afternoon at least I did 4 miles under 30 minutes, and this afternoon I did 4 miles in just under 29 minutes. I'm looking to see if I can do the Great North Run in Newcastle, or maybe do the Garden City 10-mile again. So we'll see how it goes. The first day at work in Tosco was a bit unusual - I didn't know the answer to any of the questions that any of the callers rang in about! That's a bit of a worry, but I am confident that I will pick up the patterns soon ....

Yes, well, I have just finished my first week at Tesco and it was quite interesting. I haven't driven in England much before now, so driving to work has required a bit of education, too; although I haven't actually got lost, I have driven home about four different ways, none of them intentionally. Progress House is in Shire Park which is on the edge of town, so I don't get to see anything of Welwyn Garden City, but the group I am a sort of a member of has taken me to lunch at the Crown and Anchor pub in Tewin, a little country town 10min away, we've been to the Shire Club where you have to have a security pass to get in or it costs you 50p entry fee, and we've been to the cafe on the ground floor. Elaine makes my lunch, so none of that has cost me anything, but they are interesting places to go.

Tesco hasn't yet organised too many of the tools I need to start work - my door pass arrived only yesterday, as did my AHD logon, but that's all. I haven't got a system logon, so Simon logged me on - illegally - as him, I haven't got Lotus Notes so I can't get or send messages, I haven't got a telephone logon, so Simon let me - illegally - use his. And I haven't got a mainframe logon, so if anyone rings me about problems with the mainframe, I can't help them. All the servers were turned off on Tuesday, so we couldn't help anyone at all and some of us couldn't even log on. There are some people from Novell working on the servers in the basement on pain of death if they don't get things rectified, and the system administrators can't set up any new accounts (like mine) otherwise everything is FINE. I sat at Simon's elbow from Mon till Wed, then on Thurs I sat with Kevin, watching how the infrastructure worked and how the calls were answered and trying to see what were the most common problems. On Friday, two helpdesk guys failed to turn up and on Monday one of them is leaving, so they put me to work on Friday afternoon, fudging all the legal niceties as I said above, and I fell into the deep end. In the course of the afternoon, I took ten calls of about 15min each and I resolved ALL of them. None of them was left open, and none of them was referred on. One guy said "I can't find the trakworks.ini file."

I said, "That's nice, where is Track Works?"

He said, "You haven't been here too long, have you?" He was still most impressed when he went off with his program working properly.

So that's it, I am now on the Helpdesk and working at the craft. The contract goes until 02 Feb 2001, but the manager says that it should go on much longer than that. We'll see.

The only thing wrong is how COLD the place is. I know this is summer, but it looks like I'm not going to get much of it because where I sit is right under one of the cooling fans and I have to wear a jersey inside all day. When I get into the car, I find the day is roasting hot and I have just missed it. Because Elaine is now on holiday, we have six weeks to find another car. That shouldn't be too hard. The Metro Centre wants to sell us one of theirs so we should be able to get a really nice little car for about 200 pounds.

Yesterday morning we decided we'd better chase up my new car, so we went round to the Metro Centre on the London Road and had a look at a couple of the cars he had for sale there. One of them was in our price range (300 pounds) it was quite tidy and the MOT for it was current till March next year. Also, it had seat belts for the rear seats. It's exactly the same colour as the one we already own. Metro cheese. He said he'd make sure everything was tidy, legal and running smoothly and we'd pick up the car probably next Friday. So there you go, two cheese-coloured Metros in the parking lot.

We did get to the Gardens of the Rose yesterday. We went to the market first to have our cup of coffee and had a good chat with John of French Row, the folk singer. While we were talking to him we heard Eine Kleine Nacht Musik - played too fast, but rather well - coming from a small orchestra the other side of the clock tower, so we went to investigate. The orchestra had two violins, a viola and a cello and they had obviously played together a few times before - their tone was deep and very co-ordinated. They went on to play the William Tell Overture and quite a few other family favourites. Apart from their excellent sound, we also loved the way they got kids up to help them and they danced and gestured as they played. It was a delightful 1/2 hour we spent listening to them. For some reason you get very good acoustics if you stand in front of the clock tower and no-one has to have any form of amplification in order to be heard perfectly well by a crowd of about 100 grouped under the robinia. It is just so romantic.

We decided to go to the Gardens of the Rose even tho we would get there at about 2:30pm. It's a beautiful place, all right; the house is an old manor, but I don't know anything about it other than it is now the HQ for the Royal National Rose Society - patrons, Princess Anne and Lord Runcie. They will obviously have to get a new vice patron, because Lord Runcie, retired Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of St Albans, has just died.

The gardens are in 30 acres of rolling Hertfordshire countryside and are actually in Chiswell Green (pronounced Chissel Green) but that's only a suburb of St Albans anyway. We had a quiet and contemplative afternoon in the warm sun wandering around admiring a beautiful garden of 30,000 roses. One section of the garden was called the Peace Garden and was a collection of all the most famous roses that are descendents of the Peace rose. I didn't know that Superstar was a "Peace Rose," but there was a bed of Superstar and all its descendents in the Peace Garden. We got a really awful bright red plastic rose fridge magnet as our memento. A good day all told.

This morning I have been for a six-mile run and it was a respectable enough 43:54min. I haven't done much work since the Petersfield 1/2 marathon, but it looks like the work I did in Belgium on the cross-trainers wasn't wasted effort. I found out there that my highest heart rate is 178 and my resting pulse here at home at 42. I have bought the latest Runners World magazine and at last I have a new pair of running shoes, so I am lining up a couple of races for next month.

We've got the first of the leaf drop happening with the early-wintering birches, but there's no sign yet of general colour change in the trees. When I'm in the Tesco building, the trees around us make it look like we're in a forest. We can see to a horizon that’s about 10 miles of rolling countryside away, and everything in view is trees, we can hardly see the rooftops because the trees are so big and they grow so densely. Every single tree was planted by hand. The fields all around us are deep yellow with ripe wheat, maize and barley and we can see combine harvesters at work on most days. Many fields have large stacks of wheat or barley straw bales waiting for the truck. Some fields have even been re-ploughed and we can see the dusting of fertilizer sitting on the ground. The fields around Beds/Bucks/Herts are on beautiful, gently rolling countryside, they are 20 to 50 acres in size and all are ringed in magnificent oaks, elms, ashes, chestnuts and sycamores. The entire countryside looks like a gigantic park.

We went to Knebworth House yesterday. It used to be just an old Tudor manor, and home of the Lord Lyttons since about the 1450's but in the 1840's (around the time we signed the Treaty of Waitangi ...) it was added to considerably and they put up towers and added gargoyles and laid out some lovely gardens. It was used as Wayne Manor in Batman! And I thought the entire movie was shot in America. The outside has been about one quarter renovated so it will look very impressive once the work is finished, but in this week's paper Lord Cobbold says he may have to sell the place because the work is too expensive. They used steel reinforcing rods in the 1840's additions and in England's damp and cold the rods rust, which breaks up the stone. The Victorians got very energetic with lots of these manor houses and all of them (I know of another 3 in the area) now have to have huge amounts spent on them removing the rods and fixing the damage. The Victorians thought the rods would make the building last longer. Anyway, it's a fantastic looking building and the gardens were a very pleasant afternoon's stroll. And, it's not far from here, off the A1(M) near Stevenage. One of the more recent Lord Lyttons was Viceroy to India in the 1870's during the British Raj and it was he who organized for Victoria to become Empress of India. Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor here and his painting of the Banqueting Hall now hangs there. Queen Elizabeth the First also visited here in the 1570's (I told you the place was a Tudor manor house) and the Lord Lyttons were all knights of the garter. One of the more unusual paintings is of a nun and a monk holding a baby and grinning widely. It's described as "Tudor anti-Catholic propaganda."

AND we have the fridge magnet of the house ....

We went to Southend-on-sea for the day on Sunday. It was such a fine sunny morning and I'd already been for my 12-mile training run, so we thought we'd go and look at the sea. I'll tell you what ... you wouldn't go to Southend-on-sea twice. It seems the kids in various schools your Mum teaches at have said with great enthusiasm that "You gotta go there!"

We took the M25 at London Colney, past the Stanstead turnoff and on down to junction 29 where we took the A127 to Southend. The prettiest part of the trip is in Hertfordshire; once you get into Essex, the scenery gets much more industrial and scruffy. There are lots of untilled little fields lying fallow and full of weeds, many of the fences are in poor condition, there are unpainted warehouses dotted along the sides of the roads, that sort of scruffy.

Southend is quite big and it took a bit of navigating to find the beach. The town would have to be at least as big as Hamilton, but the beach is narrow, pebbly, with a bit of sand and heavily fortified with groins running out to sea trying to stop what little beach they have being washed away. The town is on the banks of the Thames and does not look out to sea, but across the river to tall chimneys and industrial installations on the other bank, at least 5 miles away. The view is dominated by a long jetty swinging from the far end of the beach to about a mile out to sea and we could just make out a few people walking on it and a little train running along it. Behind us, the beach carried on for another 2 miles before it turned left and the Thames met the Atlantic.

We parked our car about half way along the beach and walked west, with the sea on our left and the road on our right. We stopped at a Louisiana 30's style eatery for lunch and although he was unkempt, the chef could cook. Elaine had a seafood platter and I had fish and chips ... for the first time in England someone knew how to cook chips.

When we got to town it was the sort of place that was made for kids; we could see why the kids in school had recommended the town so enthusiastically. But actually, it's horrible, noisy and loud. Every second place is a casino or games joint, there are three tattoo parlours, every other place is an eatery, and on the shore side of the road opposite the town there is a narrow strip of sideshow sort of attractions clambering over the rocks - flume rides, adventure rides, flying swings, pirate ships, that sort of thing - all with their music turned up and all flashing their lights and waving their flags. Kids heaven, I should think, but sort of down-at-heel and tawdry and the people who walked about chewing their Southend rock looked sort of desperate for fun with their new tats and their hot, screaming kids. We bought the fridge magnet of a brightly multi-coloured sailing dingy and found a badge for the blanket. We ate some of the locally-made sticky peanut fudge and watched the traffic wardens sticking parking fines on the cars that hadn't paid-n-displayed. Next stop Blackpool, I suppose ...

The very best wishes

Ewart and Elaine

24 Aug 2000

Dear Dad

Our planned trip to Wales this weekend didn't come off, unfortunately. Yesterday afternoon, Elaine went to examine the coffers to pay the rent and stuff and the report wasn't good. We're not destitute or even close to it, but spending 300-400 pounds on a trip to Wales didn't sound too clever with Christmas not too far away along with our trip to NZ and Elaine still being on holiday - and not being paid - for the next two weeks. However, all is not doom and gloom. It's raining here and there are storms in Wales and people also told us that going away on long weekends usually means sitting in long tailbacks on any highway we wanted to travel on. Well, parked on the M25 is not my idea of a holiday, so I guess we're making a virtue of our necessity.

We're not wasting our time, though. When we went into the market for our veges this morning, we met two really cool people from "oop North" (Birmingham) dressed in motorbike leathers, who called themselves Paul and Jean. They rode to St Albans on a Honda GoldWing 1500 and they are camping on the Hertfordshire County Fair Ground near Redbourne. That was the grounds we went to last year for the Hertfordshire County and Gamekeepers Fair (where I bought my neat hat.) It is also the grounds where the first ever recorded game of cricket was played in 1668. ANYWAY, they are staying there because there's a Europe-wide gathering of the mark. Tomorrow afternoon, 600 of those huge bikes will parade through the streets of St Albans and Paul and Jean have asked us to come and see them before the parade. So tomorrow looks like being quite a good day. And we're going to Iris and Ivor's for dinner. Wales will wait.

At this very moment, we are watching Inspector Morse. It's the episode called Twilight of the Gods where a Welsh diva gets shot. She is in a parade on the way to collect an honourary doctorate when she gets shot from an upstairs window of the Old Bodlean Library. Well, we've been there. Barbara Tearle took us on a tour of the Old Bodlean Library. We went through the archway, into the courtyard then into the little room where the gunshot came from. It's the communication room, where all the letters are delivered down these long tubes fed with compressed air. When they get to this room, the messages are redirected up other pipes to their chosen destination. The library desperately needs updating, but this system is an institution. We also had to have a special pass to go there, because it’s a staff-only area and Barbara had organized the passes before we got there. Later we went up onto the Library roof and then onto the roof of the Radcliffe building. We also walked along the canal where Grimshaw was found murdered, and we explored the ruins of the nunnery that formed the backdrop for the scene. We followed the canal all the way to the Trout, a most beautiful pub on the banks of the Evenlode River overlooking a low weir surrounded by huge trees in full summer dress, where we had a plate of hot chips with a cup of coffee and a pint of lemonade.

As far as my running is concerned, it seems that it's very difficult to make real progress. I seem to be stuck at this level; I can do 3 or 4 miles at 7min/mile, but I can't get any further. Next weekend, I'll be running my second Garden City 10mile and I shall be lucky to get inside 72min, which really is only 4 min faster than last year's time. I am hoping for 70min, but .... it seems unlikely on present form. I suppose I have to remember that I'm only in week 5 of a 12-week sked for a 1/2Marathon in late October, so a 10mile at this stage is a bit premature. But a good result would still be very nice.

I hope that Mum is still enjoying herself at Matapa. It’s not long till Christmas and we are very much looking forward to seeing you.

Lots of love …. Ewart

22 October 2000

Dear Dora and Ian

Our NZ itinerary looks like this so far:

13 Dec Last day at work

14 Dec Fly to NZ

16, 17 Dec With Joni in Auckland

18-21 Dec In Otorohanga with Elizabeth and Ross Marshall – check the farm

22-28 Dec In Pauanui

29 Dec Go to Hamilton

6-12 Jan With Joni

13 Jan Catch plane to England

15 Jan Back at work.

We drove all the way up to Leicester last Friday night to stay with Kate and Jack Dalgliesh so that we could have an early Sunday morning start to go even further north to Denstone. Susan, their daughter, took us in her little black Escort. Denstone is way up north near Stoke-on-Trent and it took us 1 1/2 hours to get there because Susan won't take the M1, which is the short route. Denstone is a beautiful village with mostly turn of the century red brick houses - nothing very old - and a most magnificent stone college built about 1880 in that Victorian baroque style with the round windows. They call it a Lottery College because you have to win the lottery to afford your kid(s) to go there. Elaine met some of the inmates and they said it cost 3000GBP per term to go there. Apart from the rural agriculture, Denstone is mostly famous for the huge JCB factory there. JCB make diggers and this factory is set in magnificent, expansive grounds with a lake that has a statue made up of about 8 stainless-steel birds landing in the middle of the lake. There is also a very comical statue of a one-footed insect looking monster made entirely of grab buckets on long arms.

We got a very good park right on the finish line and were about the second car there. However, lots more competitors arrived very soon afterward. It seemed to me very odd that so many turned up on the day and registered, whereas I had registered a month before. The track went steeply downhill and then turned to go along a disused railway through very scenic countryside with a river on one side and a steep cutting on the other. We crossed the river at a stone cafe and began a 1/4 hour ascent of the most diabolical hill I have ever had to negotiate, then a slight downhill and another 5min grind uphill, then a very long section through the forest on the other side of the river, crossing again at the stone cafe and runing back to the college along the wet, dirt track in the middle of the disused railway, through the village and up the nasty 1/4 mile incline to the college. Everyone I had ever seen pass me I killed .... along the railway track about 6 of them, up the incline to the college another 5 or six, and in the last 200m I ran down another 11, 5 of them in the last 50m. The last one I passed swore, because he had passed me about mile 3 and there, within 5m of the finish he lost a place.

I have just seen the list of the All Blacks; I think they could have done without Anton Oliver, otherwise it looks like a pretty good selection. Remember when we went to Leicester for the first time and had a look around the grounds of the Leicester Tigers? The man who was being shown around was Carlos Spencer! He was negotiating a job there, but it appears he turned down whatever offers they came up with.

I am not happy with my Denstone 1/2 Marathon performance at all. The time was a dismal 1:42:13 and now I have the results, that put me 161/266 overall and 33/64 in the M50 class. I'm down from top third to only half way. One L50 woman beat me and she finished at 1:37:44 and three M60's beat me. This M50 class is very competitive because the first M50 home was 6th overall and at 1:19:01 was just 2:03 min behind the winner. Only 2 M40's beat him.

I decided that this morning I'd better put things right so I aimed for 16 miles in under 2 hours. I got 1:58:44 and I ran the hard way - twice over the Nash's Farm Road hill. And my 13 mile time was 1:36:12. If I'd done that in Denstone I'd have been 114th overall and and I'd have been 26th in the M50. Those few extra minutes make a lot of difference.... I'd have beaten the woman and one of the M60's. I realised this morning that you have to push yourself all the way to maintain that 7:30 pace, and I think that when racing I'm too conservative so my race times are slower than my training times.

But I am so stiff and sore ...

It's getting close to Bonfire Night, so there are the odd loud bangs outside as people let off fire crackers, the Jersey Farm Residents Association is advertising its bonfire night and we are looking forward to our second bonfire here and a very pleasant evening being entertained by a live band while we watch the fireworks. Last year it was pretty crisp outside and the smell of mulled wine and cordite was a heady mix. It was also the first occasion that we met many of the leading lights around the estate. This year we are going to go over to the field where it's held and we'll help them put up the big white tent and add whatever we can to the bonfire.

Lots of the local shops have Halloween masks and stuff, so trick-or-treat day can't be far off. Elaine's kids at school are highly excited that some of them might be going trick-or-treating, so Elaine has warned them to be careful. Last year we had a couple of beautiful little kids (with Mum in tow) arrive at the door, so we gave them a biscuit each, but this year we have bought some gold and silver coins, which are really just yummy chocolates, so that we can give them a nice surprise.

The weather is still very mild, but you've probably heard of our flooding down south in Kent - it really has been raining quite severely. We are way out trouble here in St Albans so we've been watching with some sympathy as people in other communities have had trials heaped on them. Except for a couple of absolutely beautiful, clear days we have had lots of grey skies, wind and scudding, drizzling rain.

Because our little flat is so warm, we don't have to worry about the conditions outside and since both of us work inside, neither is too upset about inclement weather and most of the time we hardly notice what the weather is doing. It is, odd, tho, looking out the window at work and seeing it almost completely dark at 5:30 when it's time to go home. In a couple of weeks, daylight saving ends and then it will be dark going to work at 7:30 and dark again at 4:30pm before we come home. Thanks to daylight saving, we don't get very long in the dark, because all this dark is over come March.

Bother! I've just found out that, due to a misplaced marshall, we all ran about 500yds longer than we should have. The race organizer says "Knock 2min off your time!" Even so, I'm still outside my 7:30min/mile target, and it doesn't change my dismal placing....

Lloyd's Bank has just allowed internet banking for free (it was 10GBP per month) so I signed up for it and we can now see our account balances without having to go to an ATM and we can transfer money between accounts without having to go to the bank. Very nice. They contacted me last week to say that the small business service was open so I signed up for that, too, so I can see what the balance is on our E&E Tearle Consultancy Ltd account. We may even be able to transfer money into our other accounts, but I'll have to see the proof first.

In the meantime, be cool!

Lots of love

Ewart and Elaine

10 September 2000

Dear Dora and Ian

As you know last weekend was our wedding anniversary, our 26th. We went to the market in St Albans in the morning then decided to go back to Old Warden to the Shuttleworth Museum to follow up a car we found last time we were there. We are pretty sure it is one of the cars driven and worked on by my grandfather, Arthur Tearle, when he worked for Lord Rothschild. It is an 1897 Panhard Levassor and was owned by Lord Rothschild at Wing .... it was even loaned to King Edward V11 to drive him to the races at Ascot in the early 1920s.

Anyway, while we were talking to staff about the car, there was suddenly a roar in the sky. We rushed outside to find a Spitfire doing a beat up of the airfield. We watched while it performed a series of aerobatics over the airfield and then came into land right in front of us. We had been told to wait "for a man called Ken wearing white overalls who was refuelling planes" so we could ask about the car. Elaine saw someone matching his description so she hopped under the barrier to talk to him. It turned out they were having a problem with the fuel tank so they called a few guys to help to push the Spitfire into the hangar so I went to help. This left Elaine to walk back to the hangar with the pilot. It turned out that he and four other Spitfires had been flying for a couple of days at Eastbourne assisting an American movie called "Pearl Harbour" to be released later this year. The movie will tell the story of how the Americans won the Battle of Britain - according to the pilot. He had had fun doing lots of aerobatics but said the Spitfire was pretty heavy to fly so he had come back very tired. When we got into the hangar most of the other civilians had drifted away and Elaine and I were left with three ground crew who look after the plane. Elaine told them that her dad's friend Maurie Andrews had flown Spitfires in The Battle of Britain so they were very happy to talk to us and show us the plane. Shuttleworth is full of enthusiasts, mostly volunteers. I asked if they would allow Elaine get into the cockpit. They told me this was not usually allowed but they looked around, and seeing we were the only civilians, they closed the hangar door, told her to take off her jacket and watch so nothing would catch on any part of the plane, opened the door and assisted her up onto the wing and then into the cockpit. I took several really good photos of Elaine sitting in that cockpit. You could see she loved every minute of it! Sitting in a Mark Vc Spitfire.

After leaving Shuttleworth we explored the beautiful little village of Old Warden and photographed its extraordinarily beautiful cottages, many of which are thatched, and then found the local church - a really gorgeous old Norman church with some of the most beautiful stained glass windows we have seen in England and deeply carved wooden pews. A lot of the carving had orginally been purchased from the bedroom of Anne of Cleaves, one of Henry V111's wives. The area was originally owned by Lord Ongley and later purchased by the Shuttleworth family, Joseph actually. He built up a huge estate, the home is now Shuttleworth College (a tertiary college) and the Shuttleworths had two sons. Frank was given the estates in Bedfordshire (where we were), his brother was given he family estates in Lincolnshire that we have not yet seen. Frank Shuttleworth married Dorothy when he was 57 and she was 23 and they had one child only, Richard. Richard was very sporting and flew aeroplanes and raced racing cars extremely successfully. He went to the war as a pilot and although this little district sent about 70 of its young men to war and only 4 were killed, Richard, the only child of the lord of the manor, was one of them - killed on a test flight for a new aircraft. The little St Leonards Church at Old Warden is full of huge, beautiful, stained glass windows donated by his mother as memorials to him, his father and grandfather. She also added the little church foyer and door in his memory. His mother also bought and built the Shuttleworth Museum to house his plane and car collections which have subsequently been added to. All a wonderful tribute by a mother for her only son. We also found the Shuttleworth family graves.

So, we went back to the Shuttleworth airfield on Sunday afternoon to see the Spitfire Elaine sat in last week flying and lots of other WW1 aircraft, mainly bi-wing aircraft and one tri-wing. I have taken lots of photos. An excellent way to spend our 26th wedding anniversary weekend.

That Sunday morning we went to Welwyn Garden City where I ran the Garden City 10 (a ten mile race which I also ran last year). It was quite cool in the morning but turned into a lovely day and nowhere near as hot as last year. We packed up our picnic and rug with all our souvenir badges from this trip, our incentive to have fun ... and headed to Welwyn Garden City. Elaine found a good spot to wait and watch the runners prepare then I set off with all the others, about 575 of them! I ran about 4 minutes off my last year's time for the same course and came in 42nd Veteran runner in the M50 class. A lot of veterans run in this race, it is the Hertfordshire Championships and British Champions also compete so times are very fast. The top time was just over 51 mins so my time of 72:27 min was not bad and it was nice to have an improvement on last year. Another thing I was pleased about was that only 12 women beat me and none of them were W50 or older. Most of the people who run are from clubs. I took 208th place over all, which is ok for someone running only his third competitive race. People were still finishing the race when we left just on two hours after I finished. I always does a sprint finish and I heard the race commentator say, "We never usually see sprint finishes like this he said, and from an unattached runner!" (meaning not a club runner). It paid off though, because I passed a vet in that sprint ... so I was 43rd instead of 44th. People come from all over the south east to race. We heard of people from clubs in London and the Lake District as well as all the other areas within about a 2hrs drive.

I have signed up for the Cabbage Patch 10, which is a 10-mile race run by the Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham, that’s the weekend after next. On 15 October we are off to stay with Jack and Kate Dalgliesh in Leicester for the weekend. Remember that we stayed with them for a few days earlier in the year and went to Bosworth Field to see where Richard III met his end. This time I shall be running the Denstone ½ marathon. Denstone is in Staffordshire a little north of Uttoxeter and a little east of Stoke-on-Trent. It looks like three houses and a tent on the map and since the listing says H for hilly, I guess it will be interesting countryside, and I won’t be looking for too quick a time … I have also signed up for next year’s London Marathon. I know … daft. However, they don’t tell me I’ve been accepted to race until December, so I can’t say until then whether or not I’ll actually be running. I am looking forward to it, though.

The days are positively balmy, even warm, and there hasn’t been much rain; a very nice late summer going into autumn. The trees are just turning colour even though there have been no frosts around here yet and the coolness one associates with autumn hasn’t snapped in. We have a beautiful big bushy Superstar rose that has a dozen large flowers on it and Elaine’s impatiens are in full and glorious flower. One of the things that is always so surprising about England is how vigorously everything grows - like a tropical garden – and how intensely the plants cram their flowers onto every available twig.

We’ve been researching our ticket home. Believe it or not, we’re going to buy our ticket from a NZ travel agent because it will cost us less than HALF what it would cost to buy the same ticket here. The same ticket … it boggles the mind, doesn’t it? At the moment it looks like we arrive in NZ on Sun 17 Dec and leave on Fri 12 Jan, but all that still has to be confirmed.

No doubt you’ve heard about our strikes and blockades over the cost of fuel? Elaine says that there are very long queues outside petrol stations. We are ok for the next week or so because our tanks are full and we run little cars, but if things drag on, life could get a little stark if we can’t go to work and therefore don’t get paid. It’s never dull here!

Lots of love

Ewart and Elaine

14 Sep 2000

Dear Dad

Thank you very much for the parcel today … I’m not intending giving away the beautiful bowls you made. We’d love to use them ourselves, to put them on the table and say my dad made them when people ask us where they came from and what the unusual looking woods are.

And what a wonderful surprise the stop-watch is! Grandad Dawson, after whom I am named. I am thrilled, Dad, it’s such a wonderful treasure and I didn’t even know it existed. Please thank Mum very much. When I am working on the helpdesk lots of people ask me what sort of name Ewart is and I am so pleased for Mrs Youngman’s research, and for Mum’s stories, that I can tell the asker that the name is Irish and was my mother’s father’s middle name. I now have something tangible and very personal (it would be a safe bet that he used the watch to time his horses) that belonged to my mother’s very loved father.

Also, thank you very much for the offer to stay with you, but we are already booked into the Pauanui house.

I have also signed up for next year’s London Marathon, to be run in April. However, they don’t tell me I’ve been accepted to race until December, so I can’t say until then whether or not I’ll actually be running. I am looking forward to it, though; you run across Tower Bridge and you can’t cross that on foot at any other time. I want a time of under 3hr 30min.

You would have loved it here, Dad, if you’d have been able to make the trip. St Albans is such a beautiful city and the old people here who know a thing or two, recognise the name Tearle and say that it is an old St Albans name. The Tearles have been here since about the 1760’s. The countryside around here is like a huge park, all closely manicured and carefully managed, the accent of the locals is light and sweet, the little children are beautifully dressed all the time, and the entire city is quiet and orderly. The history of the place is deep and intensely interesting, filled with many of history’s greatest names. We have felt very at home here, and we have met lots people who have treated us with kindness and genuine friendliness. We love our little flat and Jersey Farm is like Pauanui.

No doubt you’ve heard about our strikes and blockades over the cost of fuel? It’s never dull here! A couple of stories now about the fuel crisis:

A garage in Flitwick, up the road from Luton, is selling petrol at 2.00 pounds a litre instead of the usual price of 83p

Some guy in Luton stored 70 gallons of petrol in beer barrels. They leaked into his basement and the whole street was evacuated while the petrol was flushed away.

The local councils want the secondary schools to close because if teachers can't get to work, they can't guarantee the safety of children and teachers who can get to school.

Believe it or not, Elaine and I have HEAPS of petrol. Almost all the garages around St Albans are advertising "Nothing except 4* (LRP.)" Well, that's what we run on. Our little old Metros only use 4* petrol. Now that my tank is full, it will go for about 2 weeks, just to work and back.

We have lots of supplies left in our millennium cupboard, so we won't starve for a while.

I keep thinking, oh, dear ... why me? They know I’m in England but they don’t know where, so they’ve sent this huge fuel crisis to flush me out. Well, I won’t go.

By the way, here's a note from our travel agent:

Thanks for your email Ewart, the petrol situation is incredible and yes it is on the news here plus the inflated costs at some petrol stations. We have had rises here to and it is now 1.15 per litre.
I have great news. JAPAN AIRLINES IS CONFIRMED NOW to depart London 14
December at 6.15pm and arrive here on Saturday 16th at 11.50am and then to depart Auckland on Saturday 13 Jan with the free night at the airport hotel in Osaka and arrive London Heathrow at 3.20pm on Sun 14th. Cost is NZ$2260 plus taxes and does not have to be paid in full until 45 days prior to departure.

Now we know our home and return dates ...

By the way, our gas in England is $NZ2.48 per litre – I guess you can see why the locals aren’t too happy about that.

Love

Ewart

13 Dec 2000

Finished work today, we'll be on the plane tomorrow.

There's a plane stuck on the runway and lots of flights have been delayed, but that's life. Every now and then the train you are on will just stop on the tracks and the usual joke is that the driver has seen a leaf on the track and he's gone out to sweep it off. The standing excuse for trains being late is for either leaves or snow on the track. In 150 years of British Rail they still haven't come up with a cure for either. I suppose it's the same for planes, not for leaves or snow, but some pathetic excuse that will hide the real story of someone's incompetence.

Never mind, neither rain nor tornado can stop us now! We have had lots of cards wishing us well and about a dozen phone calls from friends and family. Jenny Pugh has rung, as has John Tearle, Clarice, Thelma, and Roland. Pam and Tom took us to dinner and Liz and John Stredwick made us a beautiful dinner in their lovely Goff’s Oak home. Ivor and Iris will be looking after our car and I have insured mine so he can drive it, and then again for Elizabeth Marshall who’s coming to see us for a couple of weeks as soon as we get back. Here, it's illegal to drive a car without the basic insurance.

Elaine made some Afghans for her work and for mine and they went down a treat. It's also traditional here to give a Christmas card to one's fellow workers, so I found some really good cards (20 for GBP2) and they were quite impressed with my cards. I got them from the Saturday market. So a card and an Afghan each for all 20 of them really got them talking at work. They also hadn't tasted Afghans before and they were pretty envious that Elaine and I would be on the beach in summer for Christmas. I promised to show them my new tan when I got back. They are a very nice group of people and it's a pleasure to work with them.

We have spent an hour or two touring St Albans looking at the decorated houses and we are sure that there are lots more than last year, many with Christmas trees outside their back door beautifully lit and lots of houses with brightly lit windows flashing with coloured fairy lights. It's dark at 4:30pm so there is plenty of evening before 10:00pm (when most people switch them off) to show off one’s own lights and to go around town admiring the efforts of others.

But now it's homeward. We'll see you soon.

Lots of love

Ewart and Elaine