May

9

Best shop in the world

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Behold, the fantastic stuff of Carousel Consignments in downtown Janesville, Wisconsin.

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If you can’t find a treasure at this shop, then you have a heart of stone. Or a very tidy house. Either way, I wouldn’t ever trust you.

I bought the most gorgeous little salt and pepper shakers (my treasure had to fit neatly into luggage) but, believe it or not, I have not yet photographed them! I’ll get around to it.

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Carousel Consignments is magical. For more pictures from the shop, please visit my flickr page.

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May

8

iced tea and the unexplained

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My recipe for vanilla iced tea:

  • Boil 1 quart (or 2 UK pints) of water.
  • Add 5 bags of tea (I used PG Tips) and 1 bag of Rooibos Vanilla tea.
  • Steep for an hour, give or take, then squeeze the bags hard and discard them.
  • Stir in 1/2 cup of white sugar until dissolved.
  • Add 1/2 quart (or 1 UK pint) of cold water.
  • Don’t add ice, but chill in the refrigerator.
  • Enjoy.

There is something about moving thousands of miles and an ocean’s distance away from the place that you were raised that stirs up longings you never possessed before. At least not when it was logical to possess them. For me, today, on a warm and sunny day in the first part of May, I made iced tea. And I made it my own. Like I knew something or had the right to tinker with an old hand-me-down recipe. I don’t actually have any such birthright. My mother drinks hot tea only— no milk or sugar and strong as mud. My dad, I don’t remember what he drank, but I would guess he drank coffee at work. Until today, I could count the number of times I ever sipped from a glass of iced tea on one hand, but on this warm May day — and for no reason other than it felt like the most natural thing in the world — I made iced tea. Vanilla iced tea. And it is good. Good like I have been making vanilla iced tea for years. Good like my mother must have taught it to me. Good like she learned it from her mother. Good like this couldn’t possibly be the first time I have ever made iced tea.

I think the tea is a result of recently spending time in the state of my birth and raising. I have been affected in ways I did not expect, and I don’t just mean that in the context of my rather exceptional vanilla iced tea.

We’ll get to Indiana in a few more posts. My next post will continue where we left off for more of the Wisconsin leg of the holiday.

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May

7

We started in Janesville Wisconsin

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Before plucking the delicate internet flower that is moi to be his partner in life and crime, Neil had no reason to ever be in Wisconsin. Since marrying me, he’s been there at least twice. I lived there for ten years before making the trans-Atlantic move to England and consider it as much my home state as Indiana. We spent the last week of April in Janesville in a slightly dodgy Motel 6. The woman who runs the motel is lovely, but the thin walls kept no secrets. We had the sex maniacs next door doin’ their thing between 4 and 5 AM one night, the clown car-esque group of illegal immigrants with their sleeping bags on the other side for the next, and the drug deal bust and unhappy buyer the following morning in a room upstairs and opposite. Oh, and the all night packers who seemed to gather their things for a couple of hours, then nap, then get up and shuffle some more stuff. They could have been touring troupe of Stomp for as much noise as they made. It’s not the kind of motel you complain about, as you get what you pay for and you just have to stay positive about the daily police presence. I have never felt such an even split of safety and danger anywhere. It was weird. But they had free wifi…

Moving right along…

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Big, yellow, school buses are still a magical thing Neil first saw in movies and television, so I took him to see a whole depot of the things in Janesville.

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When I first moved to the UK, it was early November and I assumed that snow management would be on the minds of everyone. I asked Neil if we had a shovel, to which he looked perplexed. Snow was not on his mind. I explained that I meant a SNOW shovel and he explained that we did not have one. I then asked if there is a specific time or day for us to move the car out of the lot so that the managers of the flats could plow the car park. His response (complete with British spelling), “Plough?” Yeah. So, evidently I was the only person with snow on her mind. I have still, more than three years on, never seen a snow plow in Southern England. Grit trucks, yes. Plows? Pretty much unheard of. And you can pretty much forget buying a bag of sidewalk salt too. Add British “snow management” in the age of global warming to my list of things I love about my adopted country.

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May

7

I’ve launched a specialist site today

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I’m wading through my own holiday photos and thoughts, but decided that now is the time to launch my collection of other people’s holidays…

Introducing: Box of Postcards.

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It’s a site to showcase my vintage postcard and Hood’s Photos of the World collection. I aim to update it every few days until I run out of things to scan. Trust me, it will take awhile… in fact, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed to be sure to catch every weird and wonderful upload.

My thoughts and photos of our own, recently concluded, holiday will be uploaded in instalments over the next few days. SO much to process…

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May

3

Alive and well and still on holiday

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I am sitting outside the Steve Alford All-American Inn on 3 just outside New Castle, Indiana. They have free wireless internet for guests and although we aren’t staying here, they have range enough for me to leech teh internets through their walls. Hooray!

All is well from the road. We’ve driven miles and miles and miles and have stories and photos to share. Most of that stuff is going to wait until we get back, as we will not always have drive-up wifi access on our routes.

We’ve seen the family and friends we needed to see, and found the places I wanted to photograph. Roads are mostly familiar and food is more wonderful than it should be. In short, life is good.

More from us when we get back to the UK.

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Apr

28

More Greenland from the air

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More from 38,000 feet above Greenland on my Flickr page.
Click the above photo to take you there.

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Apr

25

38,000 feet above Greenland

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Taken as we flew over Greenland on our way to Chicago today. I’ve got loads more of the glacier paths, icebergs, and terrain to upload but will probably not do any more tonight since we’re knackered from travel.

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Apr

19

On acting my age and then some

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Neil and I went down to the Post Office to take care of the car tax due and decided to stop for a Costa coffee to properly start the day. We walked through the shopping centre and passed a (high quality) shoe store. A display caught my eye.

J - ‘Oh! Those look comfortable!’

This is how I know that my age and my attitude are sometimes in the same room now. I was drawn not to the sexy, funky shoes, but rather the ones that you could spend all day in, travel in, do the laundry in, write your will while soaking your dentures in…

Next thing you know, I’ll be appreciating the elastic-waisted, permanent press slacks that are advertised in those little catalogues that come with Reader’s Digest. “Almond” — yes! that would go with everything and the elastic waist would be so comfortable.

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