Just got home from the last match of the softball season.  It’s dark outside now, it rained today, and I’m beginning to wonder if summer is over already. 

We didn’t win this evening, but it was close.  37-35.  I didn’t intend to play when I left home this morning, but I’m glad that I did.  I got out a couple of times; got home a couple of times.  Overall, I still suck, but perhaps I sucked slightly less than usual.  Continue to have issues with things like catching and not running into people.

We played in Hyde Park, Knightsbridge-side, in a strip of softball matches.  Brightly coloured charity t-shirts.  The Albert Memorial in the background.  Plastic bags as bases, and calls that could’ve gone either way.  Perhaps we should’ve won.  Perhaps it doesn’t matter that much. 

Caught the tube home.  Stopped for a pasty.  This is living in London, and yet I’m a tourist observing it still.

This is the inside of our door.

I feel it deserves its own blog entry for two reasons.  The first relates to the round thing at the top of this not-so-carefully taken photograph.  That’s our doorbell.  Our landlord described it as a green doorbell, which basically means that we have to wind it up by hand.  If it loses its internal tension, it also loses its sound.

The second, is that flap halfway down.  That’s how our mail arrives.  I don’t think I’ve seen a letter box over here.  The mail comes through the flap in the door, and usually it’s bills or junk mail (as seen here).

While it’s quite nice to come home in the evening to a pile of letters on the doormat, the obvious disadvantage of this system is that the flap is too small for large book-shaped parcels from various internet retailers.  Sometimes these get left outside, sometimes they get left at the nearest post office, and sometimes – depending on the depot – they’re returned to the head office halfway across the city.

At Christmas we tie ribbon around our doorbell, but since it is November, it is not Christmas just yet.

Tash

Matt and I just watched the last three episodes of The Tudors, Season II: right up to the death of Anne Boleyn (and I hope that doesn’t spoil it for anyone).  It’s a story I’ve heard many times – while studying Tudor and Stuart history at high school, in the novels of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, Jean Plaidy and Suzannah Dunn, the Elizabeth and Other Boleyn Girl movies and now in this series.

Living in the UK has only increased my fascination.  It still seems surreal that I can visit places where this all happened: Hampton Court Palace and Hever Castle (we haven’t quite made it to the latter just yet, but it’s on the hit list).  I used to walk past the Tower of London every day on the way to work.  Inside, there’s a memorial to Queen Anne and the others who were executed at the site. A glass pillow.

Anne’s just lost her head again on my laptop tonight.  I’m not sure that I can wait till next year for another Tudor TV season.  Unfortunately there’s little point reading online spoilers because I’ve already got a good idea what will happen.

Tash

One of my goals for this year is to run 5km. I’ve already done that, probably 15-20 times since January, at the gym – and now I can go the distance on the treadmill without too much trouble.

The trouble comes when I go outside. Outside and summer doesn’t agree with me here in London, and I can only manage about 100 metres before my nose starts running and my eyes start tearing up. A couple of hundred metres later, I get a side-stitch, I’m out of breath and that’s the end of it.

So it’s kind of worrying that, in just over a month’s time, I’ll be running 5km in a Race for Life event at Regent’s Park. Unfortunately Regent’s Park isn’t a gym. It’s outside. It’s got grass, and given that it’ll be July, it might even be sunny. If you’d like to support me through this trauma, you can click on the rectangular ‘Sponsor Me’ button to the right here.

Perhaps the fact that I’m not only suffering, I’m also raising money for Cancer Research UK, will help me get through.

Tash

Matt and I ‘discovered’ the Guardian newspaper on the Greek Islands, during the early days of our honeymoon.  A year and a half later, it remains my favourite British paper.  It’s got a great book section and podcasts, lots of new media jobs, and um, today in the online version at least there’s an article about volunteering, and work, and that ever popular back-of-the-book picture of… um… me.

One of my goals for this year was to be published in the UK.  This isn’t quite what I meant.

Tash