home country correspondents

It was a lovely spring day today; in the last three weeks we've seen the trees around Wimbledon transformed from budded twigs to a sea of green leaves. Walking home tonight just after 6pm, at the end of a long and challenging day, it was refreshing to walk under blue skies with puffy clouds, amidst a soothe of greenery. (That surely is the collective noun.) We're already seeing what people say: in London, the seasons turn.

On my route home my final landmark is the Royal Mail postbox, which is directly across the road from our flat. On our recent trip to Whitby, Michael Bucksmith told me an interesting fact: the post boxes here in the United Kingdom all carry the initials of the ruling monarch at the time of their construction... I immediately thought of the box near the flat, which I'd noticed was of venerable age at least. A visit on my return home revealed to my delight that it was in fact one of the earliest post boxes. As shown in the photo I took, the box bears the initials "VR", for "Victoria Regina". This dates the box at the latest at 1901 (the end of her reign), and possibly as early as 1879, when the first cylindrical post boxes were introduced. Other roadside pillar boxes had been installed elsewhere on the mainland from 1853, but of a different style. Another piece of history on our doorstep, like so many things in London.

When we first arrived in London we'd spent a week just getting ourselves sorted. The following week I started work, and Bronwyn starting doing some supply teaching (the job formerly known as "relieving"). She did five days of work over the next two weeks before the holidays were upon her. As a result she's had the last two weeks without the potential for work. Bronwyn used the time productively, signing up with seven further teaching agencies, in addition to her original agency Timeplan. She's also had a chance to exhibit nesting instincts, making our flat a little more liveable. Amongst other things we've now got guest mattresses. This is probably a good thing as we've already been receiving emails from a range of people heading this way sometime between now and Christmas!

School went back this week. Monday was a teacher's only day, but Bronwyn has spent the last two days teaching. She's already experienced a mix of some nice schools and some that fit with a more negative London stereotype. She's in the process of investigating one long-term position at the moment. This would give stability of location and income, but would be a reasonable commute from here; perhaps an hour each way, each day. You'd get a lot of reading done.

Happy Birthday Megan!

It turns out that 3:30am is the answer to the question, "What time will we have to rise to get to the Anzac Day dawn service at Battersea Park?" It was just unfortunate that we came into this knowledge at 9:30pm last night, discovering late that the service was at 5:10am not 5:30am, that overland trains don't run that early in the morning, and that we'd need to catch not one but two buses in order to get there. This belated epiphany meant that we were only able to get 5.5 hours of sleep last night, unfortunately. I don't think it was a lack of sleep that meant that on our second bus we found it difficult to read the names written on moving bus stops in the dark. (Technically you may wish to argue that the bus stop itself wasn't actually moving, but that would display a curiously inflexible view of the world.) In any case, we were fortunate to have the River Thames as a clear landmark that we'd gone too far, which meant we were soon in no doubt about our error. As it turned out, the walk alongside the Thames was lovely, and as the water was still it provided excellent reflections of the bridges and buildings. I took a couple of long-exposure shots with a pocket-tripod, which hopefully will capture the tranquillity.

I'd printed out a clear map of where we needed to go in the park, but needn't have worried. We were carried along in a stream of antipodeans, some draped in Australian flags (though interestingly only one New Zealander adorned with our flag). We arrived at the War Memorial to find somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people assembled for the service; too many people to locate our friend Sonja until afterwards, as she arrived a little late. The crowd included some older servicemen (though none of course from Gallipoli as we're now 87 years onwards). The majority of the people, however, were in their twenties and thirties... The service was opened by pipes while two jets did a fly over, which was followed by a hymn, readings, a speech from the Leader of the Australian Senate, and prayers. A soldier from the New Zealand Army played the last post. It was all... appropriate. After the service they served coffee and tea along with, of course, Anzac biscuits. I learned that despite the Australian Senator's recall of his town's Anzac traditions, black coffee is best served without the rum. Thanks to the generous soldier who was distributing it, though I never drink before 6... (but AM?)

Part of me felt after the service that I was living out some sort of script. "The antipodean young person in London went to the Battersea Park Anzac service, though he had never attended an Anzac Day dawn service in New Zealand... His thoughts turned to the nation he had left behind as he realised for the first time..." [season to taste: "...the true futility of war",  "...the true value of peace",  "...the sacrifice made by those young men 87 years ago."]  The fact is that on one level it wasn't a profound experience. But I'm glad we went. It meant something to me. God, grant us peace.

Greater love has no man than this: that he lays down his life for his friends.Lest we forget.

Yesterday's entry briefly mentioned our trip to Whitby for Easter. Before we left New Zealand, I'd been talking about going to Prague for Easter. In our first couple of weeks here in London, however, we'd come to realise that finding a flat and settling into London life was going to take all our spare time. It just wasn't realistic to plan an overseas trip this early. An email from Michael and Jenny Bucksmith inviting us to visit them up in Whitby was thus well timed. They're both old friends: I'd flatted with Jenny in Newtown, Wellington, immediately prior to my move to Palmerston North, while her husband Michael was in my 5th form class when I attended Wellington College for a year.

After being driven to Leeds by Alex and Pip (see yesterday's entry), we caught the train to Scarborough. Jenny picked us up from there and drove us the last half hour to Whitby. The drive through the moors was uncannily like the Desert Road region of New Zealand. Our weekend in Whitby was a nice mix of catching up on old times and seeing a new place. Whitby and the surrounding towns we visited were very familiar, bringing to life the fishing towns and country villages we've seen on television. Despite being chilly over the weekend, Whitby was completely overrun with tourists (not us, of course... that other kind that are annoying). This made the parking so bad that Michael and Jenny had to park their car over 10 minutes walk from their house. Needless to say, the local residents would like the council to install some residents' parking areas. We enjoyed the walking though.

Although Whitby is a long way from London, it was great to see Jenny and Michael and to feel that we've got some more connections here in the UK. We're settling in well, but there's nothing like old friends. We'll definitely be bothering them with our company again, when we can.   : )

How do you go about choosing a church? Sound theology? Good music? Contemporary atmosphere? Friendly people your age? A church that supports overseas missions? Local to where you're living? A web site that points people to God? These criteria and others were in our minds as we considered how we would find our new spiritual home here in London. Of course, everyone who had lived in London or even visited at some point had a helpful recommendation, so we'd arrived in any case armed with a few suggestions.

Not all the recommended churches met the "local to where we're living" criteria, but one was particularly on the mark. When we met Corrie Burung at Wycliffe Australia she recommended her home church, Queen's Road Church in Wimbledon. On the strength of this recommendation we visited there on our first Sunday in London, though at that stage we were still in Clapham South. On subsequent weeks we've also visited All Souls Langham Place in the city, where my father attended when here as a student in the late 60s. We've visited as well Emmanuel, a Church of England (as it turned out) congregation in Wimbledon. On the Sunday before Easter we went to Worple Road Church, again in Wimbledon and this time with Open Brethren roots. All of these churches in Wimbledon are within 10-12 minutes walk of our flat. I found it interesting that none of these churches make their denominational affiliation particularly prominent or even clear... However, I'd liken Queen's Road, Emmanuel, and Worple Road to (a slightly more charismatic) PN Central Baptist, (a slightly more traditional) All Saints PN, and (a slightly smaller) Titahi Bay Gospel Chapel respectively. [To be fair, I've only been to one service each at CB and All Saints, so can't really claim to know that much about them anyway...]

There were probably only 40 people at Worple Road the Sunday we attended, but they were definitely the most friendly church to date, despite quite good receptions from the others too. In conversation after the service we were asked what we were doing at Easter. I said we'd been invited to visit our friends Michael and Jenny Bucksmith up in Whitby, North Yorkshire, and asked about the best way to get there from London. After about five minutes of discussion regarding various options, the woman we were speaking to suddenly said something along the lines of, "Oh, actually, we're going to Yorkshire on Friday. Why don't we just give you a lift?" To cut a long story short, the afore-referred-to-but-not-mentioned-by-name Pip and her husband Alex thus generously drove us to Leeds last Friday, and back again on Monday, a 4.5 hour journey each way. They're lovely people, and it was great to get to know them during that time. We still haven't finally decided where we'll end up for the duration for our church, but we experienced an excellent example of Christian community through them. Thanks Pip and Alex!

Three weeks in London, my first two weeks of work, and an internet drought have come to an end. It's been an eventful time. We arrived in London to the excellent hospitality of our friend Sonja, and stayed with her and her flatmates in Clapham South. I trained with Sonja in Palmerston North and it is great to be able to have more contact with her again now we're here. It was in fact Sonja that forwarded to me the job advert for my position here, so it's her own fault that we've been inflicted on her. Sonja and her flatmates were warm, welcoming and generous towards us and we couldn't have asked for a better introduction to London. Thanks!

The weather has matched that warm welcome. Our first two weeks here were unseasonably good for March in London, with warm weather and blue skies. In the last week or so though it's become more chilly, and I came out of the hospital the other day to discover it was hailing. Upstaging even that, I headed out for work from our flat on Thursday morning to find it was lightly snowing! Amazing, and equally as un-seasonal in April as the good weather was in March.

The astute will have noticed a reference to "our flat" in the previous paragraph... We are pleased to report that after looking at about 15 places we found a flat we could all agree on. It's quite a process to prove you're worthy to become a tenant here, but we finally completed those processes on Tuesday and moved in. It's a two double-bedroom flat with a very nice sheltered garden area. We share the flat with friends Nick and Hayley from Wellington, and a family of squirrels whom we presume are from around here. We're still unpacking. While it's furnished-ish we need to obtain a number of necessities of life still. But it's home. It's so nice to have one again.