The milk man

We are really pushing to be as English as possible. Next I'll be buying a mini... mmmm, 1960s mini... wait... I've gone horribly off track. Our latest "when in Rome" moment came two days ago when the milk man came to the door asking if I wanted to have door-to-door delivery.

• Would it come in those little glass bottles with loosely fitting foil tops? Yep!


• Does it really get delivered from a little open-sided milk truck? Yep!


• Is it pulled by an old horse who grazes Oxfordshire countryside in the afternoon? No.

Two out of three.

The fact that it is locally sourced milk in re-usable containers (that they pick up)at better-than-supermarket prices didn't matter so much at the time (but I am happy about the environmental upside) because it was just such an English thing to do.

Full circle?

As noted, we are now a two car family again. It happened more by chance than design, but thanks to Dad coming through in a moment of need, we now have the back-up Passat for our motoring needs. As I get used to the quirks of the 'new' vehicle, I often smile to myself at the similarities of this vehicle and the last vehicle I took off my dad's hands.

Most probably know the story. It has been one of those life-defining stories that I re-tell to rolling eyes and knowing smiles. I can't help it... and, frankly, probably won't help it. Nevertheless, I'll give the briefest of overviews here. In 1999, I got an old BMW motorcycle off my dad to travel Europe. We managed to spend 4 months covering just shy of 20,000 miles on Fred (the name we gave our two-wheeled friend). Fred had lots of character and didn't always get us there in the end, but we enjoyed the experience immensely for what it was.

Only a week into owning the Passat, I am able to draw a number of paralells between the car and Fred. For visual learners, I will make a little table:

	Fred	Passat
German	x	x
high mileage	x	x
leaks oil	x	x
convienence items that once worked now don't	x	x
dad describes himself as having driven it 'hard'	x	x
dad declares it "unquestionably reliable"	x	x
Oddly, only one key	x	x

I will draw your attention to the last couple of points, starting with the provision of a single key. When I picked up Fred from Dad, he handed me the key and said, "Whatever you do, don't lose this key. It's the only one and getting another will be expensive and inconvenient."

For those that know me, it will be unsurprsing that it took me about 3 weeks to lose that key. We were in the Netherlands, enjoying Dutch hospitality in a small and slightly strange town on the coast. We walked about, had a pub lunch, visited the local museum, fed the birds and even went for a swim in the public pool. When we woke the next morning, the key was gone. Really, really gone. After a very long and stressful search, I pushed the bike a little over a mile to a motorcycle mechanic on the far side of town. After discussing various options which cost a lot of money, he mentioned that he had a number of keys for BMWs that had been left at the shop over the years. Out of an small, oily, wooden box he fetched a key and put it in the ignition. Despite not fitting snuggly, it turned and the bike sputtered to life. Success! And cheap. We laughed, he didn't charge us, and we drove off with a 'new' key... which I lost some weeks later in Bristol. Knowing any key fit, we grabbed one of Ange's suitcase keys and it too worked. It was so loose in the ignition, that we had to attach the key to a piece of string, which in turn was taped to the speedometer. Only we didn't have string, so we used dental floss. And the only tape we had was bright yellow duct tape that had been used previously to mend a broken panier. So everywhere we drove, the key would be flopping about the speedo on a piece of dental floss taped to the bike. Very innovative if not always appreciated by my fellow Beemer owners.

When we left on our motorbiking odessy, I questioned my dad on the reliability of the old BMW. "It's German," he said. "It'll go forever!" Later that same week, he noted, "Why, I'd take that to Moscow tomorrow without a moment's hesitation." Another moment of fondness for his time using that bike, he claimed it was the most reliable bike he had ever known.

To cut a ridiculously long story short, we broke down in every single county we visited. The bike leaked a steady flow of oil from the shaft. "No worries," dad said when I reported the development in a phone call to him, "just keep topping it up!" Our clutch cable went in Scotland. We were forced to use a small wooden block to prop up the side stand so the bike wouldn't fall over. We blew a tyre in France. We had what can only be described as 'total system failure' in Ireland. In Germany, the BMW dealership pinched an tool off a new bike and gave it to us for free to encourage our quick departure from the fore-court of their dealership. In Switzerland all we could find was the above mentioned bright-yellow duct tape to tape the paniers and their frame back together. The electrical system was so clapped out, that at one point in time in France we had no speedo, no tach, no headlights or indicators, no brake lights and my handwarmer stopped working. Occassionally a bump would jolt some or all of the electrical functionality back into the bike only for another bump to stop them from working again. We simply could not run the risk of driving at night and were confined to day driving. It wasn't lost on us that when we arrived back in Mundesley at my dad's house, he came out with a laugh and gave us both a big hug, commenting without a tinge of irony in his voice: "I can't believe you made it back with the bike!"

So here I am driving a high mileage, German vehicle that my dad has declared unquestionably reliable. As he handed it off to me, he notes that, "whatever you do, don't lose the key. It's the only one and they're expensive to replace!" He went so far as to suggest that we sell our Toyota, save the money and just drive the Passat. I admit that I smiled at the thought of it. But he has a different perspective on vehicles than I (or, I should think, most readers of this blog). Case and point was the other day when I asked how he was enjoying his new 2004 Peugot 407 (it's Peugot's nice, full sized turbo deisel and his has only 10,000 miles since new). It is probably one of the newest cars he has ever owned. It is modern in every sense of the word. And what does my dad like about it? He says to me the other day, "Ben, this car is so nice to drive. The heater is fantastic! It is warm as you want. They call it climate control or something."

God love the guy who is pleased that his brand new car has a decent heater.

And--note to self--what kind of heater do I now have?

Thank you
We've received a wonderful bunch of supportive and thoughtful messages from friends about the burglary and thefts. Thank you. It has been so nice to hear from friends. Many have offered that if they could do something, they would. While Canadian care packages make me warm inside, if you really want to do something please consider allocating some of your 2007 charitable giving to a charity in your area that tackles root causes of poverty. I suspect that where poverty is on the decline, so too is theft. If I'm wrong, reducing poverty is surely worthwhile in itself...

Ange finds the car

For real. Ange spotted our car parked about a mile away from our house on Saturday: only two days after the theft. She walked by, confirming it was ours and... walked home to phone the police (because they had stolen both the key AND her mobile phone).

It isn't quite as random as you might think. The police have a good profile on who they think committed the crimes on our street on Wedensday night. Apparently they stash the 'hot' cars on a number of streets and wait to see if they're noticed. If they sit without discovery for a 3-4 weeks, they pick them up and start using them. The theives kind of let the car 'cool off' before actually using them. It probably was in our favour that I left the car with barely fumes in it for petrol. With so many cars to look for, the police recommend walking down a few known streets because it is easier for the owner to recognise their car quickly.

So, car is found. Now forensics has our car to see if they can get some evidence on who stole it. This, of course, leaves us with our "new" car--dad's old Passat--until we get the Carolla back. It is very exciting as within the week we're very likely to hit 200,000 MILES (about 321,869 km). I will take a photo for the blog. Hopefully we get our Carolla back in the week. Fingers crossed!

Vignettes from a difficult week

This might be long. It has been a crazy few days. You could select a few days for a truly random read…

Saturday

A day full of promise. It was beautiful. The sun shining, the Henley team trucked into London to play against bottom-of-the-league Wimbledon. A win would put us at 7 wins in 8 and, most importantly, 5 of 6 league wins. It would launch clear of relegation and into mid-table. We didn't play our best, but we did enough to win 4-2. The win capped an incredible run as we were all but written off by everyone in January. It was a late game, starting at 3pm. That left a sprint back to Reading to meet up with the family and head down to Southampton to stay with Pete and Karen. Rach and Ellie were also by and we had a lovely evening while Anna slept soundly amongst a throng of duvet in another room.

Sunday
Rachel always needs a plan, so the night before we had decided as a group to make for Titchfield Abbey after a breakfast of bacon and egg bagels. Pete pulled together the breakfast while Anna ripped around the house and Ange and I drank coffee. Jenny and Corey were able to make it by. It is always a little weird to think my office-mate from United Way of Calgary and Area is living in Southampton. We caught up on months of daily routine and Jenny and Corey mulled over "what next" for them. Stay? Return home to Calgary? Strangely, they've managed a moderately plausible in-between: move to Ottawa. Their indecision is almost entertaining. I think Jenny likes to stress me out a little with it. They seemed happy and well-adjusted to life in the UK: Korey follows football, they want to holiday in France for their summer vacation, they text on their mobiles instead of phoning, and they're in a constant state of concern about the expense of everything! Happily, they're most likely here until the autumn, so we've plans to see them more over the summer.

Jenny and Korey were unable to join us at Titchfield Abbey, but the rest of us drove down in two cars. One car was coming back to watch England play France at rugby, the other going to the pub on the beach. It was only when we were about to leave that I realised that I had misplaced my wallet. Or had I? I had it when I left and I swore I had put it in the bag on the back of Anna's push-chair. My heart sank. I knew it was gone. We had walked away from the push-chair briefly to poke around. There were a number of people around when we came back. There were a few people who looked a stereotype that one might think would pinch something, but who knows? I took the bag apart once, twice, three times. I emptied the car. I re-emptied the car. I checked and re-checked and decided to look around at Pete's place. In the end, it was a blitz cancel of all the cards as I resigned myself to not seeing my wallet again. I was sadder about losing my wallet, which I had had since I was 16 than the 30 quid or my lost UofC alumni card. Those who knew me way-back: it is the same one that sported a ‘Rhymes with Orange’ sticker for many, many months.

The class required to steal from a baby buggy still irks me a little, but in the end, it was good to see friends in Southampton. And England won a very exciting game of rugby. As the many people cheered and clapped each England score, Anna cautiously clapped too (a vast improvement over her terror at the cheering for the Oilers in last year’s playoffs). Very cute.

Monday
I arrived at work to a phone call from Gary. Gary, who works in Cosham, near Titchfield, had found my wallet on the beach about 3 miles from Titchfield Abbey. No cash, but all the cards were in it. He kindly offered to post it to me, sending me a note along with which read, “I hope this has restored a little faith in the English. Welcome to England!” But that would not arrive until Thursday which, as it turns out, was a long way away.

Until then, Ange would have to take out money for me. I had a little leather business card holder with a bit of cash from Ange and… nothing else.

Tuesday
Survival without my wallet going well. With no need to purchase anything, I hardly noticed it being elsewhere apart from the odd full body pat (back pockets front pockets, left coat pocket, right coat pocket…) before realizing I wasn’t ‘meant’ to have it at that moment.

Wednesday
A largely uneventful day. I was on course to learn how to interview people. It was moderately interesting. Anna’s day got to end at nursery a little early as the course ended early. We hung out at home and went for a run about the garden to enjoy the sun. Everything is a bit of a jog right now. Walking firmly under the belt, she has started to lean forward slightly as she walks which throws the balance slightly and means it is full steam ahead all the time. Ange and I watched the movie The Station Agent, which was short, interesting and had a happy ending of sorts. We went to bed early-ish as I had a course in London the next day.

Thursday
We woke up and started our routines quickly. Little time to spare as snooze had been hit once or twice. As I emerged from the shower, Ange asked if I had been downstairs already. “No,” I replied inquisitively. The door was open. Our first thought was that the wind had blown it open because we hadn’t latched it firmly. The computer was there. The camera was still on the table, nothing was out of sorts. We started getting Anna’s porridge together (she loves porridge: especially with blueberries) and I grabbed my stuff to get to the train.

Ange went for her wallet to get me something… oh boy. Her attaché case wasn’t where she left it. Ange never forgets where she left something (a trait that truly does my head in)… I quickly scanned the place. The sat nav was gone. Mobile phones were gone. You could see Ange’s heart sink. I fired over to the computer to pull up the police number. Was her wallet in her bag? Yep. The phone calls started to banks in both Canada and Britain to cancel. I found the numbers quickly; almost effortlessly as if I had had practice at such things. I was so confident that it was all in hand that I thought we’d report it and get on with our day.

Then I asked if she had keys to get back in. No. They were in the attaché. I felt sick as I tore out the front door. Sure enough: the car was gone.

Suddenly the scale was big. The police were on their way as we started to realize how much had actually been taken (my work documents, good coat for work, hockey stick, cd’s, the map that Ange and I had taken around Europe with Fred the motorbike, and our London A-Z were in the car).

As we stood there looking at one another trying to take it in it became obvious I wasn’t going to London. Not the least of which was because now neither of us had a wallet.

Priority number one became to get my wallet from the post office. I walked over to the post office with my last remaining piece of ID (my passport) to collect it. Thankfully, my debit card came through the door that morning as well. I got some cash from the bank and returned home with a wallet full of canceled cards, a brand new debit card and some cash. Ange had to smile as I handed over the business card holder with the same money she had taken out for me on Sunday night.

So, we’re alright. A wee bit rattled, but nothing severe. Besides, there are now loads of things to blog about! For example, look forward to Organized Crime: Your Insurance Company or The Thames Valley Police Service: Legitimate Candidates for the Friendliest People in Britain or Dad Gives Ben a Car Not Unlike The Bike He Got for Ben in 1999 or Have a Look for You Own Car in Caversham (no reflection on how good the police really have been)…

The Answerphone

They call answering machines, "answer phones" here. Strictly speaking, we're all voicemail here. The Brits call it voicemail, I call it voicemail. Whatever it is called, the voicemail at Oxford Brookes is ridiculous. I know, you're wondering what my blogging obsession with phones is. Let's just say that the telecommunications industry keeps providing the fuel for this fire.

As part of your new staff welcome, they give you an 'induction pack' that includes everything you need to know to work here. It's a useful piece of kit. It is particularly useful when one goes to use their voicemail. I found it slightly odd that I had to dial the somewhat random number "3000" to get my voicemail. Then you have to enter your 4-digit pin. You then get a long welcome which you can't skip. You then get some choices. Press 1 to listen to your messages is entirely normal. After you have listened to your message (this is where I get the feeling that the system hasn't been updated since some telephone engineeer-type put it together in 1992) you have the option to "listen to your next message, press 3. Or, for more options, press star". Press 3? What happened to 1 and 2? Star for more options? Hmmm, that sounds intriguing. Since I'd now either like to save the message or delete the message, I'll go down mystery star selection...

So, what do you think happens next having pressed "*"? Well, you get the full slate of 9 choices. Forward, save and remove all fall under the same option: pressing "0". Okay, I'll press "0". Again, 6 options including forwarding the message, saving the message and returning to the previous menu. Thankfully, removing the message is also under this list. You press the very intuitive "hash" (#) key. Yes, every time you want to delete a message, you have to press three different keys. If you do it too quickly (becuase you've learnt the sequence) it will spit you right back to the begining: "to listen to you messages, press 1". It's a little thing, but it drives me nuts.

Then, to compound the problem, you have to listen to a message in its entirety. You can't select to delete or skip half way through a message. You're committed to the message. When you have someone rambling on the voicemail you can't skip. You know who it is, what they want and their phone number but there will be no skipping or premature deleting of the message. No, no. With this voicemail, you will sit and listen. All the time with your finger poised to go through the secret sequence of keys that will delete the message once it is finished (but not too quickly!).

This listen to the whole message system was a feature of a past voicemail system I encountered. I think Jason Hildebrand and I may have contributed to a revision and overhaul of the Industry Canada's (Federal Government) voicemail in the mid 1990s. Jason and I lived with Lisa Brake. She wasn't Lisa Brake at that time, but a young and impressionable Lisa Reifenstein. Somehow, Jason and I had ended up with a phone number for a Federal Government program to discourage smoking amongst youth. They appealed to the public to phone in catchy marketing slogans to a voicemail. Fools. Being a free call and the fact that Jason and I had just gotten back from a coffee that had somehow taken a wrong turn at the local bar, we started phoning this number and leaving ridiculous messages. The idea was not vulgarity or offense: merely to make whoever checked the messages laugh. For the better part of an hour we phoned this number with every ridiculous accent we could dream up. After about an hour, we started to bore and decided to phone Lisa's work phone number and leave the messages for her instead. This was much funnier for us. We could hardly dial the number, we were laughing so hard at ourselves. [The photo is of us flatmates: Lisa, me, Anu and Jason at one of the ridiculous parties we had... and standing in front the recently tinfoiled walls because it had better reflective qualities for the discoball.]

It eventually became so raucous that Lisa wandered into the room to see what we were up to. She must have suspected we were somehow doing damage to something. We explained that we were phoning the Govenment anti-smoking campaign number (but, of course, we had already switched to phoning her work number). She quickly saw the humour of leaving messages for some stranger to have to wade through. Fifteen minutes later, Lisa was in on the action. Leaving absurd messages is painful accents. The revelry continued for ages. Being a work day, however, we did evenutally go to bed.

The next day, I got the funniest email from Lisa. It amounted to, "you guys suck." Unable to skip through the messages, she was forced to listen to the whole evening before again--while at work, and including her own abuse of the messaging service. At lunch, poor Lisa had a sore neck from holding the phone to her ear while trying to work as hours of cackling messages crawled by, just waiting for each to finish so she could delete them.

Of course, I am not advocating such behaviour be applied to my work phone. And, just in case, I won't be giving out my work number to anyone who might read this! I merely want to point out that a decade on and Brookes is still using a similar voicemail.

Lisa Q Rocks

Today is a work from home day. I kind of love them, kind of hate them. The problem with them is that once I get going, the world around me ceases to exist. I actually find it very easy to focus and suddenly 3 hours of passed: I'm hungry, I need the loo, the teabag has been in the cup for hours and the milk is going sour on the counter.

Today, however, has been balanced. Spring is suddenly in full swing. The trees are flowering, the dafs are everywhere and the sun is shining. Just stepping out your door is a new lease on life. Everyone is now selling dafodils, which I don't entirely understand. They're as pervasive as dandilions in Calgary in mid July. They're quite literally drowing up in the gaps between paving stones in every garden. Well manicured lawns are awash with dafs, or the stubs of dafs that have been mowed. Why, then, would someone pay a quid for a bunch of them at the store? I guess because they're pretty. And yellow. If you particularly like yellow.

Also, today, Ange and I received our first care package from Canada. The postman knocked at the door, giving me a start and pulling me from my concentration. He handed me a shoe-box sized package in brown paper. Realising it was from Canada, I made a point of flipping it so I couldn't see the customs declaration. Lisa Q had sent us an entire box of homemade cookies. Oh my goodness. Lisa's cookies are like cocaine and I had about 3 dozen of them in my hands. Ange doesn't even know they've arrived. A deep breath. I'll only have 2. Five minutes later, I am savouring my third. Okay, new limit: four. That gives me one more. I gobble it down, hardly giving my mouth the opportunity to taste it. The box taunts me. It needs to be moved. I am so weak and the cookies are so good. The removal-from-sight process costs me another cookie. Five. And it is only 1:30pm. Thank you Lisa. You have made my day, possibly my week.

This weekend (on Sunday) we'll head to London to pick up Oma (my mum) from Emily's flat. Anna will get two days with Oma. I'm excited for both of them. Anna has changed so much since Oma saw her at Christmas. She knows a new animal sound. An owl says, "hoo hoo." It's a quiet, high pitched sound from the back of the throat and it is so cute.