The Archers (Part II of our Trip Home)...

I have come to the conclusion that Ambridge actually exists, The Archers isn't just a radio play that some of us grew up listening to at breakfast on a Sunday morning. It's quite obviously based on the village where my mum lives, and where we spent the second half of our trip home.

Thankfully, second-home ownership hasn't eaten away at village life here. The community spirit is alive and kicking, and everyone gets involved in everything (and everyone knows everyone else, which can of course be both a blessing and a curse!) When we arrived, preparations were in place for Easter, and a hardcore crew of flower arrangers spent hours expertly decorating the church for Easter Sunday. Within a few hours, it rivalled Westminster Abbey for the big wedding (minus the indoor trees, but then it does have that pretty special one just outside which wins hands down in my opinion!). That evening we were just sitting down to eat when a frantic phonecall came through to say that one of the displays had toppled over! You would have thought that the actual church spire had toppled off such was the tone of urgency! The designers of said arrangement duly set off to rectify the situation. Upon their return, a new message was waiting for them. This time a long and lengthy request for a dozen eggs, to be left on the caller's doorstep on their return from holiday (on which they are not going for another three weeks)! Honestly, the drama of it all (in a rural parallel universe kind of way)was quite exhausting!

Add to this vision of rural life Small Boy's egg cartel, a little egg stall where he spent a very happy morning channelling his inner barrow-boy, yelling "sweet eggs for sale" to passing villagers! He sold the lot at lightening speed which was either because he was doing a supremely good job as vendor, or the neighbours just wanted to shut him up! The chickens then had to suffer an afternoon of mild disturbance as both S and his big sister checked them constantly to see if there were any even fresher eggs to sell!

A couple of days later as we left the village, our rental car radio was tuned to Radio 4, and I swear as we drove out of the village and headed back towards London, the first words we heard were "and it's goodbye to Ambridge" (although I am not sure they were talking about the Archers)! Yes perhaps, but just for now...!

(checking for another type of egg on Easter Sunday)...

Happy Easter...

Easter lunch (note the all important mint sauce!!!), Easter eggs, Easter tree - what more do you need?

A Proper Loppe & A Good Friday!

After the not so successful trip to hunt down Danish antiques the other day, and after finding a huge list of Antique Loppermarked's on the Internet, yesterday we went to the Easter Loppemarked held at Forum (a big concert venue in Copenhagen). It did not disappoint! It was packed to the brim with hundreds of stalls, with an incredible array of antiques and other knick-knacks, and no new junk in sight! I could have quite happily spent the whole day there, but it obviously wasn't the most exciting place for children. We probably had an hour and a half if we were lucky before the meltdown stage began, but I think the promise of a hot-dog for lunch if they were good definitely bought us some time! I made a couple of Scandinavian purchases, which will serve as a reminder of our time here, a Norwegian Egersund 1950's jug , and a Royal Copenhagen 60's/early 70's vase . I need some spring branches to go in that, it's quite a strange shape, but I think it's lovely all the same!...Speaking of twigs, the Easter "tree" has been expertly decorated and I will post some pics of that on Easter Sunday, just to be topical!

Today we went to the Frilandsmuseet, I have no idea why we haven't been here before,it's not too far from us and we all thought it was great! It's an outdoor museum that consists of original historic buildings (mostly houses) from all over Denmark, that they have moved and rebuilt, covering about 85 acres of land. It was quite busy today as it's obviously good Friday, so we missed out on a cart to pull the children about in. A little bit of moaning ensued about all the walking, understandably - it's a big place, but it was well worth enduring it! It was really educational and I think our two learned a lot about life in times gone by. They were really interested in the interiors, especially the tiny beds for children. My little girl concluded that she preferred life today, with electricity, warmth and running water. I think my little boy thought he preferred modern life, as we have chocolate! He couldn't understand why there weren't any chocolate eggs available in the historic Easter activities! Both of them thought they saw the Tomten at various stages, which was really sweet, it's a favourite story of theirs (by Astrid Lingren), I can see why, although it's Swedish, the buildings look the same as in the book! If you are not familiar with the Tomten here he is: - the books are lovely!



Next time we will make a day of it and take a picnic...

I missed my family today, it looks like I always do on holidays. Lots of love to you all xxx

One a Penny, Two a Penny.....

Hot Cross Buns... Ta dah....



My mother and grandmother will be very proud of me! They have always made their own hot cross buns, and I don't think I will ever beat their attempts, but we had fun making them even if they did take FOREVER to make. Good things come to those that wait however, and even if they were all strange and wonderful sizes (thanks to the modelling expertise of my two children), they went down a treat in this hot cross bun deprived house! I might also take my son's advice, if you haven't any daughters that might want hot cross buns, he suggests that you give them to yourself - sounds good to me! Next time, I might also use my mum's tip and put a marzipan cross on top as that would be easier than piping the cross, and it would be sweeter too. We still have some Cadbury's creme eggs left over from my trip to the UK, it feels like Easter in our house!

I had a really lovely dream last night! Years ago, I would dream about travelling through exotic countries and the like, my dream last night was about... Waitrose - how sad is that? In it, I was wandering up and down its huge, lovely, wide and empty (ok, it was a dream!) aisles, looking at the vast selection of produce, and all the things I miss, then I woke up with the horrible thought that I would have to attempt to do a big shop today before all the shops close tomorrow for Easter! It was as hideous as I expected, it was like the big Christmas food shop all over again! I really don't like the supermarkets here, don't get me wrong, I think the quality of the food here is mostly good, and it's really refreshing to get quite a bit of local produce and good fruit and veg available seasonally, but if they could just change the layout a bit, and put in some bigger aisles, so you don't have to wait for half an hour while someone picks out which rugbrød they are having? It would make the whole experience a lot more pleasant, honestly!

Dear me, is that really my first moan? Well my close friends and family will be surprised - it's only taken me six and a bit months!

Waking Up...

Today was so gorgeous, it really really felt like spring for the first time this year! It was so warm that we didn't even need jumpers outside, and much to my son's joy, the sandpit was given it's first airing of the year (we couldn't open the lid before with about a foot of snow on it!)! He spotted an early mumblebee(!) and quite a few butterflies who are beginning to wake up and make an appearance after the long winter. It's now quite hard to believe we endured so many weeks of snow! Note our dead looking grass on the pictures, luckily the whole lawn doesn't look like this and hopefully it won't take long for this to recover! The departed snow has also revealed all sorts of things we had forgotton about, hula hoops, balls and strangely lots of firework cases from New Years Eve, not ours though, that night was far too cold to be stood outside letting off fireworks, instead we enjoyed the lavish displays of our neighbours! It seems that the Danes believe that no-one is more important than anyone else, except when it comes to fireworks, then it's time to try and out-do each other! It made Divali and Guy Fawkes night displays in South London look quite tame!

On a separate note, I had a nice suprise waiting for me when I got in this afternoon, as my lovely Danish friend and neighbour had left me some tea from Perch's as a little gift, a Kenyan black tea and Pouchin tea, which I first had at her house. It's a really lovely perfumed tea the scent of which reminds me of my grandparents house for some reason. It was really kind of her, tea for an English girl - the perfect gift! I am planning on taking my Mother-in-law to Perch's when she visits later in the summer, a trip to La Glace will also be in order I think! In fact I might take every visitor we have there, then there may be a chance that I can try a slice of every single cake that they do before our time is up here!

It's the first day of the Easter holiday for my daughter tomorrow, two weeks of weather like today's would be incredible, but I am not holding my breath! Looking forward to two weeks of late starts though, no early morning panics to get out of the house on time and no lunchboxes to make...and relax... as much as you can with two small children!