more guest blogging - a tale of two houses and sore tootsies

A quick shout out to BK- thought of you when I saw the bus to Tooting Bec. And now to today's subject. The day began at the end of last night when we walked in the door at 12 :10 p.m. (Can you believe this,children that we stayed up past midnight).After a brief stint of sleep (the sun came up at 4) we gathered our stuff and ate some pain du chocolat, then we walked to the train station in Wandsworth, boarded for the quick trip to Clapham Junction. We then crossed over to the train that took us to Victoria Station. Once there, we set out to find the coach (bus) that would take us to Cambridge. The coach departed at 8:30 and we saw several interesting individuals, none of which gave permission to describe them on this site. Hopefully one of the more interesting individuals is not a professor at Cambridge. Two hours later, and a viewing of the movie London Suite on the personal Dvd player (thanks to R&M for providing the movie) and substantial worry about the sick wife next to me, we arrived at Cambridge. M & B & I chased K down the streets of Cambridge and she was on a mission to see the big church downtown, so much so that she passed the nearby baptist church and went to the church of the martyrs. we forced her to detour into Downing College for a walk around the grounds. After seeing the grounds, the church, etc. we boarded the train to Brandon. And now K picks up the emotional tale of the primary purpose of our journey to find her childhood homes. Cherrio! The train arrived and we took the long way to downtown Brandon with the intent to find 19 Hillside and 32 Crown St., homes where I lived as a wee child and of course searching for Brandon Infant School where my most vivid memory is falling down. (ask me about the scar) First stop was to send child #1 into a real estate office to ask for a map and directions. When he returned, my feet began to protest but not enough, so we set out and within minutes I was able to relive the trauma of Brandon Infant School and the devilish hill (that probably has a grade of 1 degree per thousand or so RJ estimated). We then decided to get some sustenance for our bodies prior to beginning the long journey to the two houses. A quick bite of the requisite Fish & Chips and confirmation that we had indeed been to the site of the fall at school - we set out on the long journey to the childhood homes. I tell you that the houses looked in really good shape for being over forty years old as a minimum (R says I look at least as good as the houses for my age as well). Oh, before we got to the hoouses, we detoured through a really neat looking cemetery with an old church on the grounds. The walk to the houses took over an hour and then of course we had to walk that total distance back so we took an alternate path along the river to the train station. We got on the train and went back to Cambridge where we ate some biscuits (cookies to non-brits) and drank hot chocolate and frescotas (M&B summer fruit, R Mocha). Then we took the coach back to London where after a trip to the grocery we dined on a concoction by chef M - Cajun chicken pasta. Tomorrow we are off to, well, I guess I'll keep that a secret so that you will tune in Friday night for a review of Thursday and Friday.