31 January 2010

Best Afternoon Tea in London


The Quintessentially English Tradition of Tea and Cakes

By , About.com Guide

I am a regular follower of Laura Porter's London Travel Blog:  http://golondon.about.com/b/ 

It is filled with great ideas of things to see and do. It is my first stop when I start to plan a new excursion around London. She has put together a 'hot list' of places to take tea. My plan is to go to all of them during our stay in London.  Read on for more information on where to take tea....http://golondon.about.com/od/afternoontea/tp/AfternoonTeaLondon.htm


Information provided by About.com: London Travel
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Posted by on Sunday, January 31, 2010 1 thoughtful comments

Surrey's best winter pub lunches - from Great British Life

Read the following link for a list of great winter pub lunches that can be had around Surrey...


The winner of the 2009 Favourite Winter Pub 
for a Cosy Lunch in Surrey: Talbot Inn in Ripley



7th December 2009 
"Congratulations to the Talbot Inn in Ripley, which, in the final week of voting, pulled into a clear lead as we asked you to vote for your favourite winter pub for a cosy lunch in Surrey. 
Surrey Life online users voted in their thousands and honourable mentions also go to Ockley's King's Arms and Buckland's Jolly Farmers, which came in second and third respectively."

Information from Surrey Life Magazine at Great British Life
Posted by on Sunday, January 31, 2010 0 thoughtful comments

28 January 2010

BBC Drama: Cranford

Watching the BBC production 'Cranford' and absolutely loving it.
What a wonderful group of ladies...
they make me laugh.. they make me cry.
A charming story!




Read here for more info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ps1xh

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Posted by on Thursday, January 28, 2010 2 thoughtful comments

The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British

I have this book sitting at my bedside table and am looking forward to reading it. Written by Sarah Lyall it looks like a fun read. 


The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
The Anglo Files
New York Times Bestseller

Dispatches from the new Britain: a slyly funny and compulsively readable portrait of a nation finally refurbished for the twenty-first century.
Sarah Lyall, a young reporter for the New York Times, move to London in the mid-1990s and soon became known for her amusing and incisive dispatches from her adopted country. As she came to terms with its eccentric inhabitants (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers, the people who extracted their own teeth), she found that she had a ringside seat at a singular transitional era in British life. The roller-coaster decade of Tony Blair’s New Labour government was an increasingly materialistic time when old-world symbols of aristocratic privelege and stiff-upper-lip sensibility collided with modern consumerism, overwrought emotion, and a new (but still unsuccessful) effort to make the trains run on time. Appearing a half-century after Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige, Lyall’s book is a brilliantly witty account of twenty-first-century Britain that will be recognized as a contemporary classic.

Posted by on Thursday, January 28, 2010 0 thoughtful comments

Traffic Solutions

I have only been in the UK for six weeks and let me tell you the one thing that quickly hit me in the face was the amount of traffic. Spending four years driving around Auckland was a cake walk by comparison. Not to fear as I have found the solution to my travel woes....Audio CD's. My son and I pop into the car each morning with a smile on our face knowing that we get to travel into a different world as we sit in the traffic weary grey skies of Surrey on these cold winter mornings.
Each morning we start the day with Jeremy Irons as he relays the J.R.R. Tolkien story, The Hobbit. It is brilliant... he is a master storyteller!

Once my son is out the door and on his merry way to class, I pop in my audio CD and what a delight it is! Presented by two remarkable english women. The book was written by Elizabeth Jane Howard and received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. It is read by actress, Juliet Stevenson who has a gift for telling a tale.
Audiobook Reviews  

THE BEAUTIFUL VISIT 



'A young woman, the daughter of unremarkable parents, passes through an ordinary childhood with little emotional awareness until age 16 when she's invited by distant acquaintances to a house party, which becomes the beautiful visit and the measuring stick of her past and present. Such a novel deserves a narrator of the highest abilities, and Juliet Stevenson is just that. She captures her audience with determined awareness and delicate timing. She steers each character to its proper niche and manipulates the author's words with an intelligence one can hear.' J.P. 
Can mornings get any better than listening to Jeremy Irons and Juliet Stevenson? I think not. My driving worries are over!


Top image via Google

Bottom image via my scanner
Copy from Audio File Magazine


Posted by on Thursday, January 28, 2010 0 thoughtful comments

27 January 2010

Learning about The Great British Life



This is a must for anyone new to the UK. You can learn all about Great British Life by following this link www.greatbritishlife.co.uk It is a great place to get started. The website is filled with information covering a range of topics:
Food and Drink
Arts
Property
People and Places
Style
Out and About
Family Travel
Magazines
Business
Directory
Community
Recipes
Restaurant Reviews
Food and Drink Features
Farmers Markets
Reader's Photos
Shop
and more!

 Celebrating all that is Great about British Life!
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Posted by on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 0 thoughtful comments

26 January 2010

Wonderful Weekends in England


I was inspired to create this blog after reading this book by Elspeth Thompson.
It is filled with great information and has been of enormous value to me as I transition into England.  When names are unfamiliar and you can no longer find your favourite brands you have to start looking elsewhere. This is a great start for some of the essentials.
UK-based companies making high-quality skin and beauty products:
Tree Harvest
I am always on the lookout for good bath towels and linens
and plan to check these out:
This is a good way to start the day. Your skin will feel refreshed and you will be wrapped in beautiful towels. More to come later....
To learn more about the book go to http://elspeththompson.wordpress.com/

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Posted by on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 0 thoughtful comments
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