Live from Connecticut

It's day 3 on our whirlwind tour of the North East, and so far we've managed to discuss money, religion and politics.

We flew into JFK on Saturday evening. As it was Susie's birthday (and I was therefore feeling generous), I queued with Susie in the you-aren't-an-American-so-let's-just-see-how-long-we-can-make-you-stand-there-before-you-try-to-contact-your-bloody-consulate queue. We arrived at 4:30, we cleared immigration at about 6:00 or 6:30.

Uncle Craig had graciously come to the airport to meet us. For anyone who doesn't know, Uncle Craig is an engineer on the Long Island Rail Road. So on the train journey into the City, he took us up to the control room and sat us down with the engineer, where we sat until the New York skyline filled the whole horizon. It was breathtaking.

Uncle Craig took us back to meet up with Aunt Gail at their place in Up Town (if that's how you write it? Anne? Rebecca?), and we had margaritas and snacks and chatted until dinner time. We went to a beautiful El Salvadorian place just up the street from their flat. It was my third visit, and the food and drink were exceptional. We stayed up late talking and listening to music. Uncle Craig played music and we did tequila shots (not a good idea, as it happens).

The next morning, groggy from the shots (and a 4 am wake up call from my bank), we ate fresh bagels and lax from a local deli and then drove up to Connecticut. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Uncle Craig's driving was not scary. Except when someone challenged him by suggesting it was not scary, and he deliberately scared us.

We went to Mom's, where Mom, Papasan and Grandmom were waiting with lunch (a beautiful beef stew/soup for the meat-eaters). We spent the whole afternoon, the whole evening and the whole night talking about family history, looking at photos (whenever we finished a box, another one would be brought down from upstairs), and generally testing Susie's limits to see at what point she would crack. Susie's extraordinary stamina shamed me (at Christmas, without the excuse of a 4 am wake-up call or even jetlag, I had fallen asleep in a chair in Susie's parents' sitting room within an hour of arriving to meet Susie's uncle and grandmother).

So today is day 3 and Susie was up at 4. We're seeing Wethersfield today, and just spending some time with Mom and Papasan. Tomorrow we're taking the train to Baltimore to see Jennie and co!

On a completely different note, can anyone identify what my breakfast on 14 February was (pictured below)?

First glimpse of life in Hackney Wick

So, living in Hackney began last week. I will reveal more about the area in good time, once you've all come to see it first hand. For today I'm just posting because we've had SNOW! The first picture is the garden, viewed from the first floor.

London is so ill-equipped for snow that when I woke up this morning I was astonished to find that a mere 4 inches had resulted in ALL bus services across the entire city (population 8 million) being withdrawn. All of them. And about half of the tube lines were down. Most trains weren't running. And as the snow was up to about 5 inches by the time I was ready to go to work, I wasn't realistically about to do a 5 1/2 mile commute on foot wearing shallow shoes. I did give it a go, however, and made it about 100 yards before I was walking with packed snow in the bottom of my shoes.

It's been snowing all day, and these are the views from the window as I work from home.