JANUARY- CHRISTMAS (a bit late ),NEW YEAR, ARMOUR & SNOW !

On 30 December we returned from Morocco (the blog for that is nearly ready!) to find that Santa had in fact been to East Finchley while we were away!!!  The kids had to wait a bit as Christmas cannot officially start for our family until the traditional reading of Clement C Moore's 'Twas the night before Christmas'. So,the kids trouped upstairs, climbed into Aisha's big bed and listened while Mark read from the very book that his mum read to him and his sister Alison when they were little. After the kids had 'gone to sleep' they 'woke up' to find that there were presents under the tree they could now open.

socks......

Not socks.

Ducks....

A paperweight....

Unusually,  Santa seemed to have mixed up a few presents.

Pink !!!!?

We were back in time to join our friends Tiff & Chris for what has become a traditional New Year's eve get together going out for dinner then watching the fireworks from Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath (leaving all the kids together with a wonderful baby sitter who spoils them rotten!). Unfortunately the 'Marrakech express' bug that took both the kids down on the last day of that trip chose to lurk in Mark for a day or two before slowly rearing up on him mid-way through dinner. He held everything together until getting home but was not at his best that evening, nor for several days after.

A few days later we again caught up with Tiff and Chris and their children again for another of our London traditions; a trip to the pantomime (panto) performance at the Hackney Empire. Hackney is not a well to do area but the theatre is impressive. Mark's Auntie Mary recommended it to us when we first arrived as being renowned for having the best pantos in London. The pantos have been great and sadly this was our last. 

In winter, numerous outdoor skating rinks go up around London. This year we took the kids to the rink outside The Tower of London. Kids skated, parents watched. 

The Tower by night.

The last time Sally skated was in Canberra in the mid naughties. Back then she successfully made it around the rink for an hour with a 7 year old birthday girl Aisha and 5 yr old William in tow. On her last circuit someone cut in front of her and she fell, breaking her arm. No skating since then for Sally.

A week after the tower skating Mark, William and Sally returned for what would be William's third, Mark's fourth or fifth and Sally's first ever visit to the tower. William confidently scouted on ahead, finding the best exhibits in the armoury.

Klein and Gross.

One of Henry VIII's.

In the upper Chamber of the Beauchamp Tower, with views directly down to the Tower Green courtyard execution site, there are scores of examples of graffiti left by many of the condemned prisoners. The graffiti to the left, 'Jane', refers to Lady Jane Grey, famously known as the '9 days Queen' and is thought to have been made by Jane's husband, Lord Dudley, who was imprisoned at the Tower.

The great-granddaughter of Henry VIII through his younger daughter Mary, Jane was the cousin once removed of Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. With the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the 9 year old Edward was crowned King. Six years later, as he lay dying, possibly of TB, and in a bid to keep his catholic half sister Mary off the throne, he nominated Jane as his successor. Mary, however, proclaimed herself the rightful Queen. The Duke of Northumberland, who was the father of Jane's husband, led 3,000 men to try and arrest Mary but was met by her and a force of 20,000 soldiers at Framlingham castle in Suffolk ( which we visited in November last year ).

Framlingham.

Defeating Northumberland and gaining increasing popular support, Mary marched to London. The Privy Council that had backed Northumberland and Jane as Queen, now realised its mistake and decided to back Mary as the rightful successor to the throne. As a result Jane, her husband, father and two brothers were subsequently all charged with high treason and executed a year later.

On the morning of 12 February 1554, Guildford Dudley was taken from his rooms at the Tower of London to the public execution site at Tower Hill, where he was beheaded. His remains were brought back into the Tower by a horse and cart, past the rooms where Jane was held. On seeing her husband's corpse, Jane is reported to have exclaimed: "Oh, Guildford, Guildford". Soon after she was then taken out to Tower Green to be beheaded. The privacy of Tower Green was accorded to nobility sparing them the circus like atmosphere of a public execution. 

It is reported that the 16 year old Jane made a speech as she stood on the scaffold then recited Psalm 51 in English (Have mercy upon me, O God), and handed her gloves and handkerchief to her maid. The executioner asked her forgiveness, which she granted him, pleading: "I pray you dispatch me quickly." and then asked him, "Will you take it (her head) off before I lay me down?", to which the axeman answered: "No, madam." She blindfolded herself but then failed to find the block with her hands, and cried, "What shall I do? Where is it?" Probably the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, helped her find her way. With her head on the block, Jane's last words were "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!"  Her father, Duke of Suffolk, was executed a week later. 

This arresting 1833 painting below, by the French painter Paul Delaroche, which we have seen several times, hangs in the National gallery in London.

Just before kicking out time we got talking to a friendly Beefeater  who kindly posed for what must be one of thousands of photographs taken of him each month.  He told us all about the ravens that live at the Tower and were being put to bed by the Raven Keeper (now there's a different kind of job title!)

Aisha didn't join us on that visit as she was completing her Baden Powell adventure challenge by participating in an across London monopoly board inspired challenge. She was in a team and, despite being a 'foreigner' and the youngest in the group, was able to use her considerable tube knowledge to guide her fellow guides all across London, and lead her team to victory!

 Aisha returned from her guide 'camp', held in the ICANDO guide centre across the road from Buckingham Place, in time to have Christmas lunch at home with the family and Auntie Mary. Before leaving for Morocco we knew that we would not really have any Christmas Day celebration and decided to hold Christmas after we returned to London. Before you contact child services, please note that on Christmas Day in Fez the kids did get to open a present each!

We kept all our decorations up way past the mandatory take down date and the kids decided to keep some of the presents from Santa unopened so Mary could share in this. She, of course, brought a whole new supply of gifts and we did it all again, for the 3rd time. Mark did a roast beef while William made excellent Yorkshire puds as well as a home made custard from scratch (no powder for our Bill !!!)

The broad street pump is a curious bit of London history that we visited in January.  

It would be remiss not to give you a bit of a history lesson. Again.

By the 1850s central London, and Soho in particular, had become a less than healthy mixture of cow-sheds, animal droppings, slaughterhouses, grease-boiling dens and primitive, decaying sewers. Many houses had cesspools of 'night soil' underneath the floorboards of their basements. The cesspools were often as old as the houses and usually had never been drained. Many families paid to have their raw sewage taken away by night soil men to be emptied directly into the Thames. The pools were filling and, particularly after heavy rain, overflowed into the streets and eventually down to the Thames. As well as contaminating the Thames, itself a source of drinking water at the time, the cesspools contaminated the various public wells dotted around the city.

On 31 August 1854, after several other outbreaks had occurred elsewhere in the city, a major outbreak of cholera hit Soho. Over the next three days, 127 people on or near Broad Street died. In the next week, three quarters of the residents had fled the area. By 10 September, 500 people had died. By the end of the outbreak, 616 people had died.

John Snow, a physician who lived near Broad street, did not believe the prevailing 'miasma' theory, bad air, for the causes of disease. He drew up a map of the homes of the dead and saw that there was a concentration around the Broad street pump. He then established that many of the dead who did not live near the pump had likely access to it, including children who went to school nearby and most likely would have drunk from the well on the way to school. 

Snow also realised that certain groups who did not have access to the pump - notably a nearby monastery where the monks drank beer they brewed and not water, escaped the epidemic. He lobbied local authorities and, despite being widely disbelieved, had the handle from the pump removed. With this the outbreak slowed then stopped. It was later discovered that the well the pump drew from had been dug only 1 metre from an old cesspit.

The whole Soho outbreak seems to have started when a family at 40 Broad street had a baby who had caught cholera elsewhere in the city. It was the run off from washing the nappies of this baby that flowed into the cesspit that was next to the Broad street pump that started the outbreak in Soho.

Despite the work of John Snow and others all this did not begin to change until the 'Great Stink' of the unusually hot summer of 1858 (indeed the handle of the pump was put back once the outbreak was cleared !). The stench from effluent thick Thames was so great that plans were drawn up to move Parliament upstream to Hampton Court while the Law Courts looked at relocating out of London to Oxford or St Albans. Plan for a new sewer system, drawn up years earlier, were acted upon and slowly the London sewer system was overhauled and put underground. 

One last bit of information for you to reflect upon, especially if you have seen the Les Miserables movie. Once the sewers were built and 'commissioned' new jobs sprang up including that of 'Tosher'. Also sometimes called grubbers, these people scavenged through the sewers looking for anything of value. Often whole families worked as toshers. While it might not be a job to aspire to, they helped to ease the flow in the sewer systems. They also gained some immunity to sewage-related diseases that killed many. 

On Jan 18th, as Sydney had its hottest day ever recorded at around 47 degrees, London and the UK in general began to be blanketed in white. William had been off school sick for the whole week and, when vertical, was able to watch as the garden slowly disappeared.

Will watches with Jose.

His illness coincided with visits from friends and a former Jakarta boss of Sally's. Jose stayed with us for a week while on leave from work in New Delhi. We were also visited by Joanna and Geoff who were en-route for Jo to begin her role as High Commissioner at the Australian HC in Ghana. Jo & Geoff left just before the snow while Jose was able to leave despite it. 

Looking across the road to the neighbours.

Fox tracks.

It was a bit bizarre that while so many gumtrees in Australia were literally exploding in flames, our Tasmanian eucalyptus was being delicately dusted with snow.

Our front garden was still guarded by 'Bruce'.

Fortunately none of our respective families were directly affected by the fires, especially Sally's family in Tasmania.

After a whole week off school Will was able to struggle out to play in the snow at our local Cherry tree woods. He made a new friend while there. Sadly, when he went back a few days later the friend was no where to be found. We think he was seen walking in the air.......(we went to see the Snowman at the theatre only the week before).

The walk into the park.

One of Will's Christmas presents was a baking book by Paul Hollywood. It was put to good use just a few days after our return form Morocco.

All in all a busy but fun start to 2013!