England on my mind

Husband & I are planning a movie date , was going to be tonight, will probably be tomorrow now.  We are going to see "Young Victoria" the movie about the life of the young Victoria before she became Queen of England.  We spent a fortnight in England in December 2008 and another week there at the end of April this year.  We visited Kensington Palace which is where Victoria was living when she came to be Queen, we even saw the bed she was sleeping in when they came to wake her early on that morning.  My mother is English, she came to Australia as a "ten pound pom".  Sounds awful doesn't it, but that's what they were called.  All the English people who immigrated to Australia after WW2.  It cost them 10 pound and I believe they had to be sponsored by someone, though I can't swear to that. So when Adrian & I went to England this year I had high expectations.  I wanted to see where mum grew up though she went to 14 different schools, so it would take a bit of travelling round.  Her dad was a soldier and manned the guns that guarded the English Channel so they moved a lot.  Her mother refused to send her to the country like so many other families did with their children, so mum saw lots of the bombings and all the chaos that went with living close to London at that time.  We went to Corby the last town mum lived in before she came to Australia, a sad little town now, nothing like she remembers.  Took this picture of Rottingham Castle which is nearby, it was closed because of the time of year.  But I can almost imagine her roaming around here.  We spent our time at Milton Keynes which is near where our daughters were working at the time.  That was really the reason we went for Christmas, to check out our 19 year olds.  The sight seeing was a tack on.  Loved England with a passion.  What a country.  Cold, beautiful, windy, icy, ancient, brown, crisp, vibrant..we loved it so much we went back for another look in April.  I could still go back, hopefully will.

Milton Keynes car park at about 4pm in the dead of winter.