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Old Normal, New Normal, the Mitcheldean Garden 2022 |
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This is the 2022 index of the pages describing our very dull life in the UK since arriving in 2011. Having negotiated the maze of regulations designed to frustrate those wanting to bring a non-EU spouse into the UK, Yuehong has been the proud owner of a UK passport since late 2014 which means we can have a near perfect balance of the best 8 months of the year in the UK and the best 4 months of the year in Penang. Well that was both theory and practice until the Chinese gifted the Big C to the world and who knows how long we shall wait to be able to return to Penang? We now hire a car in Penang, while in the UK public transport and weekend car hires having just sufficed for 7 years, we have now put our own 4 wheels on the driveway which allows us more flexibility to explore our surrounding countryside and better enjoy our visits to steam fairs, only in 2020 there were none in and in 2021 very few.... Click here for the main 'Life in the UK' index page. For most people in the UK the prospect of taking on a property built up 33 steps on a 30 degree slope would be a nightmare. For us, it's proved both a challenge and a delight. This is our twelfth summer (2022) and it's again likely to be completely different from those that went before. I would like to think that the garden achieved a degree of maturity in 2017, acknowledged by our being invited to be part of the Open Gardens weekend in June. 2018 saw me celebrating a big birthday and while 2019 saw the addition of the wall, my own physical efforts were all about 'maintenance' which I think we have now organised as being appropriate to our mature ages. I guess in 2020 we were happy to be alive and solving all sorts of new 'supply' problems which mercifully were not repeated in 2021 and now in 2022 we can go as we please but prices are all 10% higher and likely to go higher still. In April, I finally grasped the nettle that was my life expired camera and bought myself a Canon EOS 4000D DSLR. The results have exceeded all expectations, the pictures are sharper, there is more detail and the colours are almost perfectly 'true to life'. It's easy to tell which pictures are taken by the old camera (4 x 3 aspect) and by the new one (3 x 2 aspect).
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