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(Mum and Shona, this is mainly for you...)
It was an offer to good to refuse - so we didn't. My friend and colleague Paula, with her fella Adam, are off on a 7 month overseas odyssey of their own, and they needed someone to take care of their chickens and Adrian ze bad-cat (yeah mum, I know, me and cats...), and to help keep the mortgage ticking over while they are away. Mates got, well, mates rates. So for slightly less than it was costing us to share in Oxford, we now have our very own 2 bedroom, heritage listed, GORGEOUS cottage in Witney, about 7 miles from Oxford, complete with massive long skinny back garden (so very english!) and the aforementioned pets.
I'll be honest, Ants was more keen on moving to Witney than I. Witney is a pretty little market town (settled since pre-Roman times, and made affluent for the past 1000 years by the wool and fabric milling industries, as I've learned recently), but Witney today is very much the home of the great English suburban dream: materialism is God here and I've afraid there won't be much to do except shop (not my thing) and eat bad English food (even less my thing!). A lot of people I work with live in Witney (and I have already started bumping into them in my trakkies at the local Sainsbury's - supermarket) while nearly everyone I count as a friend is back in Oxford town.
We wouldn't do it at all if we didn't have a car: a trip to the Half Moon takes less than 20 minutes in Anthony's little red beastie, the Scirocco, but would take the best part of an hour if we had to catch the bus and then walk down to the pub at the other end.
But the house, as you'll see below, is lovely, I know there is at least a decent Thai place in town, and some of the pubs definitely have potential. Anthony is particularly excited about the fact that there's a longbow archery club nearby - and the back yard is big enough to swing a sword in, as long as the chickens are safely in their run when we do it...
So, all things considered, even I'm excited...
For the past couple of months I've been scooting down to London to catch up with some of the very talented lads and lasses I work with - not for their low-carbon talents, but for band practice! Last night, our hard work came together at our 'one night only' appearance at the Carbon Trust annual conference. Okay, so apart from the fact that NOBODY I work with has ever seen be in a little black dress and knee high boots, it was a hoot. No matter how comprehensive some of our rehearsal screwups had been, it really did all go right on the night. I even ended up with my first groupies - several of the guys and gals from my team rushed the front of the stage and started up a wee 'Go Georgi' cheer... mad.
Francis, Georgi, Kathryn, Kofi natterin' between numbers
Beltin' it out - a little bit o' Brown Sugar
Andy 'the Godfather' Togher twiddles with the fiddly bits on one of his seven guitars (and knocks out one helluva solo!)
By day, Professor Michael Grubb is CT's chief economist...
After the show...
Says it all really...
I felt like a proper rock star - right up until the moment where, at 7am and after not enough sleep, I had to drive back to work... ahhhh Cinderella, next time remember not to stay up quite so much past midnight...
Ms Special K Dalecki has been living in Poland since way before I left Melbourne. We've been emailing for ages saying 'we must catch up'... and finally, amid the chaos of getting ready to move house, we has swung it!
She jetted in to Stansted and braved the 3 hour bus trip from airport to Oxford (if only I had paid attention before booking my tickets to Denmark... sigh!), hitting town just as I lobbed in from work. Hurrah!
Crazy girl had brought us food from all the four corners of her adopted country: smoked cheese, polish sausage, mulled wine and sweety goodness... which we just had to taste before heading in to town to the Kaz Bar. Red wine, sherry, too much food, lashings of conversation.
I realised, not for the first time, what an unbelievable luxury it is to natter about the present with someone to whom you don't have to explain the past - they already know most of it. And to be with a fellow expat again, where we can both get all agog at the amazing stuff in our new home towns, and laugh at the crazy English, and those wacky Polish folk.
And I got to show of my turf again. We raided the covered market for good quality cheddar (from Cheddar gorge, no less!), and sainsbury's for random groceries requested by friends back in Warsaw. We scored a rare seat at in the snug at the Eagle and Child and scoffed down masses of foodie goodness. We wandered down the high street and along the Thames and back up to the centre of town, stopping at random pubs along the way. Sunday found us at the Falkland Arms, which my pal Dan so brilliantly introduced me to back in May, with Dan and his new lass Katie and a friend of theirs from Vienna.
We wondered later about the wisdom of putting an Austrian (their countryman started WWI) and a Pole at the same table (the Poles, lets face it, were well shafted during that one), but after a couple of 'don't mention the war' jokes, it all went swimmingly.
We hand't meant this weekend to co-incide with Mikko's birthday when we booked it, but it was nice to have someone else to raise a glass to him with this year.
Next: I really need to get myself to Warsaw!!
I feel like I've lived the last 4 days in something in between a fairytale and a movie. Our adventures started like a nightmare road trip: 5 adults and far too much kit squeezed into Si's tiny green car for the two hour drive to Gatwick airport. With stops and detours it took nearly 3, and the chap at the airport carpark said he'd never seen a car so laden down. Says it all really.
A combination of good luck and fast talking saw us check in our 30 kilos per head of luggage without any excess charges. Miraculously, we were allowed to take our helmets through security as hand luggage (altho you should have seen the look on the face of the guy running the X-ray machine!) - hmmm, so although I could headbutt you to death with my 3mm steel helm, it's okay cos there's no sharp edges - but tweezers get banned in case someone loses an eye! Given the all clear, we settled into a bar for a pint 'til our flight. By the time the plane had run two hours late, we felt like we'd already lived half the adventure, but the best was sooo totally yet to come.
It was nearly midnight by the time our plane landed at Vilnius, but our new best friends from the Brethren of Trakai Castle were waiting to collect us - in a military transport van. By 1am we had left the capital behind and were bouncing over dusty grass and spilling out into the parade ground of a ruined fort. We were far from the last to arrive - some of the club members had a gig that night at Kaunas, to the north, and arrived still buzzing from their show. Introductions were made, red wine poured and we hauled our bags up three flights of stairs in search of empty camp beds in the dorm beneath the rafters of one of the fortress towers. We drifted off to sleep surrounded by muttered goodnights in a fistful of unintelligible languages, feeling slightly tipsy and blissfully surreal.
The fairytale dawned properly the next morning, as we realised that our fortified tower stands beside a vast lake (that explains the mozzies then - ow!), with the 'main' castle standing on a distant island in the middle of it, like a red brick beacon. 
Desperate for coffee, we found ourselved gently commandeered by 14 year old Istus (who likes to be called 'Ice', especially by English speaking people), who was determined to show us the sights while practicing his English. A more gracious host we couldn't have asked for, and it was a pleasure to shout him breakfast after we'd been for a wander past fishing boats and bathing spots and up to the foot of the mighty castle itself. Exploration of that would have to wait 'til Sunday (but was worth it - you'll see!), because we'd just enough time to stock up on beers (at 60p per half litre, a bargain, like lots of things in this country) and check out the market and dancing displays before it was time for the boys to kit up - it was time to fight!
Okay, so the first thing you need to imagine about this weekend is that it's properly hot. As in 35 degrees. The guys are all wearing linen shirts, covered by padding, covered by chain mail and/or metal armour, and 3mm steel helmets. The sun beats down on the metal and gets it properly uncomfortable. I spent most of the afternoon topping up 5L water bottles - I reckon the 4 of them went through maybe 25 litres. Even our hosts (that's Karolys, below) were feeling the effects.
Nothing was gonna stop the crowds though, who climbed on top of walls, palisades and up trees to try to get a good view of the arena. Bouts were full contact, with headblows and all and 'round robin', with the winners from each group of 4-5 fighters competing the second day. Probably just as well then each fight only lasted 5 minutes.
I am so proud of my blokey - that's him with the yellow shield - Cundall colours and the family coat of arms. Not only was he up at 6am the morn before to finish hand stitching his tabard, but he commanded the crowd's attention from the moment his helm was fastened. Most of the crowd would not have understood his growled 'make way!', but they parted like a biblical ocean. Sadly, years of kite shield fighting have left Antsy with a bad habit - see below for the moment before his knee and tendons got smacked and damaged, forcing him to retire even though he was winning. The crowd hated him for it, but I'm just glad he's okay. And we're gonna fix that fighting stance!!
Once our fighting days were over (none of our lads progressed - but we've loads of ideas for being more competitive next year!), we could get on with the serious business of eating, drinking and watching the entertainment.
And what a show! From live fire arrows being shot into the palisade we were all standing on (and a few that went over the top and into tents behind, prompting much scurrying about with fire extinguishers) to a midnight fire and light show, followed by a game of 'let's make the crazy English drink 14 kinds of vodka' in the Polish camp. For the record, my favourite was the hazelnut.
This Italian drinking horn won prizes for sheer 'yerhavinalaff' size. Suddenly it was 3am and the sun was coming up, so we downed some water and went to bed to nurse our budding hangovers. What a night!
The advantage of having been knocked out on the first day of the tournament meant we could spend Sunday enjoying the spectacle - and what a day to be part of the crowd! At first light, the lads in military kit who'd been hovering at the entrance the day before came pouring out of their transits and started donning mail. We learned later that the 'official parade uniform' for ceremonial events IS 13th century kit! It was weird to watch boys in Khaki fit on another's coifs, but they made a gorgeous honour guard.
But who were they guarding? As it happens, this being the 10th Medieval Festival at Trakai, the final was to be watched by no less a man than the Lithuanian President. So after the bomb squad had been through to make sure we weren't carrying any nasty weapons (yeah, right), and the presidential PR crew had rebuilt the pavillion so the president could arrive and leave without ever turning his back on the crowd, the dignitaries rolled in.
To our surprise, we were sought after too. The UK Defence Attache to the Baltic states had, it seems, been part of the drive to find UK fighters for the tournament, and wanted to personally thank us for coming. He had an amazing perspective on this developing country, reminding us that the affluent, gorgeous young folk in the Brethren are all probably from wealthy families, and that 30% of homes still don't have power or running water. We thanked him for his time and watched the fighting - won by a Templar from Poland, I think, with a Russian runner up and our friend Karolys 4th - although the commentary wasn't ever in English, so I can't be sure.
Late in the day, hospitality (which had already included the boys' flights, our accommodation and meals and abundant charming conversation) wound up a notch. Our hosts took us for a guided tour of Trakai castle - which is stunning. I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves.
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As the camp around us began to pack up, we took ourselves off for a dip in the lake, to freshen up ahead of dinner that night, which featured lashings of leftovers from the President's luncheon, all authentic medieval dishes, plus bottles of leftover booze. As dusk fell (around 11pm) Anthony was invited to fire the hand cannon, we were eaten alive by the mosquitoes and eventually poured ourselves, exhausted, into bed.
By Monday morning we felt as if we'd been away for a fortnight, but our hosts had one more adventure for us - a trip to the Ducal castle in Vilnius, on our way to the airport.
Back in Oxford, surrounded by luggage and dirty linen, I still feel like a fairytale princess. ust like in the story books, I feel like I've been gone a month, not just a few days. And I know it's going to be hard to face the office tomorrow....
For those of you who have been wondering (yes, there is more than one of you who bother to read this blog, apparently!), no, Ants won't be going back to Warwick castle this summer. We could blame the rubbish remuneration, the long commute, or the 'working outside in a crap English summer' factor, but in fact, the biggest reason is that he has much better things to do this summer, and this year I get to play them too!This weekend, our antics with the Company of Chivalry are taking us to Lithuania. Yes, really.So let's start with a bit about the (none of which I knew a week before we left). Having read Lonely Planet and every other website I can find, I'm not sure whether to expect an amazing country of fairytale castles, lakes and forests, or a heavy dose of Soviet interference with 20 storey concrete bunkers posing as accommodation blocks at every turn.
In centuries gone by, it was the political powerhouse of the region. Its heyday (happily for us) was in the 13th-16th centuries, before one region and then another was gradually broken off and swallowed by poland and russia. Like many baltic countries, independence came, briefly, in 1918, but it only lasted as long as WWII. Lithuania was the first of the former Soviet countries to declare and achieve independence, in 1990 ad 1991 respectively.
The only other thing I know is that we're going to a place called Trakai, about 30kms from Vilnius, the capital, where four of our boys (includingAnts) will compete at some kinda very big deal tournament...
I'm so excited though, I could burst!!
So, all things considered, even I'm excited...
