North Turramurra to North London…
Photos of our London home can be found here... http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobbin/
Our home in Turramurra… is large and comfortable on a large block of land with not only garaging for 3 cars but room for a Double Decker Bus as well, then there’s the pool and the tennis court… family and friends have been heard to describe it as the ‘Bobbin Head Resort! It’s close to Ku-ring-gai National Park in one of the most Conservative suburbs of Sydney; we have a wonderful Village Shopping centre only a walk away with the City of Sydney a 30 min drive to the South. Three of our four children, their partners and our grandson live close by with my parents, brothers and their families only one-hour north.
A lot of people exclaimed in horror when they heard that we were going to live in Britain during the winter months but they had to agree with us that if anyone visited Britain solely for the weather they were bonkers… in fact the weather has been absolutely wonderful so far - with mostly dry sunny mild to hot days, crisp nights some cloud and some rain as well.
We’ve come back to live in Britain to meet our beautiful Granddaughter and to spend time with her and her parents as well as catching up with long time friends.
Several times we’ve thought ourselves mad for renting a tiny Terrace House in tightly packed North London and thought longingly of a cottage in Surrey or Sussex similar to where we’ve lived before… but NO… we are here primarily to be near Tomos, Emma and Abigail Rose.
In 1968 we were married in Guildford, Surrey our first home being a charming converted stables called Henfield Cottage in the grounds of Henfield House. The Cottage was small, comfortable with wonderful views of the Sussex Downs and we wondered why the only heater was attached to the inside of the built-in-wardrobe… in winter most walls ran with moisture so that’s why! In 1977, the second time we lived in England we bought a largish 3 bedroom Semi-detached house in Guildford, which we enjoyed renovating.
Our Home in Wood Green… is in an Estate called ‘Noel Park’ the homes were built in the 1880’s & 90’s for Artisans and Workers working on Alexandra Palace, it’s a sort after area in Wood Green consisting of Terrace houses smaller than ours as well as some much larger with everything in between. Noel Park is a bell shape bordered by the busy Shopping area on the High Street, then Westbury Avenue and Lordship Lane… don’t you just love that one… Lordship Lane! Lordship Lane! Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? There are signs everywhere of the Blitz, not rubble and so on but gaps where newer but similar homes have been built.
David just paced it out… in the little part of Moselle Avenue where we live there are 16 homes just on our side of the street which is 60 metres long. That means we could put 8 similar homes along the front of '333'
Every Road and Avenue in Noel Park has many road bumps and stop signs… I counted 11 Bumps and 9 Stops from Tom’s home to ours and we are barely one kilometre away. The Area is very quiet as you may expect with so many bumps and is a much favoured area for Learner Drivers… of course the streets are lined both sides with parked cars but like Tom’s they don’t go out much, it’s easier to walk or take public transport. I say very quiet… which a tiny lie, because you do hear Police or Ambulance Sirens on the major roads, as well as car alarms but basically it’s very peaceful. Wood Green isn’t an area most people would aspire to live in but I think it is a hidden gem and Tom and Emma had a lucky find especially seeing they back onto a nice little park. They will sell up eventually and either move out further to a larger home and garden or stay in this close to the City, whatever they do they do need a home with a little more room.
Living in a 3.5m wide two up and two down house in a very racially mixed North London is quite a change. There are two small bedrooms upstairs, the larger one has two single beds up tight together… on David’s side of the bed is a chair for his bedside table and with the help of some cardboard, he’s managed to attach a reading lamp borrowed from Tom and Emma… I have the box the microwave came in covered with two blue and white British Quilt Guild tea towels, there is only space left to walk around the bed I can’t imagine trying to fit in any other furniture. The smaller bedroom is our dressing room; we have a borrowed mirror, borrowed shelves for our smalls, our suitcases and a low ironing board with iron plus a hanging rack for our shirts etc.
Downstairs we have two small living rooms that have been opened up with glass doors but no latches, in the first room we have our TV sitting on the coffee table given to us by ‘Kenny’, plus one two seater couch and one arm chair bought from second hand shops… I washed the covers and wiped down all the other surfaces using a damp cloth and lavender oil, which not only smells good, it improves the look as well. The box the TV came in I covered with a bed cover lent to me by Emma and it now makes the prefect table to keep my hand sewing plus a snack or two! The second living room holds the Fridge and the scary, scary stairs which David thinks have been put in back to front… coming down stairs to the Loo in the middle of the night is a picture I won’t spoil your image of us with… suffice to say the thought of a chamber pot doesn’t sound too bad some nights!
The old kitchen and bathroom have been totally gutted and rebuilt with a dining room off them, this has been made by enclosing what was once open space and turning it into a light bright room with a glass Green House type roof, it’s brilliant for light, air and receiving the sun and it’s a pleasure to eat our meals, read and write up Blogs. French Doors open out to a small terrace and garden but there’s not much privacy… you’d have to be brave to go in for nude sun baking! I guess our little house would sell for about £200,000.00 ($A473,960.00) just to give you an idea of the area.
The owner of our London home is M. Sadik who’s off sider is the infamous ‘Kenny’ they remind me of an Australian Comedy team called ‘Dodgy Brothers Incorporated’ The house is newly renovated and mostly done really well and tastefully but I think they must have lost interest with the finishing touches so here’s the list of things that amuse us…
Doors and Windows.
All are brand new and double-glazed which makes for a very cosy feeling… Kenny lost the keys just days before we moved in so had to get new locks, he didn’t take off the whole handles then the locks he cut though the handle plate very roughly which makes opening and locking the doors a hazard for ones fingers plus the whole thing almost falls apart in your hands if you aren’t careful… but they work!! I managed to get myself locked out the other day, thankfully Nancy, our left side neighbour is young and keen and climbed over the fence to the open back door for me! The Windows are all smeared with little bits of cement and tar from who ever was working outside… I’ve cleaned all the downstairs windows but aren’t game to try the upstairs ones.
Blinds.
There are four rooms that have Wooden Venetian Blinds on the windows… only one room has blinds that actually fit the windows and that’s our bedroom. The dressing room blind is too narrow, the living room has two blinds on one window, they are not long enough and the two together are too wide. The dining room French doors have a blind each but they also aren’t long enough by at least 50cm! I think they must all be the same size blinds but no one checked if the doors and windows all measured the same.
Cement and Tar.
In every room on every floor and on every surface there are little bits of cement, tar and in some cases bubbling oceans of insulation foam that’s been pushed into the sashes around the windows.
The Bathroom.
Has no cabinet, no mirror and no power outlet for even a shaver. It is tiled up to the edges but if there was a gap they just filled it with filler not tiles, the pipes and toilet outlet has been boxed in… well sort of boxed in!
Smoke Alarm-s!
Just thinking about using the toaster had the Alarm in the Kitchen deafen us with it’s noise and no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t shut the thing up even when David dismantled it, it kept going. Next time we thought about using the toaster the Alarm went off again but hang on we’d dismantled it!!! Aaaahhh there was another Alarm in the living room with the stairs!!! By this stage we are feeling a little guilty about having taken both alarms off and a little stupid for not noticing there were two of the things but hey we could not only think about using the toaster we did use it without noise!! Then… you knew this story had a bite in the tail didn’t you!! At around 2am about one week ago, after both Alarms were safely in a cupboard, I was sleepily staggering down the stairs as is my middle of the night wont when I looked up and there blinking at me at the top of the stairs on the small landing ceiling was yet another Smoke Alarm… we’ve let this one stay because it not only lets us think about using the toaster it actually lets us toast!!
Central Heating.
Is wonderful and in every room, David has almost mastered the Boiler which is in the first living room… he has no instructions but after much trial and error and a phone call to a very helpful young girl has got both the heating and the hot water working at once. Postscript… we can’t get hot water into the bathroom till all the radiators heat up… Kenny is coming tonight!
Cars.
We think we’re pretty posh buying a Peugeot, we know they aren’t the most prestige of cars but we reckon they’re pretty cool… for one mad moment I worried about it being parked out on the street and not necessarily in front of our home till I decided to take note of the other cars parked in the same street… right in front of our Pug Estate was a much newer grander Peugeot Estate then there were another three Peugeots, three Mercedes, one Audi, one Jaguar, two BMW, two Citroens and a couple of other nice looking cars all in 60 metres. Gave me a giggle it did!
P.S. Noise….
Since we moved in here, at the beginning of this month, Fireworks have been going off before dark and several times during the night… till way past midnight, there are some shops selling nothing but fireworks, all this for Guy Fawkes night which is not until November the 5th!! Tom says they will go on for weeks after the 5th as well.
Shopping.
The High Street has everything you could possibly want with the addition of markets on weekends which mostly sell fruit and vegetables, but our closest shops on Lordship Lane :-), are the best… the TFC (Turkish Food Market) has good vegetables, fruit, cheeses, bread made upstairs, all sorts of Baklavas and Sweets, a whole section of Olives in jars as well as from the fresh section! The butcher section sells only chicken, lamb and all sorts of offal from these animals, the cuts of meat are different to anything I’ve ever seen, the leg being enormous and they don’t sell lamb shanks! Actually now I come to think of it I haven’t been able to find shanks anywhere! Today I bought a 3.25kg leg of lamb for £16.50 ($A39.10), I asked them to cut it into three so right now there are two bits in the freezer and one cooking! YUM!
Just up from the Turkish is the Portuguese Supermarket/Café who’s Custard Tarts are almost a daily requirement for us… well at least a couple of times a week.
Our home in Turramurra… is large and comfortable on a large block of land with not only garaging for 3 cars but room for a Double Decker Bus as well, then there’s the pool and the tennis court… family and friends have been heard to describe it as the ‘Bobbin Head Resort! It’s close to Ku-ring-gai National Park in one of the most Conservative suburbs of Sydney; we have a wonderful Village Shopping centre only a walk away with the City of Sydney a 30 min drive to the South. Three of our four children, their partners and our grandson live close by with my parents, brothers and their families only one-hour north.
A lot of people exclaimed in horror when they heard that we were going to live in Britain during the winter months but they had to agree with us that if anyone visited Britain solely for the weather they were bonkers… in fact the weather has been absolutely wonderful so far - with mostly dry sunny mild to hot days, crisp nights some cloud and some rain as well.
We’ve come back to live in Britain to meet our beautiful Granddaughter and to spend time with her and her parents as well as catching up with long time friends.
Several times we’ve thought ourselves mad for renting a tiny Terrace House in tightly packed North London and thought longingly of a cottage in Surrey or Sussex similar to where we’ve lived before… but NO… we are here primarily to be near Tomos, Emma and Abigail Rose.
In 1968 we were married in Guildford, Surrey our first home being a charming converted stables called Henfield Cottage in the grounds of Henfield House. The Cottage was small, comfortable with wonderful views of the Sussex Downs and we wondered why the only heater was attached to the inside of the built-in-wardrobe… in winter most walls ran with moisture so that’s why! In 1977, the second time we lived in England we bought a largish 3 bedroom Semi-detached house in Guildford, which we enjoyed renovating.
Our Home in Wood Green… is in an Estate called ‘Noel Park’ the homes were built in the 1880’s & 90’s for Artisans and Workers working on Alexandra Palace, it’s a sort after area in Wood Green consisting of Terrace houses smaller than ours as well as some much larger with everything in between. Noel Park is a bell shape bordered by the busy Shopping area on the High Street, then Westbury Avenue and Lordship Lane… don’t you just love that one… Lordship Lane! Lordship Lane! Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? There are signs everywhere of the Blitz, not rubble and so on but gaps where newer but similar homes have been built.
David just paced it out… in the little part of Moselle Avenue where we live there are 16 homes just on our side of the street which is 60 metres long. That means we could put 8 similar homes along the front of '333'
Every Road and Avenue in Noel Park has many road bumps and stop signs… I counted 11 Bumps and 9 Stops from Tom’s home to ours and we are barely one kilometre away. The Area is very quiet as you may expect with so many bumps and is a much favoured area for Learner Drivers… of course the streets are lined both sides with parked cars but like Tom’s they don’t go out much, it’s easier to walk or take public transport. I say very quiet… which a tiny lie, because you do hear Police or Ambulance Sirens on the major roads, as well as car alarms but basically it’s very peaceful. Wood Green isn’t an area most people would aspire to live in but I think it is a hidden gem and Tom and Emma had a lucky find especially seeing they back onto a nice little park. They will sell up eventually and either move out further to a larger home and garden or stay in this close to the City, whatever they do they do need a home with a little more room.
Living in a 3.5m wide two up and two down house in a very racially mixed North London is quite a change. There are two small bedrooms upstairs, the larger one has two single beds up tight together… on David’s side of the bed is a chair for his bedside table and with the help of some cardboard, he’s managed to attach a reading lamp borrowed from Tom and Emma… I have the box the microwave came in covered with two blue and white British Quilt Guild tea towels, there is only space left to walk around the bed I can’t imagine trying to fit in any other furniture. The smaller bedroom is our dressing room; we have a borrowed mirror, borrowed shelves for our smalls, our suitcases and a low ironing board with iron plus a hanging rack for our shirts etc.
Downstairs we have two small living rooms that have been opened up with glass doors but no latches, in the first room we have our TV sitting on the coffee table given to us by ‘Kenny’, plus one two seater couch and one arm chair bought from second hand shops… I washed the covers and wiped down all the other surfaces using a damp cloth and lavender oil, which not only smells good, it improves the look as well. The box the TV came in I covered with a bed cover lent to me by Emma and it now makes the prefect table to keep my hand sewing plus a snack or two! The second living room holds the Fridge and the scary, scary stairs which David thinks have been put in back to front… coming down stairs to the Loo in the middle of the night is a picture I won’t spoil your image of us with… suffice to say the thought of a chamber pot doesn’t sound too bad some nights!
The old kitchen and bathroom have been totally gutted and rebuilt with a dining room off them, this has been made by enclosing what was once open space and turning it into a light bright room with a glass Green House type roof, it’s brilliant for light, air and receiving the sun and it’s a pleasure to eat our meals, read and write up Blogs. French Doors open out to a small terrace and garden but there’s not much privacy… you’d have to be brave to go in for nude sun baking! I guess our little house would sell for about £200,000.00 ($A473,960.00) just to give you an idea of the area.
The owner of our London home is M. Sadik who’s off sider is the infamous ‘Kenny’ they remind me of an Australian Comedy team called ‘Dodgy Brothers Incorporated’ The house is newly renovated and mostly done really well and tastefully but I think they must have lost interest with the finishing touches so here’s the list of things that amuse us…
Doors and Windows.
All are brand new and double-glazed which makes for a very cosy feeling… Kenny lost the keys just days before we moved in so had to get new locks, he didn’t take off the whole handles then the locks he cut though the handle plate very roughly which makes opening and locking the doors a hazard for ones fingers plus the whole thing almost falls apart in your hands if you aren’t careful… but they work!! I managed to get myself locked out the other day, thankfully Nancy, our left side neighbour is young and keen and climbed over the fence to the open back door for me! The Windows are all smeared with little bits of cement and tar from who ever was working outside… I’ve cleaned all the downstairs windows but aren’t game to try the upstairs ones.
Blinds.
There are four rooms that have Wooden Venetian Blinds on the windows… only one room has blinds that actually fit the windows and that’s our bedroom. The dressing room blind is too narrow, the living room has two blinds on one window, they are not long enough and the two together are too wide. The dining room French doors have a blind each but they also aren’t long enough by at least 50cm! I think they must all be the same size blinds but no one checked if the doors and windows all measured the same.
Cement and Tar.
In every room on every floor and on every surface there are little bits of cement, tar and in some cases bubbling oceans of insulation foam that’s been pushed into the sashes around the windows.
The Bathroom.
Has no cabinet, no mirror and no power outlet for even a shaver. It is tiled up to the edges but if there was a gap they just filled it with filler not tiles, the pipes and toilet outlet has been boxed in… well sort of boxed in!
Smoke Alarm-s!
Just thinking about using the toaster had the Alarm in the Kitchen deafen us with it’s noise and no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t shut the thing up even when David dismantled it, it kept going. Next time we thought about using the toaster the Alarm went off again but hang on we’d dismantled it!!! Aaaahhh there was another Alarm in the living room with the stairs!!! By this stage we are feeling a little guilty about having taken both alarms off and a little stupid for not noticing there were two of the things but hey we could not only think about using the toaster we did use it without noise!! Then… you knew this story had a bite in the tail didn’t you!! At around 2am about one week ago, after both Alarms were safely in a cupboard, I was sleepily staggering down the stairs as is my middle of the night wont when I looked up and there blinking at me at the top of the stairs on the small landing ceiling was yet another Smoke Alarm… we’ve let this one stay because it not only lets us think about using the toaster it actually lets us toast!!
Central Heating.
Is wonderful and in every room, David has almost mastered the Boiler which is in the first living room… he has no instructions but after much trial and error and a phone call to a very helpful young girl has got both the heating and the hot water working at once. Postscript… we can’t get hot water into the bathroom till all the radiators heat up… Kenny is coming tonight!
Cars.
We think we’re pretty posh buying a Peugeot, we know they aren’t the most prestige of cars but we reckon they’re pretty cool… for one mad moment I worried about it being parked out on the street and not necessarily in front of our home till I decided to take note of the other cars parked in the same street… right in front of our Pug Estate was a much newer grander Peugeot Estate then there were another three Peugeots, three Mercedes, one Audi, one Jaguar, two BMW, two Citroens and a couple of other nice looking cars all in 60 metres. Gave me a giggle it did!
P.S. Noise….
Since we moved in here, at the beginning of this month, Fireworks have been going off before dark and several times during the night… till way past midnight, there are some shops selling nothing but fireworks, all this for Guy Fawkes night which is not until November the 5th!! Tom says they will go on for weeks after the 5th as well.
Shopping.
The High Street has everything you could possibly want with the addition of markets on weekends which mostly sell fruit and vegetables, but our closest shops on Lordship Lane :-), are the best… the TFC (Turkish Food Market) has good vegetables, fruit, cheeses, bread made upstairs, all sorts of Baklavas and Sweets, a whole section of Olives in jars as well as from the fresh section! The butcher section sells only chicken, lamb and all sorts of offal from these animals, the cuts of meat are different to anything I’ve ever seen, the leg being enormous and they don’t sell lamb shanks! Actually now I come to think of it I haven’t been able to find shanks anywhere! Today I bought a 3.25kg leg of lamb for £16.50 ($A39.10), I asked them to cut it into three so right now there are two bits in the freezer and one cooking! YUM!
Just up from the Turkish is the Portuguese Supermarket/Café who’s Custard Tarts are almost a daily requirement for us… well at least a couple of times a week.
2 Comments:
Compelling reading Pennie. Very interesting! Sounds like a book review doesnt it:)
Jamie can buy shanks.
KLM
Lamb shanks are one of my favourites. They can be baked, grilled or casseroled.
I've discovered that there are two types of people in the world. People who enjoy chewing on bones and those that do not.
As you might have guessed, I'm one of the former, but I live with two of the latter. So my own pleasure of picking every morsel of meat off bones is added to by being able to finish off the bones of my wife and my daughter (don't take me literally - I mean of their meals, not their bodies).
As a shank-lover, you must also be a bone-eater. You will know the secret pleasures of a chicken leg, both ends of which have grissly treasures. And a chicken wing - the sweet crunch of those crispy-skinned bones.
A cleaned-off leg of lamb still has treasure to give away. Smash the bone with a hammer - out on the pavers, not on the dining table, to reveal the glistening marrow inside.
Roast duck is, for a bone chewer, as close to paradise as you can get.
Peter S
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