Marvelous Monday

Yesterday's adventures were much better than Saturday's. We skipped church (bad Nolens!) and headed out around 11.30 to an antique toy fair. Very interesting. The kids were good up to a point, but there's a limit on "look but don't touch." One man (who later told us he has an almost-3-year-old daughter at home) took pity on the 2 big kids and gave each a double decker bus toy. They're the size of Hot Wheels, and I think one still had a £5 sticker on it. Wow! We bought a couple of things for souvenirs and headed out.

On the way to TGI Friday's (to try again - am I a glutton for punishment?) I spotted a place called Toby's Carvery. It looked like a pub, and by this time it was about 1.00, so I hung a U-ey at the next roundabout and we pulled in. They said the wait would be 40 minutes, but we stayed anyway. While we were waiting, I called Friday's and they said (after a 7-minute call) that the wait there was about an hour. Yikes. So I conveyed the info to Steve, had time to read a comic on the wall, and the hostess said that our table would be ready in 5 minutes. Less than 1 minute later, we were on our way to our table! All in all less than 10 minutes. Sweet!

Turns out this place is more restaurant than pub. And a carvery is a place that carves the meat for you at a buffet-style bar. I don't know if it was a Sundays-only thing or if it's daily. Anyway, they had gammon (ham), turkey, and roast beef. The ham and beef were fabulous, but the turkey was dry. I didn't see any gravy to lend assistance, so I left my turkey alone. They also had Yorkshire Puddings. "What's that?" you may be wondering. It's bread. It's like a bowl of flaky-ish bread a little bigger than your fist. Nothing in it, just bread. A Yorkshire Pudding. Nancy really liked those. They also had roasted parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower in a sauce, mashed orange something (that didn't taste like yams or sweet potatoes), carrots, boiled new potatoes, and roasted potatoes. And leeks! I gave Audrey one long skinny parsnip and when she took a bite of it, she turned to Steve and said, "This isn't a very good french fry." We all chuckled at that. Now for the leeks - they taste like a garlicky mild onion. I guess these were boiled. I liked them. I think I was the only one at the table who did, though. They're grown in Wales.

For dessert, the kids each got an ice cream, Steve and I each ordered a rhubarb & apple crisp that came with hot custard (just like really thick sweetened cream), and L&N split a Knickerbocker Glory. That puppy was huge! I bet the whole thing from table to top was at least 15 inches! The bottom 2.5 inches was the stem of the glass and the top 2.5 inches was the little frou-frou things that they stick in sundaes and things like this. It was ice cream, different sauces (forest fruit sauce?), and a raspberry cheesecake mousse. Lynette said it was really good.

After lunch we headed to the ruins of the abbey that's in the center of Reading at Forbury Gardens. The "gardens" are actually just a park. With a "ginormous lion statue". Those are Audrey's words. She was describing it to my mom on the phone. It's on a base that's probably 12 feet tall and maybe 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. So if the base is that huge, the lion's got to be at least as big! I think it's as big as the church's minibus. But this is a guess.

Then we walked to the local Hobbycraft store. Think Hobby Lobby, but open on Sunday. We were there to pick up string and something to poke holes with. Have I mentioned conkers before? They are the nuts off the Common Horse Chestnut tree. There are *loads* of these trees around. They are bigger than walnuts and they come out of a green softish shell thing. They pop out when they fall from the trees. Here's a picture.

So the kids pick up these "conkers" as they're known here and play a game called (what else?) Conkers. Here are the rules:

1. Take a large, hard conker and drill a hole through it using a nail or small screwdriver. (This may be done by an adult on behalf of the contestant.) Thread a piece of string through it about 25 cm long. Often a shoelace is used. Tie a large knot at one or both ends of the string, so that the conker will not slide off when swung hard.

2. Find an opponent. It is to your advantage if you can find an opponent with a conker smaller and softer than yours.

3. Take it in turns to hit each other's conker using your own. To do this one player lets the conker dangle on the full length of the string while the other player hits. To hit, hold the string in one hand with the conker held above it in the other hand, then swipe at the opponent's conker, letting go of your own nut but keeping hold of the string.

Does this not sound like a game invented by little boys? The scoring is even better:

-A new conker is a none-er meaning that it has conquered none yet.
-If you manage to smash your opponent's conker to pieces, so that it comes off the string, your conker gets the score that your opponent's conker had, plus one for beating the opponent's conker itself. So for example, if two none-ers play, the surviving conker will become a one-er. But if a two-er plays a three-er, the surviving conker will become a six-er.
-This scoring system is arguably not particularly fair, but it has the property that in a competition where n new conkers compete until only one survives, the surviving conker will be an (n-1)-er regardless of the sequence of games. Familiarity with the game will make this scoring system seem more justifiable, as some conkers seem to lead charmed lives, while others are just extraordinarily tough.

Again - boys *must* have invented this game.

So we got the stuff we needed, came home, and played Conkers. It takes longer than one would imagine. Audrey gave up after 2 turns because she said it was too hard. It is tough to make your conker hit your opponent's, and I imagine having the dexterity of a 3-year-old doesn't help much. Caleb and I ended up playing. Laughing is more like it. I would take 3 hits on his, then he would take about 29 swings on mine and only hit himself when his conker would swing back on his string towards him. He nailed me in the head once. That got us both laughing! Julie liked watching (from a safe distance) and would laugh every time Caleb threw his conker.

If you want more information on conkers (they have a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!!!) look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conker. It's where I got the picture.