Jace and the Giant Peach.....

Had a quite an interesting walkabout today, with nothing going as planned, but everything working out to a very memorable day. Things started bad when we travelled to Great Missenden, where Roald Dahl lived and wrote in order to go to the library for the girls. But it was closed. So, we walked off around the town and looked at the places that my mom and Lance used to live and haunt there as residents. We were lucky enough to happen upon a statue of the Beatles.



Eventually we found ourselves hiking up into the hills above town where we looked at some spectacular estates, horse pastures, and beautiful vistas of the town itself. It was nice to be way up here because my girls could for once yell and sing their brains out at will. I'm coming to think that my kids are the noisiest kids in the UK....but they are having a blast.



After visiting Roald Dahl's grave on the way down the hill, we went to the park where my mom used to walk Dylan her dog, before he passed, and there was a disco party for a little girl's birthday party. Marina and Elena danced like crazy at a distance to the party, just hearing the music, and pretty soon had people from the party watching them and laughing. Show off American girls. Then we got thirsty, and decided to head to a beer festival going on in the village of Haddenham. The trouble was, that after journeying there through windy roads, we go in and found out that they had run out of beer. 47 kegs of beer in 5 hours. I looked around and saw why. Not only does everyone drink imperial pints as a rule (20 oz), but the women throw them back as strong as the men. My kind of people



So away we went, in search of beer. My mom piloted the car to an out of the way pub that they had never tried. When we went in we got icy stares by the lady of the house behind the counter, who was serving some worker guys at the bar. All the tables were "reserved" although empty. Lance explained that all we wanted was beer then we would be on our way, and got us some pints. But it was close. So we happily kept a low profile in the corner and kept the girls from wrecking anything, and feeling much more human rolled out of the "Plough" pub in a better mood.



Back to Stoke Mandeville and to a really nice pub right down the road from Magpie Cottage called the Wool Pack. Alas, nothing on the menu at all for Marina, so I after getting our food, I and Elena wolfed down some chow and the three of us left the restaurant to run back to the cottage so that I could make Marina some corn on the cob that I had gotten at a farmers market in Aylesbury earlier in the day, along with some other of her favorite things in payment for her tremendous will power and patience. And I got more beer from the fridge for me. Do you see a theme about me and the UK?