Goodbye St. Albans; Off to a New Adventure

Warming up at a pub on New Years Day

We’ve been mostly enjoying our past month in St. Albans, UK where our 3 ½ year old grandchild Hazel and her parents live. With a population of 148,000 and average housing prices of £604,400 ($769,760 US), it is one of the most affluent places to live in the UK. Keep in mind that these are mostly row houses of 1500 square feet or less, and a lot of residents live in apartments.

We find it very bicycle and pedestrian friendly, and it seems like we are always encountering baby strollers and toddler scooters. Parks and playgrounds are everywhere. As son-in-law Alan said, “People live in London to start their careers, then move to St. Albans and smaller suburban cities to raise a family.”  Being just 40 minutes by train to central London, I’m sure Covid had something to do with it as well.

The 612-year old High Street
clock tower at Christmas

We love its “High Street,” the name given to the center of most town squares where most of the eateries and shopping occurs. It is at the top of a hill, about three blocks long, two blocks wide and almost completely pedestrian.  Farmers markets happen all year about two-three times per week.  The population is about 90% white and 4% South Asian, but we hear a lot of Eastern Europe and Middle East accents. High Street and St. Albans have many ethnic restaurants including at least a dozen north Indian restaurants, a Bangladeshi one (our favorite), Japanese, Thai, French, Turkish, Greek and several Middle Eastern.  This is in addition to countless pubs and Italian places. Dining out is actually cheaper than in the States.  Usually no tipping is involved, but the nicer places for a full meal sometimes add a 10% service charge. Wine is cheaper.

With 3,000 years of continuous human habitation, St. Albans was the site of England’s most important Roman settlement and the place where hot cross buns were invented. We can still walk among the ruins and see some cool things in a museum at the heart of the settlement just 1.5 miles from Shanti and Alan’s home.

For security & privacy reasons, it's not their
home or street. But it's typical.

And speaking of historic structures, it feels like we are living in one.  Their 100-year-old, 16- foot row house is always in need of repairs and more heat.
So, between walking Hazel to and from nursery school every day (except during Christmas week and weekends), cooking, laundry with no dryer, and grocery shopping, we’ve been busy with home repairs. Considering that we are complete home-improvement screw-ups and lack proper tools, everything takes longer than it should.

It's not what you think! 

We journeyed here two times 

to find screws to fix a broken

Ikea cupboard door. Just what

we home improvement 

screw-ups needed.

But it wasn’t all work. We read our four or five daily digital newspapers, went to the gym regularly, caught up on The Crown, played cutthroat pinochle with Shanti and Alan, and went to London three times.  Once for the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone and the stolen Elgin Marbles, one for the Tate modern art museum, and to Buckingham Palace. Even we anti royalists were very impressed. (No photos were allowed.)  We also spent a lot of money and time—mostly at High Street—getting the proper equipment for our next adventure to Antarctica that we either forgot or didn’t know to get before we left home.  But at least Road Scholar told us at almost the last minute.

Cha & Nasta, our favorite lunch eatery serving
Bangladeshi street food.  We've become good
acquaintances with Rahena, the co-owner.

And interspersed with all the above tasks and fun, we were remotely trying to deal with Kathy’s almost 99-year-old mom in memory care.  We had to move her there from assisted living four days before we flew here.  She’s been such a difficult resident that her costs have skyrocketed to the point where she has exhausted all her assets. We’re running up a huge phone bill with Oregon DHS getting her Medicaid assistance. But the bright side is that we’ve worked with some wonderful and caring human beings at the State who are making it easy on us. They make public employees look great!

It was a joy to celebrate Christmas through the eyes of a child again!  Hazel is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. And she definitely has a mind of her own. As much as we think she loves us, she said that she is looking forward to more “Mummy and Daddy time” once we leave. Shanti and Alan have long, stressful days so we try to pick up the slack as much as possible. Little does Hazel know that our absence will mean more time in nursery school and less with parents who need to cook, clean, shop, and do chores.

Christmas morning and a Bluey playhouse

So, goodbye St. Albans.  We’ll miss Hazel, Shanti, and Alan. We’ll miss St. Albans, its environs, its delicious bread, and unfailingly polite people. We’ll miss the small cars and relatively quiet road noise without the din of oversized  loud pickup trucks, unmuffled motorcycles, and souped-up low-rider drag racers at home.  And we'll miss the absence of unhoused people that are so omnipresent at home. But we won’t miss the potholes, narrow roads, crazy roundabouts, right-hand drive, and the dark and dreary weather.  On to Antarctica, where it is summer and slightly warmer!

Here's a link to just a few additional photos.

"What We Can, While We Can; What We Could While We Could"

PS:  It's been almost six months since my last post.  So what happened since then? I had rotator cuff surgery August 30.  Recovery is coming along, but slow and uneven. Hazel, Shanti, Alan visited us in September and we had the joy of introducing Hazel to camping and 'smores. A week later, daughter Skyler joined all of us for a week in central Oregon. Then three days before we flew to the UK, we had to move Kathy's mom into memory care.

Four generations before Kathy's mom
really started going downhill

Roasting marshmallows in a sling
at Silver Falls State Park