Day 9 England/Paris Trip

Coastal Day – Fossils, Cliffs and CREAM TEA!

(Mr. Kim’s comments in italics.)


(Internet picture)

It’s not easy getting into this again. So much LIFE intervened and I had to put away all my notes and folders and books and pamphlets. I’ve gotten them all back out, but my brain is being balky. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little creaky at first.

I don’t understand your problem. I remember our trip as if it were yesterday…. The cheesesteak sandwiches, seeing the Liberty Bell, the side trip to the Jersey shore…. No need to review the notes!

This was our first full day in Dorchester, but we spent almost no time there at all. We got up, had another wonderful breakfast and hit the road.

We drove back through quiet little Chideock and along the sea to Charmouth, a beautiful coastal village. Charmouth’s big draw is fossil hunting. On what is called the Jurassic Coast – England’s first natural World Heritage Site – Charmouth is home to the Charmouth Heritage Centre. The Centre is full of fossils and fossil hunting advice and a good place for sissy Americans to dive into when the rain starts. The Brits, of course, just Carry On. This is truly a gorgeous and wild looking coastline:

and we loved wandering up and down the beach searching the strewn rocks for fossils. We didn’t find a thing, but brought home a few interesting looking bits and pieces for The Child and Mr. Kim’s mom. For a country noted for its soggy weather, we couldn’t complain about the rain – it was a cold downpour but only lasted an hour or two. It was the only time the entire trip we had rain during daylight hours.

Just west of Charmouth is Lyme Regis, our next destination. Lyme Regis is still considered a village, but seemed large to us, having become used to the little one-main-road burgs we had been driving through. A gorgeous town, with charming houses, gardens and shops that spill down from the cliffs to the beautiful seaside.




I especially fell in love with this pink cottage and its gorgeous garden:








It was certainly bustling with people on that sunshiny Sunday. Families, young couples, old folks – all intent on enjoying the good weather while it lasted.

We did find some tranquil spots. The church of the day was St. Michael the Archangel:

Perched on a hill with a spectacular view and benches for quiet contemplation:


St. Michael’s is a beautiful, light-filled building with lovely stained glass, tapestries and paintings. What I found particularly unusual were the gorgeous decorations on the façade of the case holding the organ pipes:





The color in the picture is true – quite pastel and what you might not be able to make out is that parts of them were actually metallic. Really remarkable.

St. Michael’s churchyard is the burial place of Mary Anning. I vaguely remembered hearing about her and the story is interesting. She was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis into a working class family of fossil collectors. At the age of 12, she and her brother found one of the first ever ichthyosaur skeletons. She worked at fossil collecting her whole life, without any formal education and was known throughout Europe as a collector and dealer. Being a woman and poor, she couldn’t belong to the organizations and publications that men could. And yet the fossil crazed world of the early 19th century seemingly beat a path to her door to buy the artifacts that she found and to consult her on geology and anatomy.

We wandered around the streets and shops of Lyme Regis and strolled the promenade. Lyme Regis is exactly the kind of place that I’d vacation at if I lived in England. It was yet another place that I wished we had more time to explore. Some more favorite shots:










We had a little snack at the Mulberry Manor Bakery on Broad Street. Since I knew that I was going to get a cream tea, come hell or high water, we didn’t want a lot and shared a gorgeous beef and bleu cheese pasty and a flaky, crisp cheese straw. We might not have gotten as far as Cornwall, but I thought that pasty was awfully good:


She didn’t want any part of it, but I couldn’t resist a tart little marinated pepper stuffed with cheese.



One small curiosity captured my attention on the walk back to the car. In a large but otherwise unremarkable building we saw this:


I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out, although everyone I have shown the picture to has tumbled to it immediately. This is a public mail slot in the former post office, one of the oldest in the country.

What can I say, simple things amuse me.

On to Beer. Not the drink, but the village (though Mr. Kim had fun taking pictures of every sign with the word ‘Beer’ on it – he especially liked The Beer Social Club and the Beer Coast Guard). My Aunt Mary lives in Beer. Unfortunately, she happened to be in the States during our trip. We didn’t coordinate very well and we were all so disappointed to have missed a visit. Beer is a small village built around a small cove. Like Lyme Regis, it is hilly with the car park being built on a fairly high cliff. We parked and hiked down to the main street:


Fore Street. Packed with shops and tea rooms:


and finishing up at the water:




Kim stayed up on a bench at street level (and I do mean up – the shore fell away precipitously) while I walked down to the sea. Besides the larger fishing boats, there were lots of little rental single masters and outboard boats. I thought it would be fun to take one out, though it was too late in the day and there were none for rent then. I can imagine an earlier time, when Londoners on holiday would come to Lyme Regis and maybe take out a boat for a morning. Or perhaps not – it may be that recreational boating is only a recent arrival in this fishing village. But it is fun to imagine.





I turned and looked at how far I had to climb to get back to Kim and was quite ready to find a pub.

We wandered up Fore Street, captivated again by the cottages and gardens (and Mr. Kim vigilantly on the look-out for more funny ‘Beer’ signs). A sample:








We found where my aunt lives and even met one of her neighbors, who very kindly recommended The Captain’s Cottage on Fore Street for our cream tea.

A short primer on ‘TEA’ may be needed here. Not to sound snooty, but ‘TEA’ as a meal is something that Americans get wrong most often. They tend to talk about ‘High Tea’, when they really mean ‘Afternoon Tea’. ‘High Tea’ is just dinner – an evening meal with a main course of fish or meat. Cake and tea afterwards, of course – it IS England, after all. The tea meal that consists of delectable little sandwiches (TEA sandwiches) and cakes and tea is actually ‘Afternoon Tea’ and almost no one has that anymore except as a treat or a party. Or, of course, desperately Anglophile little girls, enraptured by English storybooks and cobbling together a tea of Wonder Bread, Miracle Whip and cucumbers served with hot Lipton.

A cream tea is another thing entirely. Eaten anytime you like, from what I can see – and you should have it as often as you possibly can if you go to England. A cream tea is tea served with scones, jam and an impossibly delicious and rich comestible called ‘clotted cream’. Clotted cream is very rich and VERY fattening cream that is made from full cream milk and, alas, does not travel. Though, I understand that it is possible to make it, if you can get ahold of unpasteurized cream.

The Captain’s Cottage was utterly charming:

Stone walls, thatched roof and a sign saying “Cream Teas, Crab sandwiches and Dogs Welcome”. I’m not sure I even needed a recommendation – I would have picked this place anyway. Struggling mightily (and successfully) to resist the lure of a crab sandwich, we ordered a cream tea for two:


A properly built scone:

There is a lot more clotted cream on there than it looks like – it’s hiding beneath the jam. You should pile it up pretty high. I kept telling Mr. Kim, “Put on more – it’s not BUTTER, it’s CREAM!!!” The jam is strawberry, made from the tiniest, sweetest little berries that I’ve ever seen. I was a happy girl:


I wish I had taken a picture of the tea pots. They were lined up on a series of shelves in the dining room, as much decoration as serving pieces. In Three Bears fashion, they came in smallish pots for a one or two person service, medium sized ones (which we got) and family sized pots that seemed practically door mouse sized. The owner/cook/waitress was constantly coming out to get a pot from the shelf or returning to shelve freshly cleaned ones from the kitchen. As I have said, weird little things catch my attention sometimes.

Replete and sleepy, I found myself unable to climb that cliff to retrieve the car. Luckily, I had brought a husband. There goes Mr. Kim to get the car:

Thanks, Mr. Kim. Hmmm. He doesn’t seem to be responding.




We made our way slowly back to Dorchester to the hotel. It’s a good thing the GPS knew where we were going. Jeeves chose a route for us that for several hours largely looked like this:

Not for the first time, we were thankful to have it with us – we simply could not have found our way around without it. But what a grand adventure!

Dinner that night was (I blush) another convenience store sandwich. We were exhausted and on our way to Winchester the next morning and, like I said they were pretty good, exactly what we needed after a full day.

My BIG News

That shaking you feel is not the epicenter of a new Virginia earthquake. It’s me doing the Happy Dance. I have, as of last Monday, joined the ranks of the retired. (more shaking – still just the dance.) It may only be temporary – we are hoping that we can swing it financially. But even if it is, I am going to enjoy having a life while it lasts.

This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. Honestly, I never really wanted to grow up to be anything but a housewife. I wanted to cook and keep a house and take care of my family. I was born in the wrong generation, I think. But then, I am such a flaming liberal (born that way, I think – I used to get all pissed at Darren when he tried to boss Samantha) that I would have been tarred and feathered in any other era.

So, I will not miss working. I will, however, miss some of the wonderful people that I worked with. Things had gotten really crappy there and the only thing that made going to work bearable was those folks. They know who they are and I am going to make a gargantuan effort not to lose touch in my tendency to cocoon.

Some folks asked if I wasn’t afraid of being bored. Hah! I’ve been off a week and feel like I haven’t taken a break yet. I’ve worked on some projects. I’ve caught up on blog reading. I’ve cooked meals. I’ve hosted a Super Bowl party (I’m hoping that Mr. Kim will do a blog post since he did most of the cooking – it was GOOOOD). And I keep finding myself smiling. I am just so freaking happy. I’ve had lots of jobs – some I even liked and almost always worked with some amazing people. But working was what bored me. I’ve never, ever found myself bored staying home.

I just haven’t ever been a terribly ambitious person. I know that’s not too cool to admit. And I know that that has puzzled the people in my life. I think that there may be some who are STILL waiting for me at age 52 to ‘find myself’. To find a fulfilling, career. Well, I did. I’m home. I’m happy and comfortable and at peace. Is there really anything more than that in this world?

Mr. Kim blogs: Mrs. Kim's Gift

I try to be a story teller in this blog, and when I don’t have anything to say that would be entertaining or at least a bit tawdry I just keep it to myself. I mean, who wants to read that I got home from work and balanced my checkbook or collapsed in front of House Hunters International, or some similar nonsense?

But this blog entry is not given to storytelling and it is not really entertaining at all. It’s more of a snapshot to memorialize this Christmas season and the tremendous gift my Bride gave us all this year. Kim’s readers here all know what a huge deal Christmas is around here, with the Christmas Eve bash and all the house decorating and gift wrapping and, some years, even church attendance during Advent. (Clearly not often enough, as every time I attend I am greeted as a visitor at the door and asked to introduce myself.)

My job is a pain in the arse for someone who is as much into the celebration of the season as we are. In the best of years I work 60-65 hour weeks beginning September 1 and extending all the way up to December 20. It’s the nature of the business (state governmental budgeting) and they pay me to do what I do, so I shouldn’t complain. But I do, loudly. The nights and weekends always make it hard to squeeze in college football (season ticket holder) and all the preparations and shopping for the holiday season, and there is a lot of wasted time nights and weekends trying to get decision makers to focus. This year was most definitely not “the best of years.” The budget season was, for various reasons best not put into writing, very difficult. Instead of the usual 60 hour weeks they were closer to 80. Weekends this year were just days, and all of them were spent at the office – not one full day off between Thanksgiving and December 22, and not one full weekend after Halloween. Even the nights I got home before 8 or 9 PM, I was simply exhausted.

Yea, I know, poor me. Get over it. But if it had depended on me, Christmas was not going to be pulled off in its usual manner in our home in 2011. All my energy reserves were depleted, no sense of organization or motivation, my usual to-do list in my head was buried under vanilla pudding. All good will toward men was overcome with resentment toward the job and the impact it was having on our life. I mean, I derive my life’s joy not from my career, but from the time I am able to spend with Kim doing the things the job gives me the means to do. And the job became the instrument that prevented all that. And no thank you, no apology, just expectation. And the statement to our faces that we, experts in our various areas each with decades of experience, were lucky to have a job.

Thank the goddess for my Bride. She stepped in and took over the 10% I usually contribute to getting us ready for Christmas. Let me be honest, it’s usually her making things happen anyway, but I am usually engaged and try to be helpful and try to at least appear to be part of the process. But I was nowhere this year. And while she would have been completely justified in being resentful of the burden, or in cutting back on what we do, or in making it clear how much she hated my job and demanding change, she did none of those things. With an almost eerie calm that had me scared for a while, she methodically made sure everything got done. If I was on the sofa flopped out, she kept cleaning. If I was working, she kept cooking and buying and wrapping and making lists and checking them twice. If my schedule changed at the last minute to accommodate the whims of power brokers and bureaucrats instead of what we had planned to do, she adjusted expectations. She told me where I needed to be and when, and mashed and squeezed and bundled everything into place.

The result was the best gift of all for me. She made Christmas for us when all I could do was watch and feebly wrap a few gifts after midnight on the 24th. Even the Christmas Eve dinner party we always throw for family and close friends went off without a hitch on our part – even though 22 of 58 invitees pulled no-show-no-calls, and most of the remaining 38 showed up between 45 minutes and 3 hours late for a hot meal. Even then, my dear Wyfe remained calm and, for the sake of the season, didn’t kill any of the late arrivals.

Gifts, meals, trees, carols, candles, centerpieces, and decorations both familiar and new, all because of her. I would have missed the season, as important as it is to us, without her flying solo for all of us. What a wonderful gift for me and our family. And I am so very grateful.

Mr. Kim blogs: Valuable lessons

I have learned several things today.

1. Never get coffee from a Starbucks that usually serves its java from the brewer but is today serving from twenty gallon portable urns.

2. Twenty gallon portable urns full of coffee cool faster than three gallon brewers that are constantly refreshed.

3. Coffee from a 20 gallon urn is likely to be cold.

4. One should taste one’s coffee before leaving a Starbucks to see if it is the right temperature.

5. A cup of cold Starbuck's coffee does not magically get warmer after a 10 mile drive to the office.

6. Starbucks cups, even when full of cold coffee, will nonetheless burst into flame when placed in a microwave.

7. Flaming coffee cups, when grabbed by bare hands, can leave a mark. A very painful mark.

8. Grabbing a flaming coffee cup does not in and of itself prevent now-hot coffee from spewing all down your hands from the deteriorating cup.

9. Standing still and screaming in an office break room while holding a deteriorating flaming coffee cup form Starbuck's does nothing to improve the situation.

10. Folks in my office find the strangest things amusing.


No, the moment was not captured on video. Stop laughing.

My Daughter is Trying to Kill Me

I have no idea why The Child is trying to effect my demise, but it is obvious that she is. Evidence:

1). The move to an apartment in the city

2). The creepy alley entrance to said apartment

3). The multiple car accidents.

4). Gallivanting off by Herself to New York City.

This is the scene of her latest attempt:

This is the Sun Trust building in downtown Richmond. It is 25 stories high. And this:

is The Child’s bottom coming over the top of the building. The baby that I carried for more than 9 months is on the edge of that precipice and I am on the ground holding a camera.

The Child’s middle name is the same as my maternal grandfather. This was decided long before she was born. And it is apt. She is as fearless as he. She also has the same soft heart that he hid behind gruffness and bluff. This was a fundraiser for Special Olympics. She raised over $1100 and came down carrying a picture of our adorable cousin Luke. We were equal parts terrified and proud. Both emotions clutched our throats and filled our eyes.











She fills me with awe. I wonder where she came from. She is somehow so much more than I have ever been – braver, stronger, smarter and so very, very bright.

The author Elizabeth Stone said: “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” How my heart could have been in my throat and coming down the side of that building at the same time is a conundrum, but it was.