Things in England in March (a list)

* Sitting on chewing gum on the train from the airport. Welcome to England.
* My Mum and Dad, staying in a small village in Kent, and feeding us up like we couldn't possibly have eaten since we last saw them.
* Proper pubs with low dark woody beams.
* Proper pub meals.
* Mysterious ruins of a castle on a hill. Inside the hilltop too. It reminded of being a little kid when you would just pretend the hill was a castle; this was kind of the same, you had to look at the hill, and knowing that it housed a castle, kind've imagine the castle inside...
* Leeds Castle. It didn't need to be imagined. The big old castle had an even bigger castle built onto the side of it in 1822... many rooms inside were done up in proper 1930s salon style by latterday owner Lady Baillie who liked to throw glamorous parties there for princes, films stars and politicians. Fun to imagine, not quite the same following a rope around it beside a bunch of French school kids.
* Leeds Castle animals... peacocks, toucans, macaws. Also portraits of Lady Baillie's dogs on the walls, along with a collection of engravings of monkeys.
* Farm shops.
* Really delicious duck pate... the last ever tub, i discovered, when i went back to the farm shop to buy more... they said it was just a local farm making it and it had gotten too expensive. The effects of the economic crisis, perhaps?
* Hills, woods, fields, mud, wet feet.
* Old country town graveyards and churches where you can see where things were ripped out and smashed by the Puritans in Cromwell's time.
* London.
* Corinna.
* Corinna's big house and many housemates and funny little kitten who didn't have a name last time we visited - I thought Milly-Walky-Talky was a good suggestion but now she is called Birdy. I guess that's good too. Birdy looks more like an Anime cat than any other cat I've ever met.
* Salt beef bagels in Brick Lane.
* The V and A museum. Oh, I love it.
* A super exhibition by Haunch of Venison at the Royal Academy.
* Hackney Curries that turn into a brick in your belly.
* Boiled grapefruit lollies in a tin, Dad's gift for the journey home.