Rocky the Raccoon - The Whole Story So we knew, because we had seen it when we had put the garbage out at night, that Rocky was a particulary smart critter. We have "wheelie bin" type of things over here except they are alot bigger. We were beginers at the garbage putting out process, so we discovered earlier that putting out the garbage (from the garage where it lives) the night before a garbage collection day was just asking for trouble. Rocky would have the bin over and the lid off in no time and by the next morning the garbage was all over the street. So we wised up and only put out the re-cycling the night before and tried to get up in time to put the garbage out by 6:00 in the morning. Then the fun began. Now the garage is a double size job with an automatic up and over door which is controlled from inside the car. This is very handy if you do not want to meet your neighbours or get cold in the winter. You can drive straight into the garage shut the door behind you get out of your car and enter the house from the internal garage door. Some folks that we visited on the weekend said that although they knew that someone lived in the house next door to theirs (it was less than 15 feet from them) they would not know the man if they met him in the street. He has never come out of his front door - only coming out of the garage in his car. So, as we get near to the house, we push the garage door button and drive into the garage. Usually we leave the garage door open during the day as we tend to need to go in there to get things like tools. At some stage before we close up for the night, we close the garage door. On this particular occassion, we went into the garage to get the car to take the boys to school. The pesky beast had been in the garage and managed to get into the bin (knocking it over) and making a big mess. We also noticed that he had left some of his own deposits behind. Well I looked high and low to find out how he had got in. The only hole I could find was about 4 inches across, so I plugged it with wood. I also noticed some animal deposits on the garage roof. So the next night we made sure the bin was well sealed and the garage was safely sealed. I actually went into the garage about 9:00pm (after the garage doors had been closed for about 3 hours) and found he had been in and into the bin again. Put the rubbish back in the bin and an extra box on top of the bin. Next morning - same thing. Bin had been knocked over and more deposits left. When I came back from taking the boys to school that morning, there was a pest control van at one of the neighbour's houses. He was spraying the outside of their house to kill spiders! We know they have a greater disposable income than we have in the UK but really there must be better things to spend your money on. I asked the pest control man to come and take a look when he had finished his job. He looked around the garage and gave me all sorts of reasons that a raccoon would be able to get in. "They are really smart and they can lift up the garage door you know". Although he could not show me how the animal was actually getting in. He did think that he may be getting in through the roof and coming through the attic door. This tied up with the pooh on the roof as well. Anyway, he was a bug specialist. He suggested I call in the mammal experts. I thought I would have a go myself. So knowing that the animal had been into the garage before 9:00pm, I got myself a book and got inside the car at 8:30pm. Julian was quite concerned about this. The pest controller had said that the animals were strong enough to push the garage door up. Well since the garage door is attached to the auto opening mechanism, when it is down it is virtually locked. At least when I tried to open it when I was inside with Julian, I was unable to get it up more than and inch. This immediately led Julian to conclude that the animal must be much stronger than me and that if I was confronted by it I might be thrown in the lake by it! I closed up the garage, got inside the car and put the side lights of the car on. About 20 minutes later he appeared. I couldn't believe it. He appeared from behind a stack of boxes and rubbish in the corner. It was one place I had not looked behind to look for ways that he could get in. I looked at him for a while and decided that he was so docile looking that I could probably manage to get out the car, open the garage door, go and get Julian and a camera and come back in again. I shut the garage door behind me as I went to get him. We got back in the car together and waited another 10 minutes. Rocky came back. Julian was virtually wetting himself with excitement. He was less than 5 feet form us although we were safe inside the car. We took a load of pictures and watched him for about 20 minutes. He moved very slowly and seemed to be trying to crawl up the wall. He was eating the spiders that were crawling around in their webs. When we had had enough of all this we when back into the house making sure we left the garage door open for the night, so he would be free to come and go. Needless to say he got in the bin again that night and perhaps his mates had a go as well. The next day I pulled out all the trunks and rubbish to see how he had got in. I was surprised and sort of relieved to discover that there was no way in there. This guy had taken up residence and was living in the garage. He was so comfortable and had all his food provided that he didn't even need to leave. I subsequently discovered that he had gnawed the inside of the garage door in an attempt to get out. The pooh was the other clue. He had to because he could not get out. All the time we were thinking how did he get in but it was all about how he didn't get out. The thing was that during the day when the garage door would be left mainly open, you would have expected him to make a runner for it. Except that they are nocturnal creatures and he would have been sleeping during the day. So that's the story. We acquired another house guest. He has subsequently disappeared.

Dawn over the lake yesterday. 

We are back in business. Mr. Dell delivered my new beastie today. And what a beast it is. So give me a while to play with it and I will be back posting again.

Going Off-Line

We are losing my mum's laptop today and because of dickering on my part, I have not received my new one from Dell.  It is due to be here in the next week or 10 day, so stand by.

Day 34 - 8th September - First day of school and more Flowers, lots of flowers, music from a cello, children coming up and saying "Hi". This was how we started our first day at school. The Grade 8 students (about 12 or 13 of age) brought in the Grade 1 children (about 6 of them being at grade school for the first time) and introduced them to the school and gave them each a flower. We even caught Julian singing for the first time ever in assembly. This was a sound led by the music teacher who was also on her first day at the school. Julie and I dropped them off, attended the opening day assembly and then spent the next 4 and half hours going to the freight forwarders, the Canada Customs, then the warehouse to collect our tin trunk. We had sent this from UK with all our winter clothes and other things that we need for our trip. Then we collected the boys from school. We were anticipating a good report but they seemed a bit stunned by the difference to Christchurch. All the new things were a bit overwhelming. The next dayin the morning, Sammy was crying and Julian was not at all keen on going. However, a brief word with their teachers who were wonderfully empathetic with both the boys and they seemed to cheer up almost at once. Day two seemed much better and we were met by Elizabeth, one of the older memebers of staff again as we entered the school in the morning. She had met us in the evening to check how the boys were doing and to report on her observations of them throughout the day. It was very comforting to know someone was so interested in how they were fairing. Not quite what we have been used to. Julain was singing "O Canada" (the national anthem) on the way home from school!! The boys have a playground which is like the wildlife areas at St Saviours and Christchurch but with more trees, a climbing frame like the one we have in Acton and lots of fallen tree trunks and bits of wood to build forts and other boys hiding places. British Health and Saftey would not like it at all!! Day three at school saw them both bouncing out at the end of the day Julian with a Squash (vegetable) in his hand which his class had help harvest from the school garden. Telling us he liked his german teacher and now knew the french alphabet. Sammy was very pleased that they had, like Julians class, spent all afternoon painting on wet paper to produce an abstract. He has already commented on the fact that they have more time to do their work and complete it and he didn't feel as rushed as the lesson are in England to get it done quickly. The timetable is run on very different lines from that which we are used to with main lessons taking and hour and a half. So there is plenty of time . Sammy is enjoying his german lesson as they are concentating on animals and he keeps trying to spot wasps, as that is his favourite German word at present. So it looks like they are starting to adapt to the different format and we are hoping that this will be a very rewarding experience for them both. Lots of new ways of looking at learning which will refresh some of their (especially Julain's) ideas of what school is for. I have just made a batch of apple flap jacks as there is a parents coffee morning at the school so it will be nice to have some time to speak to some of the other parents and perhaps arrange for their children to visit with the boys after school some time. We haven't seen many other children since being on this trip and this has meant that the boys have had to rely more on each other which has had some high spots like sitting on the doorstep tonight eating their tea and chatting to each other about the chipmunk that lives under the front step! It has also had it's low spots like lots of fighting! We are hoping that the school will bring them a littel peace before we set off on our travels again.

Days 29 to 33 - 3rd to 7th September - Oakville OK so I' m cheating now. It has been impossible to do a daily blog just recently. There has been so much activity in the house. We have had new wooden floors put throughout the ground floor of the house and it took 4 men 2 days. Constant banging and moving around. Paul (my Mum's husband) is preparing to return to europe, so he is packing. We are preparing the boys for school so there are last minute trips to the shops for things like lunch boxes. We have been out on the boat again (still no fish) and on Monday (the day Paul flies out) we lost Julian at the Canadian Exhibition in Toronto. This is the exhibition (like a county fair) that has developed into a giant event that occurs over the last 2 weeks of August. It ends on the bank holiday labour day weekend (a week after the UK one) which was Monday. There was an airshow and huge theme park type fairground, concerts, fireworks and lots of shows for the kids. At lunch time in the food hall (10,000 poeple and 150 food concessions), we parked Julian to go and get some food. I went with Sammy in one direction to get kebabs and Julie went in the other direction to get Pizzas. Although Julian was told to stay and wait, he obviously decided not to. He explained later (and with some conviction which was quite convincing and indeed quite sensible) that after some time, Mummy had not re-appeared and he supposed that she was probably lost herself (not an unreasonable assumption). He therefore put into action the "lost boy procedure" that I had told them about at the entrance gate. In the event of being lost, return to the entrance gate just to the right of the huge wind turbine generator where we came in. After looking for him in the food hall for about an hour we despatched Paul back to the main gate to see if he was there. The distance from the food hall to the main gate being about half a mile. When he got there he discovered from the security guard that Julian had indeed arrived back at this gate but had subsequently been collected by the "lost child" department and driven by buggy to another location. After going over there and trying to persuade them that he (Paul) was actually a member of the Board family, they released Julian and returned to the food hall where we had a promised not to move an inch. Julian was quite rattled by the whole thing. Julie was getting very excited and I was sure that he would have followed my instruction to the letter and was quite content to collect him on our way home. Paul was completely soaked in swet as the temperature was baking and he was not dressed for the fair. Poor man had to fly back home in a set of sweaty clothes. Mum left the fair at 4:00pm to take Paul to the airport and we left at around 5:30pm on the train back to Oakville.

Day 28 - Oakville - Thursday 2nd September We visited Julian's teacher today and did some more of yesterdays type stuff. We bought a bow and arrow set for Sammy today. It was a real fibreglass one but a kids size. They had great fun in the garden but need to be supervised constantly. They could certainly loose an eye with one of these but we do allow them to play on their own if we know the other one is inside. The picture shows Julian with the weapon. Getting a bit twitchy now about going to school (at least Mum is) but we have a few distractions arranged for the weekend to keep them occupied You may have noticed a little envelope icon appearing beneath each of my posts, just to the right of the comment link. You can e-mail me (or any of us) directly from this icon. Bit obvious but I thought I would point it out anyway. You could also leave a comment. You could also do nothing. But then that's what you have been doing all along anyway. Thanks.

Look the point is this; my Tonka toy is bigger than yours and that's all there is to it. This beast (dwarfing our little volvo) has a 5.7 litre V8 engine. In the pick up are 2 bags of shopping. You never see one of these with any dirt on them. Coming soon to a street near you (as soon as they widen them all). 

Day 27 - Oakville - Wednesday 1st September Sammy and Paul spent the morning cutting down trees and then we went to the Waldorf school to meet Sammy's teacher. Then shopping for school bits, food, more cheap shoes and I started putting together the spec. for a new laptop. This is now becoming an urgent purchase as my Mum leaves in 7 or 8 days from now and then we are laptopless. Is it better to go for the 60gb hard drives that spins at 7,200 rpm or the 80 or 100gb drive that only spins at 4,700 rpm:(answer: go for spin speed for quicker data access?). These are the types of questions I am pondering. There is lots to do.

Day 26 - Toronto (Oakville) - 31st August

Sleep, sleep and sleep.

Did nothing and slept.

To: The Wolfson and Haberman Families

From: The Thank You Very Much Department

What can we say? What can we do?

We so enjoyed your hospitality and generous outpouring of love for us. We have never been so feted, ever. It was if we were your family.

Thank you.

We will never forget our time in Pittsburgh and will always hanker to visit again.

If you ever want to come to London again (after we get back of course) you must come to see us.
If you ever wanted to visit Toronto - come now. We will be here until at least the middle of November.

Than you once again.

Love from

Richard, Julie, Julian and Sammy

Day 25 - Pittsburgh to Toronto - Monday 30th August

We spent the day preparing ourselves for the night time trip to Toronto. It's a distance of 350 miles and we booked to go by Greyhound Bus.

During the morning we packed and tried to remove any evidence of ourselves from our hosts house. Then we were collected at 4:00 pm by Cheryl and taken to the bus terminal in downtown Pittsburgh. What we hadn't realised was, that there would be so many stops and transfers on this trip. The idea was that we would travel by night, the boys would be asleep and that we would arrive in Toronto at dawn. What happened was that we left at 6:15pm and the first stop was at 9:15pm. Here we had to get off the bus and wait 2 hours in the bus terminal (not sure where we were but it could have been Erie, P.A.) for the next connection. They had helpfully provided some arcade video games for us to play with but after we had spent about CND$6 on games (that were 25cents a pop) we had done them all. Daddy showed them all how to play Pacman, getting the highest score of the day. After all I must have spent a fortune on this game when it first came out in the mid to late '70s and I hadn't lost the knack!

Our next bus left and took us for another couple of hours to drive to buffalo, N.Y. We arrived here about 1:30am. By this time the boys had been asleep and we now wide awake again. This led to some interesting situations. Buffalo bus terminal is actually a very fine place. At least I think it would be during the day. When you are trying to manage 2 boys who have suddenly come back to life at 2:00am in the morning and you feel like hell, it's the worst place in the world.

Got on the next bus around 3:30am and got everyone settled for the final journey to Toronto. Only to be turfed off the bus some 30 minutes later as we arrived at the border point. All off the bus again with all our luggage, go through customs, get back on the bus, try to get to sleep, arrive in TO, find a train to take us to Oakville, get a cab back home and arrive there at about 7:30am. We all slept until midday!

Day 24 - Pittsburgh, P.A. - Sunday 29th August (Ok so I am a few days behind - just hang in there!) We were collected this morning by Matt and Traci whom we had met last night. Matt is Nick's uncle but since Nicks Grandad had 9 children and Nick's father is the oldest, it is perhaps no surprise that Matt was (how shall we say it) a younger man. They took us to a great church in downtown Pittsburgh. This church was a growing church. They have already crammed in 4 services into the morning. They have ushers that will ensure that every seat is filled. The capacity was perhaps 400 or 500 per service. It causes so much traffic in the area on a Sunday morning that there is a traffic cop directing operations in the street outside. The church is called ACAC (Allegheny Center Alliance Church) and we very much enjoyed the service. God has been good to us so far on our trip and it is a real pleasure to be in a great church with great people, to give thanks. Thank you Lord. We took Matt and Traci to lunch at a place called Eat and Park. I originally thought they called it "Eton Park" which of course sounds quite grand. Now this place was not the grandest looking of all places but the food was very good. Just not quite sure why it wasn't called "Park and Eat" as that is the more usual course of events. In the evening I went with Sammy and Lindsay's dad Tim, to a free rock concert. Throughout the summer they have free concerts in the park. This one was a band called "Better than Ezra". I can't say I had heard of them consciously but they seemed vaguely familiar and the music was great. This was Sammy's first proper rock concert and he loved it too. It was in a great meadow and we played frisbee before the band started. The band did this thing where they asked if anyone in the audience could play guitar. They found a guy who could and knew their music well. They got him to play lead guitar and do all the jumping bits which was great fun. Apparently Bono did this at a concert of his with 60,000 people and ended up being outplayed by a 14 year old. I was waiting for the drummer to ask the same question ............