You Got Mail

May 31, 2017 hollywoodwife2countrylife4 Comments

I am well aware that this blog is supposed to be about finding cool and trendy things to do in the countryside so a post about post offices may just make anyone who is reading this switch off.

Village Post Office in England — The next village’s post office is positively buzzing!

But I can’t help it. I’m taking a rain check on my post about a fantastic holiday in Devon for one about mail or post or whatever you want to call it.

A country road in Somerset, England — Traffic getting there was a nightmare

When we moved back to England a very good friend suggested my daughter and hers, who had known each other since they were babies, became pen friends.

Obviously being three and four years old they weren’t going to conjure up handwritten masterpieces, but we figured scribbles and stickers would be greatly appreciated.

However, the contents of the packages was less problematic than the physical action of posting them.

I kid you not that my email (yes, I’m aware of the electronic irony) to said pen pal friend’s mum read:

“I’m glad she liked the card. H has written T another one, but the pace of village life means the post office comes to visit us just once a week in the Working Man’s Club,” I wrote. “I wish I was joking! I haven’t plucked up the courage to go in there yet. I don’t know what I’m expecting to find, but I I keep getting visions of the last man standing from the night before, being left in charge of the first class stamps and the stamp sticker pad has gone missing. This means he takes it upon himself to lick the stamps and even worse my envelopes with his stale cider breath,” I continued.

“So instead I drive to the next village where there’s an actual PO that stays open all day – except for lunchtime of course, because with all that foot traffic they need a rest. It also sells pet food, imports the local old lady’s knitted goods and if you’re really lucky you’ll find a second hand hamster cage for sale.”

Crafts at the village post office — ‘Craft services’ brought on a whole new meaning at the village post office

She responded by writing that she’d “audibly gasped”.

But my fascination with the place meant I insisted on my husband paying it a visit too, only he had to leave because he said it made him want to cry!

I, on the other hand, love it. I’ve even braved the Working Man’s Club post office too. I won’t lie, it was weird. There was a raffle and they were setting up tea and biscuits, but it beats standing in a half hour queue at the Hollywood Post Office where I was generally greeted with gritted teeth, a frown and a $45 price tag to send a letter home.

hollywood california post office — My old local post office in Hollywood, California

My only issue with going again is that I’ve just been told the Natwest Banking Van visits Martock on a Wednesday and I’m not sure I’ve got enough time to post a letter, have a free cuppa and get to the next village in time to pile into the back of a van to deposit my pennies!

The Ex-Files

May 23, 2017May 23, 2017 hollywoodwife2countrylifeLeave a comment

From time to time, I get my city fix. I jump on the train (see the picture of my rural station below where if you look carefully you can see “the path to town” on the right!!!) and spend two wonderfully quiet hours headed to the big smoke for work or to meet friends. I enjoy the fact it doesn’t matter if I get on the tube going in the wrong direction because I don’t have to lug two kiddies off and on the train, with the awful fear of leaving one stood on the platform!! It’s a nightmare of mine, and a reality to a family member who did just that in Singapore! But that’s another story. Knowing I don’t know many people in this vast city and I bump past no familiar faces is kind of refreshing. But all of that went out the window last week when I bumped into possibly one of the worst people I could have…my ex-boyfriend.

I’m not talking about a recent ex, I’ve been married 9 years and with my husband for 11.

I’m talking about the ex boyfriend I had in Los Angeles before getting together with my husband.

I’m talking about the ex boyfriend who, the last I heard was living in New York.

I’m also talking about the ex boyfriend who apparently still calls me ‘The Poison Dwarf’ – I barely break the 5ft barrier, so he’s not completely wrong.

So when I was tucking into my Bakewell Tart in a cafe in Green Park, London, a place I’d NEVER been before I practically spat my Americano across the packed place in horror when I saw him walk in.

At first I thought “it can’t be” then I thought “it could be” and when he turned round I saw “it f***** was”. I could have done the adult thing and said hello, even just put my head down and hoped he didn’t see me. But I took the very childish route instead. I threw the remains of my cake into my oversized handbag – and yes for those who follow me on Facebook, it was the one I carried a jar of mayonnaise containing my son’s poop to hospital in – and tried to flee.

I could feel I wasn’t being subtle. I was making more of a scene as I tried to squeeze through the birthing canal that this too small exit route had become. My bag was whacking angry city workers and because I had my head down, I’m sure I bore a strikingly resemblance to a rugby prop (or perhaps an angry dwarf?). It all began to happen in slow motion, he was getting closer to the front of the line and I had to pass that point to make my escape. I couldn’t physically turn around and if I got any lower I’d have been crawling on the floor. So why, in that moment, I decided the only thing to do was to fake taking a phone call, I have no idea. As I burst into the fresh – if not slightly smoggy – air I realised that if he hadn’t seen me already, he’d certainly heard me now!!

I continued that fake phone call for the next few minutes as I power walked out of the joint at such speed I probably looked like a shoplifter. The thing is I think I’d have preferred to explain myself to an officer of the law, than make small talk with my ex, who the last time I saw actually growled at me and said: “urghh. What’s she doing here?”.

It put me on edge for the rest of the afternoon and very almost put me off my lunchtime ‘Langan’s‘ fishcakes as I kept looking over my shoulder for fear of who else I might come across.

Serves me right for escaping the countryside for the day!

– Oh and Mr. Ex-boyfriend, if you ever read this I’m really sorry I didn’t stop and say hi – but then again, you’re probably not.

Bus Snob

May 11, 2017May 16, 2017 hollywoodwife2countrylife1 Comment

I’m not a snob. I’m far from it. I currently drive a 15-year-old Volvo that has ‘C U Next Tuesday’ scrawled into the back of it. It’s very subtle and if you glanced at it, you may even think it was a cool piece of graffiti. Anyway, I’m not a snob, but I don’t like the bus and that may sound snobby. I didn’t like going to school on it in England, it always had a whiff of wee and somehow no matter where I sat, my seat felt and smelled like the crusty carpet of a dodgy nightclub. So I avoided riding it in Hollywood. In fact my sister-in-law was the only person I knew who did, and her route was to Beverly Hills, so I always felt that didn’t count.

South Petherton Trading Post Railway Cafe

If I didn’t want to sit on a bus, I definitely didn’t want to eat on one. You can imagine my horror then when a mum at my daughter’s ballet class in the country suggested I take the kids to dine on an old disconnected railway carriage. My terror only escalated when she added “they’ve got an old bus you can eat on too.”

The bus! Photos don’t do the place justice

My face may have said it all as I had visions of sitting on a pee ridden backseat tucking into a grotty old sandwich brought in from the local petrol station. But on her insistence that the Trading Post was “lovely” I braved it.

I’m glad I did. The food, no joke, was the best I’d had in a VERY long time, their menu may have been tiny, but it was incredible! The bus was decked out with cute wooden tables and chairs and the train carriage had old seats and train tables converted too. Everything, with the exception of my two kids who hardly touched their lunch because they wanted to go and see the massive fat pig wallowing in mud outside, was outstanding.

There wasn’t a tramp in sight and even if there had been, I almost couldn’t have cared less…