Author’s Note: I stopped blogging regularly in 2020, but now in 2023, I am using Google Photos and Google Maps timeline to recreate a post about what we were up to each month!
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Well June certainly started on the right foot with some donuts from our new favorite place - Happy Donuts! If I recall correctly these flavours are Red Velvet and Lemon Meringue Pie and while they were both delicious, the lemon was the winner! (P.S. I chose the red one because the day before was Pentecost, iykyk.)
I think this marks the month that Joel and I fell in love with the plant, Jasmine. On our many walks around the city, we kept getting a whiff of something that was just the most incredible, intoxicating scent. We finally narrowed it down to this plant and identified it with the help of some of our friends when we posted it on Facebook. [Note: I’m writing this now in September 2023 and just this week we planted our own Jasmine, something we had been wanting to do since 2020! I can see it from my study window and can’t wait till it is blooming and smelling wonderful.]
Sometimes it feels like all we did this summer was walk, but at least we were in the most amazing place to do so. More wandering through Kensington Gardens brought us to The Albert Memorial. This incredibly monument was commissioned by Queen Victoria to memorialize her husband who died in 1861. At the time it cost £120,000 which is worth more than £10 million pounds today. Can you imagine? I don’t think the royals get away with stuff like that anymore.
On the first weekend in June, I got to attend the Iowa Annual Conference online! This was going to be the first year that I couldn’t attend Annual Conference (in 2018 I went before we left the country and in 2019 we happened to be back in Iowa during that time) so I was delighted there was an online option. The different time zone made it a little weird but it was great to be able to participate!
Around this time I decided I wanted to try my hand at growing our own herbs on the kitchen windowsill. Everyone seemed to be taking up gardening in the pandemic but we didn’t have any outside space to call our own. So herbs seemed like the next best thing! We got Basil, Mint, and Coriander (Cilantro.) Fun fact: Brits pronounce the “h” in herbs and look at us funny when we don’t. [Note: These herbs survived London, the Basil and Mint made it to Monmouth, and none of them made it to Caldicot.]
We also fell prey to some more online shopping. Remember how last month we randomly ordered a case of wine because we got a coupon when Joel bought some shoes? Well, the wine came with coupons for plants…so we bought a plant. Look how pretty! Funny story - this plant got delivered on a Sunday (who knew?!) and the bell rang while I was in the middle of preaching for Zoom Church - Joel had to run downstairs and get it from the guy while I tried not to be too distracted. Ah, the perils of online church from home. [Note: This plant has survived and currently thrives in our dining room.]
On a random Friday night wander we ended up at the Kensington Town Hall. Weirdly, for a government building and especially one during the pandemic, it was open to the public! So we had a nice wander around. There was some really lovely art by local artists on the walls, and this meeting room had a really cool light fixture.
The next day we decided to splurge on some takeaway for lunch and eat it in the park. The weather was gorgeous (like it often seems to be? Like, for real, how do people complain about the weather here?!) Joel likes to smile with food in his mouth if I try to take pics while we are eating, so now that is getting posted on the internet. You’re welcome, babe!
If you recall, I was working at Notting Hill Methodist Church (as much as one could work for a church part-time during the pandemic) and the church is just around the corner from Grenfell Tower. This is a housing block in London that on 14 June 2017 suffered a devastating fire that burned for 60 hours and killed 72 people. On the night of the fire, my colleague Mike opened the church and it served as a safe point for rescue workers and people escaping the fire. Every year since on the anniversary there has been a memorial and a continued push for safer housing (there is evidence that it was government neglect that led to the fire.) You can read more about it here.
Some of the memorials were placed at the church.
And others were placed closer to the scene of the fire.
It felt particularly poignant to remember this at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, as most of the residents of Grenfell were black or other minorities. There were candles and memorials all over the city that night.
A few days later, on an evening wander, I happened to glance in the window of a charity shop and noticed a pair of Rothy’s shoes. Now, if you are familiar with Rothy’s, you know that getting a pair at a thrift shop is a huge score! They were closed at the time but I immediately told Joel we needed to come back first thing in the morning to see if they were my size. So we went back promptly at 9am and while they were a little bigger than what I would order they fit well enough, so for £20 they were mine! I felt like I hit the jackpot so I shopped a little more that day to see if I could get lucky again. (Also, it was nice that some stores were open again!) I found this gorgeous green polka dot dress and you can see the red Rothy’s that I was wearing when I found it. [Note: 3 years later this dress no longer fits me…but I’m working to get back to it!]
Not only were non-essential stores starting to open again (with masks and distancing) but we were finally allowed to gather with people outside of our household in small numbers. We had become friends with the property guy for the church so we met up with him for a picnic in the park. I didn’t take any pics of all three of us or the food, but I did get this cute selfie with my hat! (Because, again, it was a super sunny day!)
So far I haven’t shared the less glamorous side of our life in London which is…we had mice in our flat! We had been fighting them basically since we moved in…with traps and poison and a nose thingy that was supposed to keep them away…but it was rough. They got into some of our food and they kept Joel up at night (luckily I’m a heavy sleeper.) Eventually we convinced the church they needed to do something so they sent a guy to seal up some holes in the wall where they were getting in (let’s just say the remodel done before we moved was not exactly perfect.) So here is our kitchen torn apart for that fun task.
We ended the month by creating what was to become one of our favourite foods for a long time - the breakfast chimichanga! Mexican food is basically non-existent in the UK (and what is here is usually not great) so we quickly learned that if we wanted it we would have to learn to make our own. For the breakfast chimi we scramble eggs with veggies and sausage and spices, then wrap it up in a tortilla with plenty of cheese, then Joel fries it (I’m scared of hot oil) before serving it with salsa and sour cream. It is so good and we ate this for breakfast almost every day for years after this. [Note: It’s fun to look back and see this is where it started. And now I am craving one again!]
So there you have it, an overview of our June 2020! I think this time in London really had us living into our whole concept of "the big and the small." Here we were doing something BIG (living in London!) and yet we mostly had to focus on the small as the pandemic restricted what we could and couldn't do. Funny how life works out.
XOXO, Bethany