islandhippy

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Four generations of Tathams and Hayllers celebrate Granny Tatham’s 98th birthday with lunch at Baxter Farm. Thanks Mum and Dad for a lovely lunch! This is what we’re missing stuck halfway round the world in Singapore.

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Halfway through our 3-month holiday in England …

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Sandy, Leo, Olive and Phil (henceforth known as SLOP) left London for rural Nottinghamshire and stayed with Phil’s parents in Willoughby on the Wolds for a week.

The heatwave in UK continues — grandpa sunbathes while Olive sensibly retreats to her castle.

We’re short of beds so Leo’s sleeping in the cupboard.

Olive celebrated her 3rd birthday with [...]

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Sandy, Olive, Leo and Phil are on a three-month working holiday in Europe. We need to change the blog’s tagline to “Life in the UK with baby … and baby”. The following photos were taken during our first week in London staying with Holly and Nel.

Olive hanging out with her cousins Oscar (left) and Ralph [...]

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Ooooooh my god! Sandy told me to keep 10 days free in Feb for a surprise holiday to celebrate my 40th birthday but I never expected this. I arrived at the airport with no idea of the destination and no clue as to what Sandy and the kids had planned for me. I guess I [...]

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Olive’s preschool, Carpe Diem Kidz, held a Christmas party in which Olive and her classmates sang a song in English and Chinese. Sorry for the poor AV quality, hubby shot the video from some distance on his iPhone while carrying Leo. Olive is standing in the back row somewhere in the middle (below the “AR” [...]

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Olive learns how to make glutinous rice balls for the Chinese winter solstice festival “tang yuan”, celebrated in 2010 on 22 Dec.

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A belated Merry Christmas to all.
This year we celebrated Christmas with Sandy’s family up in Kuala Lumpur and avoided the whole turkey palaver by going out for Christmas lunch. Stick-in-the-mud traditionalist Phil still insisted on ordering a Christmas turkey platter with all the trimmings, while everybody else wisely chose pasta or all-day breakfast. (”Hey, [...]

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… if nothing else that we could enjoy
Our hopes for a 24-hour break from diapers and high-chairs — our first 24-hour break together in two years — were dashed when Olive came down with a temperature hours before our “holiday”. Sandy’s family were due to come down from Malaysia to look after Olive [...]

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Last weekend I followed a dozen Nature Society of Singapore (NSS) birders, led by Sutari bin Supari (aka Malay pot-bellied laughing thrush), to Tanjung Tuan on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia to witness the annual raptor migration from Sumatra to Malaysia.
This being my first overseas NSS trip, I was somewhat anxious to find [...]

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As if a 7kg turkey wasn’t enough on Christmas Day, we had another lovely turkey dinner on Boxing Day with Don’s family and Drunkle Sri. Then the following day, on the Sunday, the neighbours threw a post Christmas potluck party. Sandy prepared green salad with mango and avocado, Phil cooked an Italian meatball dish. Somebody [...]

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If you’re suffering from Singapore island fever or tiring of Christmas shopping in featureless Singapore malls that all contain exactly the same shops, dim the lights, turn up the volume and enjoy this beautiful video of blue cranes learning to fly that was shot in South Africa by Christian Letruria with music by Sigur Ros [...]

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Last night we celebrated the Chinese mid-autumn festival with a mooncake BBQ-cum-lantern parade at Karen and James’ house down the road. Each of the five toddlers present carried their own lantern, from the traditional candle-in-paper variety to the battery-operated-musical-flashing-inflatable kind. I believe we were supposed to eat mooncakes but everybody was so stuffed after the [...]

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[Olive recuperating in Holly's back garden in London]
It’s been 48 hours since Olive was discharged from hospital in Nottingham and we’re still having trouble getting her to eat and drink. We’re now in London and we’re supposed to fly to France tomorrow to spend a week in a tiny four-house hamlet halfway up a mountain [...]

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I’m blogging from Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, where Olive has been hospitalized for over 24 hours following two febrile convulsions and dehydration due to a viral infection. Poor Olive was hooked up to an intravenous drip for about twelve hours but that’s just been removed and we’re hoping she will be discharged very soon. [...]

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‘Daddy is such a greedy bugger. He ate my in-flight meal!’ Olive (photographed playing in the sandpit with cousin Oscar at Baxter Farm)
Embarrassing but true. The Qantas steward dumped a ’special’ meal in front of me. I protested saying I hadn’t ordered a special meal so he showed me the foil packet which had ‘TATHAM [...]

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Living in one of Singapore’s only neighbourhoods with no cable access means we rely on Starhub’s wireless network, the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) system, for our viewing needs. We get a much more limited range of channels than regular cable subscribers but it’s better than nothing (also known as Singapore TV). We haven’t left the [...]

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The Good

Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad with Sourdough Toast. Smoked Eel, Beetroot & Horseradish. Casual atmosphere. Reasonable prices (compared to Singapore). Minimalist decor. Friendly staff.

The Bad

Tasty but not outstanding; I expected more from a Michelin-starred restaurant. However, the menu changes daily and there are so many dishes I’ve read about which I still want [...]

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Jay
I had lunch with Faith yesterday and marveled at the bird life in her walled garden. It was a beautiful sunny day so we ate in the conservatory and watched the birds poke around in the garden and feed on nuts from a hanging bird-feeder. In the time it took my grandmother and I to [...]

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Ariel played by Atandwa Kani (photo taken from the RSC website)
I’m back in England for London Book Fair and was very lucky to be invited to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest in association with South Africa’s Baxter Theatre Centre. I’d never read The Tempest before but it translated well to a [...]

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On Sunday evening we ushered in the Year of the Ox with Reunion Dinner at Sandy’s parent’s new house in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Absent with apologies was Sandy’s brother, who had to work the following day up in Penang, but present at the table for the first time was baby Olive. I was kind of [...]

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Sandy, Olive and I joined Mum and Dad on a bracing walk from the windmill in Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, through Cley marshes to the shingle beach, and back again.

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Sandy, Olive and I celebrated New Year in Norfolk, England, together with Mum, Dad, Holly, Nel and Oscar. We rented a tiny cottage in the village of Sharrington just outside Holt and froze our butts off in sub-zero temperatures.

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As we live the other side of the world, in Singapore, this is our chance to catch up with, or meet for the first time in Olive’s case, friends and relatives in the UK. Holly has very kindly organised an open day at her house in London next weekend and we hope to see lots [...]

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Olive awoke on Christmas Day to find her first Christmas stocking (surely that’s a pillowcase. Ed.).

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Singapore Zoo has nothing on Baxter Farm. Above are Nel, Oscar, Sandy and Olive choosing a bird for the table.
Basil the cat is the same size as Olive:

Reindeer in the garden:

Oscar’s best friend is Zozo the sheep:

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