Lord and Lady Coleman are in fact title-bearers, and are heirs to the fortune of Coleman mustard, which is apparently a famous mustard brand. I had never heard of it, but I have never like mustard. I googled it and found this advertis-ment.
Their Lordships are kind enough to lend half of their home (and several jars of their mustard) out to the church for week-ends away. So I was first on the list when the country getaway was announced, and I spent the past weekend living a la Downton Abbey.
The lovely, massive, home we stayed in was purely for our use. I think it must have once housed servants, judging by the massive kitchen stocked with everyone to cook in bulk. Lord and Lady Coleman live next door, in the proper house. The house was massive with a lovely dining room, living room, and 10+ bedrooms all with proper names, like "The Rose Room" and such. I was in the Chinese Room, which I called the Chinese Torture Room because it was freezing. I forgot to pack my hot water bottle.
The 20 some of us on the weekend arrived to a roaring fireplace, homemade pizzas popping out of the oven, and what seemed like an unlimited supply of wine. We spent the evening carb-loading and chatting and playing games.
I joined in for a friendly round of Articulate!, which is basically the same game as Taboo except without the list of taboo words. There are cards with people, places, things, actions, etc on them that you must make people on your team guess, but you can say anything but the word to get people to guess it.
I thought this would be ridiculously easy, since there was no forbidden words! But imagine my shock when the first card I drew said "Stinging Nettle."
I have no idea what a stinging nettle even is!
It only got worse from there, when I got
"Snowdrop", "Duke of Wellington", and "ladybird"
How does one describe things when they haven't clue what they are?
I thought it might be easier when someone else from my team was doing the describing and I was simply guessing. But I failed to guess "paddling" when my teammate described it as "sort of puttering about in the shallow bits of the water"
It all made for a quite a laugh. I was a pretty Rubbish teammate, but I did get one English thing correct - Delia Smith. She's a big chef here who I know because of her insane baked goods recipes. My sugar obsession proves to be useful from time to time.
I was nearly ready to retire to my room, when someone cheerfully announced, "who's up for a midnight ramble?"
Although I thought, "a what?" something possessed me to say "me!" and that's how I ended up scared to death on a pitch black walk through the forest surrounding the grounds at 2am where we saw deer, owls, and bats. Or vampires - depending on what you believe.
At least the next time I play Articulate I will be set if "ramble" is on my card.
I was only tucked in bed a few hours before I had to wake up to help prepare breakfast.
There was quite a dispute between the group leaders about having a "proper cooked breakfast" or just cereal, toast, and fruit. The English consider a morning with a cooked breakfast a morning lost, but I did not mind setting out some yogurt rather than cooking up fatty sausages and frying eggs. I have tried to like an English breakfast, I really have, but it just gross. Everything about it is gross.
See below, starting from noon and going clockwise.
Black Pudding - blood cooked with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. Now doesn't that just sound delicious?
Greasy Sausage, and fatty slices of cooked ham that they call bacon.
Eggs. Usually fried, but here they are scrambled. This is the only bit I can stomach.
Fried bread. Bread that has been sliced and fried in bacon fat. Also known as a slice of heart attack.
Fried tomatoes and mushrooms. Why not take the only healthy bit on the plate and destroy it's chance for adding nutritional value by frying it?
Baked beans. Keep them by the camp-fire, please. They don't belong at breakfast.
Needless to say, I was most grateful for a banana and granola in lieu of proper English breakfast.
The schedule made for the day was pretty full, but we had actual 20 minute breaks for tea time where tea and biscuits were served. It is still hilarious to me that the English would never consider planning a schedule without allotting a slot for "tea team".
We also had a few hours of free time to do whatever we liked in the afternoon. So since it was the most beautiful, clear blue skied day, I joined in on the team going on an afternoon run - which was only 5 of the 30 of us. The others hung around chasing the sheep on the grounds, drinking tea, and napping.
It was so wonderful to breathe in clean country air! The run, although creating jabbing pains everywhere in my body, was beautiful. The path we ran down was surrounded by massive, spanning fields with horses nibbling on grass and ancient trees rising high up, we passed a barn with roosters clucking about, and a little cottage that looked like it had popped out of a fairytale and onto the road.
It was such a beautiful and picturesque place, it made me never want to come back to London. I could be very happy becoming a Lady myself and living in a manor house like Malshanger. I wouldn't even need a maid or a cook or a chauffeur, like they have in Downton Abbey. Just the title and the land would do.
My Downton Abbey fantasy was taken a step further as the evening approached, and we all put on our 1920s fancy dress and began the Murder Mystery Game and Dinner.
I am always impressed with how in-character men can get. Everyone of the guys was dressed in a suite or tux, hat, one even wearing an old tails coat that was his "gran-dads." Simply brilliant.
We had quite a good time wineing and dining and pretending to murder each others. Since the characters were all mobsters in New York, I got to hear everyone's (crap) American accent. The game, that should have only been about 45 minutes went on for hours and ended with a dancing of the Charleston in the common room.
The weekend away was such a lovely and much needed escape. To leave the hustle and bustle and be able to run through green fields with sunshine on your face and farm animals running about was heaven. I even heard the Rooster cock-a-doodle-do this morning. I wasn't sure if that was even a real thing before today.
I live in a house full of Brits, but spending the weekend in a massive, English manor house with 30 Brits took it to a whole different level. I was in constant laughter as ridiculous things were being said left and right and the cultural differences became more and more apparent. You'd think after 4 months the novelty of the accent and language would wear off, but all it takes is someone to refer to a minivan as a "people carrier" to send me into a fit of laughter.
It's certainly a different world over here. With manor homes and midnight rambles, whetabix and blood-themed cusine. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to some of the things or feel I am at home, but I could definitely get used to scheduling a time to sip tea and eat biscuits every afternoon - so I'll cheers to that! With my pinky out, of course.
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