Oct 2006

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October 2006

28-29 September 2006, Scarborough

28 Sept, our first post-world trip day. We woke up in our temporary "home", chez Caz & Andy, where we're staying in their barn, which is gradually being done up and converted. We stayed here for a while in June while we took a break from our travels, and it already felt familiar to us. There had been some changes though. Stairs had now been built, leading up to a temporary bedroom, and we had a rudimentary bedroom of our own. The shower was still a work in progress, but it was only a short dash across the pebbles of driveway, to the main house. Caz & Andy (and Joe, Ben and especially Bud!) made us feel very welcome, the two nomadic travellers. We were in a complete limbo, with lots of uncertainties ahead of us, and it was thanks to this "space" that Caz & Andy had created for us that we were able to slowly being the process of planning and preparing for our post-travel lives. First there were various appointments to keep, a round of seeing family and friends. The rest could wait for the time being.

30 September - 2 October 2006, Woody's Party, Barry's Play and St Albans

We headed down to Reading first, to be there for Woody's first birthday. Mischa and Greg were keen to make it an occasion for a family party and house-warming, as they had just recently moved to their new house. Mama had already flown over from Belgium and had been staying with Mischa and Greg for a few days, and it all worked out quite beautifully. We had booked into a nearby hotel, the old Hillingdon Prince, now a Comfort Inn. It was great to see Mama, Mischa, Greg and Woody, all looking very good and relaxed. The party was a success and I think Mischa and Greg had put a lot of effort in to make sure it all went smoothly. After the party we drove to meet Mark and Margaret in St Albans. Last time, in June, we had stayed at Margaret's house. This time round we were staying at Mark's and again, as before, we were made to feel very welcome and at home. We took a train into London to go and see Barry tread the boards again, playing the role of Doctor Azov in Chekov's Uncle Vanya. Tuck and Sarah also came to the play. It had been ages since we had last seen/spoken with them. They arrived a little late but managed to discreetly squeeze onto the front row. At the interval we caught up with them. Tuck was looking very thin due to some problems with his digestion and now has to stick to plain foods, a pity for a guy who used to like his food so much! The play was an excellent production by the Tower Theatre Company and Barry's performance was outstanding. He and Frank were going through a tough patch and had pretty much split up by now. After the play we carried on to Barry's flat and stayed up late, talking, drinking and having a chinky. We had planned to head back up to St Albans but instead spent the night at Barry's. The following morning we walked to Tower Bridge and along the Thames, past the HMS Belfast, and to London Bridge station. It was an odd sensation, back in our old city which now no longer was home. We had mixed feelings, looking around us at London and agreeing that we still liked it and, under different circumstances might still live here. But our priorities had changed over the course of the past year and a half or more and we were pretty clear that we wanted more than just city now. At London Bridge station I bought some droewors (South African cured sausage, for which I acquired a taste in Namibia and South Africa) from a stall, we picked up coffees and croissants and caught the train to St Albans, feeling rather sheepish when we got back to Mark's but fortunately they didn't mind. Later we went out for a walk with Mark and Margaret, watching the paragliders at (SOMETHING DYKE), and then went for a typically English gastro-pub lunch in a picturesque little village (NAME?) with a pretty little pond. A great weekend!

On monday we left St Albans and drove down to Blackheath, where our stuff had been put in storage. We had called ahead so they could arrange for one of our five containers (small ones, not ship size ones!) to be extracted so we could get some basic essentials out of storage, mostly "normal" clothes. Blackheath was a strange area, with on the one hand a prim village with a pretty church, green common, and a curious skyline consisting of the top halves of the gleaming office towers of the docklands beyond the greenery. But on the other hand there were the run-down estates, one of which we ended up driving round when we lost our way. We briefly entered a world of Somalis living in squalid grey apartment blocks, with the majority of the windows smashed in. In fact, at first we thought these estates surely couldn't have anyone living in them, they looked so run-down and abandoned, but then we saw people, mostly Somalis and other Africans. What a terrible place. The Ferrier Estate, that was it. Eventually we tracked down our storage company, and it turned out that the crate we needed was a differennt one, so we ended up heading back into the village centre of Blackheath to kill some time while the correct crate was located. Lunch at a nice Pizza Express, and I took some snaps of the common, under a brooding sky with darkening clouds. Later in the afternoon we came back to James Removals, collected some clothes, and then rest was put back into storage for a future date. Then we drove up to Solihull, a short little hop along the British motorways.

3-4 October 2006, Solihull

- 3/10 the back-to-backs in birmingham

- 4/10 romeo & juliet ballet? (one of these days)

5-6 October 2006, Harrogate

- 5/10 drive up to harrogate (one of caz's colleagues was booked on a course but couldn't go so we got a cheap hotel room)

- 6/10 harrogate, walk, pump room, gardens, café, town crier

- 7/10 ?

- 8/10 walking along the beach with caz andy and bud, beautiful light, andy taking pics of reflections

- 9/10 out together, just the two of us - filey? little place along the coast

- 10/10 out to whitby, grey and cold day, james cook museum, magpie café, climb up to abbey

- 11-12/10 no idea - presumably admin days at caz & andy's

- 13/10 take bud for a walk, lovely sunny day, mama calls on mobile while we're out walking

- 14/10 drive up to north berwick

- 15/10 our first day in our new flat, with "european sausages, cous-cous and mediterranean veggies" for dinner

- 17/10 misty walk with Mark, Trossachs, pint at the Lade Inn

- 21/10 beach walk

- 22/10 another walk with Mark, Ness sprains and strains, Ben Vane? Ben Venue?

- 26/10 beach walk

- 31/10 another walk with Mark, freezing cold and Brian ends up getting double pneumonia

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