Thursday, January 11, 2007

New Year Round-up

We are now back to the Big Lychee and unfortunately I am back to work after a packed trip back home. In fact we nearly did not make it back to UK as V. developed a high temperature on the day we were due to travel. Fortunately were were able to swop the tickets (at some cost) and there was availability for the identical flight two days later. Even then, Heathrow was closed to domestic flights due to fog and we must have been among the first flights to touch down that day (at 5.45am).Flight was not too bad with V. in a bassinet (sp?) and A. managing to get some sleep.

Picked up the hire car OK and arrived at my parents house at around 9.30am. Nobody home so called around to my sister's and introduced the two new arrivals J and V. for the first time. Finally caught up with my parents and showed them V. and reintroduced them to A. who had grown very considerably since they had last seen him nearly a year ago (by around 3 inches according to the marks on the door at his other grandparents house).

The next few days passed in a whirl including a lovely Christening for Verity at the church at my old primary school at which many of our friends and relatives managed to attend even though it was Christmas Eve and an excellent party at my Sister's house afterwards for which we will always be grateful to my parents and sister and B her husband for organising. It was a truly magical day.

Christmas Day was spent in a haze of present opening and Dinner at my Cousin's house where his wife A. cooked a fabulous Turkey dinner for 12. We left in the early hours and were up shortly afterwards (at least E. was) when V. (still on Hong Kong time as she was for much of the trip) decided that it was time to wake and see what the day had to offer.

The next few days were spent with my Sister and her family and A. and his Cousin N played (reasonably) well together. We managed to find time to visit a rare-breeds farm and spent a couple of very pleasant hours looking at various farm animals and their young (and the rest of the holiday smelling vaguely of pig poo - at least they were pedigree pigs!).

We then travelled down to E's parents in the West Country where we had a very relaxing time meeting up with E.s brother D (who we had recently seen in HK) and her Aunt. We also managed a couple of shopping trips to Bristol and also my first proper trip to Bath - very genteel - very much the Tunbridge Wells of the West Country. All to soon we were making our way back to Heathrow (although we had tacked on 2 days to the original holiday becasue of losing the two days at the beginning).

Notwithstanding the very lenghty security checks we had an incident-free flight back to HK. V. was admitted as a visitor to HK as I had neglected to add her to my work visa - must sort that out as it would be most unfortunate if she ended up being classed as an illegal immigrant.

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