London Baby, no internet - no phones = no life

Day one 19th July

I woke early and set about the house sorting our all my clothes for our next jolly holiday, My Beloved lay in his bed until the siren went off and I had to wake him for fear of a missile being dropped on his bed and launching him into oblivion, or was it out of oblivion.  Apparently after a quick text to Dina it was a testing, testing, one, two, three type of siren, phew, I really wish someone would let us expats know when the testing is occurring.

I lounged on the sun bed for a while before needing a second shower then it was time to take a hike to the Dan Pan and walk Darren’s suitcase round, obviously via Mandarin for an Iced coffee and cold coffee, then in by The Crowne for a quick chat with Sharbel and Roni, Mickael and the boss man, all are doing well. Then it was home again for the last of the packing before heading out for supper at Giraffe.

We were bedded just after 9pm as having to be up at 1.30am, was going to be a little tricky.

Day Two 20th July

Offt 1.30am came around way too quick and not before the eyeballs had time to smooth over, and the wrinkles to disappear although if I’m being honest botox is the only thing that would sort that out.

The journey to the airport was tiring and the arrival was mad, the place was hooching with like minded people trying to get anywhere else but the airport.  When we eventually checked in we were asked if we would like to delay our flight and receive a superb reimbursement for our inconvenience, unfortunately for us we had booked a taxi from Heathrow and were unable to take them up on their offer.  Having not allowed My Beloved to come off the crutches has his benefits, first in the line up for the x-ray machines, first in the line for boarding, I think we will keep those babies for quite a while yet. 

The plane journey was torturous, as the back just didn’t like the upright chairs, sleep was hit and miss as was the breakfast, then I ended up watching over My Beloved’s shoulder as he watched Sherlock Holmes, bit of a pain in the arse when I didn’t have ear phones, and lip reading is a bit of an issue as I’m half blind, who thought age could be so annoying.

We eventually landed at Heathrow very grouchy, our taxi driver was ready for us and we made our way through London town, oh how I love London, everyone is geared up for the Olympics, they even have games lanes for the buses and Olympians personal transport, it was so nice to see how London has changed since we were last here, and how much fancy housing has been built on the Thames.

We arrived at David’s and Louise was waiting for us, quick cuppa and then we headed of to the pub for a spot of lunch. We decided to walk back from the pub after Louise had offered us a lift in her street Ka, obviously it would have been two trips as there isn’t a lot of room in a Ka for a man on crutches and his wife, and so began our troubles, we left the pub shortly after Louise and got no further than half a road away when the heavens opened, this was not the sort of rain that you could ignore and having slightly lost our bearings we found a bus shelter and waited out the storm, thunder and lightning flashed and rolled and the rain kept coming, so we just waited and waited and waited, eventually it relented enough for us to make a dash back to David’s house, but what a squelchy journey it was, open toed sandals are not the best tools to keep ones feet dry.

Dave arrived home only to find I had locked him out and couldn’t let him in, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, we just couldn’t figure out how, eventually the house keys were passed through the letter box and he let himself in, apparently I had managed to double lock the door and shut it when we arrived back for our walk in the rain, very clever of me really, but good job Dave was coming home or we would have been locked in for the duration.  Denise arrived sometime later and we all strolled off to the local Indian restaurant, our first Indian since leaving in January and it was lush, oh how I miss Indian food. We had a lovely evening chilling and chatting and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, my liver will need a dry out when we get back to Israel, or maybe not…..

Oh its good to be home with the family, it reminds me why I love them, and why we live in Israel, nutters the bloody lot of them, and none more so than David.

Day Three 21st July

Dave shot out of the house unfortunately not at a time his boss would have been happy with, on exiting the drive way both wing mirrors were clipped, the telegraph pole across the road was whacked and to top it all because of the tightness of the parking executed by his beloved wife, he hit her car too. Not a good start to your day when your running late.

My Beloved and I took a stroll over the supper market and collected food for the family BBQ, having prepared the marinades we then walked to the pub, only because I had no internet and the wifi is free with every beer you buy….

We had lunch whilst we were there and then took ourselves off to Eltham high street in a taxi, we both needed sims that would give us access to the net and messaging.  Taxi back to Falconwood and Lou Lou and Rob arrived, we organized the food ready for Chef Denise to throw it about the BBQ, then the family started to arrive cousin Mark with his girlfriend Nicky and children Matthew and Amelia, along with them came cousin Sue and her grand daughter Ellie, then cousin Debbie hubby Gel and daughter Emma, what a great evening we had, the Turley’s and the Birds reunited, there were a few Turley’s missing but distance can be a right bug bind when families try and get together.

The girls, they say cousins are your first friends they are not wrong

The rest of the tribe

The Children, so well behaved who entertained us with magic tricks
and gymnastics

We had a great evening sitting in the garden, even the weather behaved for us, and although I did have to steal a jumper from little Bro it was a very lovely evening, chilling and drinking and eating and drinking……….

Day four 22nd July      

Still no internet to speak off, having recently moved into his new house,  my brother was informed it would take 3 weeks to set up his internet and broadband package.  In this day and age of high speed broadbands and internet highways should it really take that long, having no phone until yesterday was a like having a limb removed, not a pleasant experience, so needless to say the blog has not been updated for a while.

We Left David’s around 10 to begin the next leg of the journey, back to Heathrow and a plane to Aberdeen, the journey across town was great the weather was beautiful and we saw all the lovely sights of London, we did the works, Buckingham palace, Hyde Park, we did the Oval at Kennington, and Mi5 on the Thames, The Cumberland Hotel on Marbel Arch where I used to work, and much, much more, we even saw the new BMW’s that will be used to transport the Olympians to events, all lined up along a leafy street.

We eventually arrived at Heathrow said our goodbyes and headed into the departures at T5, Wagamamas first for food, then off to the plane, a short and uninteresting flight to Aberdeen and then we were met off the plane by the Little Princes, hugs and snogs all around and then we collected the hire car, which would have been all right had I not stalled it at the first junction and not having worked a  push button hand brake before I struggled to get the car to start before it tried to roll backwards into the taxi behind us, eventually we were off again, then we arrived at Turriff and The Fullwoods, Olly was getting his supper and went very shy when we arrived, fortunately that didn’t last long, and he was smiling and chatting in no time.

Supper was take away and then the girls were driven home by Manda as I had taken a moment to get a snooze, then it was off to The Crown to see the Local publicans and family, Lainey and Dave were in so we caught up with them and laughed at there sun burnt faces, having spent the weekend in sunny Perth at the Rewind festival they had managed to burn their faces and necks and apparently a small patch on the legs between the tops of the willies and the bottom of the shorts, definitely a farmers tan.