Christmas Lights

One thing we have done ever since I arrived in Perth is to visit the local Christmas lights on Christmas Eve.  A local street is pretty much given over the entire neighbourhood with thousands of people turning out to look at the incredible effort the residents have gone to. I know this post is out of order from the other one, but I kinda…

It’s Chriiiiiiiiiiiisssstmaaaaaaas.

Yes, it is, as yelled by Noddy Holder in that old faithful seasonal refrain, ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ I hope you had a brilliant Christmas – I certainly have! But first, a small apology

England Summer 2013, Final Part – Minnis Bay

My last day with the kids was lovely and warm.  We had wanted to go fossil hunting, but we were woefully unprepared for that (I didn’t research enough beforehand) and the organised tours were suspended because the main guy had hurt himself and wasn’t up to clambering about over rocks to show eager children where they could find fossils. Instead, we just kinda headed…

England Summer 2013, Part 7 – if you go down to the woods today

So, you’ll all no doubt be aware that the woods are my absolute favourite place in the world.  I grew up a few minutes walk from there and spent all my free time exploring as soon as I was allowed to go on my own. So when I go back to see the kids, we have to go there.  It’s the law. And besides,…

England Summer 2013, Part 6 – Family

I do like to catch up with my siblings when I’m back – not only cos I kinda miss them (yeah, ok, a little tiny bit – don’t tell them, eh?) but I really like seeing their almost football team sized troup of children. Ella and Henry love seeing their cousins too.  They don’t see each other that often as they don’t live close…

England Summer 2013, Part 5 – Catching up

One of the things that I do miss about England (apart from my kids, of course) are my friends. When I was growing up as a teen, I had a relatively small number of very good friends that I always used to hang out with.  I don’t actually remember how my circle of friends happened exactly, as we went to different schools and colleges,…

England Summer 2013, Part 4 – London

The kids wanted a really big day out.  So what bigger is there than to take them to London. We’ve actually done this pretty much every year – Natural History Museum, Tower of London, Science Museum, etc. This time though – Aquarium, London Dungeons, Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace.

England Summer 2013, Part 3

I mentioned walking.  We’ve done a lot of it so far this week. Way more than I would normally do. The kids and I love to do trips out – regular readers will know that we’ve been all over Kent – castles, houses, parks, gardens – we’ve pretty much exhausted it all.  Wracking my brains for new ideas, I came up with a cunning…

England Summer 2013, Part 2

Children are like dogs. They need walking every day to ensure they have burnt off excess energy and are ready for some quiet time. They also make good pets, but lets not tell social services, Henry is just getting used to his cage… Anyway, walking is something I dont do enough of, but here, the thousands of footpaths that criss cross the countryside pretty…

Back to England, Summer 2013 – Part 1

So, after 12 months, I’m back in England seeing my children.  For reasons I wont go into here, I was unable to get back here in February or Easter as originally planned, so I had to wait until the long English summer school holidays until I could get back here. I was flying Singapore airlines via, well, Singapore.  5 hours from Perth to Singapore,…