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,…

Back to England – last part!

We had a day with the cousins and saw my sister’s teeny premature twin boys which was cool.  Ella loved holding them – they’re so tiny! We went swimming (again) and Henry managed to swim unaided for 3 or 4 meters, which for a skinny 5 year old boy who last year, was afraid of the water, was really cool.  I even had him…

Back to England – part 8

A few days later, we decided to go to somewhere new.  Not too far away is the Historic Dockyard at Chatham.  On the banks of the River Medway, there has been a naval dockyard there since Tudor times (1540’s) – the yards were part of the assembly of the fleet that took on the Spanish Armada, later (mid 1700’s) built Admiral Nelson’s HMS Victory…

Back to England – part 7

So, we went off to the woods to see about building a den. I spent my childhood building dens and camps and shelters in these woods, so I was quick to lead them off to build something amazing.  As luck would have it, only a short way into the woods there was a den already started, with a good top piece and a lot…

Back to England – part 6

I’m stringing you all out here with my England stories!  Mostly cos I haven’t done anything of any significance since I got back apart from work and buy paint for the bedroom walls.  Aforementioned paint is still safely in its tins – sickness has meant that Chez Charlie has been keeping a low profile for a couple of weeks – a lot of that…