Charlie's WorldEngland Summer 2013, Part 2
Posted on August 17, 2013
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 much demand to be explored.
Back to England, Summer 2013 – Part 1
Posted on August 13, 2013
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, then 13 hours to London.
Its a long day. Read More
Back to England – part 7
Posted on October 7, 2012
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 of wood collected already, it just needed fixing up and extending. Read More
Back to England – part 6
Posted on October 1, 2012
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 low profile spent in bed, making painting doubly hard. Ah well.
Now, where were we.
It was another beauty of an English summer day, so we decided to go for a little walk rather than go on another long drive. My parents live in a beautiful village, so I thought we should explore some roads we didn’t know and look at the old houses and take in some clean air. Read More
Back to England – part 4
Posted on September 19, 2012
The weather was unusually kind to us, so we had plenty of time to lark about – we went swimming where Henry actually learned to swim properly (rather than just flailing) – Ella is a fully fledged dolphin already and there’s no stopping her, but it was really nice to see the boy graduate into the swimming camp rather than the sinking camp.
Anyways, with all this fine weather, we spent a lot of time in the woods walking, exploring, making dens and camps and having fun. Read More
back to England – part 3
Posted on September 16, 2012
We went out for Pizza for lunch – my mum and dad’s idea – lots of kids, vigorous exercise and then a treat – can’t much argue with that.
My dad sensibly peeled off from the park early to go back up to the town to book us a a table, but we were sufficiently early that we almost had the place to ourselves.
Back to England – part 2
Posted on September 10, 2012
The weather was beautiful, so we made the most of the local parks and my parents garden (which has a teeny freshwater crayfish in the brook that runs through it), playing with the kids and generally having fun. We made good use of the village shop and bought all kinds of yummy treats – thats the one good thing about living in a village – the trusty shop, which sells all kinds of esoteric stuff, including some yummy Kentish beer 🙂 Read More
Back to England – part 1
Posted on September 9, 2012
It was time to see the children in England. I’d booked the flights ages ago – but as the Olympics were on, they were massively expensive and only the less desirable flight times were available. I worked all day Friday and then caught the flight out at 2am *bleaugh* was a very long day. I got a bit of sleep, did the 2 hour stop at Singapore and then the next leg – the joyous 14 hour hop to London.
Anyway, it was all good – the airport was unusually quiet and I popped out into arrivals into 32 degree heat – rare for England and almost summer temperature for Perth! Picked up my hire car and drove to my parents house where my children were waiting for me.
Read More
Trip to the UK – Part 4
Posted on February 26, 2012
Time, as ever, is the mortal enemy and pretty soon we were down to the last full day together. It was very overcast and threatening to rain bit we decided on an outside adventure anyway.
There’s a lovely old stately home only 15 minutes drive from my parents house that I last went to probably when I was Ella’s age. No, really, it was that long ago.
Penshurst Place has gardens and an adventure playground open all year (but the house is only open in the summer) which sounded perfect – combine that with a toy museum and some lunch, we thought that would be a good day out. Read More
Trip to the UK – Part 3
Posted on February 24, 2012
It was still freezing cold, but we refused to be couped up indoors – I only had a week and I wanted to get out and about with the kids as much as possible.
We went off to the duck ponds for a wander around – there was still a little bit of snow around and the lakes were still frozen several cm thick – probably more in the middle
Brrr! Read More
Charlie's World 