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jane and the girls left julie’s house this morning and headed back to Twyford.  By the time they’d got here i’d gone in to Reading to do some shopping and site seeing.  and to eat a pie at the famous Sweeny & Todd’s pie shop

above is the church we used to go to when we were first married – it celebrated its 700 year anniversary this year. 

And below is Jackson’s Corner, purveyor of school uniforms.  It also had the worst mannequin you have ever seen in the window which i wanted to see again, and take a photo.  unfortunately it wasn’t there so i went in to enquire.  they told me it was known as ‘Cruella’ and had been thrown away 6 months ago.  oh well.  another piece of history gone.

luckily i took a photo of her back in the day to remind me / show you

esther went bowling this afternoon with a group of her old primary school friends, and is having a sleep over tonight

and kezia has spent the day with one of her old friends and is also having a sleep over

 

jane and i did some shopping on our own, then went to joy and matthew’s house for drinks and nibbles.  Our lovely friend Sally was also there and we had a great evening of chatting and laughing.  here’s my camouflaged cake plate.

and now it’s so late it’s tomorrow.

jane and the girls have had a day in the house with their friends at julie’s house.  she’s kindly let me share some photos with you (towards the end of this post).  their day consisted of playing then watching a load of dvds

 

i was back on the 6.23am train this morning.  this time so i can walk to st pancreas for an 8.30 rendezvous with Sam

Sam and i were at university together and haven’t seen each other for probably 15 years or so.  we dropped straight back in to conversation and it was a really great time.  we’ve facebook to thank for us finding each other again.

after i’d met Sam i got the Victoria Line down to, er, Victoria Station, for my next appointment

that was with Lucinda who works for a children’s charity.  after we’d had a coffee we went up a church tower to inspect london from above

  

i then went down to the cellar cafe where i decided i’d make conversation with a chap and we had a really good chat over our soups.

since my afternoon meeting had been relocated to 5pm i decided to have a photographical wander.  which i did

then i went to an excellent exhibition at the Hayward Gallery

 

somewhere along the way i had this german sausage

 

and then i walked back north to get to Goodge Street to meet with the chaps from Easynet.

on the way i popped in to the National Portrait Gallery to look at the photos.  Always excellent.

here’s me by my favourite photoing spot in london.  unfortunately the evening sun is quite weak (it is the winter solstice today) so big ben wasn’t quite a glowy as it could be.

 

my 5pm meeting went well and i left at 7.30 for a walk up oxford street to paddington station and home (via the fish and chip shop).  I was home by 10pm though.

here are Julie’s pictures [thanks to her for allowing me to post them]

i was back on the 6.23am train so i could take a few photos as i walked to my 9am meeting down by london bridge.  i got the tube from paddington station to westminster and spent the next hour and a half walking up and down the south bank.

my first meeting was with a chap who used to work for me years back and it was great to catch up with him.  then i had a coffee with one of the partners at Ofcom in the cafe in the Globe theatre

i had lunch with my old boss at Sky which was a taxi drive away.  and it turned out the taxi driver was about to move to australia so we had a good conversation about moving and families and things as we went along

i had a little more time on the way back so walked to a train stop and then got the tub up to warren street for my final meeting of the day

and then i walked down to where i used to work 5 years ago and retraced my old 45 minute walk to paddington station

so i was home by 7pm (via waitrose to buy some ben and gerry ice cream)

jane tells me she left her sister’s house this morning and drove down to her friend Julie’s house (Julie and family visited us in NZ almost exactly a year ago).  there has been much nice children playing and chatting so that’s good.

they are there for another night before we all get reunited on Friday!

here are some more pictures

 

left thehouse at 6.50 to get the 7.23 train.  my feet are starting to hurt from all the walking in my work shoes so i got a bus from paddington to kings cross.  i sat upstairs directly above the driver (the most coveted position) so got a great view

whilst i was waiting outside kings cross waiting to meet my first appointment i spotted an email from our credit card company telling me i’d reached my monthly spend limit and the card was suspended until we went to their website.  it definitely wasn’t a scam, but did make shopping rather tricky for jane who was planning on spending the day buying stuff.

i think i got it sorted though by logging in to the website using my ipad in a cafe.  and jane was able to buy a cardigan she might not need.

after that i was straight in to another meeting, then hot footed it down to aldwych for lunch where i arrived half an hour earlier than the person who booked the table.  but the restaurant was so posh they gave me lots of bread and a copy of The Times to read.

my final work meeting of the day was meant to be an hour but lasted over two as we were so busy chatting and exchanging ideas.  so that was good.

then after work i picked up my new suit from Piccadilly circus (so busy it was like Piccadilly circus) before getting the tube out to Shepherds Bush to say hi to the person i used to sit next to at Telecom when i started.  she’s now working in london and it was nice to say hi. 

we went to the shopping centre in Shepherds Bush which is very impressive

the journey home was as unpleasant as the night before – this time the train was too busy for everyone to get on, although more people could have got on if a few people had moved down the aisles.  which resulted in lots of shouting and swearing on the platform (not from me).  so glad i don’t have to do that every day

meanwhile jane did the aforementioned shopping early in the morning (failed to buy any boots), pub lunch with binky, wii dancing, a run and present wrapping.

 

so that’s that.

busy day today for me despite lots of rain

left the house and slid along the street to the railway station at 5.50am to get the 6.20am train.

then walked from paddington to russel square to meet a chap called russel

then had two meetings back to back which were really useful before heading up to the university for the annual face to face meeting of a technology journal.  i’m on the technical advisory body for the journal and i’d not managed to attend a meeting in person so it was great to be able to meet everyone

then i whizzed across town (via Piccadilly Circus to exchange the shirts i bought last Friday for ones which were the correct size), past buckingham palace (queen was in) and over to the internet service provider association for my last coffee based meeting of the day

finally i met up with an old colleague for a chat over a beer which was good too.

unfortunately my journey home took over two hours due to the train getting stuck in broken signals for half an hour. 

so i got a taxi back from the station to the house as it was getting quite late.

 

jane and the girls are having a good time in nottingham. 

 

today she did library, lots of wiii (mario cart), school runs, shopping for winter clothes and doing a christmas jiggy.

jane sounds like she’s having a good time in Nottingham with her sister and children.  she told me today was ‘church, lunch, swim, run, dinner, church, jigsaw’ and that everyone is getting on nicely.  good

the picture above is the frozen roof of the conservatory (it’s cold here)

i spent the day at our old church in arborfield.  Matt kindly picked me up at 9.30am (giving me time to spend what seemed like an hour on the phone to NZ getting my blackberry phone working) and washing the cat’s bowels etc.

i know there’s a spelling mistake in that last sentence, but it’s now made me chuckle so i’m going to leave it there.

church this morning was really nice and it was so good to catch up with lots of different people.

i then went round to piers and carolyn’s house for lunch which was really good.  they live in the rectory opposite jane’s parents so i then went there for a warm up, good chat and a little sleep (!)

jane’s mum then kitted me out with fluorescent reflecty things so i wouldn’t get run over walking to down the lane back to church for the evening carol concert.

i arrived at 6pm (an hour early) to help with sound, but was side tracked chatting with people.  the candle light service was really lovel and it was great to sing some carols in a chilly church (actually it got quite warm with all the people and burning flames).

tony big eye gave me a lift home afterwards at 9pm. 

i’ve got 6 meetings in london tomorrow, 4 of them within a few 100 metres of each other which is good.  no chance of getting bored on this trip.

here are the shots from the plane coming in to London

kezia took most of these photos i think

 

 

jane went up to nottingham this morning with the girls to stay with her sister until the end of the week.

they set off early (dropping me off at waitrose to do some shopping and walk/slide back home).  sounds like it was tricky driving though in snow and ice.

they met up with one of Jane’s uni friends on the way which was nice.

meanwhile brother edd and my mum converged in twyford before spending most of the rest of the day in henley.  here we are having our lunch.

we then had a wander before heading back to collect their cars and getting home in the light

this afternoon i spent 3 hours trying to sort out photos on my rather slow net top.  not sure how successful that is going to be

this evening Tony Big Eye and I went to Pizza Hut like we used to do in the olden days.  that was good

and now it’s now.  good night.

hello

 

   

 

bit too tired to do pictures again today.  i’ll try and get my life a bit more organised in the morning …

the girls and i were awake at 5am this morning and we got up at 6.30am.

jane and i drove to drop off my case at the Port’s’ house and then jane dropped me off at the train station.

i then had three meetings (all went very well) and did about 4 hours of walking which i loved.  we even got some snow (about as much as we got in auckland last august though!)

after my meetings i went to TM Lewin and bought some shirts and a new suit.  so, during the day i walked from farringdon to st pauls, up to st john’s then to leather lane.  finally i walked from leather lane  across to paddington via Piccadilly circus.

i probably passed more people today than i’ve seen in the whole year in new zealand!

jane meanwhile did some banking, then with esther and kezia saw her good friend lynda, had lunch with pooch and party, and spent the afternoon with the Newells.

and now we’re all back in the same place and starting to feel a little tired!

sorry, no pictures today.  hopefully get on to it tomorrow evening. [post updated- now added!]

flights were really good.  first leg from auckland to los angeles was quite bumpy, but we all managed to snooze regularly during the 11 hours we were in the air.  LA stopover was an ok hour and a bit in a little room. and the final leg to the UK was rather uneventful, but with a gorgeous final approach in to Heathrow over a sun bathed london.  i’m looking forward to showing you my photos of that.

and no one threw up or felt really ill.  result!

our good friend Clive picked us up from the airport and dropped me off at Andy and Gill’s house so i could pick up their car which they are kindly lending us for a couple of weeks.

i then bought my london weekly season ticket for tomorrow (to save messing around setting up travelcards and photo cards in the morning – my old photo card had me with long hair which dates it a bit).

we all rendezvoused at jane’s parents house and after lunch went for a healthy but freezing walk round ‘the nerd’ near jane’s parent’s house.  on the way we passed our old church and popped in to find two good friends drinking cups of tea so that was nice to surprise them and say hello.

despite our best intentions everyone fell asleep at around 5pm and we’ve been in various states of awakeness since.

for those in the UK, Jane and I have now got our old mobile phone numbers back, so drop me an email if you need those!

posts are a bit boring without pictures aren’t they [updated: a few now added back in]

bottom two pictures are of british chocolate which tastes different to NZ variety, and shreddies breakfast cereal