Italy and England, September/October 1999
It was time to introduce L and the kids to my most legendary relative ever: the sublime UK in the UK: Uncle Kevin. Grandad and Gran drove us over to Chichester, where Kevin and his wife Liz and son Luke live. Getting over there was a good chance for Isaac and Jeremy to have a ... [More]
Today after much wrestling with my PhoneAway card, I finally managed to get it working (Telstra had provided the wrong local number to dial) and checked our voicemail at home. 14 messages no less, the most immediately significant of which was that the ticket for L that I’d booked through the Ticketmaster UK web site ... [More]
We caught the train into London Blackfriars – an interesting name for a station, though I didn’t spot any black friars walking around it. It was pretty quiet, being Sunday morning, and we strolled along the Embankment, which is a rather less interesting name for what is undeniably, an embankment. One of London Transport’s youngest ... [More]
We set off into central London from my Uncle Hew’s place, with Hew in tow. We got off the train at Victoria, and strolled around to Buckingham Palace. Buck House is kind of impressive to people who’ve grown up elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and seen it on the telly every time there’s been a royal ... [More]
Time to leave Birmingham, but first of all we needed to settle the bill. I realised I was a bit lacking in the cash department, so had a quick consultation with "Basil", our host. He apologised for not accepting cards, but gave me directions to a cash machine, and then asked "Are you sure that’s ... [More]
The first B of the B&B, the bed, was very comfy, and we slept well. The second B was a great big artery blocking cholesterol bomb of the full English variety. Thoroughly delicious, and the ladies serving it were marvellously friendly, and promised to call an ambulance if anybody collapsed with heart failure. They had ... [More]
We set off from my uncle Hew’s place, not excessively early, but early enough. Our eventual destination this day was Birmingham. All the English people I spoke to wanted to know why on Earth we’d want to go to such a hell-hole, but as it turned out, Birmingham’s reputation for being grey and very nasty ... [More]
Just as we were getting used to Roma, it was time to move on to pastures new. We packed everything, somehow, back into our bags, disposing of whatever stuff we thought was surplus to requirements (those two huge books all about the pasta museum, for a start) and set off for the station. On the ... [More]