Back at home

We got back into London late-ish on Tuesday evening, after staying in a very budget hotel at Narita airport on Monday night.  It might have been budget, but it was less that 5 minutes from Terminal 1, it was clean - and it was twice the size of the hotel in Nagoya.  Did us perfectly well!

We had a 4 hour lay over in Vienna, which seemed a bit daunting until I remembered that I have a lounge pass through my bank account which gives me free access to airport lounges 4 times a year, and access for guests at a cheap rate. So we sat in the lounge in Vienna and drank their wine and ate their cheese and salads and cakes. It was really rather pleasant. And above all - it was quiet!

So was the bit of London that we were in. There was looting in parts of London, not to mention parts of Birmingham and Manchester. But only an idiot would try to loot anything near Heathrow. Mind you, only idiots would try looting anywhere but it would have to be a particularly dim idiot who tried it near the airport.  The police in Britain are not routinely armed.  They are at Heathrow!!!

We came home in an orderly manner on Wednesday. All was quiet in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. All was quiet at our place, except the garden had run riot  (but a rioting garden is OK) and the cat was deliriously delighted to see us. He remains so!  I don't mind him sitting on my lap when I am still in bed, but sleeping on my head is not entirely comfortable.  Well, it is obviously comfortable for him, but not for me!!!

On the first Sunday we were in Tokyo I got out of the shower and found I had a dry rash on my left shin. On Monday I had a rash on both shins. By Tuesday it was all getting quite painful, the rash was spreading and was beginning to look cross and grumpy. Fortunately, we were travelling with Lindsey, so there was no need to kidnap Austin and head to a Japanese hospital with Japanese doctors who speak, funnily enough, Japanese and not English!!  Lindsey handed over a course of antibiotics (doesn't everyone travel with a spare packet of antibios?) and my leg began to get less cross. Lindsey thinks it started out as a contact allergy. Ian thinks it was bedbugs (it is true that we were all getting bitten by something, not including the deer in Nara). I don't know what it was, but it was certainly complicated by the addition of a heat rash on top of whatever was causing the infection.  Happily, the antibiotics seem to have done the trick and my shins and ankles are more or less restored to normal. Although they still ache if I stand still for any length of time.

We also travelled with a small, nagging mystery.  Before we left, I bagged up a supply of Yorkshire Tea bags. I distinctly remember putting them in a bag. The Builder saw me bagging them up, but didn't see what I did with them. We got to Tokyo, went hunting for the tea bags - and couldn't find them anywhere.  We unpacked everything. We searched everything. We hunted. We fossicked. We both looked in all the pockets of all the bags. No tea bags to be found. So I bought some Japanese black tea bags in a supermarket and on we trundled.  But from time to time we pondered the whereabouts of the Yorkshire Tea bags.

We got home, assuming that there would be a bag of tea bags on the dining room table or on the dresser or in the kitchen.  But no. No sign of the tea bags anywhere at all. It was very, very peculiar.

The Builder decided that his travelling backpack had been on its last travels. It is fraying and unravelling and needs replacing.  He decided to throw it away.  Before it hit the bin, I decided to have a last check of all the pockets and stuff, not wishing inadvertently to throw away a credit card or a membership card or a stray yen. And there, right in the very bottom of the backpack, was a wodge.  I investigated.  And there was the bag of tea bags.

So the only mystery now is, where was that bag when we both searched the backpack?  Because we would both swear that they were not there when we were in Tokyo!!!

And that, I think, is that.  Freyja and Simon are on their way back from Osaka as we speak.  Lindsey, Ian, Austin and Kaori are in Hong Kong partying. Everyone else is back at home and back to normal. I am even back at work. They called for volunteers to work today while I was away. I decided I would volunteer. A summer Saturday is not an unpleasant way of getting back into the swing of things. Back to work properly on Monday