Gone to London

Actually - I'm back now.  I went yesterday for a meeting.  And it was quite a good day.

I went down on the 10:00 train. which from my perspective was a nice, lazy start to the day.  The train got in on time after a largely unremarkable trip down.  I took the underground to Liverpool Street with no dramas.  I walked out of the station - and promptly got remarkably lost.  I had absolutely no idea where I was!  Normally I come out of the station and head roughly in the direction of The Gherkin.  I couldn't see The Gherkin!  I'm not sure how you "disappear" something as large and as prominent as The Gherkin, but there you go.

I wandered around.  That didn't help.  I had obviously come out of an entrance from the station that faced away from where I wanted to be.  I turned on Google Maps - but that didn't really help either. I think it was confused by the plethora of tall, glassy buildings around me. So I turned on my GPS. The downside to this was that it assumed I was in a vehicle.  The upside was that it wasn't confused by the glassy buildings.  Off we set, heading towards my destination. And suddenly I found The Gherkin. Over there. Hiding behind and peeping out over the top of a very tall, glassy building that I think had not been there the last time I was there.  I did eventually get a full view of it, but there are lots more tall buildings in the Liverpool Street area than there used to be!

I got to my meeting at exactly 1pm, which was the designated starting time.  And found everyone else waiting patiently for me. Fortunately, I was the chair so they more or less had to wait for me!

It was a good meeting. I enjoyed it. Which is just as well, because it was my last meeting. I am expecting to be gone from the country by the time the next meeting is due, and I will be long gone from SHU. Several other people were at their last meeting too, one because he is about to retire and others because they have moved or are moving to new jobs within their organisation. I was very glad of an opportunity to say goodbye to them. And to hand over the Chairing to a colleague who I suspect will be much more organised about calling regular meetings. For some reason I am very poor at organising meetings, which is strange really because I am quite organised about most other things.

Anyway. The meeting finished and I made my way to Piccadilly Circus to I could visit the Japan Centre for a few supplies, like curry pastes and seasonings and other bits and pieces.  I pottered round to a Japanese noodle bar round the corner, but decided that it was a bit too early to be eating large bowls of noodles, so popped into a Japanese bookshop that I didn't know was there. I was a bit tempted by some of the children's books.  I do need to do a lot more reading practice.  I decided to leave them for another time, though. I already have quite a lot of Japanese learning materials.  I feel I should use them before adding to the collection.  (Perhaps I could have Tatsuki's when he grows out of them :-D )

I headed back to St Pancras and had dinner in the Betjeman Arms at the station.  They didn't really have anything that I fancied to eat, so I bought a sharing platter.  There was, of course, no one for me to share it with and absolutely no chance that I was going to manage the contents of an entire sharing platter on my own, so I ate the chips and the squid and some of the crumbed mushrooms and wrapped the rest up and took it home with me. The Builder had it this morning, fried up with toast, tomatoes and an egg for his breakfast.  He was quite surprised to find little sausages, crumbed mushrooms and haggis balls on his breakfast plate!

It was a good day.  I enjoyed it.  But it was also a day tinged with a little sadness.  I have enjoyed being a member of that discussion group and I was a bit sorry to let it go. Needs must, however. It was also a gently sad day because I had the news that a friend from university days had died.  I had known that he was gravely ill and that his remaining days would be but few. Even so, I was sorry to see the announcement from his wife that his days had now run out. I haven't seen him for years, but we have had a pleasant little friendship over the past few years on Facebook.  I shall miss his comments and "likes", which often came during the wee small hours in Victoria

I have a busy day in prospect today.  I wonder why it is that things bunch up all together like this.  I had a quiet week last week and I have a quiet looking week ahead next week.  All these things could have spread themselves around a bit more!!

Wood, rain, wind and fire

I wonder why it is that the Woodman always comes and delivers our wood when it is raining.  Or, I guess, I wonder why it always rains when the Woodman delivers our wood.  Mind you, he's only been twice, but it has rained each time that he has come.  That's a 100 % rain rate!

It took us about 30 minutes from the time the Woodman dropped all the wood into the puddles on our driveway to shift it out of the rain and into the back porch. I think that counts as a Saturday morning workout!

Rain focuses your attention when you have paid for seasoned, dried wood!

Then we cleaned ourselves up and pootled into Sheffield to meet Freyja and Simon, so we could all head to Costco and give them the contents of our bank accounts.  We packed the car VERY CAREFULLY INDEED on our return trip :-D

We got home, and I went to light our beautiful fire.  By then the wind had got up and the rain had set in and it was really quite stormy.  The wind blew down our chimney, blew the nascent fire out and filled the firebox with smoke.  Then the smoke seeped out into the loungeroom.  This isn't absolutely unknown when it is very windy, but this time the smoke simply poured out.  The smoke alarm went off and everything! (At least we know that the alarm works!).  So we left it and turned the central heating radiator on for the evening.  I managed to light it on the second attempt on Sunday.  I rang the fire people this morning and they said that they had had lots of calls reporting similar problems over the past few very windy days.  He suggested trying fire lighters instead of newspaper.  Apparently the fire lighters are quicker to heat up and generate less smoke.  We'll give it a go and see how we get on.

This is how the loungeroom looks at the moment

Plaster dry, waiting for an undercoat

 

The ceiling has had an undercoat and a first coat of white. One more to go

 

Fire lit! The arches are going to be painted jade at the back

There is a patch just out of shot on the last photo, down towards the floor, which isn't drying and we're not sure why. We wondered if it was because my chair was sat quite close to the wall, shading it from the warmth of the fire. So we've moved the chair to see what happens.  And we have discovered a leak into the front porch which we think is coming through a crack in the outside render. But it can only be coming in when it is raining very hard and the wind is blowing from the south.  We haven't noticed it before.  I suppose we had better get it fixed before it destroys the brand new plaster in the front porch!!

We have been wondering why Marlo has recently taken to sleeping here

Then we realised that the hot water pipe leading to the bathroom radiator runs under this spot!!!

Since the weather really wasn't very good this weekend, and following up my ambition to reduce the contents of the freezer before we move, I spent Sunday not outside rescuing the garden, but in the kitchen baking and roasting.  Little apple pies. A fruit pot pie. Custard (not baking, I know).  And slow roasted lamb shanks with roasted potatoes, parsnip, beetroot and onions and braised red cabbage, red onion and red pepper on the side with a rosemary and white wine gravy.  There is a positive MOUNTAIN of roast lamb left. We're going to be eating shepherds' pies and lamb curry for weeks

Slow cooked lamb, now ready to go in the oven for roasting

It's a small, small world

There is a lady who regularly catches the 07:10 bus to Sheffield from the Chesterfield Coach Station. There often isn't time to say much more than a cheery "Good morning" before the bus turns up. But over the past few months we've had little conversations and gradually got to know a bit about each other. There are other people too who often catch the same bus and we chat too, when there is time and when they are there. Julia gets on a stop earlier than the coach station. She also has a bus stop friend, who sits with Julia and me on the bus. It's all quite friendly.

Anyway, I was waiting at the coach station yesterday morning and the lady (I don't know her name) was telling me about her activities the previous evening.  The subject of where we both actually lived came up.  I said we lived in Tupton, on Bridge Street.  "Oh," she said. "My sister's ex mother-in-law used to live on Bridge Street. My sister got on with her very well and kept in touch after the divorce until she (the ex mother-in-law) died."  She then imparted lots more information about her sister's ex mother-in-law.

The story she told sounded remarkably familiar. I felt almost as though I knew this elderly, sickly, infirm lady who sold her lovely house when she took poorly after many years of heavy smoking, moved into a sheltered bungalow around the corner and then died nearly a year after.

And I did, although not very well.  The sister's ex mother-in-law turned out to be Audrey Hallam, from whom we had bought our beautiful house, ten years ago this April.

It is a very, very small world indeed!

The plasterers finished up on Tuesday, leaving the walls looking beautiful.  We are delighted with the plasterer, though less delighted with his apprentice who was supposed to clean everything up, but who managed to sweep a great deal of rubbish under the carpet.  I wonder how long it will be before he realises that it is usually much, much quicker and considerably easier just to sweep up than it is to hide rubbish under the carpet (or anywhere else for that matter!).

We have been waiting for the new plaster to dry properly before The Builder starts decorating it.  I think he is hoping to make a start on the ceiling today.  The front wall isn't quite properly dry yet, but I think wall and alcove (and porch) decorating can probably commence next week. It will be nice to have the lounge room back up together again.  It's looking a bit forlorn at the moment. And the dining room is also out of commission because pretty much everything that is usually in the lounge room is piled up in there.

I'll try and get some photos of the state of play in the house this weekend.  It's been pretty much impossible to get decent pictures this week. I haven't been home during daylight hours and the photos I've tried to take using lamps, lights and flash haven't been worth keeping!

Being Frugal (Not!)

As you know, I am imminently (well, in 9 weeks) about to become unemployed.

As you may have noticed, we are in the process of renovating, decorating and beautifying our house, ready to put it on the market.

You would think this would be an ideal time to take up a life of parsimony, miserliness, frugality, perhaps even extreme austerity.

And you would be right!

So you  probably think that I shouldn't have waved my credit card over the internet and bought two expensive train tickets to Edinburgh (and back), two flights from there to Kirkwall (and back), rented a car for four days, rented a holiday cottage also for four days and bought two Orkney Explorer Passes to some of the historic places in the Orkney Isles?

And again, you would be right.  But I have yearned to go to Skara Brae since its existence first made itself known to me.  There are lots of other neolithic sites and other historic monuments dotted around. The Orkney Islands seemed a great place to go and explore, albeit not exactly easy to get to. You can't, for example, fly directly there from England. You have to first get to Scotland. We could have driven and then taken a ferry, but it's a long way to go and I'm not sure that our almost 11 year old car, sturdy and reliable though it is, would have been entirely delighted by such an adventure. So I kept putting it off, but kept it on my list of Places To Go.

We almost went in 2014, but went to Ireland instead. After our  visit to the beautiful Western Isles last summer, I had it vaguely in mind for a summer trip this year.  Then events intervened and we are now not sure where we will be this summer.  And, although we will most certainly make regular trips to England in the future, they probably aren't going to involve trips to remote bits of Far North Scotland

I am absolutely certain that if we don't go, my one big regret later would be that I had had almost 20 years to do it, but that I had never made the effort to go and visit Skara Brae.  That seems a ridiculous thing to have as a regret when it is so easy to fix, particularly when time isn't going to be an issue after April 1st.  So we are going.  The day after The Builder's birthday.  The fulfilment of a very long held ambition of mine can be his birthday present.  (He had better enjoy it; it has to rank amongst one of the most expensive birthday presents I have ever bought for anyone - apart from for me :-D )

Sensible?  Probably not.  Exciting?  Absolutely!!!!

In other news, the plasterer Liam and his apprentice have been making steady progress in our lounge room. The only problem now is that the whole house is absolutely covered in plaster dust. But that won't be hard to fix.  I was going to wash the house this weekend, but Liam says they will come back and do Stage 2 on Tuesday (earlier than expected; apparently the wood fire is drying the plaster nicely). I might dust down the worst of it and leave a proper clean up to next weekend.  And the apprentice is a bit heavy handed and has somehow managed to break the corner off the power socket by the window. We will buy a replacement when the apprentice has gone away for good.  He has also spread plaster all over the porch, though I don't suppose that matters all that much.  And he used MY, that's MY blue bucket to mix his plaster in.  Liam has made him clean my bucket so it is now useable again.  But I went out at lunchtime and bought a very fetching new purple bucket.  No apprentice plasterer is likely to use a purple bucket to mix their plaster in :-D

From first thing this morning:

Much better now. You can't see the lathes or the very dodgy artex any more

Nice and smooth, ready for painting behind the telly

Still a bit of work to do here

Funding Emigration - one redundancy at a time

About three years ago, I was sitting one evening with my nephew and his partner in their sunny back garden in Perth, Western Australia,along with The Builder, Lindsey and Ian. We were sipping wine, chatting, and generally relaxing and having a good time

The conversation turned, as it so often did, to my foolhardiness in leaving Australia for so long, without having first taken out citizenship. My permanent resident's permit had long expired.  I was no longer married to an Australian. It looked as though any chance of returning to Australia on a long term basis was out of the question.

My nephew listened to all this and offered the opinion that, although immigration law was not his field, he would have thought the situation was not beyond redemption and recommended that I find an immigration lawyer and discuss it with them.

I didn't.  I moved on to Melbourne and continued my three or four week visit, occasionally thinking that I ought to Do Something - but I didn't.

Twelve months after that I was back in Melbourne and observed that a new legal practice, which offered immigration advice, had opened up nearby Lindsey and Ian's City Centre apartment block. Right, thought I.  I shall go and make an appointment and put this thing to bed.  I am almost certain the lawyer will say there is no chance. Then we can all move on and consider the alternatives.  (I had a Plan A ready to roll, involving 8 or 9 months in Europe and 3 or 4 in East Asia and Australia each year).  But no.  The lawyer said he thought it was going to be possible to sort it out and offered me a fixed price on a no-win-no-fee basis.  I was a bit surprised. Plan A was demoted to Plan B, at least in the short term.

In the end it took my lawyer, plus Lindsey and me about 18 months and lots and lots of effort to gather together the documents required, get them all certified, write up the statements, gather the additional material that the Immigration Department wanted, get more things certified. It cost quite a lot of money, by the time you took into account all the incidental expenses, the immigration fees and my lawyer's fees.  All the way through I was fairly sure the Immigration Department would say no - until they asked for the last lot of documentation they required.  I thought then they might say yes, or they wouldn't have asked for it. I was nevertheless quite surprised and not a little discombobulated when I got an email from my solicitor congratulating me on the restoration of my residency.

I went into Darwin last December as a resident, able to stay indefinitely, and with a travel permit that allows me to be out of Australia until September.

In the meantime, the library service that I work for had started going through a massive restructure process, more or less at the same time that I was putting into train the process that would restore my Australian residency.  The restructure was beset by delays, postponements and deferments.  Slowly, slowly, the restructure made its way through the various layers of management, and finally got to my level the day before The Builder and I left on the World Birthday Tour in December.

We knew more or less what the document would say. We just didn't know the fine detail. What that came down to, in the end, was that there were too many people for the number of jobs available and that we would have to compete for those jobs. The other alternative was to put in for a redundancy.

So apply for a redundancy was what I did. And the application was accepted.

I started work at SHU in June 1997 on a 6 week contract. I am finishing on March 31st this year after oh-so-nearly 19 years, without a break in service.  Not a bad run, when you think about it.

We can't go anywhere until after the end of May. The Builder's son is getting married in Winchester and we have already replied to the invitation saying we will be there.  Plus, of course, we need to sell the house which will be looking resplendent and gorgeous when it goes on the market in a few weeks time. We will get The Builder a 12 month visa in the first instance to see how he gets on with Australia as a place to live rather than a place to visit and then see how things go.  My solicitor says there will be no trouble getting him a partner's visa but that will be quite expensive. A 12 month visa is much less money and allows a bit more flexibility.  However, I have been doing a spot of house hunting and have found some quite nice places that would suit us just fine.   Please everyone cross your fingers for a swift and hassle free sale of the house in Tupton.

It's a bit like what we did when I came to the UK almost 20 years ago. We used redundancies to pay for it, came for 12 months and accidentally stayed (although Ross went back after a few years).  I think this will be the last redundancy that will come my way, though.

The plasterer and his mate did turn up this morning.  The radiator pipe is no longer leaking. The plasterers are making steady progress.  They'll be back tomorrow to finish up, then back in a week or two to do the final bits and pieces. Progress is being made!

It's not going very well

We're having the lounge room re-plastered at the moment.  The plaster has been coming away from the front wall for some time now.  This is largely our fault. We waited for ages and ages before we fixed the guttering which had come away from the front house wall which meant, of course, that water simply poured down the front of the house whenever it rained.  That meant that the bricks got wet, which meant that the plaster got damp and it perished.  It hasn't got any worse since we had the guttering fixed but it did need dealing with.

We decided while we were about it that we would have some other bits where the plaster was looking unhappy done, and have another wall skimmed, and have the artex on the ceiling covered over. This was an issue not because the artex in the lounge room itself was unsightly, but where the old hallway had been, before someone knocked the wall down, the "artex" on the ceiling was appalling.  Someone has just splapdashed stuff all over the place.  No attempt at a pattern.  It was awful.  Cally would have done an infinitely better job.

Well.  We knew it was a bodgy job.  We didn't realise quite how bodgy. When Liam the Plasterer started to take the stuff down in the passageway, this is what he found:

Fortunately, the main lounge room ceiling is in much better condition and it seems as though he's only going to have to properly fix the old passageway. He can skim the rest.

He started taking the perished plaster off the front wall and found a gap in the bricks, letting cold air in.  He's filled that with some foamy stuff.  The front inside wall now looks like this:

It so happened that we had a bloke from British Gas in the house on Monday, when all of this was going on. He was doing our annual boiler service.  When he discovered that Liam was intending to take one of the radiators off the wall, he came down to help.  Most unfortunately, this left one of the radiator pipes feeling very unhappy and it was leaking slowly in sorrow at losing its radiator friend. The boiler man gave The Builder instructions on how to stop it and went away. Liam was going to look at the leak yesterday morning when he came in.  Sadly, unexpectedly he wasn't able to come in yesterday.

As slow leaks do, it got over-excited and by yesterday was quite an enthusiastic leak.  This made the boiler very unhappy. Fortunately it is quite mild at the moment and even more fortunately we have our lovely new wood stove to play with.  The wood stove keeps the downstairs nice and toasty warm. Just as well, because we can't really run the central heating while the pipe is leaking.  It then leaks with extreme vigour and empties the boiler.  Sigh.

I am hoping that Liam will be able to stop the leak today.  I know he is a plasterer and not a plumber, but he takes many radiators off walls in the course of his working life so he must know how to deal with grumpy pipes.  Otherwise I'm going to have to get in a proper plumber. We don't want water running randomly onto the wooden floor in our lounge room indefinitely!!

I think next time I'll just hang an arras over any dodgy plaster I happen to have lurking about. Much less trouble, though possibly quite a lot more expensive if I get a richly textured mediaeval arras.

Flynn's First Sunday lunch out

And actually, it was probably his first Sunday Lunch ever.  I know he was born before lunch last Sunday, but I don't think lunch would have figured in his thinking a mere 12 hours after he was born! It must be said that Flynn didn't eat much from the menu, but we should clearly start as we mean to go on, and we are all enthusiastic Sunday Lunch eaters, quite often out.

Anyway.  Freyja has been involved with the Real Junk Food Project in Sheffield recently.  It's a place where they base their menus on food that would otherwise go to waste, from local shops, households, restaurants and other places which might have left over food.  So there isn't a lot of choice, and mostly it's cooked by home cook volunteers (although I believe there are a small number of actual chefs who get involved sometimes). When you've eaten, you pay what you think it was worth, or what you feel like paying, or what you can afford to pay. You can also pay with donations of food, or with your time, or with your skills.

It's based in the old Regather Works building in Sharrow, and the eating area isn't very big (although there is an area upstairs which can be pressed into service when required).  Freyja suggested that we all meet there for lunch yesterday, so we could see what it was like. She has done some volunteering there, so she knew already what it was like!

When The Builder, Freyja and I turned up, the downstairs area was already full, so we went upstairs, reorganised the tables to suit our larger party, turned on the heaters and made it all cosy.  They had run out of braised beef ribs, so The Builder and I had all the roasty accompaniments with bolognaise sauce on the side.  Freyja had nut roast.  Tabitha, Gaz, Cally and Flynn turned up a bit later, by which time tables had become available downstairs, so we all decamped down there.  It was a good experience (apart from Tabitha's food which was a bit on the cold side - that was easily fixed by bunging it in the microwave).  The Builder had some beetroot cake which Freyja had made for the kitchen on Friday. I had frozen banana "ice cream" which was very tasty, but which had dates mashed in with it to add a bit of sweetness.  I am not a huge fan of the texture of dates.  They need more chocolate and fewer dates in their frozen banana "ice cream".  Alas, I'm told they virtually never get given chocolate as a donation.  I think I might have to rectify that.  We usually buy something for the local food bank when we are in the supermarket.  I might have to add "Chocolate for the RJFP kitchen" to my list! Not that that would be waste, or junk food, but you need some condiments for your cooking :-)

I don't seem to have any photos of Flynn's parents from yesterday, and the photo I took of The Builder was all blurry.  But here are some of Freyja's and my photos:

Pirate Cally has arrived for lunch. 

You want me to come out of my snuggly capsule?  Really?!?!?!

Gamma

Pirate Cally and Flynn the Cabin Boy

Auntie Freyja

Flynn loves it when Cally sings to him

In other news, there is a plasterer in our lounge room.  He's expecting to be there today and tomorrow and then again in about two weeks time.  We had to clear out the whole lounge room yesterday afternoon after we got back. This did not delight the cat!

It's a lot easier to empty a room when you have already started a de-cluttering program

What on earth do you two think you are doing now?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Where's The Builder?

We went shopping on Sunday, off to the supermarket. As we came out, I realised that I had forgotten to get something.  So I suggested that The Builder go and put the shopping in the car and I would drop back in and pick up the forgotten item.

It didn't take long to get it and I was soon back out again.  I walked confidently to where the car was parked.  And there it wasn't :-S  I looked around.  I was *sure* it had been parked here, or at least very close to here.  And we had definitely gone in through that entrance.

I looked up and down.  I walked up and down.  I moved to a different lane. I knew we had parked on this side of the disabled bays.  But I couldn't see the car anywhere :-S

I rang The Builder.  But he didn't answer his phone :-S

I walked up and down a bit more.

I rang the Builder again.

I stopped to ponder.  It didn't seem likely that he would have gone home without me.  And if he had, he wouldn't be able to get in.  He didn't have his house keys with him.  I pondered a bit more.

And then saw him walking back up from the store.  It seemed he had moved the car down right by the door, waiting for me.  Alas, I hadn't come back out through that door and hadn't noticed him. And he hadn't seen me.  And his phone was at home, on his bedside chest of drawers.

Just as well I had noticed him walking back up from the store, where he had gone to find out where I was!!

Yesterday, I arranged to meet him after work in the staff car park.  He would give me a ring or a text message when he arrived so I wasn't standing about waiting in the cold.  At about the time I was expecting him, my phone rang. As I answered it, it cut off.  I assumed that was code to say that he and the car were in the car park, so off I trundled.  I got there.  I found the car this time.  But it was locked.  Locked and abandoned.  No sign of The Builder anywhere :-S

I rang him.  And the call went straight to his voicemail.  I texted him. Answer came there none. I rang him again. And texted him again.  Same result.  I walked up and down to see if I could find him. But no.

I didn't really know what to do after that, so I waited by the car (I wonder what I have done with the spare key, which is usually in my bag; I left it behind when we went away but I can't remember where I put it :-S). Eventually, he turned up.  His phone battery had died as he tried to ring me, so he had come over to my office to tell me he was there. Alas, I had already gone.  Someone took him up to  Level 7, because they had seen me go up there a few minutes earlier.  Then he got hopelessly lost trying to get back out onto the street.  Finally he found an escape route! When he got home and plugged his phone in, he got loads of messages from me, asking where he was. By then, of course, I knew where he was :-D

Reunited, we headed off to Costco for a shopping trip for us. Then we went to visit Tabitha, Gareth, Cally and Flynn, armed with a beef and vegetable casserole and bag loads of stuff for them all. Happy new life presents for Flynn, Congratulations on being a Big Sister presents for Cally. Presents from loads of people from Australia and Japan for Cally. Presents from Australia and Japan for Tabitha and Gareth.

Then we went to visit Freyja, taking with us presents from Australia and Japan for her and Simon.  While we were there we picked up Marlo and took him home with us. I'm not absolutely convinced he really wanted to go.  He wasn't entirely delighted to be put back into his travel basket. But he seems to have settled back in. He was very quick to head outside to check it all out.  He's been sequestered inside for 6 weeks at Freyja's place!

Time for work.  Second day back, but the first day on the bus.  The builder needed to go into Sheffield early yesterday morning for some building supplies and took me in with him. I've re-charged my smartcard bus pass. Fortunately - it worked :-D

Welcome to Flynn

Flynn Nicolas Ronnie Gillard was born at 00:05, thus just sneaking into Sunday 17th January.

Congratulations to Tabitha, Gareth and Cally on their new addition

Photo by Gareth (or perhaps Tabitha)

A Very Long Friday

My goodness but that was a long day!  I think Friday lasted for about 33 hours, counting from its start at midnight in Japan, through to its finish at the following midnight in England.

We were travelling for most of that time, although in reality a great many hours were spent sitting or standing around waiting for something to happen.

Largely, it was uneventful.

We left the hotel at a little after 07:30 and ambled over to the airport.  I upgraded us to Premium Economy for the flight to Frankfurt.  They were offering upgrades at a reduced rate and it bagged us seats at the very front of the Premium Economy section with no one in front of us and lots of room to stretch out.  I have been wondering why I didn't just buy Premium Economy tickets in the first place - but I don't think they were available when I booked the flights back in July. The Osaka to Frankfurt route only introduced them a few weeks ago. I'll certainly book it next time.

We had quite a long wait for the flight once we had checked in, so breakfast and then a wander up and down to get in a little bit of exercise.  We got into Frankfurt ahead of schedule so there was no rushing about to make the connecting flight. The only drama that occurred all day was when there was a kerfuffle up ahead of us on the plane to Manchester. Someone had been taken ill. It was the first flight I had ever been on where a call has gone out for a medical professional to assist. Despite the fact that the flight was absolutely packed, no medical professional came forward. I think that most oft the passengers were business people returning to the UK from meetings or from working away for the week.  The Poorly Passenger recovered without medical intervention and walked off the plane when we landed. His neighbour got moved up to one of the few vacant seats on the flight, which happened to be in Business Class. I don't suppose he minded all that much!

We missed the direct train from Manchester to Chesterfield by five minutes. They only go once an hour, and there didn't seem to be much to be gained by going to Sheffield and changing to another train there. Certainly not when you took lugging heavy suitcases about with you. So we bought a (very hot!) pasty each and just waited it out.  We took a taxi from the station to our place and walked in through the door in Tupton about 23 hours after we had walked out of the door of the hotel in Osaka.

We celebrated by cracking open the 5 litre box of white wine we had bought in Costco in Gifu and lugged all the way back with us (we had, with regret, left what was in the other 5 litre box in the hotel in Osaka. We didn't have the space to bring them both back).

And that was the end of what had felt like a Never Ending Friday.

We spent today sorting things out and hitting the supermarket to stock up with vegetables and a few other useful things. And cat food. We are expecting Marlo to come home tomorrow, although I'm not sure he's going to want to. I think he has been enjoying being spoilt by Freyja, Simon and Aidan. He has certainly seemed very comfortable in the photos Freyja has been sending us.

Right. Bedtime.  I hope I sleep as well tonight as I did last night.