January 2025 – Mick and Liesel's Antics

Pipes and pins

As I’ve said before, it’s always a bit of an anticlimax when you get back to normal after a break, however short. Which means we’re back to our normal day-to-day inactivity.

Amongst the ‘normal’ were our infrequent but frustrating fights with the internet: forgotten passwords, forgotten subscriptions, things that worked last week but don’t any more for no obvious reason. Our devices don’t know how lucky they are sometimes, not having had an axe embedded in their nether regions.

Having been disappointed by only seeing a stuffed fox in London, it was delightful to see a couple as we drove over to Sale Water Park. I don’t think the M60 slip road was the best place for them to play, to be honest.

From Sale Water Park, we took the tram into Manchester and had a ten minute walk to Bridgewater Hall. Not for a concert on this occasion, but to have a close look at the very impressive organ, with its 5,500 pipes. I counted them. David Wood was our very informative and interesting host. He maintans the organ, as well as hundreds of others in the north of England. I was hoping for a blast of Toccata and Fugue, but, instead, he regaled us with the history of the instrument, its construction and installation.

There were about 8 of us on this particular tour, and David took us up a narrow staircase to the second of three floors that the 22-tonne organ occupies. We had to duck under and carefully step round various obstacles, but it was fascinating to see the inner workings.

We didn’t see it, but apparently there’s a mouse in the organ. Way up high, carved into the wooden ceiling, with little leather ears, visible from the top floor where we mortals weren’t allowed.

We wandered back via the back of the Central Library, where what we thought were left-over Christmas decorations were actually something else, looking to the future rather than the past.

It will soon be Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake.

The building work at Martha and William’s school continues, meaning that access to the car park is restricted. Usually, when it’s our turn to pick the children up from school, we walk back to their home and then drive them back to our place. Today, though, we drove to the school and took them to Parrs Wood.

My ten-pin bowling skills are, let’s say, limited. We played two games, Martha won the first and I won the second mainly because William and Martha were losing interest and getting tired!

After the bowling, they spent some time in the arcade, playing many of the games, winning hundreds of tokens which they redeemed at the end for some cheapo sweeties. Great fun, they enjoyed themselves, that’s the main thing, but I thought the prizes were rubbish.

For dinner, we took them to Zumuku Sushi in Cheadle, a place they visit often enough that Wilma was happy to see them and knew their names. Frequent visitors, or notorious for some reason?

Going back to the internet, Liesel and I have both X-communicated ourselves. Yes, we have deactivated our X, formerly Twitter, accounts. A small way to fight back against the new American oligarchy, I know, but other than referring to Elon’s vehicles as Swasticars, what else can we do?

A few pairs

For some people, the second day of the new year began with a long Uber ride across London to the airport. Farewell, Una, Phil and Kiran, it’s been a gas!

For Liesel, Leslie and me, it began with a leisurely hotel breakfast. And again we recalled the time when Liesel’s Dad, Klaus, was staying at a Premier Inn some years ago. At breakfast, he was asked how many sausages he wanted. “Oh, six please.” Or eight. Depends who’s telling the story.

We parked up at Mottingham Station and caught the train to Waterloo. While my wife and her mother were in Boots, I enjoyed listening to today’s busker.

Let’s hope her partner’s surgery goes well. We returned to Gudrun Sjoden as Liesel needed to return one of the items purchased a few days ago. While she and Mom browsed and tried on everything, I went for a walk, passing by some familiar shops, such as Forbidden Planet and Mildred’s. I did see an urban fox, something we’d missed so far in London. The sad thing is, it was dead, stuffed and in a shop window.

I walked as far as the National Portrait Gallery café where I sat underneath Audrey Hepburn’s bum while wolfing down a sandwich and a coffee.

While I was wandering around the gallery, admiring some portraits, Liesel and Leslie arrived for their lunch too.

Our late afternoon and evening were very lazy and the next day, it was time to go west.

Liesel’s cousin Andi and her husband Steve live in Richmond, and we’d planned to stay with them for a few nights. It wasn’t really on the way, but we visited Ightham Mote in Kent, another National Trust property. It was, as they say, a crisp but sunny day, the more remarkable because today was the first time this Winter we’d had to scrape ice off the car.

We had a nice, leisurely walk around the grounds. There is a moat and I still don’t know what a ‘Mote’ is in this context. According to Wikipedia, the architectural writer John Newman describes Ightham Mote as “the most complete small medieval manor house in the county”.

A member of staff advised us to look out for the mice and we did see a few on our wander.

My sympathies are with the gardeners. I had a 30+ year battle with bindweed in Chessington and I am convinced that after the nuclear apocalypse, it will be the last surviving species along with the cockroaches.

In the courtyard, we found a large 19th century dog kennel. There was no large 19th century dog, though, so I asked Liesel to give an idea of scale.

The house itself was interesting, lots of old stuff of course, and some humorous cartoons on the wall, such as the snooker player who might be a Champion, if there were a Championship.

The drive along the M25 wasn’t too bad and we arrived in Richmond just as the Sun was setting. Not long after, we saw the Moon and Saturn.

The other fascinating celestial object bright enough to see in twilight? Well, it turned out to be an aeroplane on its descent to Heathrow Airport. We found Andi and Steve’s house easily enough and it was good to see them again after all this time.

Steve was in charge of breakfast and he made a wonderful omelette for us. That set me up nicely for my trip across London, thank you very much. I can’t believe I’ve known Marie now for 35 years: we worked together at Kingston University. She lives in Orpington and if she hadn’t had prior engagements, I could have seen her while we were staying in nearby Eltham! D’oh!

On the way, I stopped off at the Southbank Centre for a coffee and to see what was going on.

Fred Tschida’s spinning, glowing work is recreated at a technically ambitious scale. In this work, two parallel rings of brilliant orange-red neon – the natural colour emitted by the gas when high-voltage electricity passes through it – rotate at a slower speed of 15 rpm to produce the illusion, when photographed with a long exposure, of a giant glowing orb. So says the blurb. But it wasn’t rotating at 15 rpm when I was there. And I couldn’t find anyone to wind it up. So, to be contrary, I just took a still shot.

I walked over the Jubilee bridge and caught the train to Orpington from Charing Cross. This was followed by a bus ride and a bit of a walk, during which I very nearly missed a very important alleyway.

It was lovely to see Marie again, and to meet her Mum for the first time. Marie very kindly fed me as if I were a goose being fattened up for Christmas! Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of my host.

Before returning to Richmond, I thought I’d pay a quick visit to Battersea Power Station. Not to visit the new shopping centre, there are shopping centres all over the place. No, I wanted to see the sign outside the underground station that says ‘Battersea Power Station Station’.

You can only imagine the waves of disappointment and dismay that engulfed me when I realised I’d been hoaxed.

Meanwhile, Liesel, Leslie, Andi and Steve had had a good, if slightly damp, day at RHS Wisley Gardens, just off the A3.

They also had a late lunch at The Anchor, Pyrford Lock. No homity pie on this occasion though. So I think it’s fair to say, none of us needed a full evening meal.

It snowed in Manchester and we’d missed it, oh well, never mind, but our grandchildren enjoyed the experience.

‘Twas damp the day we visited the Victoria and Albert Museum but we thought we’d stay dry as we walked along the tunnel from South Ken tube station to the museum. But the tunnel was closed, so we had to walk outside, in the drizzle.

We admired the tapestries from the Mughal empire, the detail is incredible.

Twill-weave cotton and linen mixture, embroidered with silk thread in chain stitch. Gujarat, for the western market. About 1725-50.

Export embroideries of this kind were based on contemporary chintz patterns, with designs being sent by the Dutch and English East India Companies to both the Coromandel Coast in South-East India for chintzes and Gujarat in the North-West for embroideries. No, of course I didn’t commit that to memory.

‘Laughing Matters’ is a display of comedy objects and artefacts from the last 200 years. A lot of the items wouldn’t be accepted as entertainment today and I probably shouldn’t have laughed at some of them: how did they get away with that, even in the 1960s, 1970s?

We had a look at the jewellery too. I couldn’t quite capture the coloured glints from the diamonds.

If this were a shop, of course I would have bought this tiara for my beloved, but it was a museum exhibit, so I couldn’t. Oh well, never mind.

This tiara, from 1903, of graduated flaming hearts and C-scrolls was inspired by a vision of France before the Revolution. Louis Cartier encouraged his designers to sketch 18th-century ironwork and architectural ornament in Paris and Versailles, and to study engraved jewellery designs.

Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, was a prominent American heiress who married into the British nobility in 1876. The Duke of Portland recorded that she ‘took Society completely by storm by her beauty, wit and vivacity and it was soon at her very pretty feet’.

France; Cartier, Paris, with diamonds supplied by the Duchess of Manchester Gold and silver with diamonds; the C-scroll at each end is set with paste (glass). No, I didn’t memorise this info either.

I was very pleased to see Edward Scissorhand’s hand, though, mostly because if you’d asked me where it was, I doubt I would have guessed the V&A.

Back in Richmond, we walked down the road to The Prince’s Head pub for our evening meal. This is the pub featured in the popular TV series Ted Lasso. While the carnivores had roast meat or fish and chips, I enjoyed my roasted vegetable and feta pithivier. No, I’ve never seen that word before, either, but it’s just a posh French word for a puff pastry pie. The staff get their entertainment from listening to us customers struggling to pronounce le mot. The meal was delicious, though

We left Richmond early(-ish), hoping to beat the traffic home, this being the end of the Christmas and New Year holiday period, when we thought most people would be returning home. In the end, the drive wasn’t too bad.

It didn’t take too long to get back into our normal routine at home. Apart from, we did experience some cold and some snow. The temperature hovered around freezing for a couple of days, and it was a bit icy.

We did go into Manchester for an art show. What better way to mark what would have been David Bowie’s 77th birthday than by seeing fellow artist David Hockney at work? Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) was the name of the show at Factory International.

David Hockney himself took us on a personal journey through sixty years of his art in this vibrant immersive exhibition. With huge state-of-the-art projections and a revolutionary sound system, Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) let us experience the world through David Hockney’s eyes. We saw his work from LA to Yorkshire, and up to the present day in Normandy. The show was an incredible opportunity to get to know one of the great popular geniuses of the art world, still experimenting with new technology to create beauty and wonder. We watched Hockney experiment with perspective, use photography as a way of ‘drawing with a camera’, capture the passing of time in his polaroid collages and the joy of sSpring on his iPad – and he showed us why only paint can properly convey the hugeness of the Grand Canyon. The specially composed score by Nico Muhly was fantastic too, not intrusive at all.

Liesel and Leslie in a Hockney landscape

And finally, one more time: Happy New Year! I stole this fascinating piece of mathematical trivia from someone on the internet: merci beaucoups!

Alaskans in London

While we were asleep in Chessington, good friends of ours were flying into Heathrow Airport all the way from Anchorage. Una, Phil and Kiran were visiting London for a few days before setting off for Barcelona, where Kiran will be studying for the next six months.

Today’s adventure began with a drive along the wonderful M25 to meet and greet them at the airport. No way could we all fit in our car, even without travellers’ luggage. So Liesel drove with the bags and her Mom to Una’s accommodation in Eltham. Meanwhile, my mission, which I was happy to accept, was to escort the visitors on public transport.

The first experience wasn’t very welcoming: we had to stand most of the way on the Piccadilly line train from Heathrow to Piccadilly Circus. So many people, so many huge cases.

It was a drab day and despite appearances, this really is a colour photo of Eros. It was fun showing visitors the sights and sites of our capital city. We certainly did a lot of walking over the next few days.

Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth has a new display.

Mil Veces un Instante (A thousand times an Instant) by Teresa Margolles

It’s a cuboid constructed from the face casts of 726 trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people from the UK and Mexico, where the artist, Teresa Margolles, comes from.

More details here, at least until a new display comes along!

Our first choice for lunch was the crypt of St Martin in the Fields. But it wasn’t yet open. We went into the church itself, but we left fairly quickly as there was a service taking place. We walked on towards Leicester Square where we enjoyed a light breakfast.

Whitehall was busy and there were no protesters at the gates of Downing Street. Maybe it was too cold. Maybe there’s nothing to protest about, any more.

It was definitely a day to be a tourist. We didn’t join the queue, though, to have our photo taken by a particular telephone box with Big Ben, Elizabeth Tower, in the background.

You can see it was still not yet noon. And it was still too early to check in at the flat, so we made our way to Oxford Circus.

Walking up Regent Street, I pointed out the balcony at BBC Broadcasting House where U2 had performed a few years ago: Phil and Una are big U2 fans. We intruded on a church service taking place in All Souls, just over the road. That’s two. Keep forgetting it’s Sunday. Oops.

There were a couple of shops that Kiran wanted to visit, the sort of shop that I would never normally darken the doors of.

Sorry to say, I found the display of sewing machines here in AllSaints more interesting than the fashions. Although I was nearly tempted to buy a nice, fluffy, warm jumper. Nearly.

We also visited Liberty, a place I don’t think I’ve been inside for half a century. The main reason was to visit the loo, although it was interesting to watch the other shoppers going about their business. And I did compliment the shop assistant who was dressed as a rag doll. Yeah, I know: creepy old man.

Phil and Una were impressed by the Christmas lights in Regent Street, and of course we’d come back to see them illuminated at some point.

While walking down Regent Street, I had to show them Heddon Street, the location of David Bowie’s photoshoot for the cover of his Ziggy Stardust album.

Funny thing is, I don’t think anyone believed me when I told them this was the London Eye. It’s really Lost Echoes by Charlotte Colbert, a new addition to this area, where there are a few Bowie-themed establishments.

More pounding the streets, over to Seven Dials. A long queue at the fish and chip shop deterred us, and Seven Dials Market was very busy too.

Check-in time was 3pm, so we found our way to Eltham by train. Liesel brought the luggage over, and the visitors settled into the flat. Promptly falling asleep. Tired, jet-lagged travellers, all.

Liesel, Leslie and I were staying at a Premier Inn nearby.

After a good night’s sleep, we all met up at the flat, greeted by a flock of noisy green parrakeets.

We planned to go to Greenwich this morning. Train to Lewisham then DLR. Easy. Except it was a fast train and it didn’t stop at Lewisham. Plan B then, go on the Jubilee line from Waterloo. We had a pleasant walk, seeing more of Greenwich than anticpated. And it was good to see the masts of the Cutty Sark over the rooftops, confirming we were heading in the right direction, even if Google Maps was joshing with us, changing its mind about which direction we should be walking in.

We wandered around Greenwich Market, to pass the time, and bought some snacks. After a coffee break, we boarded the boat for our cruise on the Thames. It was hard to know which side to sit, left or right, port or starboard, since both sides of the river have plenty of things to see.

Neither Liesel nor I could remember any of the famous ‘celebs’ who live in these apartments. And of course, they’re well out of our price range.

We were very lucky, though. I’ve only seen Tower Bridge raised twice before, but today was my third time. There was no sign of a tall ship, so I assume it was just a regular test. Perfect timing, though.

Phil and I were the only ones in our group to brave the upper deck, outside in the chilly wind. I did feel sorry for the girl behind the bar. I don’t think any of us passengers bought anything from her. Perhaps the sign saying ‘Cash Only’ didn’t help.

We sailed under more London bridges before docking at Westminster Pier. It was a very smooth voyage. We then walked back along the river, admiring the real London Eye, now wholly visible, not half hidden in very low cloud like it was yesterday.

We walked to the the fish & chip shop, Rock and Sole Plaice, and again, there was quite a long queue. This time, though, we decided to join and wait. Una and Liesel went off to browse another clothes shop, one of Liesel’s favourites, Gudrun Sjoden. I paid a quick visit to Seven Dials Market, thinking I’d get some lunch here since I wasn’t interested in fish & chips. Well, it was full. Queues at every food outlet, no spare tables. I did come across a hero of mine, though:

It looks like a Banksy but I don’t think it is. Eventually, the six of us found ourselves n the basement of Rock and Sole Plaice, and I was pleased to see they had pies on the menu too. Cheese, onion and potato for me. Plus, I introduced our visitors to mushy peas. Unimpressed is the word, I think.

As staunch royalists, of course we had to pay a visit to Buckingham Palace. We walked via Covent Garden Market, Trafalgar Square again, but not under Admiralty Arch which was covered in hoarding, along the Mall where we mingled with thousands of other visitors.

We’d noticed lots of barriers and fences everywhere, probably to be used for crowd control on New Years’ Eve. Leslie was getting tired so she and Liesel returned to our hotel by taxi, tube and train. Phil, Una, Kiran and I walked across Green Park to catch a bus back to Oxford Circus. At last, it was dark enough to fully appreciate the Christmas lights.

Kiran and Una wanted to go shopping so Phil and I went on a pub crawl. When I say ‘pub crawl’, I mean we visited four pubs before finding one that wasn’t too crowded, too noisy, and we even found a couple of seats at the Red Lion. So we had a pint of beer, Sam Smiths bitter in my case, which I don’t think I’ve imbibed for several years. We were entertained by a group of young lads playing darts, hindered by the fact that they couldn’t agree on the exact location of the oche, the throw line. Like the rest of the carpet, it was well-worn.

There was no 4G signal here, so I had to send an SMS to Liesel asking her to let Una know where we were. Una and Kiran found us, and while they enjoyed more beer, I set off back to the hotel. On the walk back from the railway station, I admired some local street art.

Well done Year 4 at St Olave’s Prep School

Meanwhile, Phil, Una and Kiran visited Hamley’s and met a very imposing figure.

Back home up north, Jenny and family visited Dunham Massey to see the lights and succeeded in not tripping over the hundreds of miles of cables.

In other news, let us congratulate nephew Robert and his fiancée Cristy on their announcement! Yes, great news from Vancouver. Time to buy a new hat.

Even though Borough Market is one of our favourites in London, we didn’t pay a visit on this occasion. Phil, Una and Kiran did though, along with thousands of other people.

Liesel, Leslie and I visited Waterloo Station to begin our walk along the South Bank. There’s a new installation in the station, designed to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding contribution and dedication of the Windrush Generation to British history,

The monument symbolises the courage, commitment and resilience of the thousands of men, women and children who travelled to the UK from 1948 to 1971.

It has been created as a permanent place of reflection fostering greater understanding of the Windrush Generation’s talent, hard work and loyalty to Britain, inspiring future generations forever.

Again, we passed by many fences and barriers, plus hoarding that was hiding a lot of building and refurbishment work. These days, you need a ticket to go into London for the New Year’s Eve revelries, but Liesel and I strongly suspected we’d all be in bed well before midnight.

We’d had a hotel breakfast, so at Tate Modern, we just needed a quick snack really. Liesel and I had very different ideas about what to eat:

After crossing the Millenium Bridge towards St Paul’s Cathedral, we easily found the required bus stop.

We’d arranged to meet our Alaskan visitors outside the British Museum, which I thought was less busy than usual: there wasn’t a long queue outside, with people waiting for their bags to be searched.

We all spent time admiring the Parthenon Marbles and reading the story. Who knows? Maybe one day, they will be returned to Greece.

It’s a big Museum and would need many more visits to see everything. Has anyone, ever, done so?

I couldn’t find the mummified worm, but we did see other mummified animals upstairs. There’s only so long one can walk slowly around such places, so a cup of tea and a slice of cake is always welcome afterwards.

Una was so tired, she fell asleep and missed out on joining the rest of us for our most enjoyable evening meal in Bromley’s Aqua Bar and Grill. Afterwards, Liesel, Leslie, Phil, Kiran and I squoze into our small car, but at least we didn’t have to shoe-horn Una into the boot. After dropping them off at the flat, the three of us returned to our hotel to see in the new year. We heard fireworks at midnight, but I for one didn’t bother getting up to look out of the window.

2025 began with us heading for Canary Wharf where we’d planned to have breakfast at Dishoom. Where? Each Dishoom is a love letter to Bombay – its food and its culture, its many varied people, its rich history and its endless eccentricities.

I do like seeing works of art out in the streets, and when I first saw this one, I wondered whether it might be a depiction of a mother and child. But no.

We passed this item as we walked from Canary Wharf Station to the restaurant, where we met up with our visitors. Our waiter was very helpful and friendly and we all enjoyed our meal. Vegan sausage and fried eggs in a naan roll for me. And about three pints of sweet, spicy chai.

Outside, the wind was picking up, and it was beginning to rain a bit. Liesel and her Mom retired to the hotel while the rest of us went over to Kings Cross to visit Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾. The queue for photos was ridiculously long. The queue for the shop wasn’t too bad, so we waited and, again, I didn’t purchase a wand because I just couldn’t decide which one to go for.

We did sample the Fizzing Whizzbees, which according to the packaging, are a delicious snack and everybody’s favourite. Lies.

We caught the tube to Baker Street where we had a quick glance at the statue of Sherlock Holmes in the rain. Then onto St Johns Wood, followed by a ten minute walk to Abbey Road. Phil, in particular, wanted to see the pedestrian crossing featured on the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album.

I think the shop is new, and we spent quite a while looking at the books and records and mementoes on sale here.

And again, I was not equipped to graffiti my name on the wall outside the Abbey Road Studios.

Back at Waterloo Station, we had a coffee before heading over to Covent Garden for afternoon tea. Nobody likes going to Covent Garden tube station, because of the lifts or, alternatively, having to climb nearly 200 stairs. But, because of the rain today, we decided it was worth the effort to stay dry for an extra five minutes.

Of course, we spent some time wandering around the market before meeting up with Liesel and Leslie at the chosen venue, Ladurée, a place we’ve walked by many times in the past.

It was a very relaxed afternoon tea. In fact, for a while, we thought the staff might be a bit too relaxed. Still, we got served in the end and I was fully sated, didn’t need anything for an evening meal.

I think we all agreed it had been fun showing Phil, Una and Kiran around London for a few days, but it was now sadly time to say goodbye. They were off to Barcelona for a few days, and we hope to see them again later in the year. Thank you all for being such good sports and for massively increasing my step count for a few days! Liesel, her Mom and I were staying in London for a little longer.

As it’s the start of 2025, everyone’s talking about their New Years’ Resolutions. I don’t usually make them, I try and adjust my behaviour whenever the thought occurs, throughout the year. But today, I did take
£90 and set fire to it in the hotel car park. It was so much easier to waste money and save time this way, rather than going to a gym, registering, and never going back again afterwards.

Anyway, Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between.

Southbound

The final WI Committee meeting of the year took place, and according to Liesel, it didn’t turn into a drunken orgy. But whatever happened, it didn’t make the local newspaper.

On Christmas Eve, we treated the car to a wash and brush-up. I think most of the moss and the guano was washed off and the wheel hubs look much better without that layer of rust. I sometimes wonder whether the dirt is holding the vehicle together.

Later on, the family came round for our (new tradional) Christmas Eve potato and leek soup (Liesel’s version), salad and a selection of home-baked cookies: thank you Liesel. After clearing the table, we played the Dreidel Game for Hannukah. Martha and William enjoy the game, even more so when they know that regardless of the outcome, they’ll be going away with a tub of chocolate coins.

We enjoyed another wonderful Northenden sunset, not all the colours of the rainbow, but at least one of them.

Christmas Day, the most wonderful day of the year, according to at least one song. We shared in William and Martha’s excitement when we went round for brunch. Not when they first woke up, though, soon after 3.00am!

We went for a postprandial perambulation to a nearby playground, passing through the graveyard. Martha rode her bike, William scootered because one of his bicycle tyres was flat. It was a very pleasant afternoon and we burned off about 2% of the calories consumed earlier.

Did I say brunch? It was a huge meal, so much so, that we didn’t need to eat much at home for the rest of the day, just a quick snack. The Christmas Doctor Who was good. We also watched the final ever Gavin & Stacey. We saved Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl for the next day! Hundreds of pages of listings in the Radio Times, and that’s pretty much all it came down to, for us.

On the radio, Wythenshawe FM repearted one of my Christmas shows from a couople of years ago, and on Boom Radio, we heard a 2-special celebrating Kenny Everett’s time on Radio Luxembourg and Capital Radio, on what would have been his 80th birthday. An d I am enjoying the latest, the 82nd, series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on Radio 4

Sad to say we didn’t move much at all for the next couple of days. If I were into New Year’s Resolutions, mine would be to definitely go for a walk every single day. But I’m not. I resolve to do that quite frequently, throughout they year, and it never lasts long

Meanwhile, in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pauline and Andrew have signed up for this very special party in the new year.

We’d been looking forward to our end-of-year visit to London for some time. Again, we decided not to book a train, the service is so unreliable. We drove south: the traffic wasn’t too bad.

Once we hit the M6, Liesel didn’t need a lot of help with navigating, and I did my best not to fall asleep. In the back seat, Leslie was counting birds’ nests in the trees and concentrated long enough to reach 100. If she’d been counting sheep instead, she might easily have fallen asleep.

At the services, the sign told us to Drive Thru Starbucks. So we did. We drove thru Starbucks without stopping.

The biggest laugh of course came from Google Maps which warned us that there was unusually heavy traffic on M25. No, mate, that’s not unusual at all.

And of course, when you’re on the M25 and you think your car’s falling apart, it’s just the very loud and presumably very cheap concrete surface you have to drive on in some places.

Our first choice of accommodation was the Premier Inn in Tolworth. But it was fully booked. So we slummed it at Premier Inn, Chessington, next door to the World of Adventures. It was comfortable enough.

We drove into Surbiton where we met up with Helen and Steve at the old place, Allegro’s, for a pizza. After this, Liesel, Leslie and Helen caught the train into London to watch Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. This play was enjoyed by all, although I did feel a little jealous that I’d missed out when Liesel told me Pearl Mackie was in it: she played Bill Potts in Doctor Who for a very short while.

But I was pleased to be able to enjoy a relaxing massage on this Saturday night, thank you very much. If only I could have fallen asleep straightaway afterwards, rather than having to catch a bus and walk several hundred metres along Leatherhead Road.

I was in a room by myself while Liesel shared with her Mom: this was to be the sleeping arrangement for the next few days. After a nice, but short, sleep, we got up early, packed and checked out. No time today for a delicious Premier Inn breakfast. Things to do, places to go, people to see…