What's the point of going to England?

We went to England. We set off for London on the 10th of February.

Here’s Alex and me climbing over the base of Nelson’s Column. I don’t know whether you’re really supposed to, but there were two police vans full of coppers parked right next to us, and Alex never got arrested.


Here’s the girls in Kew Garden’s orchid exhibition...


Here’s the girls posing with a raven in the Tower of London. It turns out we weren’t supposed to climb on Nelson’s Column after all. Only joking, you have to pay to get in nowadays, but they do let you out again. It is quite some castle, all those picturesque houses in the background are within two massive curtain walls and a big moat (now filled).


Here’s a shot of me and the girls, still in the Tower. The building in the background houses the crown jewels. Some impressive plunder from distant lands there, good job they’re all part of the commonwealth and they are their crown jewels too, or they might be asking for it back! I liked Queen Victoria’s small diamond crown best, you have to be some monarch to carry off a silly little crown like that, but she managed it beautifully ;-)


Here’s a Roman mosaic at the Roman Baths in Bath...


This is me and Sophia prating about at the Cotswolds Wildlife Park...


And just to prove we really did go by train, here we are sat in Birmingham New Street on the 19th of February, waiting to set off home.


You’ll have figured out by now that it was Seiko who was equipped with a camera, and there are literally no pictures of her on this holiday :-( But I think she was there. I’m pretty sure she was there...

We also spent a day in the Science Museum (with a short detour through the Natural History Museum), had a scramble up a woody hill in Bathampton for a quick game of tag, and visited STEAM, the museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon.

So all in all, not at all a restful holiday. Came back totally knackered :-)

And you know what?

None of that was the point.

The point was, we stayed with three sets of friends in three different places. Some we hadn’t seen for years, some we’d hardly even spoken to for years, all of whom had moved on (at least house, and sometimes whole life) since we visited them last.

We stayed with my old school friend, who we last saw at his wedding 5 years ago, and properly met his multitalented wife (a brilliant cook and doctor) and two young children. My attitude towards living in London has been blown out of the water - before I went I thought London was a nice place to visit, but why would you want to live there? Now I can totally see the appeal of living there. I’m going to steal the best bits of his lifestyle and adapt them to rural Ayrshire - starting with good food, I think ;-)

We stayed with Seiko’s university friend and her family, who we hadn’t seen for even longer. Last time we visited them, I was play fighting with their toddler son. This time he was pointing out the historical inaccuracies in the art work in the Pump Room in Bath...

And we stayed with my brother and sister-in-law. Obviously we’ve seen them more recently, but we’d never visited their house before. When he moved in it was a fixer-upper; like my house. But instead of buying the house next door, and building extensions and going mad like me, he fixed it up, really properly. It is a really nice wee house. Suddenly, and out of nowhere, I can see the appeal of having doors and furniture that match throughout. He’s even got nice tiles in the space under the stairs where the dog sleeps. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that point, but I’m more enthused to get the plastering finished and do a good job on the skirting boards in my place.

In short, meeting up with all these people and staying with them in their homes has been really great, and all the touristy stuff was just the icing on the cake.

Love to all concerned, I’m not sure why I don’t want to name you but I don’t want to invade your privacy so soon after invading your homes. You know who you are :-)