Little Wandering Wren …. chats!

Days 69-72: it's cold and chilly here... The Uffington White Horse Hill dominates the landscape around where I grew up, I would ride my pony up onto then Berkshire Downs (now Oxfordshire) and go for miles... The White Horse is a highly stylized prehistorical hill figure 110m long formed with deep trenches filled with chalk and visible from a long way away in the surrounding villages. It is a great place to head with Emlin after her arrival, to blow away those cobwebs from the long flight from Australia... With our green wellies on, the wind blowing through our hair and horses galloping past, it's good to be back in Britain - I reflect this a far cry from the city life that our kids have been brought up in... People have been walking these paths for a very long time - we walk for 2kms along the Ridgeway and come across Waylands Smithy Long Barrow which was used for burials over 5,500 years ago in the Neolithic period. Down from the hillside and cold to the bone, we head for th...

DAY 65-67 We are off to see my Brighton Belle today at her new University in Sussex. For this special trip I've hired a flash new car - a Fiat 500 . They have great marketing for this car: 'Unmistakably Italien, undeniably you'... And even 'The Happiest small car'> However my reaction to my VroomVroom.com bargain booking is less than cheery. 'Don't tell me I've got that car..?' This is at the thought of a long journey in an inch winsy, bloody tiny tin can... with my Father unable to open his large AA map book in the front, and my Mother squashed in the back.... However as we speed along the motorway with windscreen wipers on full tilt in the pouring rain, the car holding her own in tricky driving conditions on the M4 and M25, Little Brighton Belle was more than doing alright. My father in a wave of nostalgia remembering our own Fiat 500 in the 1960's and my Mother proclaiming cheerily that she could see a touch of blue sky through the sunroo...

Three generations, for three days in London.... We're here to see the sights, enjoy the Christmas lights & festive window displays of Harrods and Harvey Nichs, do some shopping - including treating Grannie to a Victoria's Secrets experience - watch the West End show Wicked, and last but not least, attend the first ever carol concert at Kensington Palace. We stayed at the Grand Plaza Apartments in Bayswater just a brief stroll from the Circle Line tube, and a short walk to Kensington Palace. This was the view from our two bedroom apartment.... Nice! ....I reckon I could move in here for good... There is a lot to fit in, so first off we're going to Kensington Palace , which is recently opened following a 12 million pound investment. The Palace has been home to many famous Royals from Queen Victoria to Princess Diana (from 1981 to her death in 1997) and currently the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Kate and William, with Harry often hanging out here on an unofficial b...

Day 62-63 D Block girls out on the town again.... Almost exactly 30 years ago to the day, five first year undergraduates moved into D-Block in Sherwood Hall, Nottingham University to study Psychology, Archeology, Sociology and Medicine. Thrown together on the second floor of what we later found out was the Drinking Hall of Residence, solely because all our surnames began with C and D, it was by chance a perfect mixing up of the Great British North - South divide. Here our differing backgrounds and private/comprehensive schooling were irrelevant and as we grew up at Nottingham University, we formed long lasting friendships that were happily nowhere near as improbable as Fabian's quote from Twelfth Night suggests: If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction. Twelfth Night Act Three, Scene Four So here we are all these years later, still meeting up whenever we all in the country together....we haven't seen each other for three years, but thi...