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August - September 2006
 

Thursday 10 August 2006

 

I’m still nursing a broken heart but I’m looking ahead and I’m soooo excited about my holiday tomorrow!  Seven days and nights on a “liveaboard” luxury boat in the northern Red Sea, scuba diving with, I hope, some cool fellow scuba divers!   I can’t wait.  Last night I bought a new wetsuit (3mm for the warm 28+ degree water!), hired regulators (the only essential piece of kit I don’t own now!) and watched the video for my next speciality course – nitrox diving.   I am really excited about this, and in case it wasn’t enough, I only have two weeks of work to come back to before I am off for another week diving in the Canaries.  This is definitely the life!

 

Meanwhile in the last week I’ve made the most of the weather, which has been much more pleasant lately.  Tanya and I caught up for a picnic in the common earlier this week.  It was so nice to both be able to wander down the road to meet up with picnic food in tow.  And we both had rather a lot of attention from a local footballer – even a wee kiss each!  Yeah, well Kane was only 5 years old but he was delightful!

 

In the weekend I joined Ben and Becky at “Fruitstock” in Regents Park which was quite an experience.  A free music festival with several thousand people and beautiful weather.  We didn’t really take advantage of what was on offer, but it was just nice to be outside relaxing.   I’ve caught up briefly with Justine and Jen for a drink and last week Marie and I even went to an open-air opera, Madame Butterfly, in Wimbledon.  I was glad that I’d printed out a synopsis as it would have been rather hard to follow otherwise!  And, in typical English-weather fashion, days after enduring the end of three weeks of heat wave, the night we decide to attend an outdoor theatre, it was cold and even rained a little.  Oh well, it wouldn’t be English outdoor theatre without some rain!

Friday 25 August

 

I’ve had a busy week at work, with my boss being away and a couple of cases “blowing up” a bit.  We learnt our lesson this week – don’t ever think you’ve got a case in the bag – even when father did murder sister… it seems there’s still a chance…  oh dear.

 

It’s been a rude welcome back to real life after an amazing week away in the Red Sea diving last week.  I did get there, despite the ridiculous “security” measures that were put in place 24 hours before I was due to fly to the Middle East…!  The week was brilliant and you can see all my photos here.

 

This week I’ve kept busy with work, going to the gym and going out three nights, meeting up with Ben, Marie and Eram.  It’s bank holiday this weekend and I have plans to see the Bodies Exhibition and go to the Notting Hill Carnival.  I’ll try and make it back to the gym too and hopefully there will be some more sun to boost up my already-fading tan (but I’m not holding my breath!) 

 

There’s then four more days at work (which are likely to be very busy) and then I’m off for another week diving, this time in the Canary Islands.  I have just bought my last piece of essential kit – regulators – and I can’t wait to get back into the water to try them out.

Tuesday 29 August

What a miserable day!  I am sitting in my boss’s office (she’s away so I’m taking advantage of some peace and quiet for a couple of weeks) and outside the window is a definite sign that autumn is already here.  I haven’t seen dull, miserable, teeming rain like this for months.  And yesterday, while on a London Walk of Royal Parks and Residences I noticed a considerable number of orange leaves on the ground.  Oh dear, how depressing.  I will have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have a whole winter to look forward to though – in fact, I’ve only got to get through autumn and then I will have another summer!  Surely I can survive that!?

 

The other sign that summer is over is, apparently, the fact that we just had the last bank holiday until Christmas.  I had a varied weekend, catching up with Eram on Saturday, doing that walk yesterday, seeing the Bodies exhibition and checking out Notting Hill Carnival.  The Bodies exhibition was just excellent – for those who don’t know, they have preserved real dead bodies in carious poses and states so that you can see and learn all about how the human body works.  Really extraordinary stuff.   I think the thing that struck me most was (and sorry if this is a little gross), we are all basically made of meat.  Yep, bits of our body look just like a tasty steak.  It was quite a discovery.

 

The Notting Hill Carnival is world-famous and I thought I’d better go and check it out, so went along with Marie and her friends.  It was a great afternoon for it and we had a bit of a boogie in the streets which was fun, even if there was a half hour queue for the £1 toilets and then an hour long walk just to get back out of the carnival area.  All good fun. 

 

This week is looking busy as I am out each night catching up with Eram, Bianca, Tanya and Sarah.  There’s only four days at work this week, hopefully a little quieter than last week, and then I’m off diving in the Canaries again.  Sounds good to me!

Tuesday 12 September

 

I got back yesterday from a fantastic week away diving in Gran Canaria.  The group was made up of great people and we had a lot of fun and laughs all week.  The diving was good and my last dive on Sunday was my 50th!  I never would have thought I’d have done 50 dives this year.  Some underwater highlights were spotting the incredible manta rays, waving to tourists passing in a yellow submarine, seeing my first octopus and cuttlefish, touching a stingray (so soft!) and doing loads of somersaults in the perfect blue Atlantic Ocean.  And I was really terribly brave because although I didn’t want to get too close to the spider crabs, I did stroke an octopus (which was so much bigger)!  Above water we just had a great, chilled time.  In between dives there was plenty of chatting and laughing, swimming in the pools at the dive centre and our apartments and of course eating and drinking.  We ate out every night except one when we had a BBQ at the dive centre.  The team at the centre, Ellen, Dave, Dave and Leon were all fantastic and all my expectations were surpassed.  I am totally spoiled for future dive holidays now – they did all the hard work for us!  Check back here soon for the photos and write up.

Friday 29 September

 

I am going to Africa on Sunday!  I am excited but also really nervous.  I think I’ve just been inundated with information about all the things that could go wrong!  But I am sure that it is going to be an amazing trip and surely nothing can really go too wrong?!  Click here for the itinerary.

 

I’ve had quite a busy couple of weeks since my return from Gran Canaria which has been good (although now it’s time for another holiday!). 

 

I went to Robbie Williams’ concert last Tuesday which was a definite highlight!  It was at the Milton Keynes National Bowl which was an experience in itself.  It is a grass “bowl” in which some 65,000 people can gather.  It must be a few hundred metres in diameter and when Robbie got the other half of the crowd cheering, we could barely hear them they were so far away!  It was a great concert and even worth the palaver of getting to and from Milton Keynes (even the minicab to get home at 1am!)

 

A couple of Saturdays ago Marie and I took the coach to Canterbury for the day.  It was a nice day for it and we had lunch, checked out Canterbury Cathedral (ticked that off my list!) and then had tea and scones before heading back to London again!  Great day.  On the Sunday I had lunch with Bianca and lay in the common enjoying what I think is the last of the nice weather.

 

Eram and I were invited to dinner at Sarah and Marty’s last week.  It was really nice to go to someone’s house and have dinner, something that we just don’t do in London.  It was especially nice as they had a bottle of mum and dad’s pinot to crack open!  Eram and I also caught up with the old Havering crowd soon after I got back which was nice. 

 

This Sunday I caught up with Justine at Tower Bridge.  She is heading home while I’m away next month so we had our own private goodbye, and arranged to meet again in Wellington in February 2007!   The views from the top of Tower Bridge are great and at £5, it’s got to be London’s best value tourist attraction!

 

This past week I caught up with Ben, had lunch with Angela (who has been in Scotland for two years and is headed home to NZ now) and have two lots of law firm drinks (always good after work!).  Last night I went with Jennifer to Shakespeare’s Globe.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, much more than I expected to (and we were glad that we were in the covered seats as the people standing got rained on all night!).  We saw Comedy of Errors which is very funny and my understanding of the antics was much helped by the synopsis I downloaded beforehand!  I have a new-found understanding of Shakespeare now, he really was very clever and funny.

 

Other than that I have been rushing around shopping in the £1 shop (for gifts for my sponsored child, her family and villagers) and organising yellow fever shots, library books, insurance and mosquito repellent for the trip.  It will be a relief to get onboard the plane on Sunday night and finally be on holiday – again!

 
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