"It's about time you wrote another blog entry"

Bowing to "popular" demand, it's probably time for another entry. A few things have happened since I got back from Malaysia so I'll try and make it interesting.

The big thing is that I've now moved out of the flat I was sharing with a friend and back in with my parents. Although my flatmate found another job, it didn't pay enough for her to afford to stay and I couldn't afford to stay on my own. After ten odd years of flat/house shares, I wasn't sure I could handle any more randoms with questionable living habits. At my age (late 20s), it's a bit of a change to make. Hopefully, it won't be too long term and it means I can save up with a view to making an escape to a place of my own.

Don't worry, I have also done some (less far flung) travel to balance out my failure to be an adult.

Croydon 
Actually Selsdon - a suburb of Croydon but nobody has heard of there so Croydon will do. I went there for the periodic work annual conference. Two days of talks, awkward videos and group discussions about improving strategies and developing new ideas to become a better company. To make up for this, there was a dinner on the first evening featuring a large amount of wine and a cheesy disco.

Dorchester
Another work trip including a very long train journey. On the way there, someone started a fight on the train causing the journey to take three hours, I was incredibly bored by the time I actually reached Dorchester. I also found myself there on one of the first hot days of the year but unable to enjoy it fully. I did get time to have a wander around the town and establish that nowadays there is a little bit more to do in an evening - even a cinema.

Bognor Regis
A couple of road trips down to West Sussex's best kept secret - an amazing crazy golf course. I even managed my record lowest score of 44 and rang the bell for a free game next time I'm there. The main purpose of the visits was actually to visit my Gran and on both occasions, there was nice, sunny weather so we could take her out for a walk along the promenade.

Central London
To celebrate reaching my late twenties, I had a day off for my birthday. My policy is that I should do my best to never work on my actual birthday and so far, I have successfully stuck to this policy. This year, I went up to central London with my Mum to have a touristy day on the river boat tour. Not the crazy hardcore party antics most people my age get up to but it turned out to be pretty good.

We caught the boat from Westminster Pier and joined a trip to Greenwich. On the way we had one of the crew provide a "quirky" commentary about the various sights of London. For example, "did you know that Big Ben was named after the Clerk of Works in charge of building the Houses of Parliament? His name was Ben and he was 5ft tall. He was also 5ft wide so many people thought he looked like a bell. As a token of appreciation, they named the bell after him". Who knows whether that is true...  We had a spot of lunch by the Cutty Sark in Greenwich before joining another boat for the journey back to Westminster with more or less the same "quirky" commentary in reverse. 

Tower Bridge

The Cutty Sark

Celebratory sparkling wine

I have also relaunched my fatty to fitty campaign. Over the last couple of years, I let my fitness slide a little bit so I decided to use moving in with my parents as a motivation to change that. I started by cycling to and from work every day, regardless of weather. A minimum of 2 miles each way but I've tried to go longer routes on the way home or cycle up some more hills to improve my slightly poor lung capacity. In a week's time, I'm taking part in a ride into and around Central London (part of the Prudential Free Cycle event) which will put all this to the test. Perhaps I will write an update after that to let you know how I got on.

Christmas in South West London

I thought I would break my blog silence with an entry about my Christmas activities.

On the 23rd December, I went over to my Mum and Dad's house to stay for the Christmas week. The first key thing I did was attempt to bake. I should probably explain that normally I am not a baking person. I don't tend to spend my time baking cakes or pastries and although I love "The Great British Bake Off", I'm generally a bit lazy to give it a go myself. However, I decided to try making the mince pies. Turned out that making pastry is not too difficult although I was a bit terrified it wouldn't work out. Luckily, I cheated and used pre-made mincemeat so there was at least one part that was guaranteed to work. Sadly, I didn't quite make enough pastry so I had to use some cutters to make fun designs to go on top of some of the pies. I think it paid off and the finished results actually tasted alright.

Normally, my Gran and my sister are also with us for Christmas. As you may know already, my sister is in Indonesia teaching English and is sunning herself in Bali for the Christmas break (little bit jealous). My Gran was all set to come and stay with my parents from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Unfortunately, on the 23rd December the south of England was hit by quite significant storms. Although the storms did not cause any damage to the roads we required to collect her, she decided it would be best not to come after all. For the first time that I can remember, there was just the three of us for Christmas. Very strange.

We started Christmas day off in the normal way for us by going on a walk in Bushy Park with some friends of my Mum. We decided to be energetic and cycled there, my parents on their tandem. Despite being fairly full of a cold, I managed the bike ride and the walk around the park without feeling worse. After the walk finished, my Dad took a couple of my Mum's friends for a ride around the car park on the tandem. Having grown up around tandems, I forget how weird they must be to ride for the first time. 

Once back at my Mum and Dad's house we had some wine then opened some Christmas presents. I was very lucky and got some very nice things. My parents seemed to like their presents too. Bonus. Once done unwrapping things and drinking our wine, we had Christmas dinner. Pretty traditional turkey with roast veg and all the trimmings (except brussell sprouts) followed by Christmas pudding ice cream. 

In previous years, we've followed up Christmas dinner with a drive into central London to view the festive lights in Oxford and Regent Streets. This year, my Dad didn't fancy the drive and I didn't fancy doing it instead of him so we decided to go for a second walk. This time we wandered down to Teddington Lock. The storm had caused the river to get up pretty high and there was a bit of flooding too so we didn't walk up too far. It did prevent us all from having the post Christmas dinner lull/nap time and conveniently meant we missed the Queen's speech. When we got back we managed to catch Megan for the second Skype chat of the day.

On Boxing Day, we went to Bognor to visit my Gran. Although the storm had caused some flooding and fallen trees, this had not affected the roads we used. The journey still seemed to take ages though, think everyone had the same idea of visiting relatives on Boxing Day. Luckily, the weather in Bognor was sunny and we were able to take my Gran for a quick push in a wheelchair up to the seafront. As there was a lot of shingle on the promenade, we couldn't take her too far along as the wheelchair was really not up for that kind of obstacle. 

I spent a further two days with my parents, mostly being lazy and recovering from my Christmas cold. I am still off work until 2nd January. In that time, I don't really have much planned but should be attending my friend's New Year's Eve house party on Tuesday to mark the new year itself. Here are some fun pictures from the last few days:

 My amazing mince pies

 Classy hand decorated Christmas cake

Christmas day walk

This will probably be my last entry for 2013 but don't worry, there is much to look forward to blog wise in 2014. Not only will I probably go on some trips around the UK in dubious weather but I will also be meeting up with Megan in Malaysia in April. That will definitely warrant a few blog entries and hopefully they will be even better than this year's selection.

The blog is back!

Adventures in an airport & more fun

I've decided to try and make a few semi regular updates. This is partly in exchange for my sister Megan making updates to her blog while she is travelling to more exciting places. If you've stumbled across my blog by accident, you should check hers out too http://megs-meanders.blogspot.co.uk/

As I am not travelling very far at the moment, I'm not sure how far I will get or how interesting it will be.

Yesterday I took the day off work in order to see Megan off at the airport with my Mum. She's off to teach in Indonesia for a year. We met at the bus stop in Teddington and got the fast bus over to Heathrow. Once in Heathrow, we checked Meg's bags in and decided our next priority was to get coffee. By this point, I was struggling not to feel very jealous of the people who were actually catching a plane to somewhere exciting so welcomed a distraction.

Megan & Mum at the airport

 



After making our coffees last an impressive amount of time, we wandered over to the security gates. It was time to say goodbye. We're not an overly emotional family so I think Megan found it a bit awkward but we had a hug and waited until Megan had disappeared behind the security gates.

As we'd booked the whole day off, Mum and I decided to go over to Greenwich for the afternoon. We headed off onto the Piccadilly and Jubilee lines in order to reach North Greenwich, home of the O2 (formally the Millennium Dome. Our plan was to have some lunch and then go on the Emirates Cable Car that has been open for just over a year.

Unfortunately, shortly after our lunch it started raining. Big style. We waited it out to see if it would eventually ease off or even stop. Luckily, we only had to wait about 15 minutes until the clouds cleared and the sun came back out.

The cable car itself was not very busy so Mum and I got a gondola to ourselves. As you can see from the photo, you could almost pretend it hadn't just been raining.

 

 

The only disappointing element for me was the view. The O2 and Canary Wharf are interesting enough but those were the only real landmarks I knew well enough to recognise. I'm sure people living in the Greenwich area would disagree but to me, the tower blocks all start merging into one. Despite that, it was a fun trip and definitely worth it.

 

After that, we got onto the DLR at Royal Docks and headed back to Bank. By that point it was nearly 4pm and we were keen to avoid rush hour. As a result, we decided to get the Waterloo & City line back to Waterloo then get a train back to Teddington.

 

Not quite as exciting as a trip abroad or a year in a foreign country but stick with it, I may write something good soon.