Thursday 19th May

A long overdue post... and it will end up as always being a pretty mixed bag of day to day events, thoughts and 'stuff'.

Becky and I had a very good three day break in London, shopping, shopping and a little more shopping! Finding our way around was interesting, fortunately she had sourced a great deal of info online before we went so we had a 'plan', although we didn't always stick to it!

At one point we wandered naively down a small alleyway in Soho without realising the 'shops' were not exactly selling clothes or 'items' we would chose to buy...

Our hotel was ideally placed, right in Shaftesbury Avenue, and as you would expect a little noisy, but it wasn't until the last day we discovered we were only just down the road from the London Fire Station!!

We were also very lucky with the flights, no delays and a smooth flight out on the Monday, but it ended up being very foggy on Wednesday, and so it was with a certain amount of trepidation and (resignation), that we boarded the plane at Gatwick on our return.

I fully expected the pilot to have to 'overshoot' the runway and head back to the UK, he was approaching fairly fast (it's a short runway in Jersey, so difficult at the best of times). Bex had been reading and doing a bit of colouring (!) to keep herself busy, and as the wheels came out and touched down she and I 'braced' ourselves on the seats in front. The pilot then had to really slam on the brakes (or whatever the technical term is) causing the slim cardboard crayoning set to shoot off my daughter's lap and then to the astonishment of her adjacent passengers slide at some speed down the aisle, disappearing from view!!

We were all laughing, and on disembarking surreptitiously looked under the seats to try and locate the missing colours. As we approached the air stewardess we had to own up as to what we were doing, and unusually the pilot was standing in the cockpit doorway, "Ah, Is this what you're looking for, I wondered how they'd got there!" He said, producing the crayons from behind the door, (they must have slid underneath)!!

Had some lovely visitors from the UK.. that baby is edible...

 Even his mum eats him...

 This is what happens when you leave God-children with their God-Mother unexpectedly...you get your nails painted.. and I'm not the God-Mother!!!

 She was happy, honest, and Jess didn't like the colour much.

My husband went to the hospital yesterday to have his pre med checks for the Gallbladder operation, lots of tests, scans and samples taken, and then they told him it was booked next week !!! A bit of a shock to say the least. Anyway, we are due to go away at the beginning of June ( more of that later) and so wisely I think they have postponed it for four weeks.

There is no doubt that he really needs the operation, unless the meals are quite plain now he suffers with stomach aches, so no sauces, red meats or oily fish, he has lost a fair bit of weight (cutting out biscuits and cakes), but is craving sweet things, not overly impressed with dried peaches that I offered him today!!

We did the South Coast Challenge walk on Sunday, about 15 miles I think ( with the girls ). It was lovely, the views breathtaking, meeting people, and raising money for Jersey Mencap, all worthwhile.

 A rather steep climb right at the end of the walk, a bit unfair..

 Even Jess had had enough and so could sympathise with Steve, Beanie wondered why we had stopped!!

 The finish!

 Our woodland wildflowers..

As regular readers will know, I visited Jersey Hospice last week to see my friend and fellow RISE committee member JH . Last Thursday with her family and in the arms of her partner she passed away.

 Rest in Peace my friend xxx