Tuesday 4 May 2010

Another metropolitan foray

Having not been to London for nearly 2 years, I've now been there twice in less than a month. The object of the exercise this time was to meet up with my brother and his family to round off my birthday festivities. I'm not in the market for driving anywhere much at the moment, and certainly not interested in a 500 mile round trip at the wheel, so we went up on the train on Sunday afternoon, stayed over in a fairly nice hotel in west London (cheap internet deals rule, OK!) and then went across to Greenwich yesterday morning to meet up at the Royal Observatory. I'd been to the observatory once before, but that was about 25 years ago, so it was interesting to see how it had changed over the intervening years. We then went into Greenwich town centre to indulge in a long, enjoyable lunch in a decent pub/restaurant, which gave us plenty of time to catch up on family doings and assorted gossip - although we talk on the phone fairly regularly, I hadn't actually seen my brother for over a year, our last planned get-together just before last Christmas having been snowed off, distance and the consequent practicalities of trying to find ourselves in the same place at the same time doing the rest. What such infrequent meetings highlight is how quickly time seems to pass as you get older - my nephew is at university now, while my niece, always my favourite little lady (apart from my daughter, of course) more or less from birth, celebrated her 16th birthday a few weeks ago, and spent most of the day draped decorously over her new boyfriend, who'd come along for the trip. Tempus fugit, in spades!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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