We've moved to Valerie and Satoshi Aoki's place in West Norwood a little further south of London. I had met Valerie on our last trip and we had kept in touch. She has a Lydia too. In fact Nathan and I stayed one night with her and her son James in 2005 while her husband was in Japan with the two older children. Her girls are both doing degrees in Music. While Peter was visiting a rest -home with a team from West Hill Baptist Church Valerie and I went to Parliament Square where Westminster Abbey is and it's also near the Parliament Buildings and the River. We found the Privy Council Buildings and were able to go in and see the archives and even sit in on a session. It was a beautiful building with lots of bas-relief carving across the front. We first had to be x-rayed just as they do at the airport. On the next day Peter and I repeated this trip, this time with my camera! We also went to Trafalgar Square where Nelson stands atop his pillar in triumph. There is a large fountain there in front of the National Gallery. This gallery holds a huge collection of famous art which we sampled. After briefly looking in on Churchill's War Rooms we crossed Westminster Bridge and took the memorial walk along the Southbank passing the London Eye which is a giant Ferris wheel with amazing views of London and the surrounding countryside. Another gallery nearby is the Tate Britain which holds a wonderful collection of British art - this was facinating and also very handy to the bus home which is good news when your feet were as worn out as ours.

Friday 16th was spent looking at a car and checking out insurance for it. There are 826 car insurance companies in the UK but after filling out lots of internet applications we soon found that they don't insure non-UK residents!

Satoshi took Peter and I by overground train to Tower Bridge which we walked across. What a fascinating engineering feat it is, this is the bridge that opens to allow tall ships to pass. At the Tower of London we toured the bloody tower where many martyrs had been held prior to their execution. Then the Keep which is the White Tower in the centre of the complex, there is a lot of armour in here. Next I enquired about the queue for viewing the crown jewels; it seemed to be 40mins to 1hour long, snaking halfway around the large courtyard and also far into the building. I was wondering if the queue would be shorter towards the end of the day. I mentioned that we were New Zealanders and did not want to miss seeing our Sovereign's jewels, the guard was excessively kind and took us right to the head of the queue inside the building! Needless to say we were astounded and very thankful. The jewels were truly amazing and contrary to my expectations well worth the visit. We also saw a room where Queen Jane's name had been etched into the wall along with many other famous names as these miserable men and women had awaited their doom. Later in the afternoon we took the tube to the area near Buckingham Palace and St. James Park and there sat down to have a bite to eat while listening to a band playing nearby in a band rotunda, of course.

Sunday was spent at Westhill Baptist church with Pastor Ray Poutney and his family. Peter spoke in the morning about the rest-home work and in the evening about the 18thC Evangelical Revival. Megumi took me to the city and we visited the Dickens House Museum in the afternoon and I had a stroll around some of his haunts; he was a great walker and he had lived in two houses in this part of London. Next I finally found Liberty of London, a famous fabric shop, which was quite as fabulous as its reputation; the front door was surrounded in fresh flowers. But I didn't buy anything, couldn't buy anything!
I did find some good quality fine lawn, in a street dedicated to selling men's shirts, at tailors shop, so shirt fabric and I'm hoping to make a smocked dress out of it for some little girl as it's gingham. Nearby was Satoshi's workplace, the Japan Centre, where I managed to pick up some basic Japanese cooking ingredients (yum). When I arrived back there was the 'new' car, a Hyundai Elantra Si, so very much the same as my car at home that we had just sold.

The next day we had to navigate up to North London to Wembly to pick up some hand-brake parts for the car, whew that was some feat finding that place! Hpwever we were soon on the M4 West heading for Reading.


Our friends the Baxters who live in Reading stayed with us in 2006; the boys had worked with them at a camp in the Lake District 5 years ago and we had met them then briefly. Since 2006 they have had two children, Stephanie and Stanley. We enjoyed catching up but actually stayed at their pastor's house (an amazing home) as they were away for the week. The pastor Bruce Jenkins, had done a pulpit swap with John Levers some years back, so there is a healthy interest in NZ there.

Windsor Castle is nearby, it's where the Queen generally spends her weekends, so we had a day there and also got a bit more done on the car, Peter took the hub off a wheel and packed grease into the bearing I think. These jobs are almost impossible without tools and with no off-street parking. But the castle was unbelievable and crammed with incredible art works and armour and spears and all sorts of weapons.

(I'm typing on my case while kneeling on the floor and have just found that half my leg in completely numb!)

It's enjoyable just driving around these towns and city districts and seeing all the old houses and walls etc. The people in Britain are very similar to Kiwis in many ways an d the countryside look a lot like NZ but the houses are very different, they are almost all terraced-houses or semi-detatched, which is two houses joined with a brick wall. All the houses are made from brick; I think there was a law passed in London about this after 1666 and the Great Fire of London. In the Reading Museum there is a 70m 19thC copy of the Bayeux Tapestry and we managed to catch the tour guide explaining it, fascinating, so that's 1066.

Several families in the church are considering home-schooling so we did a seminar with them and hopefully sparked some more interest. Their church once had mainly students, now they've become parents, so there's a healthy crop of young nippers there. Two of them turned one yesterday, they are an adopted set of African twins, Lulu and Isaias, and we were kindly invited to join in the Barbeque Party in the evening. This morning at church we met a couple from Gloucester who had spent some years in Sydney with Rob and Allison and family at the Stanmore church, Jim and Pam Alcorn, so that was a surprise. After an excellent lunch with the Baxters and a few friends we were on the road again for Bathford which is very near Bath. On the way we took a back road and came across these unusual place names: Pickwick and another called Box.