I missed the 3 Kings cake today, as I travelled to the UK today. Patrick and I had one at Caroline's last weekend, and she found the King! I was deeply jealous, I never get the small plastic King, or the crown!

However, I did pay 75p for the smallest mince pie ever, so there was that :-)

( Read more... )

It's hard to voice, but it's clear that Pauline Palmer is getting ready to leave us. Mum's been getting increasing frail the last months and has had a series of infections ( Read more... )

Dad, I'm sitting by your bed in room on 4 on ward 311 at the Royal Derbyshire. It's kind of peaceful - you're alseep and snoring. It's raining outside, I can hear the "normal" life of the ward and the staff, continue outside your room. The Drs and nurses treat you with so much repsect, talking to you by name, explaining what they're doing at every ( Read more... )

I'm a bit late in writing an update (real date of writing 13th Nov 2022), but hurrah, I walked 26 miles in the Peak District on 24th September for Alzheimers Research UK, along with my amazing sister Kate Palmer and wonderful friend Mags Bird ( Read more... )

Today I realized that we are in the end game, that Dad is slipping away. I visited him for the first time in the new nurising home, since he was discharged from the latest hospital visit. Maik and the staff are so caring and seem to know Dad well already ( Read more... )

We had a ridiculous long drive today, all the way from Embleton (Northumberland) down to Watford. We broke the journey at Leeds and had lunch then saw the film, Horrible Histories: the Movie - Romans (trailer here!) - this fitted nicely with our trip to Hadrian's wall, earlier in the holiday ( Read more... )

We've had a fantastic 2 days with the lovely Swete family, of years of Swiss adventures. We loved their new house and garden in Sevenoaks and celebrated Markus' 10th Birthday here Yesterday Alan went into the city to do bookshops and mooching, he got the early train in with. Andrea, the kids and I had a fantastic time at Hever castle. Gorgeous ( Read more... )

Today was the grand finale to our UK summer holiday! Markus and I have been reading the HP novels together since 2017 and we just finished book 7 about a month ago. Read more about our HP adventures here.

It seemed fitting then that we do Alnwick castle and then of course the studio tour! Excitement was high this morning, and we got the audio ( Read more... )

Busy day today! Despite the miserable weather we ticked off 3 Alnwick hot spots ( Read more... )

So first day in Embleton, a village on the Northumberland coast, close to Alnwick. We're staying in cottages linked to the Dunstanburgh Castle Hotel, which is lovely.

Today was glorious weather, so we walked down to the seaside, the boys played in the waves, and then we walked along to Dunstanburgh castle, only to discover we had no money, and ( Read more... )