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VACATION IN GREECE

Monday, 4th June 2001
Madz left early for work, and Ross left a little later on his bike -- the weather is fine enough for cycling to Brentford. We were out and walking up to the tube at Notting Hill Gate by 11 am, and took the Central Line to Oxford Circus. Joan had her time of going into and out of shoe shops, department stores etc. (And I didn't even have a chance to get my wish list into her bags.--Don)

We went into Liberty's to return a pepper grinder we bought last year, and which deceased itself with a loud crack not long before we came away. Apparently they had had several returned and no longer stocked the grinder, but cheerfully replaced it with one of a different pattern.

We were back to Powis Gardens by tube and feet at 4 pm, tired and footsore. Even though all our Greece walking has made us fit, standing around and not sitting around for a long period does make you tired. Joan cooked us more sausages for tea -- the Cumberlands were delicious.

Tuesday, 5th June 2001
Ross was working from home today, so we took ourselves off to the Victoria & Albert Museum. For those who haven't heard of this, it was originally set up to take the exhibits from the Great Exhibition of the 1850s. Since then, it has become the repository of all the fine art, textiles, costumes, jewellery etc.

They had a theme exhibit open: on the subject of the Victorian love of art and science. I also visited the Canon photography exhibit, which had a photo display of landscapes by an early English photographer. Joan had a great time in the textile rooms, but we were getting tired by this time and decided to come back on another day to view the costume displays.

Back home and a rest, before going down to the Tesco supermarket in Portobello Road for supplies for tea. (Which was?...come on now, I have a theme working here. Note the bold text---Don)

Wednesday, 6th June 2001
I have been experiencing pain in my right elbow for some days, getting worse and worse; and Joan being rather weary, we made this a day off. Our only outing was to Portobello Road to get some anti-inflammatory gel for my elbow, and some food.

We just read and watched TV for the day until Ross and Madz came home. We decided on fish & chips for tea; this being a traditional ethnic dish of the English. The piece of fish is a whole fillet in batter, and was pronounced excellent.

Thursday, 7th June 2001
We left Powis Gardens by 10 am and walked down to Portobello Road for an excellent cup of coffee (Italian) and a pastry, before heading down to the tube. Our destination was in Hampton Court, and required a tube change to travel to Waterloo, then a train to Hampton Court.

We went to visit an ex-shop employee of mine, Tina Conway -- some of these girls were like daughters, and have kept in touch over the years (it's nearly 17 years since I had a pharmacy). She has a four & a half year-old son in very good health, and a new baby boy of 5 months which has now lost the use of one kidney and has only 13% functionality in the other.

This little boy, however, is lively and very determined, and we sincerely hope that he will survive the inevitable kidney transplant and go on to live his life. It has been very tough for Tina, but she is managing to keep her household going while having to keep rushing off to hospital.

We walked back to the station, caught the train back to Waterloo and repeated the tube journey back to Notting Hill Gate, arriving back home after two hours.

Friday, 8th June 2001
We travelled over to Putney to visit our friends Kay and Teddy, who stayed with us in New Zealand a couple of year ago. We had a very pleasant afternoon chatting with Kay, and made some arrangements for their forthcoming trip out to NZ at the end of the year. They will be spending Christmas with us. We had dinner, and then returned to Notting Hill by tube about 9.30 pm.

Saturday, 9th June 2001
Ross and I tackled a tricky job today: the basin in the bathroom has been sitting on a tiled top, and he has had a beautiful piece of black marble cut to fit. The trick was to disconnect the taps, prise the basin loose and lift it clear. We then glued the marble top down on the tile top and left it to dry for 24 hours.

Ross is selling his old Mac G3 Powerbook, and after some thought I've decided to buy it off him. This will give us the dual platform we can use to convert Mac to Windows and reverse, and also to check our web sites for appearance as rendered on a Mac -- something we've not been able to do. It comes with Zip, floppy, and CDRom drives and a spare battery.

We spent some time stripping out his files and reconfiguring it for my use. I then went over each of the Mac utilities with Ross so I had some idea of how to use them. I can see I'll be an early customer for "Macs for Dummies" <grin>.

Sunday, 10th June 2001
We were up reasonably early (for a Sunday) to drive up to Nottinghamshire. On our visit last year, we had stayed near Melton Mowbrey, and our B & B sent us out into the country to have a meal at a pub called The Stilton Cheese Inn. Stilton cheese is a blue-vein cheese and well-known as a delicacy. This pub serves a Stilton Cheese soup which is to die for -- and I had convinced Ross and Madz that we should drive up for Sunday lunch.

The drive took a couple of hours in Ross's XK8 Jaguar; we all managed to fit in somehow. I arranged for a daynotes friend, Keith from Lincoln, to meet us there. We had a delicious meal and a good chat then drove back to London.

Ross and I finished the basin job in the bathroom and we were able to use the bath and basin once more. The whole job had been done without disaster, which cheered Ross no end.