babies and braais

parents, children & godparents at the font

at the font again

Caroline, Linzi, Jules & Lindsey!

and again, shadesoff!

So Sunday dawned bright and sunny and turned out to be yet another heatwave day! We’re getting fed up with all this heat, we left Zambia to get away from it!

We got ourselves ‘glammed up’ and headed off to the christening, as previously mentioned, did the whole business in the church, hymns, guitar-playing vicar…… gave us a bit of a chuckle that!, gathering round the font for the official bit – Holly and Adam were great!, etc, then back to Jules’ parents’ for a delicious spread and a very pleasant afternoon spent in good company with a great bunch of people, some old faces and some new, very enjoyable!

Visited Gaz, Kathryn and Charlie, freshly back from their hols in Cornwall, later on that day, for a great evening and lots of catching up over a delicious braai! (we’ll have to watch all these delicious spreads we keep  getting tempted by……)

our cute as a button nephew Charlie Nokes!

Gaz, Kathryn & Charlie



Booked in for a night at the Sealand Court B&B (in other words crashed at Mum & Dad’s!) and spent a very busy Monday sourcing odd bits and pieces that we needed to get in preparation for our first trip to Cornwall to begin househunting.

Today (Tuesday) we got up early and while I did the laundry (like, everything, bedding, towels, clothes,rugs, you name it…) Justin did the gardening (again, like, everything, cutting the grass, strimming the edges, turning the soil….) so we have been feeling very pleased with our efforts all day!

We then went to see our babies and had a great visit with them all with lots of chatting and cuddles!

Had hoped to get to Minnis Bay to join up with Jules, Daemon and tribe, if only for an hour or so, but we couldn’t make it in time and by the time we were ready to finally set off there they were packing up as the tide was rushing in!

So we spent time sourcing a few more bits for our trip and Justin also organised himself some weights as he’s missing his gym…….. I shall feel guilty now and feel the need to also do some kind of healthy exercise!

So that’s all for today! It was another hot one but we finally got a little rain tonight, not sure it was enough for the garden though……………

a new day.....

End of another lovely day weatherwise…….. sunshine all day so we decided to visit Broadstairs……. A lovely old-fashioned seaside town in good old British tradition and holding old childhood memories for me of trips here with Grandma and Grandad Carps!

Everyone was going mad on the beach, much to Justin’s amusement! He said he’d never seen a beach scene quite like it! It was total chaos! People getting sunburnt, kids splashing in the sea, surfoards, windsurfers, yachts, fish and chips, ice creams, funfair, amusement arcades, seagulls squawking when they found a chip packet, all mixed in with beautiful ancient buildings filled with Dickensian history………. A very pleasant little day out!

I should have taken a photo of the chaotic ‘Brits on the beach’ but forgot! I did, however, take a pic of the windfarm just off the coast – very surreal – hope it comes out in the photo…….

windfarm in the distance....

|We get visited by the wood pigeons each morning and they love to land on the roofof the van and clatter around making a right racket..... I'm sure they're female and all wearing stilletoes!

wood pigeon!

The moorhens keep visiting us at ‘the gutter’ and are very cute to watch….. they’ve all got little babies with them and seem to come up into the little garden for the birdseed perhaps…..  got a lovely picture of one little baby with it’s parents……

baby moorhen with parents!

We very nearly tried to get to the Hop Farm music festival not far from here….. great line-up…. 10CC, Bryan Ferry, The Eagles and The Human League…. Damn! We just couldn’t do it as we found out about it only the day before and couldn’t manage it! Maybe next time…..

Tomorrow (2^nd July) we have a christening for Holly and Adam, Julie and Daemon’s twins, our new God Children! So we’ll be responsible for leading them in the right direction in life, together with Amelia, their older daughter, also our God-daughter…… hmmmm…… leading them in the right direction eh?! Well, something like that!!

We now have four God-children as we won’t forget Donald and Michelle’s daughter Jessica back in Zambia and we do hope that they’ll all get to visit us over here some time in the future!

For now we will enjoy the evening sun with our wine……………………….

sunsets and the sea!

we had a beautiful late, late evening sunset at the van a couple of days ago...... although Justin was noticing how much lower the sky is here in England, compared to Africa....... he's right...... I hadn't noticed it until he mentioned it.......

late evening sunset at the dog and duck 

after another wonderful visit with all our kids on tuesday we took a drive through to old minnis bay..... a lovely 'old-fashioned kind of seaside spot'....... remembered from my youth............ it was hot, hot, hot..... and the sea wasn't too cold! so we both had a paddle!

Justin's first paddle at  Minnis Bay!

Linzi's first paddle at Minnis Bay!

our first two weeks in england!

Well, here we are in the UK at last! We’ve been here for two weeks and our feet haven’t touched the ground yet, it’s been wonderfully chaotic , mad and exhausting and we’re loving it!!

BA were very generous with their wine!

happy fliers!

We stepped off the plane to sunny weather and Gaz (my big bruv ) met us and took us back to his and Kathryn’s where we met our lovely little nephew Charlie for the first time!

Mum and Dad were there too so we had a quick cuppa, Kathryn very kindly put us on the insurance for her car and then we set straight off for the Animal inn and our babies!

We had a fantastic reunion with all our babies and left a couple of hours later happy, grubby from massive hugs and with aching faces from all our grinning and laughing with total happiness!

So happy to be with my babies again!



I've missed you so much!



everything is right with the world!

Finally!

Your dad's missed you two!

Gypsy's back in her dad's arms!

Hello Zig our gorgeous!

and hello clyde as lovely as ever!

there's our boy!

From there, after a bite to eat in Deal, breathing in the sea air, we followed Mum & Dad to our new home for the next few months – the Dog & Duck at Pluck’s Gutter! (www.dogandduck.co.uk)

We freshened up and Mum & Dad took us out for a delicious meal at the Rising Sun down the road….. this is definitely the life!

The next few days were taken up with much baby visiting as the English weather did it’s thing and slowly changed from hot – we actually got sunburnt on our first day! – to cold and rainy!

Justin takes in the view of the river stour

Since then we’ve sorted out our wheels -  via a series of family connections, phone calls, etc, (thanks Uncle John and Beverley!!) we ended up with our lovely Vauxhall Astra,hereafter known as ‘Tali’ after our little girl.

We’d barely got Tali on the move when we heard that our shipment had arrived in Felixstowe, had been selected for random x-raying (could that be because it was from Zambia by any chance?!), had been cleared and was about to arrive at our storage depot!

So Justin got to do some major weightlifting on Friday as we spent many hours sorting and heaving boxes into a storage unit, putting aside our boxes with our clothes in….. and true to the unpredictability of British weather, the sun decided to blaze down on us at the most inconvenient time! So we left there hot and tired but pleased with all that had happened so far!

Last night (Sunday 26^th) my lovely best friend Jules came to visit and stayed over so we had the most brilliant evening catching up over a glass or two of wine….. or do I mean bottles….? Boxes even…..? We all three had scampi and chips at the Dog and Duck pub (delicious! My favourite old pub meal ever!) and finally crashed out at some stage!

Justin & Jules at 'the gutter'!

Justin & Jules get down & dirty with Pat's vacuum cleaner!
  

Enjoying our new temporary home!

first night out at the dog and duck!

Only to awake to a mini heatwave…………. Today (27^th) has been unbelievably hot, to the point where we have been reduced to minimal/non-existent clothing and needed to ‘make a plan’with a hosepipe, sprinkler and tree’ to attempt to cool down! It was that or take a dip in ‘the gutter’, which, being green and frequented by many moorhens was not our preferred option!

We’ve been going ballistic in the shops! ASDA is, of course, still my most favourite supermarket ever!! But the ‘2 for 1’, the ‘buy one get one free’, the ‘buy three pay for two’, etc, deals, are almost too much for us to take in after our years in Chingola with the famous ‘Shoprite’!

I won’t even attempt to describe our first attempt at using the ‘self-service checkout’ except to say that the queue that formed behind us was probably the longest they had seen for a long time!

So that’s the first update and we will now relax with our wine on this very pleasant evening, listening to all the birds, waiting for darkness to descend at perhaps 10.30pm…. or thereabouts!