Renford Family

It's great to be back in Sydney although I think I am having withdrawals from the morning ritual of croissants.

We enjoyed our brief stopover in Singapore but before we knew it it was time to get back on the plane. It was good to spend some time with Flip and Hodgey who were in Singapore for work and we managed to have a delicious buffet dinner with them and Scott.

Lily with Flip and Hodgey in the first class lounge waiting for our plane to board

The flight got off to a good start since Lily slept for the first two hours but she picked up a bug and spent a good part of the flight crying or whinging. When we got back home she only managed to sleep two and a half hours - it was not a good night to say the least. But Lily is all better now and now I am sick.

Lily made a new friend on the plane - she had fun with Margot in the bassinette. I think she enjoyed being in economy more than business!

Although she does look pretty comfy

View from the plane of the French Alps poking through the clouds
Lily was happy to see Oliver at the airport

It's hard to believe that our European sojourn is over and now it's time for Michael to get a job.

Well here we are stranded at Singapore, our flight has been delayed so we won't be home until Thursday now - there is a problem with one of the doors and the trusty Qantas engineers are working away but best to give them time so we don't get sucked out mid-flight.

After we checked in our 90+kgs at Heathrow and bought Lily another toy we loaded ourselves onto the plane. We were expecting a very different journey to the one on the way over to London where Lily slept about 18 hours since she is much more vocal and wriggly now. On the first leg from London she managed to sleep about 7hours and luckily (for us) only had a few screams which didn't seem to bother her fellow business class passengers. Hopefully we will find out soon if we are transferred to a flight leaving tonight or whether we get an overnight stay at Qantas' expense in Singapore.

London was fabulous as ever. We managed to catch up with quite a few people while we were there although the on our last day we were bitterly disappointed to miss seeing Mike, Deb and Rob (who traveled up from Dover just to see us, or probably Lily). For once I must take some of the blame since I sent them the wrong mobile number and while we were wandering through Tate hoping nothing bad had happened to the them they were standing outside Charing Cross tube waiting for us and we only received their email later that evening. So so sorry we were daft idiots...what more can I say.

The Lily factor was in full force when we checked in with over 80kg at Nice airport - we didn't get charged a cent and they gave us an extra seat! It's her cheesy grin - people just cannot resist (although cute it is not overly attractive).

We stayed with Josh, Jen and Amelia and the two girls had a ball playing together and I think Amelia coped very well having to share all of her toys with Lily for the five days.

Amelia reading to Lily
We met up with Michael's friends from Qantas who are now working in London- Ray, Tom, Andrea and Nick. Can you believe Lily was not allowed into the local pub since she was under 18 so we had lunch at the Marriot. She didn't overly enjoy her lasagne for lunch so she left them a little present.

It was great to catch up with Warren again and he even fed Lily.
Although after a while the spoon needed more professional guidance to make it to her mouth since she was too distracted by the pint of beer.

Frank Chalmers, who is writing a book all about swimming and we met in Dover (and a fellow Channel swimmer) hosted a dinner on Friday night with Kevin Murphy. Between the four men they had swum the Channel 37 times although the King of the Channel is responsible for 34 of them and the other three have one each! It was great for Michael to be able to spend some time with Kevin and we all watched the great doco King of the Channel which features Des and Kevin challenging eachother to three swims in Sydney Harbour, English Channel and Loch Ness.

Kevin, Frank, Michael and Simon
That night he agreed to swim in the Serpentine at Hyde Park the next morning - of course Lily and I stayed in bed. Every Saturday morning year round there are a group of swimmers that swim laps of the pool at the Serpentine. Water temperature was 6degrees but Michael managed to win his 50m race with a 33second handicap. He enjoyed the experience so much he went back on Sunday to do it all again!

Michael testing the water temp

Even though we only had a few days in London we managed to catch up with quite a few people. Maarinke has been in London for about four months now and Lily absolutely adores her. We got Indian take-in since we couldn't leave without having the national cuisine.

Lily also got to meet Andrew and Martina who I worked with at BT all those years ago. I hadn't seen them in about five years so it was great to enjoy some wine and food with them at Earls Court.

On Monday we went to the Tate Modern and I got to see Mark Rothko's work again which I love and we also got to see some 'art' such as a green flourescent light nailed to a wall titled Diagonal or a square canvas covered in only black paint which had a huge paragraph explaining the artist's thought process.

Later that evening we took a stroll along Oxford and Regent streets with Warren to see the christmas lights and to do some last minute shopping. Lily was very excited when Warren turned up with a Hamleys bear - every child has to have a Hamleys bear!

We had a great time in London apart from missing lunch with Deb, Rob and Mike. A big thank you to Josh, Jen and Amelia for having us.