Boxing day

We woke up to the terrible news about SE Asia. What a horrorshow. My heart goes out to all the people over there who have lost their lives. It is just so terrible. When you think of great natural disasters, they are all in the distant past. To have an earthquake and tidal wave so devastating in our lifetime seems somehow wrong.

But our day had to go on. We visited some of TOH's elderly and distant aunts. One lived in Hong Kong and we spent an hour chatting about the good old days on the islands. We brought back buried memories for each other.

Then we popped back over to my dad's to say hello. We went the long way round the M25 to get there from Essex to charge TOH's battery in his car - first it wouldn't start and then he ran out of petrol, which was fun.

And back home to get ready for our big trip to Newcastle and Scotland.