End of an Era

I was very sad to hear of the death on Saturday of Harry Patch, the last surviving World War I veteran in Britain and one of only four surviving WWI Veterans in the world (Briton Claude Choules now lives in Australia; Frank Buckles is American and Jack Babcock Canadian). Harry Patch was 111, and his death came only a week after that of fellow WWI veteran Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest ever male and the world's oldest man (113 years, 42 days) at the time of his death.

Part of the reason I was so annoyed at the numpty who called the office last November during the two minutes' silence at the Remembrance Day service was that I was actually semi-crying, having watched Harry, Henry and Bill Stone (who died on 10 January this year at the age of 108) each lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. It was very poignant, watching these three frail men so utterly determined to stand up out of their wheelchairs and lay wreaths to commemorate the lives of their friends and colleagues who died in service to their country. After Henry Allingham died a couple of weeks ago, I remember thinking how sad it would be to see just one veteran at the Remembrance Day service this year; I imagine for Harry Patch it would have been a lonely moment, so perhaps it's better that he passed away too before November.

We have lots of reasons to be thankful to these men, and to the thousands of others who fought in that conflict and all conflicts since then.

Feeling melancholy today. Normal service will be resumed next time :).

Wedding Season Rolls On

This weekend it was the turn of Becky and Rob (her Rob, not mine, obviously), and we had a great afternoon watching them get married and chatting in particular to Rob's aunt, uncle and cousin who'd come down from Scotland for the wedding. Becky was in on a secret plan for Rob's sister to fly in from South Africa for the week, and she had spun Rob a yarn about a super-duper sale at Debenhams as the reason she had to go out at 5am on Friday, when she was actually driving to Heathrow to pick up Caroline. It was a really lovely day, and Cathy, who made my wedding cake, did a fantastic job yet again on Becky & Rob's cake.

More photos are here.

So Far So Good

Work went from one extreme to the other this week. Monday and Tuesday were really quiet as all the staff were away, many of them in Uganda. Thursday and today, on the other hand, were the opposite - everyone back from Uganda, but most people going away again this weekend so trying to get a month's work done in 2 days. Chaos, but I loved it.

There wasn't a great deal for me to do this week, as I mentioned on Sunday, and there won't be for the rest of the summer, so I'm just going to do three days next week and possibly only two the week after. I'm going to try and get the office running really smoothly while things are quiet; we'll see how that turns out...

... And New Job

I'm starting my new job tomorrow. I'm working 20 hours a week (5 hours a day every weekday except Wednesday) as Operations Manager at our church. I've been volunteering there a few hours a week since March, and was offered the job a couple of months ago. I'm really looking forward to it - the rest of the summer should be quite quiet in the office, but from September it will get a lot busier.

Now that the wedding is over, I'm really glad to have something to occupy my time. I loved not being at work for the last 6 months, but without the wedding to organise I imagine I'd get very bored very quickly :).

New Hair...

After we got engaged, I grew my hair so I would have more options when it came to a style on the wedding day. While I loved how it turned out on the day, and while being able to tie my long hair back came in handy in Japan - my straighteners didn't work there because of the difference in electricity voltage, and the humidity turned my fringe into a frizzy mess, so I pulled it all back, something I wouldn't have been able to do with shorter hair - nonetheless I was sooo glad to get to the hairdressers yesterday. I still wanted the option of drying it wavy or straight, so I had about 5 inches off the length and had my layers cut in again.

Here's straight:


And wavy:


Plus, I can just to say get it into a pony tail for the gym :).

I'm a Twitterer

While we were on holiday, Rob convinced me to get a Twitter account. I'm yet to be persuaded that Twitter is anything more than information overload, but I'll give it a try for a while. Feel free to follow me, or if you don't have a Twitter account, my most recent tweets are in the sidebar on the left. Here goes...

Honeymoon: Bintan

After a less-than-perfect 16-hour journey to get here, which included me coming within milliseconds of throwing up due to turbulence on the plane then going one better - twice - on the boat from Singapore to Bintan island, we finally arrived and the journey was all forgotten. Our villa is gorgeous, the resort beautiful and food delicious. Sure, I could live without the mosquitoes, but getting bitten every night despite having covered myself from head to toe in insect repellent AND sleeping inside a mosquito net while Rob takes no such precautions and is left well alone is highly annoying a small price to pay.

We went on a mountain bike ride out to a local fishing village, read lots of books (Rob), played lots of Bejeweled on the iPod (me), sunbathed by the pool, had spa treatments, went to a beach barbecue, played tennis (well, tried to, at least) and had 'Dinner on the Rocks' - a fabulous 6-course meal with our own private waiter on an outcrop of rocks just off the beach.

As this was the relaxing part of our holiday, we didn't take many photographs (particularly as we forgot our camera on the mountain bike ride), but the ones we did take are here. These are my favourites: -

Our villa

Our bed

The pool area

Back to reality tomorrow :).

Honeymoon: Tokyo

Well, Tokyo is unlike anywhere I've ever seen before - possibly because there's nowhere like it in the world. It's a huge sprawling place, 23 cities in one. We visited lots of different things: the Gardens of the Imperial Palace; Ginza, the main shopping district; Akihabara, the electronics district; Shinjuku, the main business district; and Shibuya, an area popular for its shops, restaurants and nightlife.

Our enthusiasm for sightseeing was waning a little bit, so we took things at a slightly slower pace. We had also had our fill of miso soup and noodles for a while, so we went to Friday's and the Outback Steak House for our evening meals :). The weather was quite a bit cooler here than it was in Kyoto, in fact it was drizzling most of the time, but that didn't spoil it too much; we were glad of the break from the heat and humidity.

We didn't go to too many places that warranted picture-taking, but the pictures we do have are here. The two pictures below were taken from the 8th floor of our hotel, looking out at the road outside Shibuya station. The number of people crossing the road each time the lights changed was incredible; exactly how I imagined Tokyo to be :).



So, having spent 11 days sightseeing, we're now looking forward to 10 days of doing absolutely nothing in Indonesia...