Posts have been scarce again for which I apologise, I seem to have been busy without doing anything very noteworthy and so haven’t written much lately. We are now in the UK to do the “introduce Stephanie to family and friends” thing, most of which I am looking forward to as seeing friends and family, some of which I haven’t seen for many years will be lovely and I have had mostly excellent support so it will be enjoyable. Our flights with Qatar Airways were good, we decided to fly business class so I could lay down and get some rest and it is certainly a different world to flying economy class, the problem will be going back to economy next year when we come over. Thankfully due to the issues Qatar is having at the moment with its neighbours the cost of coming business class was not as much as usual, I think they are going all out to retain and grow the airline business as a show of resilience to their neighbours and we took advantage of that, also they looked after us so well on the flights back from Philadelphia that they were always going to be our first choice.
On arrival at Heathrow we were met by our wonderful friend Amanda. Her and her husband Steve live in an idyllic property just outside the village of Farley Green which is a typical English country village, well kept and full of interesting properties and of course the village green. Amanda and Steve kindly look after our car for us while we are not here, it’s probably an expensive way of being mobile while we are over but it’s peace of mind knowing that we have a car here if we needed to come over in an emergency and I love the car itself, it’s a Renault Scenic, something we don’t have in Australia, easy and very pleasant to drive, it’s little 1.5 litre turbo diesel goes really well and is very economical, very well equipped, very comfortable and it makes a change to drive a manual car. I love hurtling down the country roads in it especially when we get up to Yorkshire and I’m on roads I know well!
After a reasonably good nights sleep we decided to go into Guildford this morning but not until we had visited the “Dabbling Duck cafe” for breakfast. We have been there lots of times but never for breakfast and I have to say it didn’t disappoint, I had scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon, I expected for the price of it (9 pounds) that the smoked salmon would either have been mixed in with the eggs or just a small amount artistically laid on top but what I got was a huge pile of very fresh and extremely tasty smoked salmon on the side! It was perfect, I don’t very often choose scrambled eggs as they usually don’t compare with how I cook them myself but today’s was an excellent effort!
We had a small amount of shopping to do and I wanted to visit the Santander bank as there were lots of details which needed changing. The branch we went into was a strange sort of place, no tellers just one person to help with queries and three elaborate machines for depositing cash, cheques etc and withdrawing cash. I waited for the man to finish with the person he was helping and he asked how he could help me, he had an Eastern European accent but very easy to understand and very helpful, I explained that we live in Australia and we’re over on holiday and needed to change some details on my account, I took out both of my driving licences and explained that firstly I needed to change my address then my name and my gender, he had obviously not come across this issue before but successfully changed the address without any problems, then it came to the name and gender so he decided to call his supervisor who was at the main branch, the conversation was priceless, he said to her “I have a lady here who has been a changing her name and a changing her gender!” The way it came out was gorgeous, he was so helpful, unfortunately it’s only possible to change one thing at a time so the name and gender will have to wait for another day and sadly we will have moved on before the bank will be open again but the experience with this man was perfect. Before we left he apologised, fished his name badge out of his top pocket and put it on and said he would be in trouble if his supervisor had seen him without it, his name was Vladimir, I complemented him on his name to which he replied, “I only wish I had his money” obviously referring to Mr Putin so I asked if he was from Russia, he replied “no, Bulgaria, very close!” I shook his hand, told him he was a true gentleman and thanked him for his time and excellent service, just a lovely experience all round!