Firstly, apologies that there are no photos with the blog today. Not to protect the innocent but there simply wasn’t a subject worthy of a photo before we left France and things have been…well, let’s say full on since we arrived at Stansted…

We left France with our favourite airline Ryanair (there’s a touch of irony there) from Tours International (also some irony) after spending a comfortable night at a Campanile near the airport. The hotel is so new that it’s surrounded by a building site and I swear the paint on the walls was still wet.

I thought it was impossible to find an airport with a departure lounge smaller than Dinard, however Tours managed it. Nevertheless, we got through quite efficiently and were soon on our sleek, spacious Ryanair jet to Stansted (irony etc…) Our stewardess excelled in making garbled announcements and we thought she was perhaps Polish or Czech. It turned out she was Spanish…

We’d arranged an ‘executive car’ transfer to our friends in Parsons Green, which was about twenty minutes late and took 2 hours to drive 45 miles. How I’ve missed London traffic…

Our dear friends Dominic and Paulo have a wonderful, warm and welcoming home, in which we are staying for three nights. On Saturday evening we walked to a gastro pub for dinner. The food was lovely but we’d both forgotten how noisy a crowded restaurant could be on a sticky summers night in London. I think we were a little overwhelmed and quite tired.

So today, we will all attend the wedding of Susie’s stepdaughter, Tiffany and Amir. I hope there’ll be photos of that in the next blog…