One by one

Today we are feeling rather sad as yesterday we gave our lovely cat away.  It may seem a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things but we'd had her for about 8 years, she had a lovely friendly nature and we miss her already.  Knowing that she's gone to a lady in church who's been counting down the days until the cat arrived and who will spoil her rotten makes it a little easier but giving Ari (Ariosto) away starts to bring home a little of the cost of leaving life in the UK.  Just as it took me several days to stop looking out for the hens in the backgarden, I'm "seeing" Ari out there or catching a glimpse of her sitting on a chair before realising it's just a black bag.

Ari - always ready to help Fraser with his jigsaws

It's a good job that today we're setting out on a tour of the UK.  We call in at Ayr for lunch before spending the night near Carlisle.  Tomorrow it's on to a village near Manchester for a couple of nights before reaching Aylesbury.  That's the bottom of our U-shaped journey.  The upward leg takes us to near Cambridge with a detour to Outer London, up to near Doncaster then finally all the way back home.  Fraser's skipping half of this.  He, dedicated worker that he is, has to return to HTC so has the joy of taking the bus from London to Inverness, a journey that starts at 6am at Aylesbury station and reaches Inverness at 9:50pm.  I think my 7 1/2 hour drive from Doncaster with two children is preferable.

The aim of this grand tour is to catch up with relatives and some of my university friends.  Unfortunately it looks as if I won't be able to wrangle an actual trip to Oxford into our schedule but seeing friends I haven't seen for years will be even better.  Please remember us in all our travelling and with all the people we're hoping to meet.