Final week in the UK for…. Who knows how long?! October 16th to 24th

The last week was a blur with a social event every single night of some description.  Good thing that Simon finished his cartoon creation to this high standard.  

We spent evenings catching up with workmates,

 watching comedian Jimmy Carr at the Cliff’s Pavilion:

and grabbing a curry with good friends:

A fortnight after our call to Campers Inn in the States and I hadn’t heard anything from anyone at the company despite sending Joe a direct email.  The last thing I wanted was to have to worry and chase them up from a time zone even further away than I already was!  I emailed Joe and copied in his Manager explaining that this was causing me a lot of stress.  How lovely to receive an email back the following day saying that, as luck would have it, someone has just made an offer on the RV.  There was some haggling about our final pay-out but in the end it is a far better sum than we would get if Harvey sits on sale into 2018.  Now we just have to wait for the sale to finalise, fingers crossed!

This good news gave us the confidence to go ahead and book our camper rental in Oz.  It is only a few weeks until we’ll need it now!  That’s why the cheapest camper deal we wanted wasn’t available any more.  Planning further ahead does save money sometimes people!  We made renewed contact with our friends in and around Perth to plan our movements over the first few days.  It really was just around the corner.

The last week was also one containing a contrast of sad farewells and celebrations.  Simon accompanied me to the funeral of our neighbour from when we were young children.  In fact, ‘Auntie Jenny’ became my brother Al’s God Mum having been a pillar of strength and support for my Mum whilst she was going through a difficult pregnancy with him.  A wonderful bubbly life force of a lady.  Al himself was devastated that he wouldn’t be able to attend, however he had quite a reasonable excuse, the funeral falling on the same day as his wife’s due date.  And they live in Norway!  I offered to go to represent the Cordey family.  What I didn’t count for was how hard it would be to return to the same crematorium where we had said our farewells to both of our parents.  But it did give me a chance to visit their final resting place whilst I was in the area and have some quiet contemplation.  The baby failed to right the life balance by arriving when she was due, but more on that later!

The celebrations consisted firstly of attending the Essex Police awards where Simon had been nominated for a bravery award.  I know what you’re thinking, how can that be when he hasn’t worked a single shift in the last twelve months?  Well, it must have been a roll-over!  Anyway, he wasn’t quite brave enough to win his category, but it was a three-course meal, a night out and a chance to socialise with old work chums for free, care of the old bosses, so we were glad not to miss out.

The new Mr and Mrs Heffron

The main celebration we had been keen to attend before leaving these shores again was our friends’ Kayleigh and Gav’s wedding.  It was bound to be a great day and another chance for us to see multiple colleagues for a good old knees up.

Squeezing in some quality time with family was important.  We managed to get over to my sisters on a school inset day so that we could join the Grimshaws bowling and stay over to take Captain America to the park for one last time for a while.

Young Alex has some awesome bowling moves

  

 





















On Tuesday 24^th Simon’s other sister, his brother and family came over for lunch as it was half term and we then spent the evening with friends at the Dawson’s, in a repeat of our last night before our USA trip!  It’s always hard saying goodbye but we can tell ourselves now that last time we went away for 9 months it went so fast that we’ll be back before they have a chance to miss us.  We will be focussing on trying to slow down our time away and savouring every moment!

Saying farewell to the Dawsons and the Joftuses