Fog, fog and more fog!

December 22, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

Kerri wanted to go shopping so he had an early start and were in Guildford by about 9am … as were many, many other people.

While Kerri and Tim had coffee I popped in to HMV and discovered that my new (British) VISA card requires a PIN to authenticate the sale – whoops! Fortunately they took pity on me and let me just sign the slip as usual; the we called my parents and had them track down the info which I had recorded but forgotten to bring along (because I didn’t realise I needed it).

We pointed Kerri at the main shopping area then Tim & I headed off to Waterstones (bookshop) where we found some interesting stuff – Tim bought me a book that he said I should read called “Games People Play“.

After lunch at the local Pizza Express we went back to Tim’s, grabbed our stuff and then went over to Nicky & James’ new house, which is just yards from where I used to live.

The fog was pretty bad when we set off towards Newbury, but it got a lot worse … and I was map reading by the light of a PDA! We were doing pretty well until we got onto one road which we thought we’d be able to exit fairly quickly but instead it was a few miles before the next slip-off. I improvised a route to get us back to where we needed to be, including a tour of some local picturesque villages. (I’m sure they would have been picturesque if we’d able to see further than ~10 feet at this point!) We finally made it to Mike‘s place, where he was waiting in the driveway, waving a torch to guide us in.

After a quick round of hellos we all headed out to their local pub: Mike, Suzy and their children (Charlotte & Evan), TonyT, Nicky & James, Tim, Kerri and me. The women and kids took one car and left us to walk … but then it was all of ~5 minutes stroll and in the end we beat them to the pub. More beer was supped (I had a pint from each of their handpumps: Speckled Hen, London Pride, 6X, and 2 or 3 others) as we all caught up, and then Nicky just calmly mentioned that she & James had been in Guildford this morning too … to pick up her engagement ring! The usual congratulations were interspersed with echoes of “about time too”.

Once we were all back at the house, large amounts of curry arrived and we all dived in. Two curries in two days – now that’s a taste of England.