Back in the UK
I'm just coming to the end of a quick week's visit to the UK which has combined visits to family, friends and business. It's certainly been a full week and with a few disrupted nights of sleep I'm not yet fully on UK time.

The trip started last Thursday when Sue drove me to Sydney airport for an afternoon departure in clear sunny weather - there's some photos from the take-off here. I had a good, but long, flight via Singapore and Lesley was at Heathrow to meet me at 5am on Friday morning. I then spent a couple of days with Mum & Dad (which included a cold windswept walk to view the Cheltenham Gold Cup race from Cleeve Hill), before heading to Crowborough via a night in Maidenhead.

I then had 3 days in the office, catching up on progress there with the team and making a start on planning the budget for the coming financial year. I also had the opportunity to meet a number of friends in the town which was good to catch up on news. However, it's also been a strange week to have been back here without Sue and the girls, who are carrying on with the normal life back in Sydney. They've been lucky (or not) to miss the cold weather and some snow flurries!

Last Sunday Sue, Caroline and Rebecca took part in the 75th Anniversary for the Harbour Bridge, which was closed to traffic, allowing 200,000 people to walk across during the day. There are some photos here - it looked quite a sight with all the free caps being worn by the walkers and Sue said that the bridge was eerily quiet without the usual roar of 8 lanes of traffic.